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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 2 responses by ghdprentice

ghdprentice
6,439 posts
 

There has been a lot of progress in making DACs sound much better in the last ten or fifteen years. Like all audiophile gear, really high end gear stays relevant much longer than the lower level stuff.

Given the equipment you own, you should probably be looking at contemporary equipment (say less than 6 years old). Like all things, in general, the better quality the better it will sound as long as you buy one in the “sound camp” you are in… if you are a natural / musical camp you don’t want to buy a Benchmark, if you are in the details means everything, then you don’t want to buy Audio Research. You want natural presentation and great detail, then think Berkeley Reference Alpha.

I can’t think of why anyone interested in high end audio would want to have anything to do with USB. It was brought on board because of the PC. No high end system should have a computer in the loop… hence no use for it.

ghdprentice
6,439 posts
 

I agree that DACs have made a lot of progress… but be careful. There is no question there are significant differences in budget DACs and high end DACs. Taking for example Schiit Yggdrasil as a budget DAC and >$5K (depending on exact brand) like Linn, Berkeley, Audio Research, etc. Real high end stuff sounds a lot more like real music.

 

As an example over the last week I compared Schiit Yggdrasil, Schiit Gungnir.  Linn mid range Selekt, Audio Research 9, and . The Schiit DACs were far inferior DACs. The treble was primarily high frequency hash, the brass not natural sounding and the bass, muddled together three bass line notes onto one. 

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