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Should I buy an SME 30/12A for 15K?

I am a vinyl newbie with maybe 100 LPs (or less) in my collection. I have had a Technics SL1210GAE for past 2 years, I just plugged and played it. It’s good but my digital is almost as good or sometimes better.

I recently heard a SME 30/12A at the dealer’s, and it blew my mind, and my digital was no where close (the dealer had almost the same digital -- mine is Nagra Tube DAC, his was the Nagra HD DAC -- and we did on spot comparison, not an apples to apple of course but still best that we could under the circumstances).

 

Now given my relative inexperience with vinyl (I know next to nothing about setup), should I plunge for this offer which is offered to me at 1/3rd the retail price and probably an endgame TT for me.

 

Thoughts?

Also, is this as great an offer as I think it is, are there better TTs at 15K$ retail price (I cannot/will not buy used) than the SME 30/12A?

essrand

Showing 1 response by audioman58

audioman58's avatar
audioman58
3,896 posts
 

You can do a heck of a lot better in digital then nagar for less$$ and easill6 compete or beat SME setup 

the new Denafrips 12 anniversary Terminator +,  the Excellent T&A 200 Dac

or Holo springs May KTE , beat the nagar with Ease. , hook these up 

especially the T&A dac with Roon , and on the back end Have HQ player running 

with a sufficient high end fast server ,it then turns your digital withSuper powerful

DSP that sounds state of the art that you can Taylor the sound exactly to your taste 

vinyl is not even close which btw can only produce 12 bits ,when top digital 

can reach true 20 bits plus the DSP power once you take the time to learn all the possibilities. Until you have tried this ,you cannot comment on it it’s platform is built into Roon , and T&A designed the200dac around HQ player with many  filters and dithering options , it’s free for 2 weeks check it out .great digital is here !

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