Downside to R2R Ladder DACs?


A sales person I generally trust told me to steer clear of used R2R DACs, since their reliance on high precision resistors causes them to sound best when new, and degrade fairly quickly. It seems reasonable; have others had any experience with this?
128x128cheeg

Showing 1 response by nekoaudio

@cheeg the section labeled "Oven Control" in the Lavry DA924 user manual may be informative. The DA924 (DA2002 for consumers) was often considered a "gold" standard in professional audio DACs and not just for its color.

The specific sentence relevant to your question is:

The PCM DAC is constructed of custom made laser trimmed thin film resistor networks; yet any resistor is subject to short term drift due to temperature variations and long term drift due to component aging.