Opinions on why this system is uninvolving

Hi Rx6man - thank you very much I appreciate the kind words. Digital IS a big issue and right now I am personally going through sort of a revelation. I'll tell you about it but first I have to explain where I am coming from - as well as where I've been lately.

Pardon me while I ramble...

About 9 months ago, after trying almost every CD player I could get my hands on, I completely left digital in the dust (sold all digital gear) after I got my first analog rig - a simple Linn LP12.

Needless to say, the Linn gave me everything I hoped I would get from my digital devices & it took only seconds to realize that my perception of what "analog like" meant was way off base. Warmth is often considered to be a trait that makes a digital device seem "analog-like" but this is not necessarily true. A Shelter 901 on the Linn LP12 with a good clean recording will sound more high rez than either of the new High Resolution formats. Lets just say that after hearing the Linn in my system, it became immediately evident that digital devices were missing so much more than just "warmth". Analog has a certain completeness to it whereas everything is there... the entire venue... and CD seems to loose that information.

In retrospect, my earlier problems with digital were primarily a result of my comparing digital devices to digital devices. It became like Baskin Robbins, 31 flavors of digital... which one do I like today? Each have merit but.. none truly matched analog in any way whatsoever.

Then, I stumbled across the Meitner BiDat which is a cheap old DAC designed by Ed Meitner who is responsible for much of the technology behind SACD. BiDats have been around for a while and there are many iterations of the units since they have been modified since their inception. Today, these units are being supported and modified by John Wright. John's latest mods offer a complete transformation of the Bidat. John has taken the good, bad and the ugly mods of the past and refined these to produce a set of modifications which make the BiDat a world class DAC. John even incorporated some crazy, witch doctor type tweaks like black fingernail polish painted on some of the chips. Whatever works I guess.

The Bidat give you a sense of completeness and I do not know how or why, it just does. This is not something I can say for any other CD player I've ever tried. The BiDat doesn't have a flavor per se' it just plays music and to someone with ears that are used to the latest whiz-bang sonic signature, that lack of flavor in the BiDat may send you walking the other way. But.. for good listeners who are familiar with what I mean when I say COMPLETENESS and NATURAL SOUNDING, the BiDat is the answer.

Well that's where I am now. I have a simple BiDat which has been modified by John Wright. I am still tweaking with cables and trying to find a great reliable transport. An EAD T7000 I purchased recently arrived DOA from Canada so.. I'm still hunting for a good transport. Right now I am using a Sony S7000 DVD player and it seems to be an "okay" transport.. but I need better.

That said, the BiDat is SO close to vinyl it has turned my listening preference back to CD.

I've compared the BiDat to Linn, Oracle and SME20 turntables and the BiDat (strangely) competes with them all such that it becomes more a matter of vanity if I or my friends even keep our turntables.

The one weak spot of the BiDat seems to be with LARGE scale music - Mahler, for instance. The BiDat does not capture the scale at all it shrinks the venue and seems to compress that which should be enormous into a very tight and well defined, and not too dynamic space.

My potential solution for this is to run an SACD player as a transport (SA-14 Marantz) with the digital out going to the BiDat and Analog out going to the preamp. In my experience SACD seems to capture that largeness of scale, dynamic slam and impact better than CD and it certainly quieter than vinyl.

So perhaps the solution is - SACD transport + Sweet DAC.

Bwhite, you need to try some analog that is a little higher up the scale. Perhaps its time to re-discover that Teres project lurking in your garage. I, as you know, have spent 10 years with an LP12, and compared it to many Oracles, and am quite aware of their performance levels. The Teres 245 is a "whole 'nuther smoke" entirely. And there are tables that do even better than my Teres. That is when you will see the gap widen again, between analog and digital.

That said, I'm glad that you have discovered an improvement so profound as this BiDat. I think that Ed knows his stuff.

You're just a platter, bearing and motor kit away from a major improvement. You could have the distinction of having the first "hairy" Teres. :^) - (inside joke)

I think that when you start playing, you won't even notice anything but the sound. If you had something like a Verdier or a Walker or something like that, then I wouldn't make the suggestion, but I am keenly aware of how much difference there is between an LP12 or Oracle, and a Teres.

Twl, The interesting thing is that I have been listening to an SME20 lately which is needless to say, "higher up the scale". The SME is very precise & solid sounding and makes the Linn sound unrefined and almost as if its bouncing out of control... yet there are certain qualities about the Linn that are more fun and to some extent more natural with certain types of music. This is not to discount the SME in any way other than to say that it itself is so controled that its difficult for me to suggest that it is natural - nothing in this world (especially live music) is as precise and controled or utterly "ordinary sounding" as the SME20. Yet I believe from an audiophile perspective, somehow the SME20 is better by leaps and bounds than the Linn. Weird.

So needless to say, I am well aware that there are better tables than the Linn and I think my point was that a simple Linn/Shelter 901 was better in all regards than any other digital player. That is why I sold all my digital and went 100% analog - just like you.

You are correct, I am a platter, bearing and motor kit away from a Teres and I am considering doing that. I've even started a new (improved) design over my first Teres.

So I do plan to keep analog because regardless of the table, it *IS* better than digital but the margin of improvement has been cut massively by the modified BiDat.

I do realize that a better table could potentially widen that gap between the BiDat and analog -- but I am having a tough time attaching a dollar figure to that improvement. I would have to go above and beyond the SME20 to look for these gains. And at that point >$10K I begin to ask myself whether or not playing records is worth it. Even at <$10K, I wonder if the differences are worth it. Right now, if I could attach a dollar value to the differences I hear between the BiDat and the Linn or BiDat and SME, I would pay maybe $1000 - $2000 to get that improvement in a system but the gains are not significant enough to justify much more.

Bryan, the SME products have a reputation for being detailed, but overly dry and analytical. You should try something a little more musical to make your comparisons.

Tom, Not sure if I agree wholeheartedly with the SME reputation you speak of. I usually associate the term analytical to mean excessive detail and I don't think that's the case with the SME20.

I wouldn't call the SME "overly dry" either. So, what do you mean by "overly dry"?? The SME20 has NO grain. Do you perhaps mean dry in the context that it's bass is lean or overdampened? Or do you mean it has a short reverberation time? In any case, the SME20 doesn't seem to exhibit any of those reputed qualities - except perhaps for the bass being ever-so-slightly lean but not enough to consider the table dry.

Like I said earlier, the SME20 is neutral. The table plays the facts accurately and with precision (that does not mean analytical) - nothing seems to be accentuated at all. The table exhibits a neutral tone, or an absence of added color.

That said, I would agree there are more "musical" toe-tapping - lets get up and boogie - type tables around and I think the Linn is a pretty good representation of that type of table.

Perhaps that Teres project of mine will introduce me to a new flavor - that of a completely unsuspended, high mass table. Interesting. Perhaps musical and refined? Hmmm...

Remember, you've got a guy here who "used" to be a digital maniac and gave it all up as soon as he heard analog. After that moment, I couldn't bare to listen to any CDs whatsoever, sold my digital & I became an analog fanatic.

So... I'm sorry for mentioning that digital BiDat thingy - I certainly don't want to scare any of the other analog fanatics on Audiogon. :)