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Re: Simply get samples of early players and listen to them with modern 'audiophile' quality CDs. ...

"For some reason, many here think that those of us who don't care for the sound of CD's, except for the best of the best, are somehow pre-prejudiced to not like digital and CD reproduction in particular."

This admission invites myriad questions. Herewith a few:

1) What design impediments prevent mid-fi CD products from passing muster with you? What is it about that cost-no-object gear that separates it (sonically) from more modest equipment? Is it a cost problem? If so, I assume, as with all technologies, that we merely have to wait a few years until prices fall. Then, voila! mid-fi digital will become enjoyable for people such as yourself. (Yes, I know, by then the "high-end" will have also progressed. But at least mid-fi will be tolerable. Correct?)

Or is it an engineering problem? If so, I confess to being too ignorant to ask the proper question(s).

2) Could your aversion to the vast majority of CD products be due to a generational prejudice? I've long suspected that most of us no longer on the sunny side of fifty prefer analog because we grew up listening to it. It's what we're accustom to hearing. We have been trained, by force of habit, to favor the sound of analog.

3) If memory serves, Bob Carver turned some heads during the 1980's by taking part in a well publicized experiment that amounted to his locking himself in a motel room for a couple of days, until he had induced a solid state amp to mimic the sound of one of the world's finest sounding tube amps of that era.

I believe Stereophile's headline read "He Did It!" The writers at Stereophile conceded they could not tell the difference between Carver's ss unit and the tube amp. (By the way, what tube manufacturer was it? At the time, various tube manufacturers were praying the unit wasn't theirs.)

I realize that with the example above I'm not comparing apples to apples, but what is the essential elements(s) preventing digital manufacturers from designing hardware and software to mimic the best of analog? What's preventing them from pulling another "Carver?"

Again, if memory serves, the Carver amp was marketed and sold for thousands less than the tube amp it mimicked.

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