JonP

I've been very happy with their phono amp for my MC cartridge (now 9 years old and still going strong) and have been interested in their DACs purely on that account. But never had the opportunity to try or buy one to this point.

Based on my own experiences with companies who offer such services as well as what I have read numerous times elsewhere, then I would say yes, you can't assume items you buy are unopened. For example (Audio Advisor in this case): Audio Asylum Thread Printer Infact I've had enough experiences buying second-hand stuff sold as new by companies with trial periods that I now no longer deal with such companies. It's got to a point now where I deliberately only shop with companies who offer no returns (unless required by law). So, effectively if the company concerned does not provide actual demo units, I won't deal with them either.

Fair enough. I agree with this as well.

I don't disagree with your conclusion that 16/44.1 done right can be better than SACD, but I couldn't disagree more that the XRCD process constitutes an argument for the redundancy of higher resolution formats. The XRCD RCAs and the BMG SACD RCAs are derived from different masters so apart from them being remastered by different personnel and companies using different equipment, the actual source material for each of those series sounds quite different to begin with. The XRCDs are made from the 2 track cutting master tapes used to make the original vinyl LPs whereas the BMG SACDs come directly from the original session masters (mainly the 1/2 inch three track but as you know the earlier ones are two track). It has been pointed out by an engineer who is both in the know and well respected that the SACDs are a much more accurate rendition of the original masters than the XRCDs are. The XRCD sound is a by-product of the particular remastering process used as well as the euphonic distortions inherent in a second generation copy optimised for vinyl cutting. As someone who also owns both XRCD and BMG SACDs versions of a number of these titles, I do agree that some of them do subjectively sound "better", but I don't kid myself that they are more faithful to the original source. It's not an endorsement of the viability of the CD standard, nor the XRCD "standard". I'd venture to suggest that the shortcomings of the DSD standard on an SACD are significantly less comprised than even the very best possible 16 bit CD standard achievable. The only things in favour of the XRCD "standard" are mitigating the various losses and compromises along the entire production chain as much as possible thus maximising the potential of what will always be a flawed and significantly compromised format. There is only so much you can do with such a compromised 16 bit standard, the evil effects of aggressive noise shaping (if employed) and the necessary low-pass filtering that needs to occur so close to the upper limits of the audible spectrum.

I provided a link for anyone to read. I think you are underestimating the intelligence of readers here who are perfectly capable of clicking on a link. If could of course not have included a link at all... As for technology changing, what fundamentally amazing things have happened on the pro / semi pro digital audio front over the last 7 years such that hearing the difference between high res and low res wasn't possible, let alone hearing the difference between a CD and it's corresponding master file? You do realise that other engineers were recording in 24 bit 18 years before you made your comments and were doing everything within their power to mitigate the losses when dithering from 24 bit to 16 bit? Remember Wilma Cozart-Fine and the very first dCS model 901 24/44.1 converter? She recorded in 24 bit and made the decision to dither in real time via the Harmonia Mundi dither module and print the output directly to the Sony PCM 1600 UMatic all in one step, as she determined that did the least amount of sonic damage to the final 16 bit output. If digital technology took so long to make these differences so noticeable, why was she noticing such differences 18 years before you were saying that you couldn't? Or did pro digital technology get really good in 1990, then get really bad from the mid 90s until after 2008? Or were you playing with toy gear? And if so, why would you make such definitive statements when using inadequate gear? Shouldn't you have attempted to avail yourself of something half-decent (since now you tell us it was actually garbage in hindsight) before making any determinations at all? I bought my first 24 bit commercial recording two years before you made those 2008 posts. At the exact same time I bought the 16/44.1 equivalent of that 24 bit recording for the sole purpose of trying to hear if any difference between them was audible to me. I had nothing even remotely like the equipment you were using - just a basic store bought PC with a $60 early model 24 bit Creative soundcard. Even then the differences between the two files were very obvious - and both of them were only 44.1 kHz! So that being the case, how could you possibly not hear a difference when your equipment was so much better than a white box designed primarily for internet surfing and doing spreadsheets with a cheap soundcard on board? And two years before that I was making my own home recordings of my violin playing using the same machine and a $250 Sony microphone. Not even on the same planet as the gear you had access to. Yet the difference when making a recording at 24/96 and 16/44.1 was again painfully obvious to me. And as for the difference between CD and the master file, well I heard that the very first time I ever ripped a CD. So did Wilma when getting her MLP test pressings back from various factories - this time 19 years before you made your post. So why has it all been so very hard and consistently challenging for you, yet easy for me and so many other people when using very cheap equipment and even basic $60 soundcards? What cables were you using back then - plain wire drycleaner coathangers or the white polyester covered ones? Maybe that was your problem. Then again, maybe it all traces back to that fateful day when you were talking to Robert C. Fine and you lamented the decision not to give him some of your highly coveted professional and invaluable pearls of wisdom. Maybe if you had, he'd see the errors of his ways, have a subsequent heart to heart with Wilma at bedtime and she then wouldn't have gone on and done all those silly and pointless things years later with dither modules and first generation UMatic tapes in order to try and mitigate as much as possible the non-existent differences between high res and 16 bit prior to 2009.

I'm not sure what you mean about tricks. You said it, not me. I'm just the messenger. But it does give one cause to pause, given that your beliefs are by a very long sniper's shot the most obstinate, self-serving, unwavering and disrespectable in the entire audio industry - bar none - to the point where your opinions are actually not only dispensed repetitively as fact, but as hardcore doctrine whilst you conveniently ignore the ongoing barrage of evidence to the contrary. But rather than just cop it on the chin, there you are lashing out defensively once again and manipulating the facts to try and mitigate your increasingly tenuous position with each and every post you make on the internet. I take it then that you have evangelised yourself since 2008 and you must surely hate (or at least be embarrassed by) your former audio self, since your former audio self (apparently completely removed from your current self) clearly had no place in the audio industry. Again, you said it, not me. I'm just quoting you. By way of the particular example cited above, despite your belief systems being as apparently solid and unwavering as bedrock they are in actual fact inclined to change. Incidentally, your comments about the equipment being inadequate doesn't really seem to be an excuse in my view. The equipment you mentioned seemed plenty good to me. Infact people who know what they are doing were making far better sounding recordings than CD and redbook when the early Decca 18 bit, 48 KHz recorders and Soundstream 16 bit 50 KHz recorders were put into service. I had no trouble whatsoever hearing the difference between redbook and high res the very first time I ever heard a 24 bit file back in in 2006. That's two years before 2008 by the way... In any event, all of this does beg the question: can we look forward to you ever changing your infallible doctrine again in future, or are you now happy and hard wired at this point in your life? I'd just like to clarify incase I need to dig up your posts again in the future...

Except that you have also said (and I literally copy pasted this): "...I read your editorial with great interest as I have recently been party to a number of carefully set-up double-blind tests. First of all, you are correct, "indistinguishable" does, indeed, mean that NO audible difference exists between 16-bit, 44.1 KHz digital and the High Resolution formats. I have been doing a lot of recording lately and I have had ample opportunity to test 16-bit, 44.1KHz digital quantization against both 24-bit, 96KHz and 32-bit (fp), 192 Khz quantization. Playback directly from the computer (through the same DAC/ADC with which the recording was made) yielded no audible difference to a listening panel of 5 audiophiles. Also, no audible difference was detected between the high-resolution recording and the SAME recording output as 16-bit, 44.1KHz Red Book and burned to CD..." then you went on to say: "...I use 32-bit floating point to record simply because most of my recording is done live, and the higher bit-rates afford me more headroom than does a 16-bit system. This is crucial for live recording where one may not always have the luxury of carefully setting record levels in advance of the actual event. I usually use 96KHz as the sampling rate and I play these recordings back using the same Apogee ADC/DAC. I simply hear no difference between that and a CD output from the same recording..." Forums | The Absolute Sound

I thought it was a perfectly serious question. When I got my vinyl setup the whole aim was to get as close as possible to digital done as perfectly as possible. If you don't aim for that, I don't see the point because you are then just buying an inaccurate system. And if you want an inaccurate system you might as well just buy a cheap $500 turntable with a cheap $100 cartridge and then buy the typical $20 warm and fat sounding vinyl you find in record stores these days. Of course, if you want a vinyl front end that sounds like most digital stuff these days then you are out of luck due to the lack of expertise and the poor listening skills of most professional audio people these days who produce digital products. Than again if the question was only for fun and it wasn't serious then you can stop wasting my time and you can all politely get stuffed.

Something like a Project Signature 10 with Ortofon Anna would be very good indeed for the money. Not the best by any means but extremely good with respect to the money / diminishing returns equation. Depending on where you live that would run to about 10,000 euros or so excluding the phono stage. Although the Anna makes up a big chunk of the budget here it is a superb cartridge. Rather reminds of DSD at it's best. If you are on a tighter budget then something like the Oracle Paris with Ortofon Cadenza Black would be my choice. Probably around the 6,500 euro mark.

I'm only talking about specific circumstances. The level of equipment I'm talking about would be running well into 6 figures just for the vinyl front end only and as for the digital side of things, equipment at the dCS level. So arguably the best of the best. As for source material, I'm not talking about your typical vinyl recordings either (by that I mean the popular perception of vinyl or what you'd find if you walked into a record store). I'm talking, for example, of releases made on multiple 45 RPM disks - 4 sides for say 50 minutes worth of classical or the better quality 33 1/3 RPM disks that are re-mastered to fastidious standards. In these sorts of cases then yes, the differences should not significant enough for me to specifically pick one method of playback over another. Yes, I can hear the differences of course, just like I can between DACs and anything else, but there is a difference between hearing a difference between two things, and then again whether that difference has any real significance to my listening enjoyment and involvement. Once you go down from those sorts of levels, then at the very best practice, high res digital pulls ahead, but only in those circumstances where the mastering and playback are as perfect as possible. And that is the whole problem. It usually isn't, which is the whole reason I still go for vinyl. The problem is the remastering engineers - not the available equipment and software. These engineers simply have inadequate listening skills for people who purport to make money from a profession dedicated to highly accurate audio reproduction. There are pro audio forums out there where you've got remastering people working in the digital domain who, for example, can't hear the difference between 16 bit and 24 bit, can't hear the difference between a CD and the master file, can't hear the difference between CDs from different plants, can't hear the difference between CD-Rs, can't hear the differences between dithers, can't hear the difference between different playback or recording software, can't hear the improvements from, say a workstation with 64 bit precision versus 80 bit precision, etc. It's no wonder many digital releases sound offensive and vinyl is the only viable option much of the time. But my point is basically that the more the sound of vinyl deviates for perfectly done high resolution digital from exactly the same original analogue input (whether that be a feed from a live performance or an existing analogue source such as a master tape), then the worse that analogue reproduction is.

I know that these are two fundamental "givens" in the audiophile world but in my own experience, I don't really think either of those two things apply. There is absolutely no doubt that vinyl can have a unique sound, however it's been my experience that this only occurs if you are comparing certain types of pressings on less expensive equipment and then comparing it to digital that is either not done perfectly and / or is low resolution. By certain types of pressings, I mean several categories. Old ones, for example, that were cut differently to the modern audiophile pressings or modern "mainstream" pressings, etc. I'm specifically excluding, for example, a modern, high calibre audiophile pressing made from the exact same source as the digital equivalent, the latter of which might even have been made at the same time. Examples where the vinyl sound is not so much "unique" might be some Analogue Productions RCA Living Stereo titles (vinyl versus the SACD) and a number of titles remastered by Bernie Grundman where one can directly compare both formats. And definitely the second hand pressing you find at the local record store is going to have a "vinyl sound" to it as well. On the other hand, then, as the vinyl playback equipment quality increases then in my experience the sound of the vinyl and high resolution digital converge to the point where the differences are negligible and where they exist, rather superficial. Mind you, I am only talking here - as I stated earlier - about modern "audiophile" pressings versus modern high resolution digital done extremely well (the latter being a far less frequent occurance than I would like). But yes, from my own perspective it is safe to say that if the whole remastering process is performed by a highly experienced perfectionist and both playback chains are top notch, there isn't really a vinyl or digital "sound". At least not with the material I listen to. It's always been the case for me that I choose vinyl mainly because of genre / period of performance / quality of remastering availability versus a lack of digital titles meeting the same criteria. I don't choose vinyl because of the "sound". To me, if vinyl has a "sound" then that is a shortcoming, not an asset and it is something I go out of my way to avoid. If I could live in a hypothetical world where I was in charge of all the steps needed in the digital domain to produce every commercial title I listen to, I'd never bother with vinyl in the first place. But digital is so easy to get wrong and you need exceptionally good listening skills (better than needed with analogue in my opinion) to identify the pitfalls and steer clear of them. It's not necessarily enough to just have fantastic digital gear and leave it at that. But since that is a hypothetical world, I figured the next best thing was to make sure the format I bring into the house is all-analogue to begin with or - at worst - digitally sourced but still done by a world-renowned remastering engineer with top notch "digital" ears and then do all the digital stuff at my end.

Fantastic gear! As for ultrasonic cleaning, the improvement applies to brand new pressings just opened as well. I pay $4.50 extra to have each brand new record I buy cleaned using the store's Audiodesk cleaner. When you hear the difference even on brand new vinyl, it is a small price to pay.

I am not a collector per se but vinyl is pretty much all I buy with very rare exceptions. I only have around 180 titles so far but buy up to 20 titles per year (I have bought three titles just in May this year). I have no problems with digital whatsoever save for the fact that doing it correctly is just as hard - if not harder - as doing the best analogue correctly. There are more titles of the genre and performing period I want on vinyl than there in the digital domain so that was another consideration. Add to the fact that where I live in Australia, a very high quality digital version of a release (such as XRCD or SACD) is extremely expensive (these disks can cost upwards of $60 versus $45 for the vinyl), that is another consideration. Downloads are unfortunately not an option, not only due to territorial restrictions, but also because my internet speed is less than 1 Mbps. And yes, this is Australia, not some third world country you've likely never heard of. Furthermore, most downloads that are accessible to me are brand new modern recordings but I prefer older recordings made in the 50s and 60s in particular.

Sorry: edit: You did not want to know about cables. So you can delete this post if you want. I haven't measured but I have done some double blind testing. For example, when I bought a brand new Wireworld Eclipse 6 interconnect, I made 24 bit digital recordings of a number of specific classical music excerpts on my workstation with the cable interconnected between the analogue out and analogue in of both the soundcards (the workstation has several thousand hours on board so is definitely "burned it" itself). I then repeated that process after I had played 50 hours of the Esoteric break-in CD through the Ecplise 6 (well, the ripped tracks from it since this is a workstation - not a CD player). So I then edited the recordings such that they were perfectly sample aligned, excact same number of total samples, exactly the same excerpts. I then did a Foobar ABX test on the "brand new" and "50 hour" excerpts and passed it with 12 out of 12. Interestingly though, I bought an Audioquest Yosemite for my loungeroom system and did the exact same tests. This time around I failed the blind test, which to me means that for some reason, the Audioquest cable sound never changed at all (or it was beyond my listening skills to detect it) whilst the Wireworld one did change sufficiently to the point where a double blind test was not difficult. Whether that has something to do with those currents Audioquest run down the cables using those power packs I can't say, but that would be one major difference between the top end Audioquest cables and other cables. The difference in the sound with the Wireworld 50 hours versus brand new was that the sound was more relaxed and focussed after that 50 hour period. The Audioquest on the other hand was relaxed and razor focussed - especially in the top end - right from the start, however it's a pretty expensive cable so I'd expect it to be like that.

I'm pretty careful with what I buy so I am prepared to bet heavily on it . Although it is often less clear with popular music, with classical it is much more clear cut as to what one is actually buying. Most of my vinyl comes from Analogue Productions, Speakers Corner, ORG, etc. These are definitely 100% from original analogue tapes and the remastering process from the tape to the lathe is 100% analogue. There are of course labels out there that still produce a very good product indeed from a 24/96 master. DG are now producing some of these and the quality is excellent - better than the CDs but not as good as when a company like Esoteric get their hands on it (even though they actually go digital - analogue - digital when creating their SACDs). I certainly have vinyl that is from digital masters or involved digital at some stage of the process however I am aware of it and it did not dissuade me from the purchase. I strongly suspect some of my Reference Recording disks are from digital sources as well. The SPMTP CD-Rs are effectively a Taiyo Yuden product, as Startlabs are 50% owned by Taiyo Yuden and 50% by Sony.