I can understand that completely. Vinyl is work. Work I am happy to do at the moment. When I get old and don’t want to get up to pick up the stylus, that might be different.
Vinyl can sound amazing, but not 100% of the time. Neither does digital. But the breath of digital music, especially streaming, is something I simply cannot do without. A top-end DAC is an absolute must even if I can have a collection of vinyl I truly enjoy.
Miguel, did you sell the Cambridge CD transport? If so, why?
Did not, it’s sitting in the corner. Given I am a Roon user and every CD I have is ripped with scanned leaflets in Roon, I just don’t do CDs anymore. There’s some charm to it but the convenience of picking the album in Roon, popping up the notes if I want on my iPad, and getting sound that is essentially the same as playing the CD is just too much convenience to pass up.
PS: There’s one exception: I never ripped large box-sets (eg I have a Martha Argerich box set of all her DG recordings). Those are the only cases where I used the CD transport really. It’s just too much of a corner case to bother to get the transport back on the rack.
Agree, ripping box sets is a pain, especially metadata and tags…
Yes ripping large box sets is a pain and one emphasised with classical music as the metadata is more complex. There is also the question of SACDs which, using the “unofficial” methods of doing such ripping, are even worse ( no equivalent of PerfectTunes). So I gave up on the ripping of both. This is the reason why I bought my Rossini Transport a couple of years ago even if it is not my primary music source.
Actually, I find ripping SACDs relatively painless.
I use an old PS3 that I specifically purchased for this purpose with v3.55 firmware and I flashed/loaded the appropriate firmware/software.
My process is:
1- Rip SACD on the PS3 to a connected hard drive (creates an ISO image of the disc)
2- Disconnect the hd and connect it to my mac
3- With the ISO2DSD software read the ISO image and write DSF files - these get a title and track number since this info is in the SACD itself (no need to access a database elsewhere)
4- Use Yate to finish tagging - adding album art, tweaking album title, artist, etc
That’s it - it is not very complex.
Pete, these days SACD ripping via Oppo players are quite painless. In fact, the process is even simpler than via a PS3 as the Oppo sits on the network.
That said, I admit there’s a certain satisfaction to just playing SACDs on my Vivaldi transport 
I’m in love with my Rossini Transport. Couldn’t be happier with the purchase. definitely a keeper for me. I understand that the Apex upgrade does not concern the Transport but only the DAC. Am I correct?
Anup, one of the reasons that I abandoned ripping SACDs was hacking the source machine. I have a suitable PS3 but found that although instructions can be found on the web all of the executable files had been removed ( this was about 3 years ago).
Suitable used Oppos are not that common in the UK and when they do appear are still relatively expensive ( around 700 gbp when I was interested, still circa. 400-600 gbp).
There are also a number of Pioneer players that can be used for this purpose but I don’t believe that any of the suitable models were marketed in the UK. I have never seen one anyway.
Then there is the further hassle of the rip providing an ISO file which then needs to be converted to a .dsf or.dff.
So, hack, rip, convert, add metadata . Too much for me. I am fundamentally lazy.
Anyway I now have the Rossini Transport so the need to rip SACDs is no longer an issue for me.
I’m not sure Franco, I’d rather reserve judgement about “Apex” until after any dCS announcement (if theres such a thing in the first place. It’s not beyond some dealers to make up stories to try and justify price increases 
)
Not so these days actually Pete; the ISO2DSD front-end tool to sacd_extract supports ripping SACDs directly into individual .dsf tracks, thereby skipping the ISO image stage completely.
Very interesting, I’ve just had a Brinkmann Balance with a Lyra cartridge on demo at home for a week as a potential replacement for my hi spec Linn. It’s a beautiful piece of kit, no doubt about that. I have a huge vinyl collection and want to get the best out of it. But equally I like listening to new music without having to buy it and love the ease of playing digital, either from my ripped cds (on a Melco) or streaming with Qobuz.
The Brinkmann certainly matches my Bartok (or vice versa) for overall sound quality when playing an audiophile vinyl record. But the Linn is VERY close behind.
Clearly the gaps between tracks are dead silent with a digital source and the background slight surface noise of vinyl is always there. Occasional clicks are annoying with vinyl.
BUT with a dCS the old argument that “vinyl is just that bit warmer” or that intangible “vinyl is just more real, or more involving” was very hard to hear in this demo, because the dCS products are just so damn good.
I like the ‘event’ of putting on a record but then I can be disappointed if it crackles - and I clean everything!
My conclusion - it’s horses for courses. I like playing analogue sourced vinyl (esp 50/60’s jazz) but I can’t see much point buying recent digitally recorded music on vinyl. So I’ll keep my Linn for now - there is simply not 20 grands worth of difference to justify ‘an upgrade’ but both vinyl and digital have a place in my listening.
A very well known hifi shop here in Germany (cult status for many, youtube channel, specialist in vinyl…) said that one has to spend 3x more money in digital to match a vinyl player. Further, the findings were:
Cost vinyl setup = cost amp
Cost digital = 3x cost analog
Cost speaker = 3x cost amp
Cost cable etc = cost amp
Example:
1000€ amp - 3000€ digital - 3000€ speaker - 1000€ cables - 1000€ vinyl
His best digital source (so the owner claims) is a Metronome aqwo transport and DAC for roughly 40000€
Personally I think it is much more appropriate matching of components not cost. The Bartok is half the cost of the Brinkmann but a great match. My speakers (Wilson Sabrina X) are a match for amps far more expensive than the similarly priced Soulution 330 I have but sound fabulous with it.
One other thing - my system is a combined video/audio system and I recently started listening to all television audio from my DISH Network “Hopper” box via my Rossini, and it’s quite nice.
With my recent Bartok purchase, the era of the silver disc is over for me. So after years of procrastinating, I finally invested the time to figure out how to rip SACDs using a second hand Sony BDP-S5100 blu ray player. Best $39 audio investment ever.
Process has been flawless - I’ve ripped a couple of hundred disks. Much easier than ripping CDs - no issues with meta data as the files are already tagged. Plus and I’m able to rip over the network - less than 10 min a disc!