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High end vintage vs contemporary DAC's - are sonic improvements real?

The vintage DAC question seems to arise regularly, more or less along these lines:
     "I can get an old XYZ for $2000 or a new ABC for the same $$.  What to do?" 
The answer almost always seems to be "go with the new ABC, the XYZ is older technology," "digital has improved enormously," etc etc. 

Obviously digital technology HAS improved enormously in the last 20 years (or even 10 years, or the last week depending on your belief system).  Sampling rates have marched upwards (though many will say that anything over 24b/96khz is a waste, and I agree) and everything has gotten cheaper and smaller.  Music servers have evolved and storage is cheap.  We have streaming now and use phones as remote controls to manage infinitely large music collections.  The list goes on and on.  Yet in my mind it's really THIS stuff that's embedded in the assertion that "digital is much much better than it used to be."

But how many people have actually compared a high end DAC from, say, 1996 (now selling for $1500), with a new DAC for the same $$?  Sure, features won't be the same - the old unit won't have USB anything, higher sampling rates, etc.  Yet for all that, I can't recall any conversations on actual apples vs apples comparisons of new vs old, especially on the **same** source material, specifically on a Red Book CD or a lossless CD file rip.

Example: In 1992 the Mark Levinson No.30 DAC was sonically at the top of top for Red Book CD reproduction (feel free to substitute your favorite DAC of that era).  Fast forward to the present. How much better does today's DAC de jour sound playing that same CD?  Sure, source file X recorded and mastered at 24b/192khz will likely sound better than the same file downsampled to 16b/44.1khz when played on a decent system.   But will a Red Book CD played on a new DAC sound better than the same CD through that ML No.30? 

To be clear, this isn't about sampling rate or format wars.  Think of it like this:
Let's say I have 15,000 CD's, that's all I ever want to play, and I've $3000 to spend.   What would I get for the same $$ that would sonically do as well as the No.30 playing the same CD?  Is the answer "almost anything, because sonics have improved so much"?  Or maybe it's the $10k such-and-such.  Hopefully this illustrates the question.

Comments and thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
raueda1

Showing 3 responses by raueda1

raueda1 OP
20 posts
 
All you guys are convincing me that trying to improve on the SFD-2 MKIII - which is "free" cause I already have it - would be very expensive at best and maybe not result in meaningful improvements anyway.  That's a happy outcome cause it makes my life easier, thank you very much!  Thanks for saving me a lot of money and effort!

[sidebar - interestingly the SFD-2 MKIII uses the same OPA627 op amps as the modded Trivista.  Those boys at Parts Connexion do know their stuff.]
raueda1 OP
20 posts
 

Most of the vintage high end dacs used Multibit dac chips, today these are very expensive and hard to get, some dac manufacturers are even making discrete version Mulitbit for their costly dacs.

If you want just to get the best from your 15,000 PCM Redbook cd’s then go either new age Multibit, which will cost you, or >>go used vintage hi-end.<<

One vintage Multibit cdp I can particularly point you to, would be the Mark Levinson ML39. good luck finding one, as they need to be pried away from their owners.
This gets exactly to the core the issue.  I take your comments to suggest  that >>>SONICS<<< have not really improved, at least not against the $5000+ DAC's of the 90's.  In features and connectivity the old stuff is clearly primitive, but this isn't about that.   As it happens I'm running the once-legendary combo of Sonic Frontiers SFD-2 MKIII + Assemblage D2D-1.  [see system here https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/6097]

By my reading the SFD-2 MKIII starts where the ML39 leaves off:  PMD-200 filter (upgraded PDM-100 with HDCD and more) vs PDM-100 in ML39 and 8x PCM1704 D/A's vs 4 in ML39.  SF said at the time: "These chips are placed in a fully balanced topology with 2 converters in parallel per channel per phase."   It's fully balanced throughout (of course ;-) and goes up to 24b/96khz with lots of other technical bells and whistles that I don't understand.

So, if the ML39 qualifies as superb vintage high end kit then the SFD-2 MKIII certainly would too - though it's even more obscure and was produced in tiny numbers. All the tech stuff wouldn't matter if it didn't sound good - which it does!  Superb in fact.  It has no sonic shortcomings that trouble me, my concern was that advances had left it behind.  I'm not interested in all the hassles of researching, auditioning, shipping, yada yada if the odds aren't good that I'll find a major audible improvement for less than $3000 (kind of arbitrary budget).  

Elaboration or  rebuttals welcome.  Cheers!

raueda1 OP
20 posts
 

I can't find much online about the Mk3 but the Mk2 version of your dac looks pretty killer very robustly built with a serious looking power supply! And some great reviews as well. Assuming the Mk3 is built along the same lines it's undoubtedly a very fine dac that might indeed give modern dacs a run for their money. Here's a thought rather than improve on it perhaps improve it? Parts Connexion does mods on SF gear, why not see if there is a mod they recommend for your dac?
The MK3 was offered as an upgrade to the MK2.  The main thing was a new digital board and input modules compatible with the D2D-1 (which was thought of as companion piece). I think they only built a couple hundred boards so they're rare as hen's teeth, hence very little info in the larger audiophile community and not something Stereophile would review. SF claimed that the MK3 digital module blows the MK2 away. When I did the MK2 ==> MK3 upgrade Parts Connexion did indeed offer several further upgrade packages.  I actually did spring for one of them but I can't remember exactly what it was - some fancy new caps and direct output coupling maybe.  So it's like an MK3 Gold Edition.

In any case this thing is very serious hardware.  It sounded great in 2001 and it sounds great now.  Yet there's this mantra of "digital has improved greatly."  The farther this thread goes the more I'm convinced that it's much more nuanced than that.  Maybe something like this:
  • New(er) gear has far more features and flexibility than in the past.
  • At the low and medium end things ARE much cheaper than earlier and perform far better than their counterparts 15 or 20 years ago at a similar price point.
  • At the high end this doesn't follow.  To make a sonic improvement I'd have to spend a bloody fortune.
So, this is all wonderful!  I keep it, quit worrying and just enjoy it.  For tweaking I'll look at cables, room treatments etc. Thanks to all!


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