Are "vintage" DAC's worthwhile, or is this a tech that does not age well

yes -- this is a pretty good thread, with some good knowledge and perspectives that may useful to many - especially for those who don’t need more modern usb based connectivity

of course like with most well populated a-gon threads, you have to filter out a minority of the posts that are patently ridiculous, trolling, and/or just plain ignorant

DAC's before 2010 were almost universally worse sounding with Redbook than with high resolution files.

i don't agree with this - it is contrary to my own findings

one doesn’t need golden ears to hear that different dacs present the music differently, just properly working ones... 😂.... but folks will believe what they want to believe and some can find reason to not trust their own ears

that been said, for most in this pursuit, a modern dac makes much more sense, given the compatibility to all sorts of input formats (most specifically usb fed from computers serving as the streamer) and bit rates and resolutions of various audio files folks may use or buy in the present day

that doesn’t mean that older dacs are poor sounding, quite the contrary ... that is a different question -- as with anything in this hobby, one just needs to know what any item does, does well and does not do...

notions of power supply isolation and jitter management are not recent discoveries, recently addressed through recent technology -- for example, even peter madnick’s very affordable audio alchemy gear from the 1990’s was properly addressing jitter, clean power in digital and proper transmission of digital datastreams

dacs definitely have distinct sounds... obviously one needs a good, resolving, proper set up system, decent recordings and some listening experience (and good hearing, of course)

dacs are not just about converting 1’s and 0’s to analog waveforms (even this process has several discrete steps)... they also generally contain an internal line level analog amplifier (and thus, also, a power supply to that amplifier)... these output buffers and/or amplifiers, just like all amplifiers, have output impedance which must work with the input impedance of the receiving device -- this is why they sound different, just like different active preamplifiers/linestages sound different

the sonic differences are certainly more subtle than differences between loudspeakers, or phono cartridges, but are more distinct than among, say, different solid state amplifiers or phono preamps

yep, good dacs from way back when will sound as good as good dacs from today

usual concerns about aging internal components, as for any aging electronic gear, should be checked out

then the add’l concern is input signal compatibility, esp. w r t higher res feeds used in more recent times

examples of mine in hand -

1 - 1997 vintage van alstine fet topp dac, with its lovely philips tda1545 r2r nos chip and 12ax7 output stage.... sounds as good as any $1500-2000 dac today - but it will only accept 44.1 khz input due to its crystal semi input chip of the day

2 - 2003 vintage modded musical fidelity trivista 21 dac w bb1792a dsd converter and 5703 mini tube output stage - it accepts all inputs and sounds as good, if not better than the current high dollar dacs out there - in fact better than psa ds, dena term, schiit yggy in terms of imaging timbre and holography