Frustrated with Vinly

@slaw and @has2be, Thanks for your kind words!

@noromance ,

I completely agree with you, time will tell if there really is a difference in sound quality. Another reason I picked up the Isotek was because I had really entry lever power strips and wanted to get something a little more substantial to protect the gear.

I'm following this interesting thread, I have a sophisticated digital rig and sounds amazing but some source content, specifically rock tends to sound for lack of a better word out of sync, jazz, acoustic, salsa, americana, folk, vocals all good, rock and roll not so much.
I thought initially it was the recordings and the recording engineers but the thing with digital is it is very sensitive to changes in power supply, filters, even software, I am constantly tweaking and got to the point I need a reference and I decided vinyl could be the way (I have spoken ;)
Anyway I have a technics mk5 I think with a dl301 cartridge, would that be an acceptably rig or should I go something more modern? Like the 1200 or other manufacturer? Don't want to spend much either, I am at my limits already.

Tube pre with phono stage and tube monoblocks

By the way if I use the technics I need to figure out a balanced cable instead of the existing single ended, maybe I will need to change the tonearm.

I know I know all cartridges are inherently balanced maybe instead of a complete tonearm just need to wire the existing one. I rather stay away from an isolation transformer for this.

Jay, forget vinyl. When I visited NYC last year, I purchased like 20 expensive brand new 180g jazz LPs.Two of them being 45rpm LPs. When I started to listen to them....pure frustration!!!. Some of them, out of the sealed cover, already showed a few pops and clicks right away.Quite irritating and a waste of money. Listening to vinyl in this century is absolutely ridiculous. Long live the well recorded CDs !!!! By the way : I own a very good high end system, which makes listening to vinyl a real torture. Don't waste your time and money with "cleaning" devices. I have tried several "techniques". You may mitigate it, but bear in mind that noise from vinyl is non-removable !!! Good luck..

Jay, forget vinyl. When I visited NYC last year, I purchased like 20 expensive brand new 180g jazz LPs.Two of them being 45rpm LPs. When I started to listen to them....pure frustration!!!. Some of them, out of the sealed cover, already showed a few pops and clicks right away.Quite irritating and a waste of money. Listening to vinyl in this century is absolutely ridiculous. Long live the well recorded CDs !!!! By the way : I own a very good high end system, which makes listening to vinyl a real torture. Don't waste your time and money with "cleaning" devices. I have tried several "techniques". You may mitigate it, but bear in mind that noise from vinyl is non-removable !!! Good luck..

That is quite some first post! lol.

If you had read through this thread you would see the part of "new" albums has been covered quite extensively.

And as for cleaning being a waste of time and money, obviously you are entitled to your opinions but I would try to avoid making false blanket statements.
Good luck to you too and enjoy those CD,S as do I along with records, cassette tapes, reel to reel tapes, FM radio and internet streaming .

Lol quite some first post indeed, total hate