The cost of LP's and CD's - an observation

I've been told, here at Audiogon, that vinyl is THE superior format as long as you're willing to go down that long expensive rabbit hole required to play it properly. I have no reason to doubt that but at the same time I have no intention of going down it. I don't need that expense or complication.

I have a modest turntable, a decent cartridge a cheap phonostage and a few albums. I occasionally buy an album on a whim. Rarely listen to them.


I get CD's on eBay. Usually between $3 and $8. I research them on the dynamic range database and buy the best recordings I can find.


These days I mostly stream high res. Easy. Convenient.

But when I hear something really good I find the best CD recording of it that I can find and buy it, rip it and keep the CD. I do the same with books. If its good and worth having I get it in hardback and put it on a shelf. If nothing else I'll leave quite the museum when I'm gone.

As it is, I can access my ripped CD's, Amazon Music and Sonos from my chair with the push of a button.

My uncle was the first audiophile I ever knew. He was a neurologist in New Orleans. I remember a lot of McIntosh and Klipsch gear. I also remember visiting there when I was a child and one entire wall of his dedicated listening room was vinyl albums floor to ceiling. All classical.

When I went back maybe 10 years later that wall was full of CDs. No vinyl in sight.
He knew someone at Sony and they sent him pre-release CDs for his review.
Was he a discriminating listener? Did he have golden ears? I don’t know. I do know that he knew classical music. And it was very clear that the CD suited him just fine.

As far as 80’s recording quality? Steely Dan. Maybe not everyone’s cup of tea in terms of production characteristics but it was clear that it was well and meticulously done and pretty much exactly what they intended.

@orpheus10 Its all good. I stream. I got CDs. I got CDs ripped on a server. No reason other than cash to limit ourselves. For me, cash and complexity are the barriers that keep me from vinyl. Not some notion that the other options are better or worse. Its all good.

When I went to college we had records and cassette tapes. Records were a problem in dorm rooms. My roommate had a B&O turntable with its own suspension but it was still not enough for the bouncy floors in our 70 year old dorm rooms. We even suspended it from the ceiling using webbing. It worked in terms of isolation but it swung around in a gentle circle which was disconcerting.

So we waited until we could be still and quiet and dubbed the vinyl onto cassette tape. We had a nice Nakamichi tape deck (but not the Dragon). We obsessed over which "metallic" tape to buy and then we obsessed about the settings on the tape deck even though we had very little idea what we were doing.

The end result was decent cassette tape recordings.

When CDs came out and became affordable that’s all I wanted and even though no longer in a dorm room, I had no desire to go back to vinyl and or cassette tapes.