You can get tube preamps that are supposedly good, which might give you the distortion you crave even when paired with a low-distortion Class-D power amplifier.

You can get tube preamps that are supposedly good, which might give you the distortion you crave even when paired with a low-distortion Class-D power amplifier. CDs are still 1000x better than records with all their hiss and distortion in my humble opinion. Not saying you're one of these people, but I think lots of old-timers who complain about the quality of CD's or anything digital don't really understand how they work - Even though the bits are "limited", they do not actually output a staircase as shown in the explanations, the signal is interpolated between samples by analog filtering on the output. So it's actually outputting a smooth line that goes through the sample points. Also lots of stuff is available in 96k and above FLAC now if the limited bits are a problem. I get any music I care about in that quality but it's often because the mastering is better on those releases than the actual quality of the reproduction. Sometimes there's a SACD, Bluray or DVDA release if there's no hi-res digital download available. Anecdotally I'm happy if I can get anything at 48k 24bit or more. It's really the loudness war that has ruined music. That's the only thing about records that I consider better than digital - because of the limitations of the medium, they can't brickwall compress everything or the needle will physically jump off the record. Genuine question: what was so good about music before that is missing in your opinion now? Also, do you enjoy digital re-releases of records you previously enjoyed as much as before? Why or why not?