Hi Mike, I'll try and address your questions.

- Firstly the TT is fairly decent in its own right and as I was in the market for a decent budget TT it fitted the bill. The digital output is not the reason for the purchase, its just a little bit of a gimmicky bonus and a bit of fun to try.

- As stated I am fully aware a lot of the attractions of vinyl will be lost in the conversion (and subsequent) re-conversion of the signal. I am just curious to hear what it would actually be like.

- It's not destined for my main (critical) listening system, I just wanted something that I could chuck a record on in my second system. To listen to digital I have to turn on my NAS drive located in another room, wait for all the connections to find each other and connect to my streamer via my phone. In actual fact if I'm stood next to my hifi its probably a toss up between which method would be more convenient to listen to at the time. (Assuming the vinyl is to hand).

- Preaching to the converted on the rest of your points, spent 3 hours last night cleaning 30 or so brand new 180 gram reissue albums (as they often arrive absolutely filthy even when "sealed"). I am saving up for a proper machine but for now the acid bath wheel method will suffice.

Basically its just a little play about with some tech that comes with a decent turntable for not much more outlay over the non digital version. As both the inbuilt phono stage and ADC can be bypassed its not exactly going to be a problem for me.

For my proper listening experience I will migrate to the loft and power up the Quad 57's and LP12, no issues there.

Appreciate what you are saying though (hence the title of the thread . . . )