Quote Originally Posted by Jac Hawk View Post
Why on earth would you want to do such a thing? if you want to listen to digital music then choose a digital source as it will be far better and cheaper than changing from one format to another and then back again. Regardless of how fantastic your DAC is the ADC on the TT is doing the initial conversion so the end result will only ever be as good as the weakest link in the chain. If it was me i'd be looking to spend £339 on something else as the whole reason for listening to vinyl is to get away from the sterilisation caused by digital encoding.

This TT is aimed at people that have SONOS and the quality of the sound isn't as high on their list as aesthetics and convenience but they like the idea and nostalgia of records and a TT, unfortunately vinyl is anything but convenient, it needs to be looked after and stored correctly to maintain it's sonic quality, i would imagine the the people who in general would buy this would stick an old LP on that they have had in storage since their las TT was scrapped probably back in the 90's, realise it's sounds shit and regret the purchase while phoning Richer Sounds to see if it can be returned or at least be exchanged for another one of those fantastic little SONOS speakers.
There are many reasons. I started off with vinyl in the 1970s and was a reluctant adopter of digital. In fact, for more than a decade after the introduction of cds, I continued to purchase new albums on vinyl rather than digital format. I did buy a cd player and would purchase compilation albums and best of collections, but never really warmed to the sound. However, as the price differential between cds and vinyl reduced, I gradually veered towards digital, largely in expectation that the technology would improve and that currently harsh sounding disks would sounds better in the future. By the mid 90s I had effectively switched to cd for new purchases. At that same time, I started a series of long term overseas contracts that saw my vinyl and valve equipment go into long term storage. Two decades later, I have a huge cd collection that dwarfs my vinyl collection and have duplicated many of the titles I originally bought as albums. However, there are many discs which never made the transition to cd, including many "world music" titles.

Since getting my vinyl out of long term storage, I have been enjoying listening to music I have not heard in over 20 years as well as listening to music on vinyl that I have only heard on cd during this period. I have noticed that many of the early cd transfers were very poor and that much of my old vinyl still sounds better than the cd equivalent. I have recently sold off a lot of my vinyl hardware (e.g. an EAR834P, A Croft Phono Preamp, and an integrated valve amplifier with phono input). I have now acquired a Parasound - Zphono MM/MC Phono Stage with USB. This is a very decent phono preamp that includes a good analogue to digital converter and have begun the laborious task of digitising some of my favourite albums. I am very pleased with the results, and will now be able to listen to long "lost" albums from my younger days when I go overseas again or on my "Walkman" when I am travelling. I have also "ripped" a few albums that sounded poor when first issued on cd.

I see that Project have now produced a phono preamp that also has a digital optical output. I did consider buying one of these as it would have worked very well with my Nuforce DDA-100 amplifier. This has no analogue inputs at all and only operates in analogue at the speaker terminals. I can see many similar devices emerging as digital audio continues to improve.

Geoff