Your "eureka" digital moment

FYI folks I did clean the records! This was my real eureka moment  and a real experience. Can't I have it? Yes, a record cleaning machine was used. The noise is real and relative to CDs distracting. This is a simple reality of the medium relative to CDs. 

As much as the romance of vinyl appeals to me,the simplicity of my laptop with 40,000 songs wins the argument.

My "digital moment" came this past week after I replaced the two stock fuses in the ARC CD7se with the SR RED fuses. I thought the player was good before, but now ... WOW! Digital in my house has now gone from "convenience" to running serious competition with my vinyl rig. 

On the "snap, crackle and pop" ... I have thousands of LPs, both mono and stereo. Many are 50 years old and older and contain music that's not available on CD. I'll take a little tape hiss and a little noise in order to enjoy the music that's hidden in those grooves. And by the way, many of my records are just about silent ... even the mono recordings.

As soon as I switched from CD player to rip and stream via a good quality DAC only, about 7 years ago or so.

Mine was the same as Map's except I was already using a Benchmark DAC.  FLAC-to-JRiver-to-USB-to-Benchmark was vastly superior to CD-to-Wadia-to-Coax-to-Benchmark.