arguments against starting a vinyl collection?


Hi,

I have a pretty elaborate setup for cd playback. I use the emmlabs cdsd transport and emmlabs dcc2se dac with the dartzeel amplifier and the wonderful evolution acoustic mm2 speakers with powered woofers.

I own roughly 2600 cds and about 175 sacds.

The vinyl crowd still swears of course that great digital playback cannot equal vinyl so have been somewhat tempted to dip my toes into analog and get a turntable and phono preamp. Here is what is holding me back!

Please note that I would not get vinyl to find obscure vinyl only vintage or otherwise recordings.

It would be mostly targeted at recordings that sound better on vinyl than cd.

Here is the arguments against:

1. hard to find a turntable and phono preamp that is class A and thus as good as my emmlabs cd equipment without spending serious bucks?

2. Even if I could find a reasonably priced class A turntable, the best sound requires more skill than a newbie like I would have? In other words, the better turntables are harder to setup and use?

3. A lot of heavy weight albums are double albums so you need to switch sides three times?

4. You need to clean the vinyl before every listen?

5. If you listen 15 times to a particular vinyl album you will likely begin to hear some deteoriation?

6. Even with a good setup, you will probably still hear pops and hiss on many vinyl albums even some well mastered ones?

7. I will not hear for modern recordings a big difference between vinyl and cds given that my emmlabs equipment is so good and I cannot afford a $10,000 phono preamp and a $25,000 turntable/cartridge....

thanks

Michael
128x128karmapolice

Showing 1 response by bongofury

Karmapolice

My family were crack session men in LA and I have been in live touring space for 30 plus years, including Radiohead. Here is my two cents:

There are three things that matter, the original recording sessions, the mastering and mixing, and the final format ("pressing" or CD).

Vinyl does a really good job of recreating the original dynamics of the recording session. When this is spot on, it is really a beautiful thing to hear. I grew up around my family's playing and know what they sound like from 50 years of memory and vinyl approximates this better than digital.

Mastering can introduce a whole set of problems when introduced as part of the mixdown. Tonalities can be adjusted, good or bad, dynamics compressed or expanded, and all aspects of frequencies can be sonically cropped, boosted or altered. Both vinyl and CDs can amplify any shortcomings here, so it is a toss-up of sorts. Also, the term master tape is grossly overused--there are usually multiple tapes out there for all sessions and your vinyl and CD was probably not made from the original master tape but a second or third generation as production was sourced from multiple production facilities. This is why Japanese, British and US pressings can sound radically different around the same artist.

CDs are a perfectly rendered version of the source tape. Garbage in/garbage out--some CDs can vary by tape source.

Vinyl can suffer from the pressing process--the quality and make of the vinyl pellet (there were 13 types of vinyl in its height--only four are still made today), the pressing time in the press, where it stands in the production run, and humidity and temperature of the plant. You could listen to 25 records and hear minute but significant differences in the vinyl. Only 10% sound perfectly correct but when they do, they will slay all other formats. (PS: it has taken me 30 years to collect pristine albums of my family's work).