Baffled and Frustrated: Streaming/DAC Sound Issues

@clearthinker

To get an analog FE that equals the performance of this level of digital will probably cost north of $10,000. The price for a good pressing new vinyl is now about $30-$40 per on average. The used ones are an effort to get in mint condition and some cost thousands of dollars depending on album and pressing, Add record cleaning and all other accessories to this and it will add up quicklly.

For a price of 1 good new vinyl record you can have a month of both Qobuz and Tidal with hundreds of thousands of albums at your fingertips.

Please enlighten us how starting with vinyl from scratch is a practical advice?

@audphile1 

I still take the view that the problem is caused by breaking up the analogue signal into billions of tiny fragments that cannot be correctly reassembled.  This is the origin of dither and clock error.  It would seem no-one can solve this - the issue is 40 years old and there is no solution in sight apart from accepting the problem and reducing it by engineering.

As to starting vinyl from scratch, many older audiophiles are disposing of vast numbers of vinyl albums, either on downsizing or when their ability to listen comes to an end, one way or the other.  There is a plentiful supply - that's where I got most of mine from.  Many are near mint because we cannot play all our LPs very often and we look after them when we do.

I have also written that many audiophiles obsess about record-cleaning to an unnecessary extent or even ridiculous extent.

This can happen due to upsampling exceeding the dynamicange of the format.  Use Roons headroom settings to reduce by ~2db.

clearthinker

...the problem is caused by breaking up the analogue signal into billions of tiny fragments that cannot be correctly reassembled ... It would seem no-one can solve this - the issue is 40 years old and there is no solution in sight ...

That is not at all how digital audio works. There’s "no solution in sight" because the analog signal is not broken up "into billions of tiny fragments."

The basis of digital audio is the Fourier Transform. The theorem that makes digital audio work is the same math that describes how analog audio works. Believe it or not.

Here’s a video that actually demonstrates this.

@clearthinker 👍 good deal