Does anyone here believe that a relatively modest but superb measuring DAC can outperform a top turntable, arm, cartridge and phono stage combination? For the sake of argument let's say the whole vinyl front end cost £8-10,000 or more.
If so, I'd be interested to learn what analogue equipment you own or owned and which modest DAC was good enough to better or equal your expensive analogue gear.
I'd also be interested to learn if you considered yourself to be an objectivist or a subjectivist.
There is an extra question to throw back at this. You have to define what criteria you are using to get a result that is 'outperform'. Presumably you mean 'better'... but exactly what is 'better'
A lot of correspondents have taken to discussing 'accuracy' presumably as a measure of 'better' - but there could be many other definitions or measurements equally valid.
So my question back to the OP - what is 'outperform'? And how do you recognise or measure it.
So - some thoughts...
I would add that by an awful lot of measurements a cheap DAC system would outperform any turntable combination at any price. S/N? Check. Stereo Seperation? Check. Rumble? Check. Frequency range - probably check. Timing accuracy? Check. I guess there are other measurements. A stereo cartridge is rather compromised transducer! Mono could have been better perhaps.
Still, even a modest LP playing set up can sound great - which arguably implies
not that the turntable is 'better' than a digital system - but
rather that the digital system is perhaps over-specified and high rates and high bit depths are not needed??. Early Phillips players are still loved by many - with a 14 bit DAC at 44.1Khz.
Someone noted the famous trial where Mr 'Linn' was unable to tell the difference between a live LP playing and a digital 'recording' of the same LP - that tells you that the digital system used was plenty detailed enough to capture everything that the LP12 was reading from the record. Others have pointed out that a CD version of an album is never the same as the LP - the mastering is different, so they cannot be compared directly. You may
prefer one or the other - I cannot see how either could be declared as '
outperforming' the other as the OP asks about.
The much criticised MQA encoding makes use of the idea that digital PCM is over-specified. The designers realise that the large number of bits in a regular PCM signal are not 'needed' and can be re-purposed to give an illusion of wider bandwith. Pioneer Legato link DAC was a broadly similar idea implemented without all Intellectual Property razzmatazz.