The weakest part of your system is the most important part of your system.

Roon does help with this quite a bit. It feels more like a digital version of your physical music collection, with a huge record store next door; as opposed to all the music in the world to choose from.

👀

To put some perspective on it, a failure of a solid state amplifier is very unlikely.

The most likely thing to go would be the power supply capacitors, but with regular use it’s even less likely (regular charge keeps them fresh!) and the symptom of failure there is buzz, which gives you a good warning.

Transistors and other things could fail, but then the most likely case is a small pop and then a non-working amp, it’s unlikely to fail dangerously.

They’re fairly safe overall, especially if it’s been running well for 30 years I would expect it to do so for 30 more at least.

A computer is not a fair comparison to a standalone audio device like a DAC.

It may be an endpoint source for digital, and you may be satisfied with the internal DAC, but it’s highly unlikely to compete with standalone DACs in either quality or market.

I’d even challenge you that you should not consider it that way, and keep your Cambridge Audio DAC, which is likely to be superior.

Oh yeah you’ll get agreement from me. I mean, just look at the circuit there. It’s a glorified op amp based amplifier with a transistor output stage, and not with any special components or anything. It’s run of the mill at best.

It’s probably just what it supports as input. There’s some merit to that; because it means you won’t do down sampling multiple times, just the one time in the speaker DSP and connection.

In an apartment??? Jesus.

I assume this is an owned condo? If so then you have a condo association. You should take it up with them.

I don’t think this is really a concern.

When digital was first introduced, it was mainly used as a recording and mastering tool, and lauded for the improved quality it could achieve.

The Telarc record of the Cleveland Symphonic Winds was one of the first with digital recording, mastered to vinyl. It used the latest tech at the time, a 50kHz 16 bit recorder controlled by a DEC PDP-10. Full story here, it’s fascinating.

Anyway that is to say, I would separate out the recording and mastering technology from the delivery format. Yes, there is something special about an AAA record (analog recorded, mastered, and delivered) as opposed to a DDA or ADA, but the latter two can be very good.

Remember also that in the studio they have the best DACs and ADCs money can buy, and excellent equipment to review and quality check each step of the process. So when you get a vinyl record mastered digitally, it’s mastered using like a $5,000 DAC. Unless you also have a $5,000 DAC, you won’t get quite the same experience (debatable of course, but I’m not up for that debate today thx).

So there is value in it, even if the steps leading up to cutting the groove are part or all digital.

It’s not true, vinyl will gladly play down to the single digit frequencies. Sometimes even on purpose!

Yeah, disagree there. If the album is cut wrong with too narrow of a groove pitch then it could be a problem, but then it’s a mastering mistake by someone without vinyl mastering experience, not a problem with the format.

But most of the problem there is handled by the RIAA curve, which means that the amplitudes on the record are lessened in the lower frequencies, and amplified more by an RIAA preamp. Means the needle isn’t traveling as much as you’d expect even for I.e. 10Hz lows.

Try the Holst suite by the Cleveland Symphonic Winds, Telarc record. First movement, the Chaconne, the bass drum hits at the end. Fantastic realistic whole bass boom, way more depth than you’d expect and you’ll be left wondering how your needle didn’t jump the groove. It doesn’t sound better than digital per se, but vinyl is fully capable of it.

They’re pretty much fine if they’re cut right. Some of the best low bass I’ve heard was on vinyl, in part because it really lets the deck and feedback go wild 🙃

There are some doing good work, but not as much in the SET way.

Completely agree.

There’s a lot out there folks! Try as much as you can.

Because it turns out 2-way is the simplest and they sound pretty damn good.

But the type of thing you’re taking about certainly exists. They’re called line array speakers.

81 drivers of 4 different kinds: https://www.audiogon.com/listings/lisb2efc-mcintosh-xrt2-1k-flagship-line-array-loudspeaker-rarely-seen-for-sale-full-range

The signal goes through a lot of components.

Contrary to popular belief, capacitors impact the sound. And twenty capacitors impacts the sound more than two.