When is digital going to get the soul of music?

Albert,

Have you ever heard the better DCS gear?

I heard a Puccini recently in a limited audition and have to say I was impressed with how vinyl like the resulting sound was.

Of course if the reference standard for you is the ultimate real vinyl sound, then I would expect that nothing else can approach it in all practicality because it isn't really vinyl no matter how similar it sounds, but in the brief audition I did, I think I would have had difficulty identifying the Puccini sound as CD.

I thought it ironic though that the Puccinni was most expensive CD playback system I had ever heard and sure enough, hey, it sounded pretty much like a good vinyl recording.

This was on a very high end VAC/VTL tube system with top of the line Nordost cabling. The speakers were Magico Minis.

No DCS or Meitner in my system recently. I did hear the old DCS from a few years ago but assume they are much better now.

Doing show coverage, I've heard all the hot models multiple times at various venues but I guess that really does not count.

I've have had the Levinson two piece system, the Lindemann, Audio Note, Wadia, Theta and recently the Stahl-Tek in my system in the last three or so years.

My good friend Louis, who is part of my audio group has owned several digital players recently. A CEC transport with two different Audio Note DAC's, one single ended and one balanced. The Stibbert, Cary and another one that I can't recall right now.

His system is very familiar to me, he has same preamp and phono, Walker table, a Garrard 301 with Triplanar and a Technics SP 10 MK3 with SME 312S (same as me). Also a Dynavector XV1S, Air Tight PC-1, Schroeder reference and Allaerts cartridge.

So, by comparing all these tables, arms and cartridges against my own and against the players in my system and the ones he's previously owned, I get a good idea about performance.

I agree there is better sound with these more expensive players and DAC's. I guess my problem is spending $15K or 20K (or whatever) to get sound that's not as pleasing as my LP rig. I've said it before and I'm not kidding. If I could find a digital player that was equal to my vinyl rig I would buy it, assuming I could afford it.

I should confess here and now, I just ordered a new Air Tight cartridge that's coming into the market. Valin has one already and Jacob at Absolute Sound and I are both getting one of the five that arrive in the USA next week.

This new Air Tight is called the Supreme and according to all my reliable sources this will be one of the finest phono cartridges ever. The importer says it's a good 30% better than my PC-1, which I cannot imagine, since the PC-1 killed my Koetsu Jade Platinum Signature.

Mapman - Puccini is an oversampling player. It uses Ring-DACs - same DACs DCS sold license to ARCAM (FMJ-23). Arcam stopped making it because of DAC manufacturing yield problems (and stopped making FMJ23). Ring DAC possesses additional 4 current sources generating randomly 16 different sub LSB levels - basically noise. Adding noise to signal increases its resolution (dithering). Just a little bit tech info.

Tomcy6, let me quote part of your last post - "Sophisticated musicians, not rock, hiphop, etc., must train their ears to be able to play proper pitch, tone, etc. To other people, this practice will interfere with your finding the soul of the music." I have a serious disagreement with the second sentence here. As I stated a couple of times earlier in this thread, ear training always increases people's involvement with and enjoyment of music. The more you can hear of the details, the more you can appreciate and enjoy them. I have helped laymen (for lack of a better term) as well as music students with ear training, and in every case they were and are still very appreciative, saying that it opened up new worlds for them in their listening. This is not just for classical music - understanding harmony enhances the enjoyment of all types of music. One can be much more appreciative, for instance, of a great jazz artist's live or recorded improvisations if you have more understanding of what he is doing. The more you understand of rhythm, the better you can appreciate a great drummer in a rock band. I helped one lady in particular who now cannot help harmonizing along with her favorite country singers when listening to the radio in her car. Music is the universal language, and the more you can speak it, the more it will communicate to you.

Kijanki, that end to the sound I was describing about cd's might be dither, and if it is, I'm not sure that digital will ever fully satisfy me. Although, if I like the song(like Paula Cole's, "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone" on the 1998 Grammy Nominee's cd), I don't object-or even hear-the end to the sound. Alberporter, do they add this dither to the digital master tapes? Could that be why it takes more "plays" to understand the song on cd, compared to understanding the song on analog? Tvad, I've got a conspiracy theory and/or an excuse that leaves me totally blameless for not reading Albertporter's posts. The conspiracy theory(which might just be an error in processing by Audiogon) is that Audiogon has decided to review my posts before they are posted. The excuse is that I'm getting old, and missed a complete page of postings when I posted. If none of these work, how about the male tendency to not listen, in order to get what we want to say in? I could try Guidocorona's humor distracting me, if you like. That part about the high frequency cut off intrigues me, as I believe allowing the super-high frequencies in was why I got so high listening to cd's at APL. I also want to point out that the true experts on digital(at least here) are those that have heard those digital master tapes. So therefore, what about analog being more relaxing than digital(I think Albertporter said something about this.)? What about dither being what we hear in the deep backgroung? And does it take more "plays" to understand the whole song on digital versus on analog?