Count me as one who can definitely hear the differences between (at least some) DACs.
Having said that, I’m not suggesting that "new is always better" or that there aren’t vintage products that are competent with red-book CD (16 bit, 44.1 kHz) audio. But count me as one listener to can attest that not all DACs sound the same. When I bought my first stand-along DAC (Audio Alchemy back in the 90s... along with their DTI Pro Jitter Filter and 16->20 bit converter), I brought my stereo to the university where I was attending as I wanted to host an audio "demo" for some folks in the music department. The goal was to demonstrate basic principles of high-fidelity audio to people who "love music" but tended to have very little understanding of music reproduction... so one by one I sat each person in the sweet spot and played a Billy Joel track to demonstrate "imaging" which on its own was a big eye opener for lots of listeners. When I was about to pack everything up someone asked "hey, what does all that stuff do" pointing to my stack of audio alchemy gear. I said "oh, that’s the gear that takes the digital data for the music and converts to analog" and he asked "well what would it sound like without all that, just using the CD player?" So I moved a couple of cables and we played the same track that we had just been listening to via the analog output of my Pioneer CD player. WOW. The sound transformed from the lush, airy, liquid character everyone had just been hearing to flat, lifeless, and harsh. Without any coaching from me this fellow said "Yuck! Yeah, that equipment you have really makes a difference!"
In any case... to the caller at hand... there is good sounding vintage gear if red-book CD is your music library and you don’t need DSD, MQA etc. though with D/A converters, as with all things... personal taste and emotion come in to play (i.e. is detail more important than an organic midrange? Or is imaging more important than dynamics and bass slam)? Whether new or old there is never "one right" sound that everyone would prefer. Let your ears be the judge!
Having said that, I’m not suggesting that "new is always better" or that there aren’t vintage products that are competent with red-book CD (16 bit, 44.1 kHz) audio. But count me as one listener to can attest that not all DACs sound the same. When I bought my first stand-along DAC (Audio Alchemy back in the 90s... along with their DTI Pro Jitter Filter and 16->20 bit converter), I brought my stereo to the university where I was attending as I wanted to host an audio "demo" for some folks in the music department. The goal was to demonstrate basic principles of high-fidelity audio to people who "love music" but tended to have very little understanding of music reproduction... so one by one I sat each person in the sweet spot and played a Billy Joel track to demonstrate "imaging" which on its own was a big eye opener for lots of listeners. When I was about to pack everything up someone asked "hey, what does all that stuff do" pointing to my stack of audio alchemy gear. I said "oh, that’s the gear that takes the digital data for the music and converts to analog" and he asked "well what would it sound like without all that, just using the CD player?" So I moved a couple of cables and we played the same track that we had just been listening to via the analog output of my Pioneer CD player. WOW. The sound transformed from the lush, airy, liquid character everyone had just been hearing to flat, lifeless, and harsh. Without any coaching from me this fellow said "Yuck! Yeah, that equipment you have really makes a difference!"
In any case... to the caller at hand... there is good sounding vintage gear if red-book CD is your music library and you don’t need DSD, MQA etc. though with D/A converters, as with all things... personal taste and emotion come in to play (i.e. is detail more important than an organic midrange? Or is imaging more important than dynamics and bass slam)? Whether new or old there is never "one right" sound that everyone would prefer. Let your ears be the judge!
