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Considering a Move to Vinyl

G T Audio said:
It is never to late to start a record collection and remember when you buy a record, you own it for life.

Digital is convenient, but if you want to experience emotion in music and that illusion of real sound, what the term High Fidelity is all about, then you can't beat a good analogue front end matched to a good Hi-Fi system.
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Very well put. Absolutely agree, from my experience. Digital, particularly when well mastered is eminently listenable, and for those who do not wish to get into the undeniable faff of unsleaving, handling, and anti-static-ing their vinyl, then it's a good second best, but when you've heard vinyl done well, you realise that there's a higher fidelity format, which has been around years before digital was invented. Only ever had that hairs on the back of the neck response when listening to vinyl.
Now I think I'll have a listen to one of my cd's😉
 
You have to be a real couch potato to suggest that vinyl is faff. Store and clean your records well and all you do is put them on the platter. 1 minute well spent.
Both digital and analogue make great music, I don't see it as a competition. Both serve well in different circumstances.
My main point to the OP is to suggest that he can better what he heard for less money if he buys carefully. I imagine that the Linn concerned was north of 5 figures? Give me a third of that and we can mimic the sound, half and we can change it to (my taste) a better one. And the latter would be new or damned near.
Don't fix your focus on one distant star, when you are surrounded by it's equal just within reach.
 
G T Audio said:
Digital is convenient, but if you want to experience emotion in music and that illusion of real sound, what the term High Fidelity is all about, then you can't beat a good analogue front end matched to a good Hi-Fi system.
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Quite the contrary, I'm afraid. Listening to one's turntable is certainly a fine hobby. But if one has any respect for music as an art form or to the artist and his intentions, digital is an obvious choice.
 
Joe P said:
At the end stage of reproduction, vinyl is analogue and with analogue you get a different sound, which some prefer and love.

If you don't love it, well that's fine. But why concern yourself that some people do love it.

Joe
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not in my case - My Roksan Xerxes with Ortofon 2M Bronze, sounds almost indistinguisble from my Audiolab 8200cdq when using the Transient filters, into 8000M and epos M12is.( The industry standard sharp rolloff filter can sound very strident and nasty) Why I dont think collecting LPs worth the bother anymore unless you have some and they havent been put on cd ( or have been messed up on cd ) I have played identical records on cd and LP and switched between the inputs and have been hard pressed to hear much difference, which says a lot for Lp I think?

re cds - the one thing that does worry me about cds is CD ROT. Does it still happen? I have been making copies of some of my cds onto my pc as images so I can burn them again onto cd should the originals rot - Ihave a few older cds that are showing signs of going gold.
 
I had a turntable and sold it along with my record collection - one amassed over 30 years I might add. Within 6 months I had bought another turntable and was trawling eBay for all those gems that I had let go paying significantly more than I had let the originals go for.

I now have around 250 records and a simple Rega P3 (2016) and wouldn't be without it.

If you like classical music or jazz especially then there are many charity shop bargains to be had and the sound quality can and usually is superior to digital.

Bottom line is you can dip your toe in for not a lot of outlay and get surprisingly good results.

I would say go for it.
 
Tony L said:
I get the impression with much modern pop/rock music the digital is compressed to hell and back as the assumption is it will be played through shit computer speakers, soundbars, earbuds on the tube, in a noisy car etc, whereas the vinyl will be played at home via a much better system or in a club via a full-range PA. It annoys me hugely as someone who likes CD and has very good audio systems; a capable medium so often crippled by marketing decisions. Luckily the jazz and classical I spend most of my time listening to these days isn’t butchered in this way.
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I cannot comment on the pop/rock compression as i gave up on those genres many years ago but much of that type of music has no dynamic range, it is simply loud, very loud, or extremely loud. But I have to disagree on the point made by another poster that CD is compressed more than vinyl & if you are interested in classical I suggest you try something from the LSO Live catalogue which in my experience are superb. From what I have read (from engineers) the secret is in the high-bit rate mastering which they claim is more important than a high bit rate end-product. However dynamic range is not everything & where I find vinyl better than the majority of silver discs is in the tonal balance which seems much fuller even to my old ears. As with most things there is no one rule which covers everything.
 
cjyosemite said:
From what I have read (from engineers) the secret is in the high-bit rate mastering which they claim is more important than a high bit rate end-product.
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Are you sure they were talking about sample rate and not number of bits per sample?
 
disco said:
I have cleaned in excess of 10k LPs on a Keith Monks machine and can assure you that although static may be reduced and maybe sometimes totally eliminated by the wet process that it is not always the case. Therefore I now finish by zapping each record with a Zerostat.
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Maybe something to do with your RCM, your environment, your t/t or your system/fluid for cleaning. I went from static to no static. I have, over the many years of forum threads on the subject, read that the near universal elimination of static is a direct consequence.

B.t.w., I think I said Pixall; I meant Zerostat. The Pixall tape cleaners were the reason I bought a Zerostat in the first place many moons ago.:)
 
A few commenters have mentioned that charity shops are no longer a reliable source of decent used vinyl. Someone even said HMV etc no longer stack racks and racks of vinyl.

I think this may be a little outdated. All the HMVs I've been in recently are increasing their vinyl rack floor space considerably. One in particular in the North West (Manchester Arndale or maybe Trafford Centre?) had two aisles of vinyl last time I was there. The hipsters really have pushed LPs (vinyls? ;)) back in to the mainstream. Hopefully a passing trend that will eventually leave HMV with tons of unsold stock that they have to discount to get rid of.

The point about charity shops may still be true. The days of finding original pressings of rare and classic albums for pence are gone....but imagine when the HMV hipster gets fed up of vinyl as a fad and moves on to something else. Surely the charity shop LP hunter is due a new wave of vinyl donations to pick up.
 
Tony L said:
I get the impression with much modern pop/rock music the digital is compressed to hell and back as the assumption is it will be played through shit computer speakers, soundbars, earbuds on the tube, in a noisy car etc, whereas the vinyl will be played at home via a much better system or in a club via a full-range PA. It annoys me hugely as someone who likes CD and has very good audio systems; a capable medium so often crippled by marketing decisions.
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We need a ministry of sound quality.
 
Tony L said:
One thing I will say though is you have to first set a system up to sound right with CD as it is flat within say 0.5db, and then balance the record deck to it with cartridge and phono stage choices. If you set a system up just to sound great with a big fat ‘n’ fruity record deck it will obviously sound like crap with CD as you have effectively EQd it to a non-flat source. This being exactly the mistake all us Linn/Naim users made back in the 1980s!
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+1
Julf said:
Right. And for pretty much anything recorded after 1990 or so, that is a digital file.
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+1. We can now close the thread!

Julf said:
Why DR measurements don't work on vinyl
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I disagree - a big tangent for this thread IMO but here http://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/showthread.php?p=3209546#post3209546 I explain why I think Ian is mistaken. (Should you wish to show me the error of my ways perhaps it's better to post there, or create a new thread - it's an interesting topic anyway!)
 
Flibbles said:
I found interesting was that Naim demoed it with an NDS and 555 but then Tangerine showed off their top of the range LP12 and I thought it sounded miles better.
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You're talking about spending lots of money on top of an NDS+555, which is itself a lot of coal. Another way down the rabbit hole is exploring other high-end options on the digital side e.g. dCS Rossini. Not heard it yet - just seen one - but the dCS engineering is measurably top notch (albeit arguably massive overkill).
 
allthingsanalog said:
Yes, many of the MOS 12” singles and albums do have fantastic SQ
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On second thoughts perhaps a MoSQ isn't aiming high enough.
How about 'Home Office and Listening Room', or a Treasury with an upgraded 'Chancellor of the Exchequer & SQ'?
 
Mike Reed said:
You don't need an anti-static gun; the act of wet-vac cleaning and new inners banishes static. Not just my findings, either. Sold my Pixall gun when I cleaned my collection.
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I think I've given this advice before, keep your antistatic gun because you never know when a record is going to pick up static. It's due to the type of vinyl and dry air.
When you take a record off the turntable hold it close to your face. If it has static you will feel the hairs on your face being lifted. That is when you use the
gun. After zapping it a few times retry the face test to see if you need to give it some more.
 
ssimon said:
I think I've given this advice before, keep your antistatic gun because you never know when a record is going to pick up static. It's due to the type of vinyl and dry air.
When you take a record off the turntable hold it close to your face. If it has static you will feel the hairs on your face being lifted. That is when you use the
gun. After zapping it a few times retry the face test to see if you need to give it some more.
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And if you're clean-shaven ?:) Yes, I can see that a very dry domestic atmosphere through overheated (esp. by electricity) rooms and closed windows etc. could encourage static. Generally, though, the humidity in our climate should make these conditions the exception unless you live in a hothouse.

I used to keep a container of water next to the deck (an LP12 and Xerxes then) during the summer months which seemed to help; prior to RCM of course.
 
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