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DAC's from the past, are any of them really worth much today?

I was thinking of buying a new DAC, the choices are many, but some of the lowest price DAC’s are to be had from yesteryear. For example, i took home an Esoteric D05 yesterday and while I have not been able to hook it up to my Esoteric player, due to no suitable connector cable, I was wondering if any of the better DAC’s from years back are really worth having? The example I have in for audition, while close to SOTA back about 13+ years ago, has no USB connection! To that, it has had years of usage, and appears pristine although I am unsure as to what can fail in a DAC? Obviously no warranty, yet a price point that is somewhat attractive, particularly for the build quality.

 

The biggest issue seems to be no USB connection to the upstream gear, but also perhaps the difference in price between a DAC like this, and a more modern DAC with better DAC chips/USB etc.,would simply make this one not a great deal. Thoughts?

128x128daveyf

Showing 1 response by erik_squires

erik_squires
15,807 posts
 

I really liked the sound of old Theta D/A, so I think that is mostly Burr-Brown DACs. However, post 2000 DAC jitter rejection and playback of Redbook (44.1/16) got significantly better.

Older DAC's really like hi rez signals, while the best new DACs perform very similarly.  If you want to try out some old DACs you might want to explore Wireworld's Remedy reclocker. The limitation there is everything gets converted to 96kHz/24 bit, regardless of the incoming signal (can be higher, or lower).  I have found that, for instance, with the ARC DAC 8 this really improved performance.

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