Vader, I apologize if my comment was hurtful. I would edit or withdraw it if I could, since it was uncivil. Mea culpa.
Let's start again with something we both agree on: our analog devices need protection from digital ones. Doesn't this tell us something? Can we learn from this?
Music is sound. Sound is analog. Digitizing analog waveforms to store them compels us to to un-digitize them later to hear them. No process now in use does that without changing the waveforms in ways that humans can hear. Our ears are so sensitive to variations in analog waveforms that the only acceptable sampling rate is infinity, ie, the waveforms themselves. Everything less that's been tried to date is audibly different, ie, audibly inaccurate.
If our goal is the accurate storage and reproduction of analog waveforms, an all-analog chain is the only currently available process that gives us a fighting chance. Obviously system iteration will matter, but if we violate this basic fact we'll have no chance of achieving accurate reproduction.
This is not to say that I don't listen to CD's. I do, sometimes for convenience like TWL, sometimes because no analog copy is available like Newbee. But CD's don't play real music, they play a low resolution facsimile of it. Despite a pretty decent system only half my CD's are listenable. Many literally hurt my ears, and even the best of them cannot match a decent LP.
YMMV of course, but that's what I hear and I think that's why I hear it. Sorry once again if I was harsh.
