StenSuprenant

I don't think you've read SirT the right way. Engineers, no offense, tend to discuss things in technical terms as either black and white. Sir T is correct that as a technology Hi resolution digital is superior to both Vinyl and CD in terms of recordings. The source disc/download is superior - period.

The CD is arguably superior to vinyl as well as he notes the CD is closer to the master tape than the same recording on vinyl. CD was and is a technically superior format. CD failed with audiophiles out of the gate due to lousy machines and lousy recordings and early reports complained of horribly bright and just plain crappy sounding treble. Many of those early players were if I remember right 14 bit units.

Vinyl was generally quite superior in the treble. And let's face it - if something sounds a bit bright - no matter what else it may do - blacker blacks, lower noise, less distortion, better bass more dynamics whatever - if the treble is at all "off" then it becomes fatiguing dredge even if in EVERY other aspect of sound CD is better - treble is THE most important thing to be able to listen for long periods - if it is slightly off or bright then many audiophiles will turn it off. CD was not great in the treble. I am 38 and I still hear to 17khz.

Hi Resolution fixes what ailed the CD. Indeed very good CD players from Audio Note ails a lot of what ailed CD which is why they're so popular with vinyl philes - And having Guy Adams(Voyd References fame - now heads HP computer industrial design - so he knows math and computers) help design the CD players is perhaps why they sound better than every other CD player I've tried.

I think the thing most audiophiles with large music collections are guilty of is wanting to hold onto what we have. Nothing wrong with this of course. If you have 20,000 records you are going to invest in playing them back the best you possibly can. And you WILL get amazing sound quality out of them.

Hi Res is simply better technology and can result in better sound. As is the case when engineers record to DSD or CD and then to vinyl. This proves the technology.

Unfortunately when the engineer hat comes off and you leave the laboratory then one must enter the real world of practical results. And that world is that very often Album ABC sounds better on vinyl than CD and is not recorded and/or available on DSD. Yes album XYZ was recorded on DSD/SACD, CD, and vinyl and the DSD is deemed better. Now list all the albums available where this has been done. How long is the list? Did we get past one hand or two? Theory versus practical real world availability.

I take my albums I have at home and I say okay I have Madonna Immaculate collection on Vinyl, CD, and a few 45 singles from said album. The 45's trounce the other two, then LP then CD. I go through much of my collection where I have the CD and vinyl versions. And it's something like 95% in favour of LP and the 5% is made up of used vinyl albums that are problem discs (warped or someone ran a bad needle on it or they're newer digital made LPs where the CD is no worse sounding and therefore I give it a win because the CD is cheaper than the vinyl.

CD is technically superior but the results are simply difficult to ignore. Where CD seems to win is newer albums which can sound outstanding.

Hi Res is a different thing. I was less impressed with SACD because again CD played on Audio Note's CD players of the same album sounded considerably better - more dynamics more body more sound than the same albums on SACD - I tried about 7 albums from rock to jazz to classical. 5 channel Hotel California was frankly awful. However, this is playback not technology of the disc - the disc is substantially better - the playback of those early machines like early CD may have just sucked. I mainly used the Sony ES something or other which was about $5000 when it came out. It's CD player section was atrocious so perhaps it just wasn't very good.

Fast forward to today and the conversation over SACD is largely moot since Sony is rumbling to cease production of transports and recordings it means the death of SACD. The future is DSD downloaded music. Even if SACD survives I am in the camp of the download.

You buy a few 1tb hard drives (I have two) and you load them up with music. You run a laptop to your big screen TV - already do this to watch videos.

Get yourself some sort of 24/96 or 24/192 or 32/384 DAC and you have hi res music.

And here's the nifty thing - unlike most audiophile equipment Hi Res is "good" at low cost. You can spend $10,000 on a DCS debussy or $2,500 for an Ayre QB9 but you can also spend $500 on a Halide or less for an Arcam Rdac or even just $169 for an Audio Engine Audioengine D1 - Audioengineusa.com

To me $169 is a pretty decent gamble - people spend more on tendercups to lift CD players off the shelf than this device which, while likely not the best showing of the technology, can likely show enough to let you know what DSD is capable of. And hey it's a headphone amp to boot.

I am looking into these DACs myself but I am behind the curve and I suspect turntable audiophiles are somewhat afraid/leery of getting computers into the mix.

Plus computers tend to be out of date the moment you buy them so there is a fear that whatever you buy will be a P.O.S. in 3 months. Then what do you actually "need?" A server or a DAC.

What about the bits - 24/96 or 24/192 as minimum. Then there are some selling chips that are 32/384 which has no to very few actual music you can play and the machines that have the chip that can do it don't have connections that can send information to that level (as my limited understanding of my reading of one review indicates.)

Then some units are 24/192 via S/PDIF but only 24/96 via the USB. It's been advised on several sites that you should always use the S/PDIF input on the DAC which means you need a USB to S/PDIF connector.

Frankly for many people this becomes white noise of gobbldygook and I just want to stick the CD in the drawer and push play - simple.

Nevertheless - I am looking into them and I am not in the DCS Debussey price range - I want to start with something fairly inexpensive from a company that has a track record.

So I am currently looking at the Benchmark DAC1 HDR DAC1 HDR | Benchmark Media and Wyred4Sound W4S DAC-2 (DAC2) - DACs - DAC 2, ESS Sabre DAC, High Definition Amplifiers, Asynchronous, Sonos modificaitons, Stereo Pre Amp