How to evaluate CD DAC vs. outboard DAC quality

A topic of nearly infinite debate. If you have no interest in computer audio, i will say that DAC quality in my experience is all over the place...huge variances. In general the trend is clearly that price/performance is improving dramatically. the Oppo105 is a great example of this.

That said, my favorite digital remains the Zanden 4-box which is now nearly 6 years old, and this is in comparison with DCS Scarlatti, Wadia s7i, ARC CD8, Metronome Kalista Ref/C2A, Stahl-Tek Vekian (original), Puccini. Just one man's personal opinion.

I have heard one reason is the NOS (non-oversampling) approach that Zanden, Audio Note, Ypsilon, Concert Fidelity and AMR use. Near infinite debate about this one as well. its kinda old school but has made a big resurgence.

In a word? As with all audio, some of the best products from a few years ago are still SOTA...and newer is not always better, even if the overall trend is going that way.

Your Cambridge Audio piece gets a lot of respect, and i suspect you could get a newer DAC that you prefer...the question is how much are you willing to spend to do it?

That would help give some parameters for just how far you are willing to stretch to beat what you already have.

"So the question is: How can you know whether a recently released DAC (say around $1000-$1500) will be a useful add-on? I'm not looking for the flippant and unhelpful try-it-for-yourself-and-see response."

I understand that you are not looking for that answer. Given the question, though, I can't possibly think of any other answer that's accurate. There are so many factors involved, there's just no other way to do it.

I can think of one thing you may want to try. That is to stop reading equipment reviews. It may sound like an odd suggestion, but I'm being serious. You just don't need them. If you really want to learn about audio and become good at selecting components, getting rid of the reviews is probably the best way to do it.

If you want greater musical realism, get better speakers.