2. analog
  3. 1151458982

My digital front end outdoes my analog.....

For the first time ever my analog setup is being outdone by my digital front end. The equipment: digital-MF Trivista SACD
analog-Thorens TD-125 w/Rabco SL8E linear tracking arm/Grado Master reference (4.0mv) YS Audio Concerto plus with Telefunken smooth plate 12AX7's. The sound: Overall fairly similar with that usual superior analog HF response. The image and seperation are way better on the CDP, this is my biggest issue. Better, but less so, are bass response and dynamics on the CDP as well. I love vinyl and always have and will. The tonearm is set up great and the thing tracks perfect. VTA perfect. I have it only two feet from the left speaker and it doesn't even think of feeding back. I can jump on the floor and the woofers don't move so it is so well isolated. The table/arm seem fine. Here are problems I see:
1)Lower end phono pre (so what do I need to spend)
2)Rewire TT from cart to interconnect as the tonearm is 30 years old
3)As a passive line stage user I need a very low Z ballsier phono stage. The current unit is 54db gain with an output impedence of 1000 ohms. The Trivista CDP's output impedence is 50 ohms (this could be the bass issue since I use a passive linestage)

Vinyl will never have the place for me it once did since so few new releases are on LP. I have most of the vinyl and out of print vinyl not on or never released on CD that I desire to own (based on what I like)
I do love playing with vinyl and shopping and finding it as well. Thoughts welcome-thanks in advance

ET
electroid

Showing 1 response by dougdeacon

dougdeacon
3,338 posts
 
I do want to improve my vinyl playback, especially image/soundstage.....this is why I started the post.
Matching or beating CD for imaging, soundstaging (and bass) is possible. This is true whether your CDP cost $1K, $5K or even $15K.

As has been posted already, starting with Nsgarch, your TT, arm and cartridge are inadequate to meet these goals. No phono stage in the world will change this. Even new, the TD125 was not one of Thorens best tables. The SL8E was nobody's idea of a great arm (I owned two of them, and still own an ST-8). I could name a hundred modern cartridges that will image and soundstage better than any Grado.

I prefer good/creative engineering to slighlty better fidelity anyday.
A lot of good, creative engineering has been applied to LP playback components since yours were designed. The result is not "slightly" better fidelity, it is massively better fidelity.

Visit someone with a decent high end rig of recent manufacture. Assuming proper component matching and setup, what you will hear is a level of performance that no amount of tweaking, wire upgrading or phono stage matching will ever pull from your existing rig.

You do have some difficult decisions to make. Hopefully you won't make too many wrong turns as you try to find a path that works for you.
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