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Zybar,The thing is, see how far down in price you can go with a well set-up analog rig and it will still sound better. Especially on some nice clean orignal stamped LPs. Glad you have seen the light, anyway.Wayner
Maybe you should sell me your record collection (or send me a list of what you got). It's just a waste to see good vinyl sit doin' nothin'.Wayner
I hear ya', George.I wish I could have my cake and eat it too (ultimate sound quality with convenience of digital). Alas, it's not to be. For whatever reason, and those reasons may be debated for perpetuity, vinyl sounds real...like the actual musical event. No matter what one does to (at least 16/44.1) it never sounds real. 24/96 and 24/192 with MLP (aka, DVD-A) are a step up and closer to the goal...but fall just short of the standard of vinyl, too It's really much as Wayner said...you need not go to extravagant expenditures to hear vinyl's superior depth, ambiance and detail retrieval. I've heard it with as little as $1200 invested in table/record cleaning machine/chemicals and cartridge. John
...Presently SOTA digital is far superior to where it was ten years ago therefore it's reasonable to expect it will improve in the future...
Quote from: rajacat on 19 May 2009, 07:18 am...Presently SOTA digital is far superior to where it was ten years ago therefore it's reasonable to expect it will improve in the future...ten years ago, digital had been greatly improved over what it was at its introduction. improvements have been miniscule since then, imo. the only thing that improved is that now decent players that will get close to the best are awailable for reasonable prices. but, i think this is cuz redbook cd has hit a wall; no more improvements to be gleaned from this mediocre-at-best medium. if redbook were 24/192 from its inception, there might have been more to get out of it.my almost ten year old modded dac, hooked up to any decent almost ten year old cdp used as transport will go toe-to-toe w/new digital systems, both computer based and stand-alone, up to at least the $8k range. tiny differences, that may or may not be heard as improvements? ok, i will go along with that. "far superior"?!? NOT! doug s.
You may be overdrawing your point. Presently vinyl may be the gold standard but digital playback is relatively new and it is not necessarily inherently inferior to vinyl. Presently SOTA digital is far superior to where it was ten years ago therefore it's reasonable to expect it will improve in the future. On the other hand vinyl has been around for a long time and improvements will be harder to come by.Vinyl has its weak points including a relatively high noise floor and the slight deterioration of a record that occurs every time it's played. I suspect the even 16/44.1 playback will continue to improve with every new generation of DACs. In fact, most people can't even tell the difference between very well executed 16/44.1 and high def. digital. Also when you say that 16/44.1 never sounds real to your ears but there are others who actually prefer the sound of CDs. So, to some extent, it's a matter of opinion. There are many audiophiles that are switching to digital because they're looking to the future, keeping an open mind and not being stuck in old technology. It will be interesting to see what serious audiophiles will be listening to ten years from now .
Quote from: doug s. on 19 May 2009, 12:28 pmQuote from: rajacat on 19 May 2009, 07:18 am...Presently SOTA digital is far superior to where it was ten years ago therefore it's reasonable to expect it will improve in the future...ten years ago, digital had been greatly improved over what it was at its introduction. improvements have been miniscule since then, imo. the only thing that improved is that now decent players that will get close to the best are awailable for reasonable prices. but, i think this is cuz redbook cd has hit a wall; no more improvements to be gleaned from this mediocre-at-best medium. if redbook were 24/192 from its inception, there might have been more to get out of it.my almost ten year old modded dac, hooked up to any decent almost ten year old cdp used as transport will go toe-to-toe w/new digital systems, both computer based and stand-alone, up to at least the $8k range. tiny differences, that may or may not be heard as improvements? ok, i will go along with that. "far superior"?!? NOT! doug s.Doug,On this point we will have to disagree.I really wish you lived close by so we could do the comparison you suggest.Oh well...George
Quote from: doug s. on 19 May 2009, 12:28 pmQuote from: rajacat on 19 May 2009, 07:18 am...Presently SOTA digital is far superior to where it was ten years ago therefore it's reasonable to expect it will improve in the future...ten years ago, digital had been greatly improved over what it was at its introduction. improvements have been miniscule since then, imo. the only thing that improved is that now decent players that will get close to the best are awailable for reasonable prices. but, i think this is cuz redbook cd has hit a wall; no more improvements to be gleaned from this mediocre-at-best medium. if redbook were 24/192 from its inception, there might have been more to get out of it.my almost ten year old modded dac, hooked up to any decent almost ten year old cdp used as transport will go toe-to-toe w/new digital systems, both computer based and stand-alone, up to at least the $8k range. tiny differences, that may or may not be heard as improvements? ok, i will go along with that. "far superior"?!? NOT! doug s.OK, here's one of your 10 year old Art Di/O DACs going for $150. Hmmm...the sellers ears must be shot if he's selling this state or the art DAC for so cheap. http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=68028.0-Roy
Speaking of the DI/O ... a friend came over yesterday to let me hear his new TADAC. This is a tubed DAC (probably a tube buffer stage) that has a rather unique feature. You can dial the tubes in or out to varying degrees. When out it tended to be rather dry sounding. When in all the way it had big bloom, but also a hazyness and lack of detail. About 12:00 was right with a nice balance of both. Very analogue like sound overall.We compared it against my highly modded Zhaolu. The Zhaolu proved to be cleaner and more transparent with oodles of detail. But it doesn't sound analogue at all and can get brittle at times and in spots - somewhat typical of digital. It was also much more dynamic.Then we tried my old modded DI/O. This was much closer to the TADAC in terms of its analogue like sound. Though not as bloomy nor as precise and detailed as the Zhaolu. to my ears it was a nice compromize between the two though (in my rig).Then we spun some vinyl and were literally blown away at the detail and dynamics and naturalness and airiness and soundstaging and beauty of the sound. No comparison here folks.Enjoy,Bob
also, your comment about listening to dacs, then switching to analog precisely mirrors the experience a few of us had at rim's a year or so ago - all this hair-splitting about differences in digital sound w/warious set-ups for a few hours; then we put on a record.... as you said: "..No comparison here folks..." doug s.
