digital front end to rival best vinyl?

The best digital front end I have heard is the new Naim HDX. I felt it even outperformed the dCs Scarlatti by a significant margin. It is still not as good as a good vinyl front end (what is?) but it is awfully close. I plan to get one once the 2nd generation units come out.

The best I've heard is our PC driving a Playback Designs MPS-5. To top it off, it will accept a direct DSD signal via ST-optical. Hi-rez PCM and DSD.. can't get much better than that!

I think digital is certainly getting closer than it used to.

To be honest, with the current state of digital in my system (Weiss DAC2+Mac Mini), I would never get into analog from scratch at this point. I would even prefer the Weiss to all all my previous $3-5k tables (Michell, VPI, Rega). However with a record collection of 1300LPs collected over the last 18 years there is little chance I would give up analog anytime. And comparing my $10k+ setup there is still a slight edge to analog, even when running high-rez 24/176.4 files.

Koegz,

What did you listen to at Goodwin's. Was it the DCS or computer to the Berkeley DAC or something else? Both come very close to analog.

I think the largest issue is the SW, there is not alot of high res around yet. Most of what is available is classical with some jazz. This is a new format and it takes time to get going.
You will have to sample most of your own music. Upsampled red book CD's do sound better with the computer & Berkeley combo than from a CDP by itself. There is no jitter from HD systems I think and I also think and that helps alot with people who are sensitive to digital error. You could also spend $30,000 or more on something like the DCS or Esoteric systems. The issue I have there is there are huge advances all the time and CDP's seem to change too often. I myself do not want to throw down that kind of money on an item that wiil change shortly as I did with DVDA.
I have the Berkeley waiting for me to pick up and I have already built the computer. The setup cost alot less than $30,000. The computer also has more uses than just a music server so it has a good WAF.
It will take me time to build the library but I have all winter to do it. I am interested in sampling my CD collection to the computer and downloading HRes from the web. I will try some of my vinyl but I think I will prefer my analog to stay analog as I have since I got into this hobby.
I am glad that something digital has finaly come along that sounds very good and should have a good shelf life. I put alot of time and effort into my analog-HT rig. With the Berleley/computer setup I can also do 2 channel digital correctly without going broke. Upgrades should be much easier on the pocket also. BTW IMHO.

Hevac1; i do not know which i heard, but i agree it sounded great. you are building your own computer or having it built? i also agree with the advances which has kept me on the sidline up until now. also you are correct on the limitted software. i do not listen to jazz or classical. meridian bought out that soo???? i was going to look into that. what computer system are you building/having built?