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High end vintage vs contemporary DAC's - are sonic improvements real?

The vintage DAC question seems to arise regularly, more or less along these lines:
     "I can get an old XYZ for $2000 or a new ABC for the same $$.  What to do?" 
The answer almost always seems to be "go with the new ABC, the XYZ is older technology," "digital has improved enormously," etc etc. 

Obviously digital technology HAS improved enormously in the last 20 years (or even 10 years, or the last week depending on your belief system).  Sampling rates have marched upwards (though many will say that anything over 24b/96khz is a waste, and I agree) and everything has gotten cheaper and smaller.  Music servers have evolved and storage is cheap.  We have streaming now and use phones as remote controls to manage infinitely large music collections.  The list goes on and on.  Yet in my mind it's really THIS stuff that's embedded in the assertion that "digital is much much better than it used to be."

But how many people have actually compared a high end DAC from, say, 1996 (now selling for $1500), with a new DAC for the same $$?  Sure, features won't be the same - the old unit won't have USB anything, higher sampling rates, etc.  Yet for all that, I can't recall any conversations on actual apples vs apples comparisons of new vs old, especially on the **same** source material, specifically on a Red Book CD or a lossless CD file rip.

Example: In 1992 the Mark Levinson No.30 DAC was sonically at the top of top for Red Book CD reproduction (feel free to substitute your favorite DAC of that era).  Fast forward to the present. How much better does today's DAC de jour sound playing that same CD?  Sure, source file X recorded and mastered at 24b/192khz will likely sound better than the same file downsampled to 16b/44.1khz when played on a decent system.   But will a Red Book CD played on a new DAC sound better than the same CD through that ML No.30? 

To be clear, this isn't about sampling rate or format wars.  Think of it like this:
Let's say I have 15,000 CD's, that's all I ever want to play, and I've $3000 to spend.   What would I get for the same $$ that would sonically do as well as the No.30 playing the same CD?  Is the answer "almost anything, because sonics have improved so much"?  Or maybe it's the $10k such-and-such.  Hopefully this illustrates the question.

Comments and thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
raueda1
naimfan
166 posts
 
Well, I have a Meridian 563 DAC.  It's quite good on Redbook CDs; obviously it won't decode DSD or higher sampling rates.  I've had a chance to compare it to a Naim DAC (the larger case, not the shoebox nDAC), and the much newer and more expensive Naim is quite a bit better - more extended, better grip, more transparent, etc.  It retails new for something like $4500 and I wound up with the 563 for less than 10% of that. 

I also thought the Meridian was decisively better than the DA section of the Oppo 105 (I had one in home for the 30 day trial). 

On the other hand, the Chord Hugo was quite a bit better, and new retail in the US is, IIRC, about $2500.

Moving down pricewise, the only other modern DAC I've tried was the Wyred $1500 version.  I'd give the edge to the Wyred, but not by much, and not in everything - the Meridian has a better sense of ease - things flow better - but the Wyred offers more clarity and transparency.


georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
raueda1

Most of the vintage high end dacs used Multibit dac chips, today these are very expensive and hard to get, some dac manufacturers are even making discrete version Mulitbit for their costly dacs.

If you want just to get the best from your 15,000 PCM Redbook cd’s then go either new age Multibit, which will cost you, or go used vintage hi-end.

One vintage Multibit cdp I can particularly point you to, would be the Mark Levinson ML39. good luck finding one, as they need to be pried away from their owners.
http://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/292/#QmLYpoGWQvrRLq9m.97

Cheers George
ahendler
416 posts
 
I have been buying and listening to cd players and dacs since digital started. Recently I came across an old Phillips cd player which used the very famous 1451 or is it 1541 multibit chip. The unit sounded very nice and very musical. I now own an Audio-GD Master 7 dac and it is way beyond the Phillips sonically though more money. Digital today is much better than it used to be. Even a few years ago. Even yesterday. I am a big fan of R2R, Ladder or multibit dacs especially if they are NOS (non oversampling)
Alan
erik_squires
15,687 posts
 
My own experience, having owned a Theta Casanova long after it’s prime, is that it’s sadly very much still touch and go.

More than a decade after the Casanova was out of production it was still better sounding than a lot of mass market processors I tried to replace it with. This wasn’t just me, this was also done with music lovers who came to my home and didn’t know brands at all. They clearly preferred the Theta.

I’m not able to afford modern Theta, or really been able to listen to it, so it took me a long time to find a DAC I thought was actually better, and affordable.

This is actually a shame to me. Usually over time technology trickles down, so that what is "high end" in one decade becomes common in the next. What HAS trickled down is features, what has not is sound quality. The Casanova did 96/24 (believe it or not) and while 96/24 decoding has become quite common and mass produced, the quality of the sound is still inconsistent at EVERY price range.

One oddity I discovered when examining test results from vitamin suppliers via Consumer Labs is that the vitamin quality was WORSE at the very top and the very bottom. However, vitamin suppliers within the median range of pricing tended to have the most consistently good quality. I’ve observed this to remain true in audio gear as well. These are generalities, not absolute guarantees that any product, given price X will have quality Y. It has however kept me from aspiring to gear I can’t afford anyway.

What I will say is that you have to have an open mind and open ear. If you do, you can find some really nice bargains. Like the wine bottle analogy I use. I don’t want to find a $300 bottle of wine that tastes great, I want to find a $20 bottle that tastes great. :) And unfortunately that takes work as well as an iconoclastic disposition, so when I find it, I grab on tight.

Best,


Erik
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