15 year old DAC compare to new equipment?

[Dolby]

For many years I used a Marantz CD67 and a Meridian 203 DAC for my source. The player itself was about 6 or 7 years old, the DAC was approaching 15 years.

I decided to upgrade to a Marantz CD17MKII KI Signiture - considered to be a very good CD player at the price, and an entry point into high end audio. I have since kept the DAC in my cupboard.

However, I decided a few minutes ago to sell the DAC, and phone the Meridian importers to get a decent price for resale. The gentleman told me that the DAC is very good - and would probably sound better than my Marantz CD17MKII! Now - I haven't tried - but could this be true? I know technology has improved a lot, and this a $1000+ machine, and I'll probably get 1/10 of that for the DAC.

What do you think?

[Resident Loser]

...what would you expect them to say?

"oh, yes the newer Marantz will be much better than our older product"....Sorry, that's not the way things work...

If you can take the Marantz's raw output and feed it through the DAC, why not do it? See if YOU like one over the other...that's the only opinion that REALLY counts...certainly not some anonymous group of ne'er-do-wells with too much time on their hands...

jimHJJ(...including myself...)

[ericl]

Yeah, just try it. With digital equipment, the CW is that stuff has advanced quite a bit in the last 15 years. But with really nicely built stuff like the Meridian, that might not be so. Case in point: I bought 15 year old Yamaha pre amp (CX-1000) a few months ago. It was one of their "higher-end" pre amps in its day. It has a built in DAC which sounds pretty darn good to me. I feed the Yamaha's internal dac with my airport express, and streaming music from my computer and internet radio can sound pretty great! Competes well with all the middle road gear I have (denon 2200 universal player, MSB Link DAC, and Audiophile USB DAC, other disc players - geez, i need to get rid of some of this stuff). I switch back and forth between the denon's digital and analog outputs to compare, and there isn't really a tremendous difference to me. none of it compares to vinyl, however.