Before I had a vinyl set-up I had the EMM Labs DCC2se and CDSDse. It sounded quite good, but when I decided to sell it and go with vinyl I used the money to buy both vinyl playback and CD. I gave up on SACD because the titles were so limited and every time I heard vinyl somewhere, the differences, particularly in timbre, were too much to live without. I did find that a good SACD sounded better than most CDs, but certainly not all of them. Digital sounds good to me, unless I listen to vinyl first. My new CD player was more than $3000, and it only lacks a bit of extra detail in the highs that I found a bit fatiquing from the Meitner gear. There is no question that vinyl takes a lot of work to get it right, but, for me, I now cannot sit still for digital. Are there bad records? Absolutely. Is 180 gram vinyl the answer? Not to my ears -- some are great and some suck (I love Joni Mitchell, but Blue on 180 gram vinyl is definitely a polished turd). Sorry, got way off topic...
How can we settle for digital?
My friend, a recording engineer, once made a remark when I told him I had spent $3000 on a CD player. He said "How far can you polish a turd?" Those I know in the music business all agree that digital can only go so far. Vinyl is certainly making a comeback, but the advent of new digital formats seems to perpetuate new hope on the part of audiophiles. Do you buy it? Or are you sticking with your records? Or will you stand up for your $3000+ CDP? Is it just polishing a turd?