Sell quality turntable to buy top CD player?

Lew, good points. Back in 83 my $1200 system included not just the source but the whole works, speakers amps and all. I had a $250 tt, a $90 cartridge, and replaced it with a $350 cd player when the tt developed a hum I couldn't fix. I didn't have $1500 for a vinyl rig. You are right that in 83 all digital sources sucked, as did most of the recordings. However, a lot of the vinyl was based on early digital recording, so it wasn't always that great either.

You could be quite right, and believe me, I have second guessed myself more than once. I came close to investing in a vinyl rig once about 10 years ago, and honestly, the main reason I didn't was because my beloved began to express an intent to dig out her ancient fuzzy warbles to play through my main rig. I went pale, then green, and decided a new vinyl rig wasn't going to happen in this lifetime. True story. Let me put it this way, I'd rather have digital + my current wife than vinyl plus my ex wife. :)

As for Johnny Football, time will tell. I loved the Browns draft, but I'm a little dubious on Manzell. It will be very interesting to see how it plays out. Hoyer is a hometown boy, and is very popular with the fans.

SunnyJim
I would say keep with the ultra conveniance of digital play back,..
This past winter I got involved helping out a disabled Canadian Vetran of the Afagan conflict. The young lad always enjoyed music not only from his own generation but his parents generation also and now an appreciation of music from his grandparents generation.

He could certainly tell the differences of playback of MP3 and decent vinyl play back of his fathers system.
The young fellow is blind including other severoir injuries which anyone could imagine the difficulties ,there are many challenges for him and his parents including finicial strains.
I wanted to help anyway I could and was given the green light to do so.

A used ModWright ultimate Sony 5400 came up for sale locally which I listened to then purchased for just under $2000.00.
During the audition the seller thought I should listen to this player sitting on Syposium roller blocks including symposiums ISO platform.
That was a remarkable leap in performance for this modified Sony and a good sales tactic at a up sell on the Symposium products.

As this player stands on its own without vibration drain I found it only tolerable ,however I was not buying it for myself,. with Syposium roller blocks I liked it very much with cd and sacd playback enough to buy a modwright Sony for myself, however vinyl rules in my home.

Brownsfan,
You wrote "let the music answer the questioh" oh so true! I was a dye in the wool analog LP advocate for many years and still appreciate a well set up TT front end. Once I finally found digital sources that preserved the emotion, soul and natural beauty of music the vinyl- CD gap closed for me. There are digital sources that most certainly convey the musical message. There are turntable set ups that are analytical, sterile, lifeless and edgy. I don't see this as a religious battle or adherence to some mantra. Both source types can be organic bliss or unemotional hifi drivel.
Charles,

the oppo is the best deal going. a dac can be used but only with non sacd types i read somewhere as the dac will rob the sacd of its advantages. when oppo first gained popularity they did not play hdcd for some reason. i imagine they do now esp considering i paid $200? for my hd970 yrs ago! i own a nice nad cd player and a scott nixon dac but i am sooooo stunned at the quality of the new hybrid sacd etc that i cannot imagine buying a standard redbook cd again. it is that fantastic. imo the biggest improvement you will make is in the type of cd you are playing and not the player. but if you like to feel like you need to pay more to get more than chuck my advice. good luck, remember it is all about music not gear or names or price. but you knew that already

The limitation of outboard stand alone DACs to decode SACD is based only on the fact that Sony refused to license products that output DSD from the transport. I think that in recent months or years, there is a crack in that restriction so that now some transports can output DSD or DSD converted to another decoding stream (PWM?), so that some DACs can now handle SACD.

Anyway, the hi-rez audio available via download and then fed to a DAC with hi-rez capability will challenge the fidelity of SACD, somewhat diluting Sony's attempt at monopoly. I think Sony's reluctance to encourage the spread of SACD technology to other companies was a marketing disaster for them and backfired, like Betamax, another superior technology that died because Sony was greedy.