2. misc-audio
  3. 142546-124043

Some components too old now?

I have a traditional HiFi. Some bits are really old, but still working fine and I wouldn’t have a clue about updating even if I wanted to. Just wondering how long I can expect them to last, and whether I should pro-actively seek to update before there’s a catastrophic failure.
In particular, my CD player, pre-amp and DAC date back to around 1990, so these are about 30 years old now:
Marantz CD80 / Aragon 24k (with phono stage that I use) / Aragon D2A
Thoughts?
vinyloid

Showing 2 responses by itsjustme

itsjustme
682 posts
 
Oh, one interesting caveat.  We had a group listn to two old DACs - that were eye -popping whne they came out 20-25 years ago, and one new one, a schiit BiFrost Multibit.  Long story short the 1994 Theta DSPro hung on with the Schiit - and was generally a little weightier.  Still a top notch, musical product. Note Mike designed both.
G
itsjustme
682 posts
 
I dont know those specific components well, but in general i agree with Eric and others.  The preamp is probably fine the DAC likely can be vastly bettered ( and Schiit is a great place to start). I can't speak for the Marantz, but bear in mind that SPDIF is NOT, repeat NOT, a purely digital signal - no time to go into why, by you need a low jitter output.
A new DAC with USB and/or network in also lets you move toward the future, which is streaming.
I am constantly amazed that stuff that was great 30 years ago is often still great. But not digital.
G
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