Convert Vinyl to DSD or PCM

[Peter van der Laarse]

I completely agree with runforfree69: a top-turntable with 2016 technology in it (magnetic bearing, 100dB S/R etc etc like Clearaudio's top models) easily outperformes every digital sound. Why? Quit simple: I have the age from the other century and can read that young humans are coming from the digital century without any knowledge anymore about human ears and sound......

I can write a book about this subject (althought I am a financial auditor), but the main reason is this: the human ear is not equally sensitive on all kind of distortions. Digital distortions wich occur very easily in the digital domain like time faults and intermodulation (low frequencies are influencing the highs and vice versa) distortion are easily heard at the 0,00001% level and sound "harsh", while harmonic distortions can not be noticed at 2% at all or sound "good". My first CD player was the Philips CD100 in 1982 at 2.000 Dutch guilders at that time. A huge amount of money and in fact terrible sounding:
1. But really almost knowbody (except myself) owned already a turntable above that price-tag
2. The CD player was introduced as a solution for almost everything (better sound, klick-free etc etc) and was a very good Price, Place, Promotion and Product solution for the industry that day
3. People were prepared to pay 2k for new digital technology in stead of investing in old analogue.
But better: no way. And still nothing changed: a good designed and built turntable easily outperformes digital. Remember that in studio's digital equipment takes sometimes millions of € (including the rebuilding of the power supply; 2x115=230V) before the record is made.

It's nice to see that discussions from 1981 and 1982 are exactly the same as in that times. And as then; the industry has it's own interests. And of course digital is still moving forward; 40 bits, 384k etc. Good digital is much much cheaper than good analoque. But at this moment the best.....not yet. It looks like combining the analoque and digital technologies together gives the best results: like a magnetic bearing (like the Japanese floating train) in combination with a digital compensate on the speed errors in a turntable like the Clearaudio Master Reference turntable. I like my brand turntable very much because it is upgradable and in a better way then Devialet does (fixed pricing etc). Oke, my turntable was recent for 10 months (!!!) in the German factory to upgrade... And it's more expensive then a Devialet 440PRO at this moment and quess why I am doing this..... And of course I am a great fan of HD Tracks, but buying a second hand record for € 0,95 and really cannot hear that a record is playing on a Stax headphone is awesome. Bu that takes some time and almost now dealer is capable of doing is anymore. Like combing top-turntable with beamer views....Another story.