How much do you need to spend to get digital to rival analog?

mijostyn

For sure you are right, most of the times we must compare and choose...

But each for their own potentials, digital and analog, are only interactive elements of design in an unbreakable chain that is so mixed that choosing absolutely for one and rejecting the other is neither possible nor desirable, choosing is only possible in a particular context actualizing some possibilities for some people taste and room and system design ... This is my point...My best wishes to you...

Dear @fleschler : For CDs Denon is more than enough. Please listen the old Gladiator motion picture soundtrack CD ( in a Denon 1600. ) against its today LP counterpart. As other gentlemans posted in this thread we don’t need to listen 4x DSD and the like to " note " the today superiority of digital alternative. I like both alternatives but for a tiny different reasons.

Digital makes many things rigth but one of them is the way it handled the bass range where LPs just falls to handle with the same " true and aplomb ".

R.

We are talking DACs here. There is no feedback on a Delta-Sigma DAC.

Delta-sigma conversion is based on a feedback, it’s how it works. In fact, feedback is described even in very words ’delta-sigma’.

Delta-sigma conversion

You can see with any delta-sigma conversion diagram there’s a feedback associated. While those are simple conversions, you can’t escape a feedback no matter how advanced or modern it is, because...at some point you’ll have to do a delta-sigma, you know? ;) you can’t escape LPF-ing too.

Even on an almost 900K system, I still feel there are compromises. For one thing, its not analog. also, I have never heard drums, cymbals and overall air sound right on any digital system. Unfortunately, sometimes you have no choice as some music is digital and was never releases in analog or (tape, record).

Whether it releases on analog or digital, most music in the last several decades was digital right up to the cutting machine.

Cymbals on LPs made from digitally made masters don’t sound right either, if you listen critically. I can go to a hifi show, listen to many analog systems, but on a typical record I usually can’t hear an ’analog sound’ out of the analog rig, With digitally made records it’s not what’s there.

On cassettes that are “digitally remastered” it seems that many of the sonic ills present on the CD are gone. Why is that? The cassette version is more lush, is more open sounding, more natural sounding, has more air, greater resolution and greater dynamic range. Why? It’s because the CD is more compressed and because of the limitations of CD playback I’ve been describing lo these past many months. You want some examples? OK, Kind of Blue, Country Joe and the Fish on Vanguard and AC/DC’s If You Want Blood You’ve Got It. Check it out!

I would say as it sounds in say an orchestra hall.