High resolution digital is dead. The best DAC's killed it.

I agree 100% My setup is comprised of a Soekris dac1541 (fully balanced R2R ladder DAC) feeding a Mjölnir Audio Pure BiPolar differential headphone amp over an XLR connection. The results with redbook audio are simply astounding and I have friends who subscribe to Tidal for the MQA cursing under their breath! muahahaha!

Sorry for the double-post, but it did occur to me that there is a benefit to DRM-free high resolution lossless audio. Namely, it has the flexibility to allow compensatory equalization made to it (to nullify deficits in any given transducer) without quantization artifacts or undue loss of quality. That’s the entire point of a high res file, you can play “late stage mastering engineer” to overcome your own system’s shortcomings.

* Caveat Emptor: All of this within the obvious limits of your system’s transducers. If your speaker is reluctant over a given frequency range, you can boost it or tamp down the others to some degree, but if there’s a big gaping hole in its reaponse no amount of eq is going to fix that!

...and to each, their own road.

New DACs are way better than the old ones. They make CDs sound really good. They do not stop at CDs, they do the same to high-resolution files, too.

Digital has made great strides ,and many dacs have custom analog output stages as well as very well designed power supplies which were often overlooked.even the digital cables have come a long way in 10 years ,bits are notjust bits.
digital noise or artifacts better know as jitter is finally much bettter understood.
there are still a lot of Audiophiles who get sucked in with the numbers game 
such as DSD which can be very good but not much for offerings.and 48/192, when in fact most digitalis in 24/96.
all the terminology about sampling,oversampling is many times a marketing ploy.
it can make a difference if designed properly  but there are so many ways to implement  a digital design .
Unless you are a digital engineer  you just have to trust your ears.
some of the best digital I ever heard was the now rare Multibit dacs like the      BB 1704 ladder dacs which were individually tested which was why they were often used in pro audio.or even The old Phillips 15 series 16 bit non oversampling  dacs ,they we're very natural sounding ,there are also great Vacuum Tube dacs that truly add
body And naturalness to recordings . You can  spend over $100 k from DCS if you have the income to afford it. I have heard several of their lower budget stuff around  $35k which was fantastic. But as Eric stated for under $2k youcan get excellent 
digital performances,and who would have thought even 5 years ago that we would have highquality streaming ? And there is still Much more to come .digital now can not only match a good turntable  but in many ways surpass them in several areas . Welcome to the future !!