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

@audio-b-dog 

So, I do think there are a lot of ways to become immersed in music. I have listened to music on a $100 stereo and enjoyed it totally. Now that I can afford something that sounds like real live music, I also enjoy that totally. But I can also listen to music on my Tivoli radio and get involved. I think that having a nice stereo is a cool thing if you can afford it. But whatever I’ve been able to afford, I’ve always enjoyed recorded music on it.

The fact that we can sometimes get the same experience of enjoying music played on modest equipment as we do on a top hifi system has long perplexed me. I think the explanation lies in thinking of the experience as complex interaction of music, equipment and listener in a specific environment. Having good equipment helps this along and makes a wider range of music accessible, but is by no means the only way to enjoy music. 

Also, I have found that even on a good hifi system, the experience can be spoilt if the source is not great. For some years now I have struggled with digital and only really enjoyed vinyl. Recently, I’ve overcome this by paying attention to the details of the network and the music server, without changing the streamer, DACs or the rest of the hifi system.

If our brains work hard they can potentially overcome bad sounding music, by either filling in the gaps or filtering out the noise. Yet how much easier it is if the sound is good to start with. 

Because the music is just a means of creative composers expressing their vision of the world to us in ways that cannot be understood symbolically. Sure the musician reads music off a page, but if they don’t really understand the music’s emotions and passions, etc., they can’t really play it.

Again we have a complex interaction, this time between what the musician knows in their head or reads on paper, their muscle memory and what they can hear. As you also say, there is also something extra that metaphorically comes from the heart or spirit. Musicians do sometimes experience the same altered states of consciousness that listening to music can invoke. A guitar player once told me that he quickly entered a trace like state every time he played a concert.

@daniel25 

About $7500 into Linn tt, about 8k into streamer and Dac. Digital is very good, but gets bested every time by tt and vinyl records. Keep in mind im not just streaming, the innuos is also a cd player and I have a pretty large collection of cds. The benifit is it’s convenient, but if I want to lose myself into the music it’s vinyl every time.

Until recently, I completely shared your view about preferring vinyl. Now I am getting a better sound out of digital, I am not so sure. It appears to now be doing the same for me as vinyl. I guess that all will become clear in the next couple of weeks when my turntable is up and running again after a repair.

Rightly or wrongly, I regard there as essentially only being two formats. Those where music is stored in an analogue form on say a vinyl record and those where it is stored digitally on a CD or in a file. Whether we play CDs directly or rip them to Flac files first or if there are digital steps in vinyl replay are both secondary. 

@newton_john @daniel25 

I have wanted to be many things if I could start from youth again. A conductor is at the top of the list, but I don't "understand" music as a musician or conductor must. I learned to paint. When I say "learned," I mean that I was able to get past my conscious mind and allow my unconsciouos to take over. The same with writing and poetry. I can mostly get out of my conscious mind to hear music without symbolic thoughts (chatter in my mind) to interrupt my enjoyment. The more music sounds like the real thing (live) the easier it is for me to get involved, especially with rock n' roll.

One of the things I would have really liked to do is to study philosophy and write about asthetics. Music is a wonderful example. Great composers are not simply tapping into their unconscious minds, they are influenced and inspired by non-symbolic structures we all share. So, if I'm listening on my Tivoli radio and I am able to tap into those structures perhaps from Jung's Collective Unconscious? (I have not been able to do the rigorous study I would have liked to do) or something more Divine? all humanity seems to be able to share those structures that I will call transcendental, because I can't go back and study philosophy and find a more exact word. 

@audphile1 

My MA3i is coming Monday. Would you suggest that I burn it in first, or that I just burn it in while listening to it, which is what I usuallly do with new equipment? But if its sound without being burned in will give me a negative opinion of it, I will burn it in silently. 

@audio-b-dog 

It’d be nice to have more than one life, to follow more than one path. My alternative would to have been to be a musician, but I wouldn’t want to have missed out on the other things that I’ve done.

I was fortunate to pick up the threads again in my forties. And joined my first band at nearly fifty. It was actually more like being press ganged than joining. I found the great thing about playing with a band is that it doesn’t really matter what you do because the other guys carry on regardless. So you get the opportunity to allow your unconscious to take over and improvise.