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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 ejlif

ejlif's avatar
ejlif
1,366 posts
 
I've never heard the Emm Labs gear.

I added a turntable to my rig that had a 10K CD player. I bought the vinyl rig for 800 used including cartridge. I spent 1800 on a phono stage. That modest setup I thought was so much more musical and involving than the digital. I eventually upgraded to an even better analog setup. I don't think you have to think about spending mega bucks on your first go at it. At least you could get something and test the waters a bit without going to deep. This would allow you find out if you can tolerate the downside of vinyl and see if you can live with it. It's all an opinion, but I personally think I would find more musical enjoyment out of a 500 used analog setup than I would in a mega thousand dollar digital playback rig. That said if I was forced to only pick one it would be digital because I wouldn't be willing to miss out on all the great music that is available only on CD.

You'll never really know unless you try it.
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