I think you're right. I got back into vinyl in February by getting a Yamaha P-mount belt-drive table at a garage sale for $2. I then put an Ortofon P-mount OM-10 on it, put some Vibrapods under the feet and a felt mat on top of the rubber to control static, and I was good to go.
A few weeks later I went to a high end store with a couple of albums and their reissues on SACD. Even played on a Linn system I would never be able to afford, the LP absolutely smoked the SACD, and I decided that that's where I'd put my money from then on. To me, my $72 rig at home had more in common with their $10K Linn turntable than with any form of CD player. The cheap record player may not have the detail and nuance of the expensive rig, but there's still a shared musicality you don't get any way else.
I continue to listen to a much-repudiated rig. In March I moved up to a Technics SL-1210 M5G to get the upgraded tonearm/interconnect wiring. Since then I've done some tweaking and upgrading to wring more performance out of it. Now I'm extremely happy with it. It's very quiet and non-resonant, and most importantly, it makes lots of music and makes me smile often.
Like you, I can barely stand to listen to CDs now. I can count on one hand the CDs I've listened to since I got the Technics, and that was usually just for comparison to the LP.
A few weeks later I went to a high end store with a couple of albums and their reissues on SACD. Even played on a Linn system I would never be able to afford, the LP absolutely smoked the SACD, and I decided that that's where I'd put my money from then on. To me, my $72 rig at home had more in common with their $10K Linn turntable than with any form of CD player. The cheap record player may not have the detail and nuance of the expensive rig, but there's still a shared musicality you don't get any way else.
I continue to listen to a much-repudiated rig. In March I moved up to a Technics SL-1210 M5G to get the upgraded tonearm/interconnect wiring. Since then I've done some tweaking and upgrading to wring more performance out of it. Now I'm extremely happy with it. It's very quiet and non-resonant, and most importantly, it makes lots of music and makes me smile often.
Like you, I can barely stand to listen to CDs now. I can count on one hand the CDs I've listened to since I got the Technics, and that was usually just for comparison to the LP.