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 2 responses by kthomas

One set of responses to your questions would be:

1. No, you shouldn't need to spend anywhere near the cost of your EMM gear to equal or better that sound with a vinyl rig.

2. Maybe.

3. It doesn't matter if the music and the recording quality is fantastic.

4. Yes, but so what.

5. Shouldn't happen if you take proper care with a proper rig.

6. Should be minimal, at worst.

7. You shouldn't need to spend anywhere near that amount on a vinyl rig to equal or better your digital front end.

Personally, I wrestled with this for several years and finally decided that 1) I'll never know what I think without trying it myself, and 2) that the real decision-driver is the quality and availability of releases you want. I have no real interest in shopping garage sales hoping to find some real finds, but there is a LOT of really great versions of new vinyl coming out. It's somewhere between kind of pricey and very pricey, but if it's really exceptional it will be both stuff I really want to listen to and substantially better than I can hear it from a digital source.

Six months into it, I may decide that it's not worth it for many of the reasons you list above, but if the reasoning I'm using to try it out holds up, then it will be worth it and will mitigate many of your concerns.
Dan_ed - I am going to be curious to see if your view on bands like Radiohead aren't worth pursuing on vinyl. Many people have commented how much better the recording is on the vinyl release than the CD. The Drive-by-Truckers just released five of their albums on vinyl and the band themselves talk about how much better it sounds on vinyl. You may well be right, and I currently can't evaluate for myself, but if that is a true statement, I'm going to be bummed.