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In Reply to: RE: BS .. current DACs are the best. Only nostalgia keeps NOS/tube players alive. posted by bjh on April 15, 2014 at 08:42:24
LOL, the chordette, really!?!? Not in a million years...
BTW, it is not nostalgia that keeps them alive it is the obvious sound quality they produce that once one gets over being brainwashed about the "progress" of the DACs one can easily hear. It is the same for vinyl that is now highly regarded again and, due to ongoing TT/arm/cartridge development (only for the high end though) is probably better than it ever was.
With DACs, the main driver was always one thing...price and to have something new to sell to people, bit rate. In many ways it is a lot like digital photography. People originally thought megapixels were everything...then the reality is something very different above a certain level.
Follow Ups:
I just flopped a $350 modern DAC, the Grant Fidelity Tube DAC-11, which I preferred in pure SS mode, ran it without the tube in fact.
It was every bit the equal of my Consonance CD 120 Linear, a NOS design. A remarkable accomplishment for such a modestly priced DAC.
That's what I'm getting at, even entry level DAC there days had are the equal of or eclipse NOS designs, making choice of the latter to avoid the dreaded 'digital' sound a thing of the past ... and that's just entry level ... spend a little and a NOS alternatives becomes entirely archaic.
Never trust an Atom, they Make Up everything!
I am not necessarily endorsing NOS DACs...just ladder DACs with or without DF. Both of mine use an 8x oversampling DF (one the BB DF1704 and the other a Sony). One has a tube output and the other is all SS. Both kick the crap out of even very expensive upsampling, 24/192 sgima/delta dacs with normal cd. I have been quite impressed with the Metrum Hex and the Abingdon Research DAC and upper level Audio Note DACs but others have not impressed (like 47 labs).
You have to remember that many cheap DACs from China just stick a tube buffer on the end of a chain with several opamps and give the worst of all worlds. Monarchy uses passive IV and a single tube output stage with no transistors or opamps at all in the path after the DAC...that is highly unusual if not unique. The Kinergetics is more of a mystery but the output is at least all discrete and not opamp based.
Ah, so it's the ones you like, not the others.
What else is new?
lol
Never trust an Atom, they Make Up everything!
Come again? Not at all what I said. Try again with an answer that makes sense to what was written?
.
Never trust an Atom, they Make Up everything!
as expected...you can't.
He makes that noise often - and usually in a very short time after argument starts.
Let him swap eBay DACs, that kind of activity suits him well.
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