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Can Digital beat our Analog installations?

Having gone a long walk on developing my analog systems I am addicted to phono reproduction. Nevertheless I always kept an eye on CDs and also SACDs. Before I currently updated my digital dCS chain to the complete Scarlatti boxes I experimented on the best wordclocking connections. in the end I decided going for an additional rubidium clock added to my Verona master clock.

I am using also a second system equipped with the Accuphase 800 drive and 801 DAC, an Esoteric XO1 Limited and a Wadia 861 SE for other utilization. Let's concentrate on the dCS stack. These four boxes are sounding such good and analog like that I like to question my friends, Why isn't Digital an alternative to our best analogue chains?

So it's time comparing digital vs. analog systems and maybe some sophisticated digital chains are beating our sophisticated analog systems. Will it be possible?
thuchan
sm2727
112 posts
 
I think a dollar amount has to be established for the discussion to make sense. After 10 years of trying to get digital right, I spent half as much on analog and it sounds better than any dcs or wadia set up I had.
thuchan OP
955 posts
 
Jfrech,
I regard it as an enourmous improvement going via Dual AES. curently in my small solution (SUP and SCL will arrive maybe in a week about) I am able to enjoy DSD and upsampled DSD from the STT (Scarlatti Transport) This is much better than by the Firewire connections. Wordclocking is going Perf10 => Verona => everywhere. What is your experience?
lewm
6,770 posts
 
Jfrech, I wondered how you could perceive that the Cardas cable reduced "noise" compared to two other cables, when the background is said to be better than -100db for any respectable digital playback system. I don't doubt your perception that the Cardas sounded "better", just the rationale for it. The brain is a funny thing.

Granny, I feel sorry for you if your vinyl is or was plagued by pop pop click click. It doesn't have to be that way. Blame your LPs, not the medium.
grannyring's avatar
grannyring
4,637 posts
 
Well, the pops and clicks were not terrible by most standards, but there after cleaned properly etc....I guess I have a low tolerance due to my years of digital only...
czarivey
4,494 posts
 
Even according to Al, I still can only believe that quality of digital reproduction in the mathematical and scientific terms can only "approach" quality of analogue reproduction as close as possible when sampling resolution approaches infinity [aka Q(digital media/playback) --> Q(analogue media/playback) when sampling resolution --> infinity], but can't be any greater potentially and so practically.
Neo(aka Matrix movie hero) may certainly have a different opinion, but certainly not proven yet :-) so the analogue today and probably in far future has and will have the HIGHEST possible resolution of sound.

Despite my HUGE analogue library of near or more than 10k of vinyls/45's/7"/flexi/75rpm, I do have digital PC audio playback/great DAC simply because I love media and music more than any type of playback regardless of format. If artist I desire isn't available on vinyl, I'd never mind having it on CD or other formats or medias.
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