The short version is they can be, a DCS Elgar+ will set you back ~$3K used that was a $12000 DAC when it was originally released in the mid 90s, and uses the same core Ring DAC technology that DCS still use today.
There is a piece here https://www.whathifi.com/us/features/was-then-dcs-elgar-plus-dac comparing it to more more modern high end options, by all counts still a great DAC.
But as I said there are caveats
No or extremely limited USB support
Limited sampling rates and resolution, often limited to 192/24 or even 96/24
No DSD over SPDIF, this was introduced relatively recently
DSD only over firewire - This was Sony’s original plan for encrypted DSD good luck finding a driver for this today even if you can find a firewire port
Support limited to DSD64
So you will need to budget for a D2D converter and you may end up with no way to support high bitrate recordings, and no way to play DSD content.
There are also the other usual vintage caveats
Capacitors wear out, 20-30 years is usually safe, and some will last 50+ years, but they will eventually fail, and having them replaced can be prohibitively expensive.
Transformers can get noisy - the laminated cores delaminate over the years and in the end they develop a mechanical buzz, this is not practical to fix in most cases.
So don’t entirely discount vintage DAC’s, but do understand what your buying and do your research.
I’d also want to note that more vintage dacs typically don’t play as well with lower quality digital input signals, so make sure you get a nicer streamer/transport/ddc as well, because a lot of the vintage dacs have little to no digital signal regeneration/restoration/reclocking unlike a lot of modern dacs these days. And vintage dacs that do have usb tend to not really be that great of an implementation from my experience, so you are better off bypassing it with a ddc/streamer/transport as well
I’d say vintage dacs are easily worthwhile depending on the price you can get them for, just mainly stick with higher end vintage dacs. I personally wouldn’t consider a vintage dac that was aimed at a budget or midrange market when it was new, because I think you may be better off with a more modern dac. But going for some of the previous ultra high end totl dacs of the past for reasonable prices now is worthwhile.
Has anyone here got experience with the wadia 27ix? I had it recomended to me recently by someone who generaly likes the same gear as me and im currious for some more info on it
They seem to be tied at the hip with the 270 CD transport, still command a decent price and the 27ix is the one that’s sought after. $0.25 on the dollar is the starting point for my comfort level in vintage gear, but thankfully that’s an easy to meet price point criteria as most sellers understand the limited market segment.
It doent need to be used with the 270 if you can find one without FWIW. But yah, its expensive enough I figured I would ask instead of blind buying (I initialy expetced it to be sub-1k when I was told about it tbh)
While I’ve not heard that specific dac, I’d assume if something is tethered to a transport, that transport is going to play a larger than normal role in the overall sound quality, especially with this era of dacs, so keep that in mind
Hello,
I did it the other way round.
Connected the Matrix Audio mini ipro 2 via Rca to the Harman Kardon 880vxi.
I couldn’t be happier and is hard to beat.
By that I mean the amp is pretty bad good and so far haven’t found a worthy replacement.
I still have the Little Dot Dac 1 which has an adequate usb port but is better via coax.
With the Vintage Dac’s I think the most important thing would be to pay attention to what inputs and outputs it supports.
As Mon said, a DDC or streamer can work wonders.
But I would prefer to look for a vintage amplifier instead of a Dac and connect a current Dac to it.
The results are usually better.
Above all, the amplifier benefits more in terms of modernity and can usually be used without problems.
Vintage enough it is also sonically believe that the amplifier is more pentent the vintage Dac.
For today’s headphone amplifiers, I understand the problematic nature of the analogue sound.
Unfortunately, there were hardly any or none at all in the vintage era.
It would really depend on the Dac, also in terms of connections.
The minimum would be coax, which would still run reasonably with a streamer or DDC.
Regarding capacitors, it might be worthwhile to take a look and see if there are any with the right values, mostly yes.
As for the transformers, I am relatively less worried about them, most of them still run like a tank today.
There are always well restored vintage units that have benefited from the new capacitor technology and run better today than they did back then or the same.
Yes older usb support really isn’t that great, best to bypass them. That’s even assuming your dac has usb and not something older like firewire or only coax or something like that lol
Yes dacs generally have more greatly changed and progressed recently vs amplifiers. I still think people overestimate how much dacs have truly progressed in the high end, but they still have progressed faster than amplifier technology in recent time
One of the big things that a lot of older dacs absolutely need is a good digital frontend/digital source since if you go back far enough, a lot of older dac designers didn’t really fully understand optimizing the incoming digital signals to their dacs, so they become highly dependent on what they are fed vs more modern dacs
People actually seek out vintage transformers and sometimes vintage caps since there are transformers that you simply just can’t get today, some vintage transformers sound wonderful (for studio gear for example, for modern recreation of vintage equipment it never really sounds the same since they just can’t properly recreate some of the vintage transformers and capacitors). Transformers generally you don’t have to worry about, but older capacitors may need to be replaced so that’s something to consider depending on what types of caps are used and their age
Funilly enough I was going to bring that up, it’s the one weird case I know of where people actively seek out worn out caps, because they sound better.
A lot of old organs had tons of these that over the years drifted to the magical values used in old gibsons. Despite many gibsons just using whatever values were on hand.
