When is digital going to get the soul of music?

Tomcy6, no reason we can't listen to a broken AM radio, our iPod, car radio, satellite music, Labtec computer speaker and Panasonic bedside FM.

What's wrong with having all these mediocre sources and a couple of excellent ones as well?

I own all these listed above, as well as an old Cathedral Radio that sits on my roll top desk. If you think any of those get you closer to the emotion and passion of music than a really excellent high end system, then you have not listened to the right high end system.

If it's not worth it to you, no need to be defensive. Audiogon is a high end site and you can expect some of us are pretty happy with the energy we've put into our systems and the rewards we reap from the work.

Muralman1,

Audiogon member Logenn owned the same Audio Note unit as you, it's a great sounding DAC. This is a musical DAC not hard sounding like many. In some ways you've chosen the same path I'm discussing but with better resolution than the cheap entry level CD players I mentioned.

I think you would be surprised at the acceptable level the new Pioneer Elite Blue Ray does with common CD's. Sure your rig is better but neither is up there with LP and my player was $435.00.

That's were I differ, I either want it to be as perfect as possible or not spend much money. If there was a digital that was equal to my LP rig I would pay whatever the asking price is.

Albert,

Have you ever heard the better DCS gear?

I heard a Puccini recently in a limited audition and have to say I was impressed with how vinyl like the resulting sound was.

Of course if the reference standard for you is the ultimate real vinyl sound, then I would expect that nothing else can approach it in all practicality because it isn't really vinyl no matter how similar it sounds, but in the brief audition I did, I think I would have had difficulty identifying the Puccini sound as CD.

I thought it ironic though that the Puccinni was most expensive CD playback system I had ever heard and sure enough, hey, it sounded pretty much like a good vinyl recording.

This was on a very high end VAC/VTL tube system with top of the line Nordost cabling. The speakers were Magico Minis.

No DCS or Meitner in my system recently. I did hear the old DCS from a few years ago but assume they are much better now.

Doing show coverage, I've heard all the hot models multiple times at various venues but I guess that really does not count.

I've have had the Levinson two piece system, the Lindemann, Audio Note, Wadia, Theta and recently the Stahl-Tek in my system in the last three or so years.

My good friend Louis, who is part of my audio group has owned several digital players recently. A CEC transport with two different Audio Note DAC's, one single ended and one balanced. The Stibbert, Cary and another one that I can't recall right now.

His system is very familiar to me, he has same preamp and phono, Walker table, a Garrard 301 with Triplanar and a Technics SP 10 MK3 with SME 312S (same as me). Also a Dynavector XV1S, Air Tight PC-1, Schroeder reference and Allaerts cartridge.

So, by comparing all these tables, arms and cartridges against my own and against the players in my system and the ones he's previously owned, I get a good idea about performance.

I agree there is better sound with these more expensive players and DAC's. I guess my problem is spending $15K or 20K (or whatever) to get sound that's not as pleasing as my LP rig. I've said it before and I'm not kidding. If I could find a digital player that was equal to my vinyl rig I would buy it, assuming I could afford it.

I should confess here and now, I just ordered a new Air Tight cartridge that's coming into the market. Valin has one already and Jacob at Absolute Sound and I are both getting one of the five that arrive in the USA next week.

This new Air Tight is called the Supreme and according to all my reliable sources this will be one of the finest phono cartridges ever. The importer says it's a good 30% better than my PC-1, which I cannot imagine, since the PC-1 killed my Koetsu Jade Platinum Signature.

Mapman - Puccini is an oversampling player. It uses Ring-DACs - same DACs DCS sold license to ARCAM (FMJ-23). Arcam stopped making it because of DAC manufacturing yield problems (and stopped making FMJ23). Ring DAC possesses additional 4 current sources generating randomly 16 different sub LSB levels - basically noise. Adding noise to signal increases its resolution (dithering). Just a little bit tech info.