Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD

Interesting. On the paper Digital is far away better, but Vinyl still sound better. Why ?

Few years ago,I had a very interesting experience with a friend that I want share with you.

Chris (my friend) is a pure Vinyl guy. I am a pure Digital guy. And of course we had a lot of discussion about that (recurrent and long discussion).

One day I decided to go the Chris house with my Music server and my Dac. When I listened my music on Chris's System the sound was horrible. But on my system the sound was good (not fantastic but good). The same record from a Chris's Vinyl sounded incredible good. I was traumatise. So, I started to think, may be I should switch to Vinyl. In this perspective, I asked to Chris to come to my house to tested his turntable and phono-preamp on my system. He came few day after. Surprise, this time my sound was really better than his Vinyl. Why ?

Chris and I use dedicated systems for Vinyl and Digital. We don't mix Digital and Vinyl on the same system.

The conclusion was really interresting because at this momment I realized that I like Digital source and analog sound. So, now I choose my equipment based on that. For exemple : in my living room I use Verity Audio Speakers. When I move the Verity to my listening room the sound this bad (too ' digital'). So, I decided to use Audio Note AN-J speakers to have more musicality. Same with audio Cables. Chris uses Nordost Wallaha cables, but in my system they sound bad. Shunyata is far away better in my system. Etc...

I think it's difficult (may be impossible) to have the same equal good sound from Vinyls and Digitals source in the same system. Digital can be very very closed to Vinyl sound (sometines better) if the system is dedicated and design to have this sort of performance.

Marc

Nice Marc! Agree with you as it is always about the whole system. We listen to systems....complete systems. 

Yes it's always is about system matching so I can understand part of your thoughts.  I do find it strange as I have heard vinyl and digital on some incredible systems that were put together with system matching as the key ingredient and vinyl has always sounded a bit more relaxed and as detailed for lack of a better word.  Digital certainly does some things much much better and vinyl does things much much better.  

I honestly believe it's all about what you are used to and how you listen. Some folks have grown up on digital and only know that as a format, while many of us cut our teeth on vinyl.  Listen, I LOVE master tape even better than both, but that's not a realistic format for me and my money, lol....

I think that digital is finally catching up to vinyl in it's overall presentation, but it's very expensive for digital to do it still. I can take a 1k TT rig and that includes a MM cartridge and is blows the doors off even the Codex, which IMHO is the best sounding (to my ears as well as many others I speak with) under 3k DAC (it's around 1500 I believe).  

I see the merit in both and have  a lot of money tied up in both, but will only buy some used records and won't spend anymore on my TT rig.  I will however be selling off my OSDE/SE soon as well as my music server that Steven sold to me in order to do some major upgrades in digital.  I'm still not 100% on selling the OSDE as it is still one of the best DACs I've heard under 13k which seems to be the new standard of entry into the top DAC's going.  I"m waiting  for the new Ayre QX-5 as I was told by a couple of folks who have extensive time with it that it's priced to be the killer DAC in the marketplace.  The chips should be in house for real production by the beginning of August I believe.  I also use headphones on weekend mornings and it has a nice amp as well as a streamer so all you need is a NAS or hard drive filled with songs to play.  It also has a Roon endpoint so I guess you can use your iPad and Roon as your app. Learning a ton and this thread is amazing.  Thanks again Matt.  Greatly appreciated.  

Funny things...

Since I finished my listening room, I changed (or upgraded) all my equipments piece by piece. As i said in a previous post my last device to buy is a good DAC. So I started a long process to test different devices. In the same time, I still don't have DAC. So I can not listen my music and it's very frustating because all is ready to run. I talk about that with my friend Chris and he says to me : 'Just buy a small DAC'... after a several stupid arguments about the sound quality of budget's DAC and my audiophile ears, he said : 'Just buy the new Idac2 from Ifi. It's not expensive and it's realy good'. 350 $... why not.

So, I did it. I received the 'Gadget' one week ago and you know what? I'm blown away by the quality of this product. Really. It's so small, tiny, and inexpensive.... Wow. Of course it's not in the same range than a Pavane or an Overdrive, but honestly I can live with it without any problem. And because ifi products are really inexpensive, I will buy the iUSB 3 to test if the USB 3 is better for sound than the USB 2.... In fact, inexpensive products are sometime surprising.

Marc, I totally agree with you. So often people scoff at budget gear, but there's a market for them, because you can hear a nice difference. Honestly, I have an old Krell Stealth Dac that I'm putting into my system tomorrow.  It doesn't have USB, but it had balanced, two coax and a couple or so optical.  I've had it in the system before and it's really nice for an older piece. I'm about to place it up for sale as some folks just love Krell pieces, but I've heard a ton of DAC's from 1500 down that are really nice sounding.  Incremental upgrades are what audio is all about.  Then you have to figure out where you have to jump off the train.