The bryston sp3 is still sold and sounds absolutely fabulous. dac technology is very mature and has sounded great for many many years. I still have a meridian dac from the 90s that is wonderful sounding.
DACs for older gear
A seemingly knowledgeable poster at the Bryston thread of AudioAficionado suggested that the DAC process of my Bryston SP3 is older technology and that my Oppo 205 has a better DAC that I might use. The SP3 has a number of features that make it flexible, including lots of balanced ports so I'm reluctant to discard it. It appears as though DACs that accept HDMI input that I might use in front of the SP3 are rare -- I've read the licensing fees for HDMI are very expensive. Is there an obvious solution? Other than for the 205 and SP3, I've moved to the Ayre 5X series for stereo.