I think your Rega arm and dac may be the weakest links. I upgraded a Rega arm about as far as I could, but when I moved to Origin Live replacements, it made a huge difference. IMO, the old Rega arm is good, but entry-level, no matter what you do to it. As others have pointed out, digital has made greater strides in the last decades than analogue.
"Vintage" high end gear vs new and upgrade path?
I'm pondering a couple issues that relate to each other. Let's start with vintage vs new part. The system is ripped straight from the 90's but was pretty much a Stereophile "A" class setup in its day. Here it is:
Issue 2: Despite improvements in digital I'm also skeptical about how much real sonic improvement there has been in high end DACs, especially when it gets beyond 24b/96khz source material (system above is good up to 24/96). I'm also skeptical about the claimed improvements from DSD over PCM, so I'm ignoring that for the time being. Obviously connectivity, music servers, the digital audio chain and computer anything has improved greatly and is vastly cheaper than in 1995. But how far does that actually extend to the sonics? My sense is not so much.
At the end of the day I'm interested in any upgrade(s) that would create a real, hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck improvement without spending $10k. But I've convinced myself that so much of what I read about would be only yield an incremental sonic improvement, and maybe even a downgrade. I need a strategy - which might just be "leave it alone and just enjoy." Any comments welcome, thanks.
- Rega P3 with numerous upgrades & Exact 2 cartridge (new)
- Threshold FET10/pc phono preamp,
- Sonic Frontiers SFT-1 => Assemblage D2D-1 ==> SFD-2 Mk3
- Krell KBL preamp (recapped) ==> ML No. 332 amp (recapped)
- Maggie MGIIIa's (recent factory rebuild)
- Music server (repurposed HP server) w/ Asus Xonar card feeding D2D-1
Issue 2: Despite improvements in digital I'm also skeptical about how much real sonic improvement there has been in high end DACs, especially when it gets beyond 24b/96khz source material (system above is good up to 24/96). I'm also skeptical about the claimed improvements from DSD over PCM, so I'm ignoring that for the time being. Obviously connectivity, music servers, the digital audio chain and computer anything has improved greatly and is vastly cheaper than in 1995. But how far does that actually extend to the sonics? My sense is not so much.
At the end of the day I'm interested in any upgrade(s) that would create a real, hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck improvement without spending $10k. But I've convinced myself that so much of what I read about would be only yield an incremental sonic improvement, and maybe even a downgrade. I need a strategy - which might just be "leave it alone and just enjoy." Any comments welcome, thanks.