Question for classical lovers

Rotarius-I feel your pain! I loved my vinyl, and refused to even consider buying a cassette or even a reel to reel. When CD's came along, I was taken by the great S/N ratio, dynamic range, etc, but--- something wasn't right!

I bought my first CD player in 1984. Most of the early digital recordings were really bad. About 1990, we started getting some recordings that were better. 20-25 years after the birth of digital, we are starting to get equipment and recordings that really draw me back to long listening sessions rather than running me out of the room after 15 minutes. Vinyl is fussy and high maintenance but can be really rewarding, if you pay your dues. Digital is relatively easy, and there is an abundance of recorded material out there. It’s getting a whole lot better. I recently bought an Audio Mirror D-1, and I'm quite fond of that little box. It's not quite analog, but its certainly not digital sounding as we have come to know digital. If you think about the enormous leap in quality that vinyl saw from 1955 to 1980, maybe we are on a similar timetable with digital. We are about 25 years in now. I think we are about to get digital right, at long last.

Rotarius:

Agree with Vvrinc that the majority 80's-90's recordings sound bad, but a good CDP can improve things enormously. Just curious: What kind of CDP do you use?
Jay

Thank you all for your responses thus far. As for system synergy, let me say that I am not just talking about my current set of separates, my opinions stem from trying a lot of DACs, preamps, amps etc. and I am tired of it. Now room acoustics is the one aspect I have ignored and being recently divorced, well I don't have much by the way of plush furniture. I will work on that aspect and I am sure it will help reduce fatigue to some extent. In my collection, 1 out 6 recordings are tolerable where the massed strings are etchy but "listenable". Only a handful are silky smooth and if even 1 or 2 sound great, it stands to reason that your equipment has the potential to resolve complex music. In fact, I have been happy with how most other instruments sound as well as the imaging, sound staging, vocals etc, on various equipment. I recently had a Cal Sigma tube dac driving an AVA hybrid pre and thought the tubes rolled off the highs but the strings still felt rough just not as prominently. To eliminate the possibility that it could be my sensitive hearing, I will buy the titles mentioned above and see where I stand. If someone here has heard the new hybrid sacd LSO live release of Brahms 4/Haitink, I would like to know your opinion. I was surprised at how etchy and unnatural the strings sounded even on sacd layer. I hope I am not the only one who thinks that!
Anyway, Brownsfan, I kinda thought I'd give the non-OS DACs a try so I bought the Poth Audio equivalent to the Audio Mirror to experiment. I have maybe 20 hours on it and a ordinary coax cable so I can't critically evaluate it yet but so far it added punch, cleaner midrange but can't say that it smoothed out the highs. That maybe because of the coax cable though, I have a better one coming so hopefully I can get rid of some jitter otherwise I just want to step back for a bit, enjoy College football for a while and then focus on getting back to LPs.
Cheers!

Jburidan, I have tried several cdps in the past couple of months as standalones and transports. I used an older ES changer C7xxxx, brand new scd-2000es sacd player, Marantz cd5400, Marantz cc4300, cheapo Pioneer universal, cambridge 300se. I tried the Cal sigma and now the DAC-AH. From what I read here, I should have got a MH cd-25 or the Onix equivalent to try out.

Big orchestral is really hard to record. Always has been. It's also very difficult to create a good illusion of a huge ensemble in a normal size room. We tend to make more compromises in playback here than for other types of music. Of course there's a spectrum- some systems do it better than others. In terms of timbre, I've had a similar experience with the string brightness. Check out the vinyl. But whatever you do, don't only buy the audiophile recordings. The recorded classical repertoire is vast, and there is some utterly fantastic stuff out there that just isn't recorded very well. Confining yourself to Reference Recordings and Chesky seems like the wrong way to go.