Here's a fire starter: Analog is as good as SACD


If in my setup (see below) a SACD version and a good LP version of an album sound almost the same; ke sense to upgrade my phonostage or invest in speaker cables, etc.

Primare I32
Zu Wylde IC
Emotiva XPS-1
Hana EL/Denon DL-301 II/Shure V15. Hanna is my fav.
Oracle Alexandria/Sumiko MMT with Cards wiring
Oppo BDP 95
Belden XLRs
Canton Ergo 1002DC speakers
DIY speaker cables 10' Bi-wire 12 AWG 99.95 OFC, 50% silver plated/50% unplated multi-strand.
2channel8
LPs and silver discs are different media with unique virtues specific to each.  A very interesting thing to listen to are Stockfish DMM-SACDs where they find a happy medium between the media.😉
It depends on which format you want to listen to more. I can’t comment on your turntable setup but I know you can do a lot better than the oppo on the digital side for reasonable money.

Also, oppo players starting with the 103 and 105 models can stream Tidal and probably internet radio, giving you access to a vast amount of music and the ability to listen before you buy if you prefer physical media, and to listen to music you wouldn't ordinarily try. I think you can probably still do better than the more recent oppos for digital sound in that price range, but you would give up the universal aspect of the oppos.

So what do you think your main future audio direction is? Vinyl or digital?


The original ADC converters are invariably flawed. Some discrete ADC units sound pretty good. Anything chip based is suspect. It’s due to the complications of obtaining micro signal changes in an accurate way.

The essence of sound quality to the human ear, is entirely in micro changes to the signal, as a brutally complex set of near randomly intermixing harmonics, signals so complex..they easily exceed sampling rates. To add they mix across the two channels, not just their own reproduction issues, so the problem is multiplied - again.

Therefore Analog to analog, is good. As in -probably better than digital, in most cases.

and....ADC to DAC is almost inevitably flawed in a way that is irretrievable. This includes all forms of SACD, 384, 24 bit anything, whatever....as they are after the fact of the ADC conversion issues.

The first company to make and release commercial LP's from PCM digital sources was Denon (starting around 1972). These were classical recordings. I first listened to the in '76-'77 on high-quality playback gear ( Denon's TOTL TT, Denon DL103 mc into a custom clone Levinson JC-1 headamp, GAS Thaedra and Ampzilla with Snell Type A's. NONE of these LP's sounded good! Treble sound was hard and irritating! I can only attribute this to the digital source, as analog classical recordings (CBS, RCA, London, Philips, DG ...) sounded far better using this playback gear! So Denon's early attempts at PCM recording - not so good!