If you were serious about sound you would...

@mbmi No, I don't want to belabor this but I've set up many many digital recording setups (scars to prove it) and if the 1s and 0 are not exactly shaking hands the system will not work. This tells you many things for instance digital cables if they work they work perfectly and that 1k$ digital cable that they said gave you more imaging and tighter bass was not exactly accurate. 

I didn't read all the posts, so I'll just say this. It is more difficult to reproduce music than to record it and it requires better equipment. 

@inna There is no way to add sonic information to the recording, it's not a matter of easier or harder to record or playback. With that in mind you can't get any value out of equipment that is significantly better than what was used originally. For instance if you used a 5k $ preamp to record the song a 100k $ preamp to playback the song isn't going to add any quality, it will get you close maybe if it is synergistic with the original preamp, the only way to get the vision of the original recording that the musician producer and engineers wanted would be to use the exact same equipment on the playback system as they did. Since that is impractical If you really cared about playback you would buy studio playback equipment not audiophile equipment. Hope that's clear. 

I guess the best argument against this idea is that the very expensive audiophile preamp for example is more transparent than even the original preamp and that is probably true but the problem with that is what you are hearing is not part of the music. At Skywalker sound they have a button that adds the air conditioner noise of a typical movie theater so they have a good idea of what the mix sounds like in a typical movie theater, all that extra headroom that the boutique preamp gives you is not the information that is being mixed, it's just information your expensive preamp reads that is not part of the vision. Kinda like a car that is never designed to go over 50 mph and your drive it 100 mph from 50 to 100 you have no idea how it will act or what it will do.

donavabdear, I don't think you really registered what I said, you just got stuck in your seemingly perfect to you assumption. And I was not talking about prices.

Alright, I'll stop right there. After this. There is nothing cool about digital. It is junk all the way. Getting a little better, though.

@inna 

I'm surprised and disappointed that you would make such a blanket and ignorant comment.