A DAC that can make digital sound analog?

richopp74 

If 74 is your birth year we are the same age. If not you now know how old I am.

I know you are trying to be coy and/or kind about my point of view and/or system and thanks for that I think. 

No you are not confused. I’d like to not have to deal with tape and/or vinyl all the time but I want the tape and/or vinyl sound from a digital source. The ritual and fragility of both tape and vinyl is frankly annoying. And honestly I don’t want to listen to my favorite albums or tracks with clicks and pops intermixed all the time.

Now that I can play back 7 1/2 tape in my system, I can hear what is lacking in both vinyl and digital. Above average quality tape feels supremely integrated and without any softening or rounding (or clicks and pops). It has a very natural contrast and excellent reproduction of space/time. Vinyl does some of this but it’s more warm and syrupy sounding. Vinyl, due to its additional mastering phase generally has a pleasant—essentials only—sound. Digital can occasionally do space/time as good as tape and can go get details buried under tape hiss and/or vinyl surface noise. But quite often digital is too stark, there seems to be something extra added to the presentation, something offputting that is never present in vinyl or tape. I believe most often it’s inaudible brief transient overloads of the analog-to-digital processor at time of initial tape capture resulting in aliasing in the audible frequencies. 

I am certain digital can sound as good, if not better than, vinyl and tape. And I am curious to find solutions towards that end.

Well I received my Ortho Spectrum AR-2000 Analog Reconstructor the mystical, mythical Japanese filter that's supposed to remove all the digital nasties from the analog signal coming out of ones DAC.  Will try it out this weekend and let you all know.

It's old voodoo, but potentially strong voodoo.

@lowrider57 

I agree with you. Most initial CD pressings are more natural sounding and spacious. I have gotten very close on occasion to getting a real tape feel from my digital setup using older Zeppelin, Hendrix, Genesis and Cream discs. 

I think tape noise might be important to space/depth/time. I think it may act as a sort of bias towards signal.

The only remaster so far (which really is a remix) that is better than every other format is the Wish You Were Here SACD. Very nice.

Brett, hearing tape hiss on albums from this analague era is a good thing. It means there is minimal compression during the mastering process. With the natural noise floor of the recording intact, we hear the ambience of the room and separation of instruments.

After upgrading my digital, I went on a tear buying early release Redbook to replace any remasters and CDs with poor SQ. The best were usually mastered in W. Germany followed by Japan. The Japanese like their digital clean and analytical. 
I'm right there with you on the flat transfers of Zeppelin, Hendrix, Cream. Discogs is the place to go to find the best pressings.

And funny you should mention the remaster of Floyd's WYWH. My Redbook sounds excellent, it may be from the same session as the SACD remix. I own a few of the remasters that were released. I also own some original Japanese PF.

Now that I have good digital playback, it sounds very much like analague, but very dependent on the source material.
 

 

I love R-R tape. I used it for years in studios, I'd love to have it in my home system. I've been told CD transfers sound terrific on tape.