Comments on Profile Post by E_Schaaf

A few sound better than some vintage dacs and Gungnir Multibit or Yggdrasil. Flame suit on, ymmv, etc.

I suppose you might be right when it comes to ultimate available performance. But at the price point of many well-performing vintage DAC's out there... definitely hard to beat for someone who has a moderate budget.

I suppose another perk of a newer DAC is the availability of service and repair...

reliability, I've been through pretty much the whole Theta stack and only had one failure, which was my Gen V-A.
Chroma 396, Prime II-A, Basic III-A all worked perfectly while I had them.

The Gen V-A failure made me say f**k it and bought a Yggdrasil.
shit aint sweet anymore when your $1500 dac has dc offset and goes poof.

Depends on what you call moderate budget. From the dozens of dacs I owned and reviewed, there was not a lot of big jumps as you went up from a few hundred dollars to maybe a grand. After that though things jumped up a bit. I owned some r2r/nos vintage that sounded poor in hindsight.

I guess what I originally meant is that, at prices below Gungnir Multibit/Yggdrasil, there seem to be at least a few vintage options available that outperform many (most?) modern DAC's at respective price points.

Not enough space in a profile post for all necessary clarification.

They also appear to be huge and heavy. This doesn't work for everyone.

^this, as much as i love processor3, it’s such a monsterous 2-box set up (dac+psu) that make me rearrange the whole rack when put it in the chain.

All good points here. Not trying to make a sweeping claim, just reflecting on price/performance with vintage DACs compared to contemporary designs.

Contemporary DACs of good quality and above are more accurate while vintage stuff can be more pleasing. Just depends on the goal.