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Are there digital front ends with the body...

and resolving power of good vinyl?

I'm mainly just curious; I'm not going to buy one. Getting into vinyl recently, I'm actually surprised by how a (moderately pricey) analog setup can trounce digital - any I've heard, anyway. There are at least two areas: 'body' and image density/separation. These add up to 'naturalness'.

This is not a taunt or anything like that: I'm curious if there are those that feel that there is digital that competes on this level. Price no object.
paulfolbrecht
tvad
9,467 posts
 
The APL units do, including the now defunct APL Denon 3910.

A. Peychev designs his digital players to perform up to the level of his reference analog front end (or better, if possible). He often burns CDs with the analog rig as the source, and then he uses the CDs in his players to compare to the vinyl original.
vegasears
922 posts
 
Other's will disagree but for me it's my Esoteric DV-50. Yes, my not too pricy TT's do give it run for it's money. The trade off is software. New vinyl is pricy and the quality is not very good. Used vinyl is a crap shoot. Digital software is for the most part cheap and all over the place. Dammed if you do dammed if you don't.
samujohn's avatar
samujohn
291 posts
 
In the two areas you mention, analog (tape as well) kills any redbook CD.
On the other hand, CD can avoid speed variation, bass noise, mistracking,
surface noise, and so on. As computer chips increase in capability, CD's can sound better and better while analog cannot. Some convert analog to digital for processing. The future of analog is digital.
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