Albertporter and others who have had frustrating experience with digital, I am not sure which $$$$$ digital you have tried but, i tell you, if you ever have a chance give it a try on the Zanden digital combo. It would be even more rewarding and eye opening experience if you have a luxury to audition the combo in an all Zanden system... I have a good fortune to have an all Zanden system at home for now, oh may be 4 years and the Zanden actually beats analog more times than not. And my analog (uses Zanden Phono pre also) is also optimized. On excellent recordings it is * hard* to tell the difference. I love my Zanden digital especially there is more software choices available in CD than Vinyl.
It delivers jaw dropping life like performance every time i put on *modern* ( read: new releases) Jazz or rock or classical CDs. Better the recordings, better the performance. I have practically the whole CD catalogue from RR and Mapleshade and it even excels the already stellar performance I get from *regular* jazz/classical labels. It is truly the digital with tons of soul- all with the humble 16/44.1 CD format. It features no oversampling and true phase coherent design.
I am not here to say mine is better than yours -or brag, just to prove form personal experience that the digital * has* got soul, you just have to find the right source- like many have found in theirs. Sure analog tape could be better and Vinyl too ( at times, yes even in my set up it does exceed digital at times for certain genre) but what good is having finite number of master tapes copies whereas there is much more choices with Vinyl material and even more with CDs.
So yes, I have found a soul in digital.
It was not not an easy journey though, both in terms of $$ and time. I, too, went through (audition and bought) number of digital units prior to this- one notable being the Metronome digital combo. Peace!!
It delivers jaw dropping life like performance every time i put on *modern* ( read: new releases) Jazz or rock or classical CDs. Better the recordings, better the performance. I have practically the whole CD catalogue from RR and Mapleshade and it even excels the already stellar performance I get from *regular* jazz/classical labels. It is truly the digital with tons of soul- all with the humble 16/44.1 CD format. It features no oversampling and true phase coherent design.
I am not here to say mine is better than yours -or brag, just to prove form personal experience that the digital * has* got soul, you just have to find the right source- like many have found in theirs. Sure analog tape could be better and Vinyl too ( at times, yes even in my set up it does exceed digital at times for certain genre) but what good is having finite number of master tapes copies whereas there is much more choices with Vinyl material and even more with CDs.
So yes, I have found a soul in digital.
It was not not an easy journey though, both in terms of $$ and time. I, too, went through (audition and bought) number of digital units prior to this- one notable being the Metronome digital combo. Peace!!
