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

@audio-b-dog yep I tested gapless with Stravinsky no bueno with jplay. Hower it worked with Tidal Connect and should work with qobuz connect without a problem

the slight silence with jplay when gapless is not enabled isn’t ideal but it’s not the end of the world. You can try qobuz connect. 

My EMM Labs CDSA se is excellent. On the best SACD's the sound is perfect. Unfortunately it was never 'involving' like my analogue rig.

A few years ago Ed Meitner did an interview, At about the 20th minute he let something slip. It's in fact the chip manufacturers who are to blame. They refused to build the right kind of chip. Maybe one day that might change. 

Stop chasing the high. Digital is for listening to music. Analogue is for getting immersed in the music. Two completely different animals.

pretty tough to do even with DCS Scarlatti system. 

And that is just comparing to vinyl. If you go one step up and compare to high speed tape, then even the DCS plays 3rd fiddle. 

@cousinbillyl 

A few years ago Ed Meitner did an interview, At about the 20th minute he let something slip. It’s in fact the chip manufacturers who are to blame. They refused to build the right kind of chip. Maybe one day that might change. 

It doesn’t matter what the chip manufacturers are doing with their chips, several DAC designers are building DAC’s without them, including Meitner. Do you have a link to this interview?

According to an interview from Stereophile from 2019:

JVS: Do you work with chips, or . . . ?

EM: We make our own DAC from discrete components. We don’t use any chips.

Mariusz Pawlicki: (EMM managing engineer) There are various components, including FPGAs [field-programmable gate arrays]. However, we don't use any commercial DAC chip. The very core is not a typical market solution. We have various semiconductors; it's Ed's unique digital architecture. Every piece is unique to EMM.

EM: There is something fundamentally wrong with a commercially available DAC chip, no matter who makes it. The life of that chip is very limited, because they're building it to go into mass-produced consumer products rather than high-end components. When you totally rely on a chip that is only available for a limited amount of time, you can never evolve a product over years and years and years. But when you roll your own, you're free to do what you want as time goes on and you want to expand the product further and further. That was my path in this business, and I've done it pretty much without looking at what the rest of the crowd is up to and doing.

Ed Meitner interview

@johnss 

Another manufacturer that uses an FPGA, one who used to design the digital side of Meitner’s products is Andreas Koch from Playback Designs. Speaking of DCS check out this video comparing DCS Apex to MPD-8, and the owner’s comparisons to his quite nice vinyl setup. 

DCS Apex / MPD-8

@audphile1 

I spoke to Amadeus Meitner at EMM today. He asked me to send an email to Issis about the process of fixing the drop offs. I told him a friend told me about it. When he asked your name, I of course didn't know. I said I'd contact you and perhaps you would be willing to talk to Issis about how you knew it was a network problem. I have no idea about your background. Perhaps you helped Al Gore invent the internet. Anyway, I'm sending Issis an email to let her know about the process of fixing my drop offs.