New vs. old DACs - opinions?

Stan,

The general trend has to be upward.

Its a legitimate question but I don't think the answer is very useful for determining which way to go other than if you shoot blind, the odds say you will probably find the right DAC sooner with new versus old.

Better to know what you need and then find the DAC that seems to best fit the bill.

If it doesn't try another.

In the end, you'll get to the right one faster by looking at other factors rather than whether a DAC is old or new.

If you limit it down to several choices, some old and some new, chances are you'll pay less in the end with an older second hand unit than a new one.

This question has been asked before, it comes up from time to time. You may find more information by searching the archives.

IMHO, I'd say go older dac. For one reason, yes, the newer dacs have newer digital chips, but these are relatively inexpense. What made, say for example the Classe DAC-1 so great was that it had a fabulous analog output stage. This was a $4K DAC back in the day, with more money going into analog than the DAC chips. That great analog stage will still beat any analog output stage on a $1K new DAC.

The second reason would be re-sale. Say you buy a used Classe DAC-1 (again, just using this as an example), you get a $4K DAC for $1K. In two years should decide to re-sell and move on, you'll still get about $1K for the unit. Spend $1K on a new unit, in 2 years you'll be lucky to get $300 for it.

Cheers,
John

I agree with Bob, in general, newer DACs more resolving and exposing of warts, older less resolving and more forgiving nature.

I just recently revisited a review from Feb. 1992 Stereophile of the ML No.30 DAC by Robert Harley. This was a state of the art processor priced at 14k in '92. Harley raves about this machine as head and shoulders above anything else available at the time, needed it's own category in recommended products. He describes precisely the sonic attributes I hear in my present digital setup, a newer and lower priced setup. I also hear these attributes in current more upmarket digital from Wadia and Esoteric.

My take is digital, at least at the top of the market is making real strides forward. Now, do these improvements trickle downward into the less expensive spread? I would think this can only be ascertained on a case by case basis.

I do think a lot of newer digital relies solely on processing speed and other parts upgrades without addressing other, perhaps more important aspects of performance. I certainly see a lot of newer digital with very low parts count, weak power supplies, just lots of empty space, selling at serious money. In this case, I might say the older digital with more guts may be better. Still, a case by case comparison would be needed.

My own experience has been that digital made some major strides in the reasonably priced spread somewhere around 2000. Generalizing, I would look limit my purchases to digital after this period. The highest priced earlier digital may also be a viable choice, if I could get a ML No. 30 or 30.5 at perhaps 4 or 5k (I don't know current market prices), that could be very enticing.

"The specifications for D/A chips have improved over the years". But has the sound improved? Chris Bryant, whom I have already quoted, summarizes it like this.

To my mind there has been a general and continuing downward shift in the sound quality extracted from DACs over the past 20 years. DACs are produced by semiconductor manufactures and require large volumes to make operations economic as most of these will find their way into cheap products, there is little incentive to create good sounding components.
The DACs available for the HIFI designer will also be found in computer sound cards, personal digital stereos and televisions. As a result many modern examples have lost their audiophile verve, as the semiconductor manufactures prefer to make cheaper and lower powered devices better adapted to their principal, high volume customer's needs.
These mass produced low-bit converters do deliver excellent measured performance, but often seem unable to deliver the goods when real high fidelity sound reproduction is required."
This is the other side of the "if it is newer it must be better" argument. Personally, I have not heard enough decoders on my system to have fixed ideas on the subject. I only introduced these ideas to point out that there are differences between informed observers as to the general sound trend in CD. One distressing element is that the big Japanese audio companies who , with Phillips, were the driving force behind CD originally took their best designers off it's further development years ago. I think there are two things we can agree on: One , each DAC has to be evaluated on its own merits and Two, after all this time CD should sound better that it currently does.