Does anyone have a digital system that is as involving as their analogue front end?


I have a good analogue front end. Not stratuspherically good but good enough for this comparison. VPI Prime Signature 21 turntable, Pass Labs XP-25 pono preamp, Pass Labs XP-30 preamp and Hovland Radia amp. It has a lovely, very involving sound. On the right recording, I just drop everythng and am drawn in to listen.

My streamer, on the other hand, is decent but not spectacular. It is better than my CD player, but it is not jaw-dropping like my analogue front-end. My question is this: does anyone have a high-end, tier-one streamer (dCS Bartok Apex, Lumin X2, or something like them) that can rival a good analogue system?

audio-b-dog

I prefer digital, and my digital front end blows the top off my analog, particularly for DSD

As others have mentioned here, a better DAC is where you will start seeing gains in your digital system.   I have a Bricasti M3 with the network card which I stream Qobuz to directly via JPlay.  The Meitner MA3, being on a similar level, will show you the start of improvement you can get.   And you don’t even need a streamer.  
 

Good luck with the audition.  

I don’t but I can see how you could get there.

I’ve been doing analog for 20+ years and I have a very good system that’s also very dialed in. I just got into digital. There’s quite a gap but that was intentional.

However, now that I’ve experienced digital, I like it and I look forward to making it really solid and significantly close the gap. If it exceeds my analog, I’d probably push the analog a bit further. And so it goes.

My salesperson at TMR contacted EMM Labs about whether I can upgrade the Meitner MA3. He said that the people at EMM Labs were very friendly and I can contact them myself, without an intermediary, about upgraading to  MA3i. So, I'll see how things on the homefront go, but maybe in a year or so, based on what the MA3 owners have said on this thread and elsewhere about how the improvement is worth it.

But I do want to say one thing. When I was maybe 7 years old, in the mid-fifties, Annie Oakley was a series on TV. I have read some of the greatest poetry known to man. I studied poetry and I have written it. One of the most memorable lines, however, was when Annie Oakley told her younger brother, "No matter how fast you are there will always be someone faster." No matter how good we've made our systems, there will always be better systems and better pieces of equipment. At some point you just have to lean back and "love the one you're with."

I generally wait to upgrade equipment until I can hear a lack, something that's not there. For example, I owned an ARC PH-3 tube phono preamp for years and loved it when I bought it. After maybe ten years I began to hear that something was missing. I couldn't even specifically tell you what. The new ARC phono preamps were too expensive for me, so I did my research and decided that the PH-7 would work well and be in my budget. None were online for sale. I called every ARC dealer in the U.S. seeing if they had a used PH-7 for sale, and nobody had one. Then I called dealers in Canada and found one. I loved it, but decided to get out of tubes, so I replaced it with the Pass Labs XP-25 (I also bought used). The XP-25 is better than the PH-7 was. But my point is that a system can sound fantastic for years and then you might notice something. And that motivates me to buy upgrades.