My MSB Analog DAC and MSB transport with Aurender does sound involving. But Vinyl sounds just a little better. Difficult to describe .
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?
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I find both very satisfying, though different. The analog chain starts with a Koetsu Rosewood Signature Platinum and the Sutherland Dos Locos; this provides a highly revealing but slightly warm sound, a middle of the hall perspective. The digital chain is the Eversolo T8 and the Esoteric K-01XDSE, perhaps more detailed, a front row perspective perhaps. Rolling between amplifiers (my 2A3 SET and the C-J 62SE), fed by a Cary SLP 98, possibly is a bigger change than inherent between the digital & analog setups! The 2A3 amp is an Elekit 8900 with Lundahl OPTs, NOS tubes and paper/wax caps and it has an uncanny rendering of the space whereas the C-J is perhaps more emotional rather than cerebral. @audio-b-dog my life was rather simple - the only thing I was good at during high school was Mathematics, but only at the level of being good at solving math questions in exams - I think I knew I was not going to be a mathematician so (in the mid '60s) I became a programmer and spent my working life as a software engineer or managing software development. Now I am retired I am married to an artist/designer who does Holiday cards for MoMA and I do the paper engineering and the creation of the art files in Adobe Illustrator. Never did I think my name would appear on product sold by a museum! |
I think it’s absolutely possible to have the best of both worlds: analog and digital, and enjoy what each does best. Besides my analog system, I currently use two digital systems. One is a HiFi Rose RS130 connected to a Gustard R30 via I2S. Besides sounding excellent, it also offers a beautiful user experience, both on its built-in screen and on an external monitor. The other system is sonically superior, although a bit more geek-oriented: a Linux computer running HQPlayer Embedded, doing upsampling and sending 768 kHz PCM files to the Gustard in NOS mode. It’s impressive how a US$300 software package can compete with DACs that cost many thousands of dollars. |
@audio-b-dog |
Thanks for letting me know about hqplayer. I'll look into it when I get my new Meitner MA3i. I am listening to the MA3 and it sounds very good. Very analogue like. But it does not have the crispness of analogue and I'm hoping the upgrade will. Its analogue sound is called "soft," which to my ears means that the tones (notes) are not plagued with the old digital glare, but there is not enough "space" between sounds for the air of analogue. Also, the bass is wooly. It is often quite close to my analogue rig. The upgrade is supposed to fix the "softness," and I'm hoping that gives it the crispness of analogue. Of course, I'm at a loss for exact words to describe what I'm talking about. It is difficult to express things that come through our senses in words. |
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