Newbie to Vinyl Seeks Tips

Did you mean Ivory soap?  I find it hard to imagine that is good for records but I have never tried it.  I have tried scrubbing records with those paint pads making sure to follow the grooves but records were still noisy.  

artemus - Thanks. Is that the Milty Zerostat 3 that you are recommending?  Lots of negative reviews for that on Amazon.

My experience with other equipment is people generally recommend what they own or what is expensive so not that helpful.  The Project or Rega tables were the other obvious choices but were a bit more expensive and I wanted the Ortofon 2M Blue cartridge.  And if I hate it I can simply return it easily.  I suspect the Fluance, despite its great reviews and features, doesn't have the audiophile credibility that would get it much love on here.

millercarbon - Hi Chuck.  Thanks for the recommendation for the Mobile Fidelity brush.  I had been overwhelmed by all the brush choices so I simply went ahead and bought one based on your recommendation.  I would say that I am more curious about records than anything else.  Thanks for the invitation.

whart - Thanks for all that advice.  I'll browse through the London Jazz Collector site.  My musical tastes are quite varied and evolving.  I ignored jazz for most of my life but I'm finding myself enjoying some of the more contemporary experimental jazz as well as classics like Miles Davis or Coltrane but it still the case that I dislike more jazz than I like it.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I think well recorded/produced contemporary music sounds awfully good in digital streaming.  On the other hand, a lot of the older stuff from the 1960's-1990's sounds like crap streaming and one of the things that is driving me to try vinyl is to see if the records are better than the digital versions.

What is your blog?

millercarbon - First, I want to be clear, I said your system was extraordinary, which I think it is, but I never said I liked it.  I certainly don't aspire to replicate the sound that you have worked so hard to achieve. 

I have no idea what leads you to constantly argue that you have the best system and only path to great sound, but I am confident that I am not the only person on Audiogon that finds it annoying.  But I do want to thank you for your generosity in letting me hear your system.

I am curious about vinyl.  That same curiosity has led me to purchase 10 speakers and nine amplifiers over the past 9 months.  I wouldn't read anything more into it.  My guess is vinyl will be better for older albums because so many older CDs and digital sources seem to be flat and compressed and hopefully the comparable records aren't.  I think you mostly listen to older material which does more to explain your love of vinyl than any inherent deficit in digitally encoded music.  But I am approaching my foray into vinyl with an open mind and the same curiosity that has driven my audiophile journey so far.

And please don't turn this into one of your flame wars.  Have the last word if you must, but I won't be responding to any rants.

@noromance Good question.  Mostly it hasn't.  As I suspected, I find the whole process of playing vinyl to be less than satisfying.  I know a lot of people find the ritual of taking an album out of the case, cleaning it, and lowering the needle and then sitting back for 20 minutes devoting your full attention to the music to be rewarding but mostly I think all of that is frustrating.  But my guess is that isn't really what you were asking.  And all of my points below should be taken in the context of the fact that I still have very limited experience playing records since it isn't something I do often.

A different sound quality is the reason I wanted to try vinyl and my experience with that is hit or miss.  Listening carefully is a challenge because level matching is difficult even with a SPL meter but I do my best. 

Modern records often sound nearly identical to digital sources.  The records that sound significantly different are bolder, more dynamic and brasher.  Going back and forth between streaming and vinyl often leaves me scratching my head about which I prefer and wondering which is truer to the artists intention.  Streaming seems to recess the instruments a bit and bring the vocals forward but maybe it is just more compressed.  Vinyl sometimes almost seems like an exaggerated presentation .  And since I have a very basic vinyl setup I wonder how much of that coarseness, for lack of a better word, is just the turntable and phono amp.

Older records often shine because the streaming source seems so flat and uninteresting.  My guess is this is what drives most of the enthusiasts for vinyl, and it is hard to argue that records don't sound better for older material where streaming sounds bad.  On the other hand, the second hand older albums I have are plagued with snaps, crackles and pops that I find very distracting.  I've tried different types of cleaning without finding something that "fixes" them.  Mostly I play very current music so streaming is fine for that.

And on the topic of noise, well even brand new vinyl sounds noisy to me.  I just bought Ada Lea's "one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden" and there is a low level of hiss on the quiet passages and the occasional pop. I find that distracting/disturbing.  And this is an album where there is a big difference between streaming and vinyl but I simply couldn't decide which I liked better.

And since I use Roon, I really like its ability to play the lyrics on my tv while the song is playing.  When I play a record I often set the album going in Roon just to be able to see the lyrics.  Of course, skipping over a track I don't like simply isn't an option with vinyl.

Bottom line is I don't think I'll be a convert to vinyl anytime soon but I will enjoy playing a record from time to time but I don't like it enough to pay the often ridiculous prices for old, much less new, albums.

My latest experiment is with playing SACDs.  So far no conclusions about that at all other than an enormous sense of frustration at how expensive and difficult to source most SACDs are.  Since so little material is available as an SACD that will never be a big part of my listening even if I decide I love it.

Forgive my rambling answer to your short question LOL.