01-24-11: Stanwal
BE AFRAID. BE VERY AFRAID! Don't get into anything you have reservations about. If you don't feel deep down that analogue is the superior medium and you can't do without it stay with digital.
My personal experience is the opposite. After growing up on analog, I listened to digital exclusively for 20 years--from 1987 to 2007. Then I bought a turntable from a yard sale for $2 and even with that, I heard a continuity and musicality I wasn't getting with digital through my multi-thousand-dollar rig. I took an SACD and LP of the same recording to a high end shop to give each format a fair shake. The LP sounded lush and full; the SACD threadbare. The next day I bought a decent turntable and didn't even listen to another digital source for 8 months. What I'm saying is you never know until you try. Some people hear and feel the difference from the beginning. Some don't. If it speaks to you, the "bother" of analog--damping, aligning, cleaning, balancing, isolating, etc.--is simply part of forming a good relationship between you and the music. If it doesn't speak to you, it won't be worth the trouble. Nobody can answer whether analog will speak to you. For many years I ignored analog because I didn't want to get sucked back into the fussy details. Once you invest some time and attention, for a good setup, it's not really a big deal. Now I can't imagine life without analog. Playing records is one of the things that gets me out of bed and makes me look forward to the day. |
If your gear and musical tastes aren't a recipe for analog, I don't know what is. Classic rock and especially acoustic or semi-acoustic music like jazz, folk, and blues just sing in the analog domain. For phono stages I'd start with the Musical Fidelity; it'll probably do, and may excel for your purposes. For $1500 I'd look at a Rega P5 with Rega Exact cartridge, the Marantz TT51 with supplied Clearaudio wood-bodied MM cart, or the Clearaudio Concept. Cleaning isn't that big of a deal unless you're getting all your LPs from thrift shops or garages. I use a carbon fiber brush for a quick dust-off before each play, or a rolled up microfiber terry towel. Really, it's no big deal when you get used to it as part of your playing routine. |
01-25-11: Fatgh0st
Maineiac: You may be getting closer already :-) I've already started thinking about how I can edge my initial budget up closer to $2,500 by getting rid of something else.
So tell me, what does an extra $1,000 (from $1,500 to $2,500) open up for me in terms of options? Should I still just stick to the $1,500 for starters?
There are a few excellent rigs at $1500--the Marantz, the Clearaudio, Rega P5, and some I'm less familiar with from Pro-Ject and Music Hall. At $2500 the choices expand with VPI offerings, the Rega P7, more sophisticated models from Pro-Ject and Music Hall, and a couple that have reputation of challenging the high priced spread--the Well Tempered Amadeus and the Townshend Rock 7 with damping trough option (though by the time you get a tonearm it's more like $3500 or more). If you want it simple and good, I'd go for the Marantz TT-15S1 with included, mounted, set up, balanced and aligned Clearaudio Virtuoso wood-bodied MM cart (it's an $800 cart). Audio Advisor has a closeout demo on sale for $1359.99. Clearaudio makes the Marantz turntable, so there should be exceptional turntable/arm/cartridge compatibility. |
01-26-11: Raquel
... I'm listening to a performance of Liszt's 1st Piano Concerto on a Musical Heritage Society LP that I picked up at Tower's used classical bins many years ago that I doubt I paid a buck for, and it's sublime.
MHS editions have pretty much always been good in my experience as well. The performances are well-played, recorded, mastered, and pressed. And it seems that former owners on average took good care of them. Here's another tip: Box sets from subscriptions (e.g., Time-Life) often arrive at the thrift shops unplayed. Many of the Time-Life classical box sets are culled from RCA Living Stereo vaults, a few later ones are EMI. I once picked up 16 4-LP Time-Life box sets of their "Great Men of Music" series, at $1 each. Performances are by Rubinstein, Heifetz, Julian Bream, Boston Symphony w/Charles Munch, Van Cliburn, Cleveland w/George Szell, etc., and are in excellent to unplayed condition. |
Well-said, Raquel. For all the dire warnings in threads like this, as though several blocks of your city will explode if your cartridge alignment is off by a nanometer, let's remember that LPs have been the quality consumer musical medium of choice for 62 years. All through my childhood, teen years, and on into middle adulthood, people of all ages played LPs and ate dinner, danced, partied, and made love to the music they provided. True, you get better results with better turntable, arm & cart and closer tolerances in the setup, but it's still just geometry, not rocket science, and the worst that can happen is less-than-optimal sound, not a manmade disaster. |
Your description of the second audition sounds like the symptoms typical of an overdamped room. Having a dozen other loudspeakers in the room, especially a small one, would act like tonesuckers, absorbing the low level detail that made the first presentation so appealing. Given that Pro-Ject makes the Music Hall turntables, and that they share same/similar tonearms, the differences you heard *may* be room-related. Could also be everything else--cables, warmup time, component selection, even the cartridge setups themselves. |
02-01-11: Fatgh0st
Morgenholz: And this VERY fact is precisely what I've become excited about the most throughout this past week. It started out as a quest to get new sound, but evolved into the quest for new sound AND forging a new, better relationship with the music I already love.
I have had more transcendental experiences playing vinyl in the past four years (when I set up a vinyl rig) than the previous 20 years of CD-only listening. I thought I was getting too old (mid-50s) to really enjoy music. That was not the case. I had simply lost my patience with trying to feel the music from a red book source. I've recently played fresh LP versions of music I've known for decades that move me to emotional responses I never had with that music before. In fact, it happens pretty often now. I don't just hear the music, I hear how the music was made. I sense the effort and artistry behind the song and performance, and therein lies the artist-to-listener connection. |
02-07-11: Jyprez
...Second, vinyl is for those who want to collect records from the golden era of vinyl. If you are only going to buy post digital era reissues, then stick with that as they will give you the same sound without the inconvenience. Not in my experience. Yes, my first preference is vinyl with an all-analog chain, but I still like 24/88.2, 24/96, and 24/192 digital recordings made into LPs much better than CDs dithered down to 16/44.1. With the LP of a digital recording, you get an analog conversion at the resolution of the original recording (e.g., 24/96), run through a very expensive pro-quality (think $20K+ or so) DAC to cut the lacquer master. With CD, it's converted to 16/44.1 and you play this lower-resolution approximation through a consumer-grade DAC. Not even close. Also, I have probably 1500 LPs, most of which I collected within a year or two, mostly from dollar bins and thrift shops. I haven't needed an expensive record cleaner (though I admit it would be convenient). I use record cleaning fluid concocted at a local used record store and use those microfiber terry towels with 90,000 fibers per square inch to do the scrubbing and drying. If I need deeper cleaning I use a $25 handheld high pressure steamer. |
02-20-11: T_bone
Congrats. You jumped in waaaay deep first time in. But if you like it that much, you've got something going. Warning - as Mitch4t suggests it is a sickness of sorts. I'd hold off on getting rid of the digital. You have a lot invested in the music and buying it again on vinyl would seem a waste of resources. There is no reason why you cannot enjoy your digital as much as you did a month ago.
Maybe, maybe not. I'm coming up on my 4th anniversary of getting a turntable after 2 decades of digital only. After I got my turntable I didn't listen to *any* digitally sourced music for 8 months. Four years later the only digital music I listen to is on my iPod Classic at work to drown out office noise. My iPod is filled with Apple Lossless rips of my CD collection, so yeah, I'm glad I didn't get rid of it. But with all my records now, I take little to no pleasure in listening to music from CDs unless my primary attention is focused somewhere else. I'm not saying this is what it'll do to everybody; it just did it to me. |
02-23-11: Rockitman
... My digital system is top of the line 24 bit playback capacity. I will give digital one advantage over analog...if 24 bit, then the vise like grip on the lowest octaves is tighter in digital. Where digital blows it is in the actual texture of the musical notes whether it be voice, percussion, instrumental. This tangible feel of the music is completely lost in the A/D conversion. I also feel sound stage is much deeper and wider in analog playback. Yes-yes-yes! I've heard high end 24/96 playback at some high end audio store open houses, where 1st generation 24/96 masters are played back through insanely expensive D/A converters, line stages, amps, and speakers. I just heard such playback through a complete chain of ARC Anniversary/Signature components 2 wks ago. I can relax and enjoy 24-bit music in a way that I can't with 16/44.1, but it still only gets me 80% of the way there compared to vinyl, and in the ways you describe--texture, timbre, tangible feel, continuity and smoothness, and soundstage. Basically it comes down to how low level detail is handled, such as room ambience and the ways that sounds coming from instruments and voices start, bloom, fade, and the last room ambience decays. These are the cues that make music musical, lush, rich, and enveloping. |
