You got to be ?& · Kidding me

Remember that the big electronics companies took their designers off CD in the early 90s. They no longer design chips specifically for CD, but adopt chips designed for other purposes. Many of them fall into the "measures good, sounds blah" category. There are many who agree with this designer, I do myself to a large degree. HIFICRITIC had discussed this is some detail. They have found a decline in general CD performance since the early 90s. The best of the newer designs are fantastic, but cost a fortune; and several of them use older chips. I have a high quality DAC from the early 90s and a more modern one and neither upsample. If tube lovers can maintain that old ones sound better than current ones why would it be surprising that older chips , many of which were relatively expensive to make, sound better in quality audio applications than mass produced ones designed for MP3 players?

Yes, they are serious, but others in the opposing camps are equally serious. Each believes what they believe as to what constitutes a better DAC (or amp, or speaker, or pick your item.)

The catch is your personal preference should not be subject to a popularity vote or some one else's preference. You'll need to listen for yourself to decide. Alternatively, you can turn your choice over to whichever party's argument makes the most sense to you. Just keep in mind there will be plenty of others who think otherwise.

And then I came across an article regarding a DAC GURU from Eastern Europe that on his point of view a 1980´s TDA1541A D/A chip and using no Up-sampling is far more musical approach than any up-to-date Burr Brown, Crysta or Wolfson DAC with 24 Bit 96 or 192 Khz technology.

And since I also consider myself from Eastern Europe, I am wondering if the above mentioned Guru has heard some 195kHz/32bit that is further upsampled to 6.24MHz, and how this sounds compared to NonOS?

Just curious!

Best,
Alex Peychev

ALEX, I SEE YOU ARE A DESIGNER YOURSELF, AND A DAC GURU AS WELL, THE GURU I WAS MENTIONING IS "Pedja Rogic" FROM AUDIAL , HE IS FROM SERBIA AND IT SEEMS THAT HAS A LOT OF FOLLOWERS ON THE DIY COMMUNITY. BY THE WAY, HOW MUCH IS YOUR DAC?

REGARDS

Karim

What is so hard to believe? Physics hasn't changed, only our application of it.

IME, NOS DACs have a very organic presentation that is rather nice on simple music, but breaks up or washes out on complex passages. I prefer the native sample rates in a more modern (revealing) chip.

FWIW, the chip its self is but small portion of the sound of a D>A conversion. Transport clocking, output filters and output stage are just as important, if not more so.