2. digital
  3. 1237515477

New vs. old DACs - opinions?

I'm on the market for a new DAC. I've noticed that you can find used DACs from, say, 8 years ago that are heavily marked down from their original price. I just saw one sell for $400 that was originally $1500, for example.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but the progression of DACs seems very different from that of amps... an old amp, like McIntosh, is still highly competitive today... but it seems that newer DACs are more evolved, refined, and use higher quality parts for less money, right?

Another thought is - before DACs were as widely used as they are today, perhaps the mark-up was much greater in the past...? Where-as now, with the influx of foreign manufactured DACs, there is a healthy bit of competition that keeps prices down by limiting the manufacturer mark-up. Correct me if I'm off here as well.

So, overall I'm wondering if I would be better off buying something new like a Keces or MHDT DAC or finding something older that is heavily marked down.
djembeplay

Showing 2 responses by rbstehno

rbstehno
1,505 posts
 
in my auditioning, i listened to older dacs and the newer dacs, and the ones in my price range (< $5k), i preferred the older dacs. i have or have had audio research, manley, classe, cal audio, audio alchemy, and the adcom 600 & 700 dacs in my systems. i still have 3 of these in my systems today. i have listened to the newer 24/192 dacs, and have owned cd players with that capability, but just because they have 24/192 capability, it doesn't necessarily mean they are better sounding.
rbstehno
1,505 posts
 
there is a lot of talk about clocking and re-clocking. in a normal transport/computer to dac connection, there is no clocking or re-clocking. except if you own certain esoteric or dcs components. to do clocking, these devices would have to work on a peer to peer basis and if the dac receives invalid data, it forces the source to retransmit or reread the data (esoteric calls that flow control). esoteric and others sell external clocks which are very expensive and they only work on certain sources.
here is a quote from Thorsten Loesch:
"In reality, it is relatively easy (i.e. low cost) to make a clock crystal with high precision (<0.5ppm). However, making a clock crystal with low phase noise (jitter) is much more difficult (i.e. expensive). Perhaps that's why the aftermarket so-called 'super-clocks' often quote the former and omit this latter and more relevant specification. Just as importantly, the use of more than one clock (even a 'super clock') if it is not synchronized to generate a master clock signal, will mean that the issue of all clocks being out-of-sync with one another has still not been addressed. Again, this leaves the other major source of jitter unresolved."
More to discover