Yup. decent DACs have been around for decades. I bought a Philips CD473 in 1988 and it had one of the TDA1541 DACs. The TDA1541A was released later and there were S1 and S2 versons, including single crown and double crown releases, offering slightly different S/N ratios. My CD sounded great in 1988 and it's still revered. You can only take DAC silicon so far and I don't think modern DACs are fundamentally better at what they do and new ones don't necessarily sound better. The supporting circuit s play a large part and I bet a TDA1541 derivative could be implemented today and nobody would notice any real flaws or anomalies in its design or sonic signature. It would be interesting to build a CD player using parts used in players from the 1980s just to hear how good they sound. I've said it many times, but the Red Book CD standard is over 40 years old now and reached its technical peak many years ago. CD has reached a technical dead end and there's nothing else to squeeze out of this astounding, but old format. There's nothing you can do to increase the 1411kbps data rate, or improve the optics, servo, transport or the error correction used to read discs. Any modern CD player over £300 is overpriced and spending more is pointless. The most expensive DACs from ESS or AKM are £50 when bought in bulk and they don't offer anything radically different form their 40 year old ancestors. CD data passing through a modern 24 bit DAC won't receive any more sound quality and CD sound quality can't be 'polished' by a modern DAC. The Red Book standard is set in stone. I'd argue any modern format using a modern DAC won't sound much better than CD anyway. Sounds quality can't be increased forever and human hearing has its limits. Higher numbers are fascinating to nerds, but don't necessarily translate into incredible sound quality. Companies selling very expensive CD players do their best to trick you into thinking their product has somehow re-invented the wheel and can give you much better sound than a player from decades ago. They will give up eventually and all companies will release streaming devices to replace CD players, when the inevitable CD revival appears and then fades again. Streaming is the future and there are several DACs out there to support all known formats. My Audiolab Omnia's DAC, like the ones in many devices, supports bit rates and sampling frequencies far above any modern available format. It's nice to have future proofing, but when will these super high res sound formats arrive and do we really need them? Been looking for the old DACs and I can't believe they still make the TDA1541 unless someone found a drawer full and decided to use them.
www.dutchaudioclassics.nl
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