I have once read Charlie Hansen's post on one of the forums, where he stated that DAC chip itself is only responsible for 10% of the final sound. Power supplies, digital filter, jitter management, I/V conversion and output stage are by far more important and account for the remaining 90%.
Older is better - D/A chip?
I had three audio nuts over my house yesterday for a component shoot out. I have a highly modded Jolida JD100 tube cd player with Mullard tubes. We then swapped in an old Magnavox player running a TDA1540 chip. This player has been recapped, extensively modded, and the oversampling processor removed. Well, we were all blown away. It was clearly more open, detailed......had more decay versus my Jolida or a Sony 5400. I just assumed the more current chip sets would sound better. What an eye opener.