When I want to upgrade a component and want to find out more information, I visit audio shops and shows. Was at AXPONA 2 times besides certain high end shops.

Here is the reason I do this:

I visited a dealership when I was new to the hobby and there was this older gentleman there. I told him by budget for the speakers. He asked me to come in and listen to a system that consisted of Sonus Faber Stradivari with Nagra Amps and sources. I am guessing the entire setup was $75k. Seeing the surprise on my face he said that he is NOT expecting me to buy anything in that room. But when you listen to this setup and then go and listen to the speakers in your budget, it will (kind of) give you and idea of which of the speakers you feel compromises the least from what I heard in that $$$$ system.

All good points.

I see the mighty Oppo UDP-205 being auctioned as well. Will be interesting to see the final price on this.

So, most people would think that by upsampling a low res file to a higher bit might add data to that and probably sound better. That is completely incorrect.

I recently came across a podcast where Peter Comeau where he nicely explain in layman’s terms how upsampling pushes the digital noise farther in the frequency band and that leads to “less noise” at audible levels. If you are interested, search for Darko audio’s “10 hifi myths busted”. In fact I was made aware of this podcast here on Reddit.

That’s a large collection of SACD. Good for you. I have about 150 SACDs that I ripped using a Sony blu-ray player. I am eyeing the T+A DAC200 for next year. Need to save a bit for that.

What player are you using and which DAC? I use Foobar2000 to convert FLAC to 512 DSD played through a Oppo UDP-205, that is used purely as a DAC. Of course, i don’t convert the DSF files to 512, as Foobar2000 would first convert them to PCM.

Congratulations on acquiring the new amp! Must be exciting. Hope you are having fun playing your old music as new again 🙂. So any comparison between the March and the NAD that you can share?

Beautiful setup! Must be lot of fun to listen in this environment. Enjoy your music!