Yes, in my humble opinion it is worth it. No other music medium I have tried brings on the emotional engagement of good quality vinyl playing on a really good analog system. Using a tube preamp and amp also add to the pleasure. Humans are internally wired for analog. |
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I like CD better but my brain begs to differ. |
If when you switch to digital, get tired of listening, switch back to vinyl and sit there for three hours enjoying yourself. That could be a factor. |
Yes it is well worth it. If you have the time to sit and listen, if not do not bother. Today we for some reason do not have or cannot find the time to enjoy the simple pleasures in life anymore. |
I consider vinyl as being one of the finer things in life. You can pour a bottle of wine into a glass or you can decanter a fine bottle. Good things in life take time. |
Must we sacrifice? If you're a music lover you must have both worlds (analog/digital), because of the music that's simply not available in either world. Would you give up music that you love, because it's inconvenient? Or, because there's not enough air?
If you've got both then you'll discover your preference, and if you're an audiophile you'll work on the sound, and your preference might flip and flip again.
BTW - I find my digital side to be a big pain in the butt, not convenient, and frustrating. It falls within the same pitfalls as computers, cell phones, and the like. I put up with it, because I need the music.
And, right now I prefer my vinyl, because my system is currently stronger on that side. |
I also remember Harold Youngblood, he passed in 2008, but we were friends for 20 years. I never heard of him deciding to abandon vinyl for digital, but he believed that the best of both required that the equipment be up to the task.
I was into vinyl in the 80s and 90s because of an experience I had at Harold's (one of the audiophile experiences I've always been chasing to duplicate) but like many lifestyle dictated digital later, mostly as a matter of available space.
I've rekindled my interest in audio as a whole and am back into vinyl in a very big way......I also love the best digital has to offer. I have a VPI HRX with a Kiseki purple heart cartridge on the analog side and an Esoteric K03 SACD player with a Bryston BDP2 on the digital side.
Someone said once that "music is what happens between the notes"
and that in my opinion sums up the difference between vinyl and digital.....digital does a great job at providing you an accurate noise free picture of a recording but on a flat plane.....whereas the best vinyl rig will flesh the images out and provide you with a very intimate view of the instruments, textures, decays....vocal phrasing etc....vinyl just sounds more musical and the fiddeliness of it is a plus in my view....I love the whole ritual of cleaning, changing sides, setting up a rig, tweaking the setup etc....
So in a word YES, I think Vinyl is worth it.....but only if you're willing to commit to it with a proper rig and that's true for digital as well.... |
Well put Stewart, and very nice front ends you have there! |
Everytime I play Dean Martin's "Dream With Dean" (original pressing), Jo Stafford's "Ballad of The Blues," or Norman Luboff's "But Beautiful," I know why I love vinyl so much. I'd like to hear the digital setup that will do what these records will do on a high end vinyl setup.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dean-Martin-Dream-With-Dean-LP-Stereo-/381358804911?hash=item58cac18faf
http://www.ebay.com/itm/JO-STAFFORD-Ballad-Of-The-Blues-LP-Columbia-Six-Eye-Stereo-1959-/400962458749?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_15&hash=item5d5b39947d
http://www.ebay.com/itm/But-Beautiful-The-Norman-Luboff-Choir-LP-Vinyl-Album-Record-Columbia-6EYE-/141529734895?hash=item20f3d45eef |
I am in the slow process of re-doing my entire system; only the preamp will stay. I have to say re-learning record playing geometry and setup and cleaning and on and on is less painful and way more straight forward than computer audio. As far as playback, the only thing I have heard that give me pause in the opportunity cost of vinyl is the Bricasti DAC.
This is amongst other upper-end digital.
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Monumental day in the Mapman household today. My 14 year old daughter decided she wanted to play records and learned to do it today on the $70 Innovative Technology suitcase turntable she researched and found. Its a nice little gadget for kids. Nicely put together and featured for the minimal cost. Seems to work well. Even has Bluetooth to play from phones and an aux in. Reminds me somewhat of the first record player I had as A kid a much larger and heavier Motorola suitcase record player with foldout speakers which was a significant expenditure 50 some odd years ago in my parents house. She loves music and plays violin. Maybe a budding audiophile. 😍 |
Recently I was going through my CD library and stumbled across Dark Side Of The Moon. Realizing that I had not listened to it in decades, yes decades, I fired up the ol' stereo and sat back for a listen down memory lane.
How about awful? All caps - AWFUL!!!
I sauntered over to the rack just to make sure something wasn't amiss. There wasn't.
Turns out that it was one of the first discs I added to my collection, mirroring my vinyl collection back in the day.
I then dug out my vinyl version and...hiss. Pop. Click. Wow - they were still there and I didn't care! In the same exact spots where I remembered they were!
Subsequently I purchased a remastered disc version and all is well on all fronts.
Lesson learned? Many of the early compact disc releases were poorly produced in haste to nourish the beast.
I likes vinyl. I likes the compact disc.
Achieving optimum resolution from either format runs into some considerable financials either way so...spend where you feel most comfortable AND what you will use the most!
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I then dug out my vinyl version and...hiss. Pop. Click. Wow - they were still there and I didn't care! In the same exact spots where I remembered they were!
I listen to Led Zeppelin II and a remember the points where the 8 track tape my brother had would switch. |
I have to just LMAO when I see multi thousand $$ TT rigs running through a SS Amp!How can anyone be taken seriously if your rig is not analogue from start to finish?NO,vinyl is NOT worth it!Digital with tubes is the only way to go. |
abucktwoeighty...hahaha!
Gawd...remember the rumble that the 8track plowed through the speakers when it did that? Thanks for the memory! |
I have to just LMAO when I see multi thousand $$ TT rigs running through a SS Amp!How can anyone be taken seriously if your rig is not analogue from start to finish?
freediver, I don't understand what you mean here, exactly. Care to elaborate? |
Freedriver obviously is misinformed about how a solid-state amplifier works. He must think that a solid-state amplifier per definition has to be "digital". Perhaps we should give him some time to study the subject carefully, then comment, as this would make for much more enlightened comments :-)
Good Listening
Peter |
Count me in among the uninformed- why is what I'm listening to now- vinyl LP, cartridge to a SS pre, then other SS gear, digital?
perhaps this was tongs in check- that analog deserve tubs |
Zavato,
Tubes are no better than transistors or the other way around. A solid-state amplifier does not have to be "digital" as Freedriver erroneously suggest in his "smurky" post above, which makes it kinda funny.
Good listening,
Peter
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I prefer vinyl but happily listen to YouTube and CD when the need arises.
A friend of mine informed me that vinyl sounds better than CD. Her record player is a Crosley portable! |
Dogs are vinyl, cats are compact discs.
Like mapman, I too am able to share an appreciation for either species and have had both in my house together and apart for as many years that I've been alive. I think it's utterly groovy - pun definitely intended - that vinyl's recent resurgence as an artificial reproduction medium is bringing younger people into the fold of high-fidelity. My ten year old niece loves to come over her uncle's house and flip through the LP collection...and yes, I encourage her to operate my turntable without worry she may damage anything because...that's what uncles do. She's developed an appreciation for Joni Mitchell early on and prefers to listen to her on vinyl because she can read the lyrics contained inside.
I think a lot of the arguments against the compact disc, and one that I reserve for downloading, is the loss of the tangible sense of ownership. With vinyl you get that big beautiful thing you can hold in your hands, often including liner notes, posters, photographs of the artists inside. With the compact disc you got/get a shrunken head version of that which is not very huggable. With downloading you get none of that - you get exxes and zeroes into a diminutive slab of plastic or metal.
My niece can hear the quality difference between vinyl and cd, the difference between her iPod and my A&K 100 portable player.
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I just recently bought a turntable. It is the very first I've ever owned. (ProJect Debut Carbon) And a handful of LPs to go with it (most of them used for a couple of bucks). I find it all so far very worthwhile to me. Most of them sounded better than I thought I had a right to expect.
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