Interesting reviews here of the JC3+. I had a JC3+ in my system for a few months before sending it on its way to a new owner. For all its features like potentiometer based MC loading and its John Curl lineage, I was pretty shocked by the MC mode noise floor of my sample. It was elevated, easily audible, in both channels and more so in one channel (I can’t remember which). I’m not talking about hum. Broadband noise the minimization of which Parasound proclaims to be a priority in layout and parts selection. Perhaps mine was just a production outlier, but I wasn’t interested in playing with it any more. I have a Cary Audio all tube phono stage in the rack at the moment and it is quieter than the JC3+ was. Go figure. Differing listening based impressions of the same product.
that’s a phono amp
the improvement I seek is a comparable dac
What was the output of your MC, just out of curiosity?
0.4 mV
oops, just recognized you were asking someone else about their cartridge
Very interesting. Your observations jive with others I’ve read on the forum. Makes me wonder if pursuing digital on the next level is a fool’s errand.
I should also say that digital can sound very good and very pleasing…and it’s vast content availability is fantastic
But so far, vinyl can surpass digital in various SQ ways, even if the source is Octave dsd recording
Hope is eternal for a dac equally delivering the best SQ possible
When I find it I will shout from the rafters
I wish you could compare it to a dsd recording of the output of the vinyl mastering system, to see how much of the difference is from the vinyl itself and the playback rig, compared to whatever conpression/eq etc is applied at the vinyl mastering stage and report back on that 
Not normally something even vaguely possible but PSA / octave being the record label and recording studio here we actually could request this, or at least a list of the processing involved in the vinyl mastering process after the dsd master.
Today I reported observations above of Octave vinyl and Octave dsd, both of which come from dsd recording/mastering
Earlier I compared traditional vinyl to hi-res digital
Similar result
indeed, and vinyl playback does give a more enjoyable listen to many folks
my point is in this unique circumstance we could go some way to figuring out why, in this case at least, and nail down whether it is the additional processing a destined-for-vinyl production master has compared to a production master destined for digital release, or the characteristics of the playback system itself, or combination of the two.
Some prefer driving a Bentley; others, sports cars.
It is a fool’s errand to sink money into one with the intent to make it behave like the other.
I have been called a fool my entire life
Those like Paul dedicated to producing music that sounds real is not a fool’s errand but rather commendable, why most of us are here and what drives most audiophiles
Aye and I a “weirdo” - I think my “weirdness” might be always always seeking the mechanism behind any phenomenon that interests me, even though I acknowledge that we probably will not be able to discern this in everything, even that conceptually we might not (as a species) be able to discern the mechanisms behind everything (I think there is a mathematical proof of sorts that states we can never ever understand all possible mathematics).
Nevertheless I don’t believe in magic, of any sort, just undiscovered mechanisms, so I will probably keep trying whenever I spot an opportunity
I doubt you are a fool at all.
Except maybe for designing, building, and then flying in a plane 
Mind you, less so than helicopter pilots. I used to know a bunch of light aircraft pilots - even they said the helicopter pilots were “crazy, the lot of them”…
In my posts related to Memorial Day can be seen another one of those (DOD) that tried to make me out to be a fool…spent over $100 million of taxpayer funds but DOD failed bigtime. Pharmaceutical companies did too, though costing them over $100 billion in lost sales and punitive damages.
One reason perhaps why I like that song, What Kind of Fool Am I.
No, it isn’t. It’s what we do.
This is not the fool’s errand.
Trying to make digital sound like vinyl, or vinyl like digital, is the fool’s errand. They will always be fundamentaly different, both with good and bad.
So true.
I’m not the first to say this, but there is much chatter about making digital sound like vinyl, but not the other way around-----surface noise not withstanding.
I like both.
I agree, I like the best of both
Though I seek digital with better SQ
But the benefits of digital is why digital is often listened to more often, including by me
Some of us here however exclusively enjoy vinyl
I also have the Cary. If that phono amp touches you sonically ( I love it!), then you should invest in Cary’s DMS 800PV. Directly connected digital music sounds absolutely amazing and is comparable to vinyl.
Streamed music, however, is soft and uninvolving. I recently attended an audio event at a local dealer, and all the audio was streamed from Qobuz. To overcome the dullness, the set volume in every demo room was uncomfortably loud (didn’t help).
Streaming has a long way to go!
A phone amp is not a dac
I seek a dac
Sorry! The DMS 800 PV is a DAC/streamer