Considering going Vinyl--Please talk me out of it

Vinyl can sound very good in spite of it's various 'minor' problems (eg. noisy surfaces, inner groove distortion) but what bothers me most is it's pitch instability (non-concentric records). Having heard the rock solid pitch stability of digital, I found it frustrating to listen to my records even though my VPI HW19 Mk IV with Graham 1.5T arm is a very decent front end. Since I do have a large collection of records, I had to decide whether to give up on them or get the only TT that addresses this problem with records - a Nakamichi (in my case a Dragon-CT, about $3000 on ebay). I bought one and am happy with it. It's a very fine TT that does truly solve the problem (I'm a musician and apparently bothered by this problem more than most listeners). But, had I not a large collection of records I wouldn't consider getting a TT and beginning to acquire records. Ovbviously we all hear differently. What I hear with my system is sound as satisfying with digital as it is with vinyl. A somewhat different presentation, but at least as satisfying. I'm talking about plain red-book CDs. And this kind of reproduction doesn't require an exotic player. Use almost any player with digital-out and invest less than $1000 in a good DAC - say a Benchmark or Lavry - and you should have wonderful sound from any decently recorded CDs. Perhaps I should qualify that by saying that I listen to classical music almost exclusively, so don't know from experience if other genres of music have been as well recorded (but not perfectly!). But if they are, I see no reason to get into the analog domain, since you don't even have a record collection to listen to. Good luck and happy listening, whatever you decide to do.

Nedmast: You hit the nail on the head "...I see no reason(michaeljbrown)to get into the analog domain,since you don't even have a record collection to listen to." Well said.

17 months later (last post 12-30-07) I'm discovering this little gem....I've never had such a good read - laughed til I cried. Some of the funniest stuff I've ever heard. You ALL reminded me of why I'm in this hobby having gone down the vinyl rabbit hole 4 years ago and enjoying ALL of it: vinyl, stereo lp's, digital lp's and analog lp's, redbood cd's and dvd-audio, and sacd and xrcd and dualdiscs, and, and....it's ALL fun!!!