Vinyl vs. top-notch digital

41 responses so far, but very little mention of the software.

My personal preference is firmly in the vinyl camp but I would not recommend anyone getting into vinyl today unless they truly felt committed to the sonic benefits of analog playback. It is not just the time and expense of selecting the hardware, it's building a vinyl library.

There are three basic choices for buying vinyl today. First there is a growing supply of favorite (and some not-so-favorite) albums being reissued. Most of these cost from $30-$60 when remastered by established engineers. Other label-generated reissues with unknown mastering may sell for $10-$20. Next is the vinyl resale market on line or from a few remaining stores. Here you can expect to pay from about $5 to three figures, depending on rarity and knowledge of the seller. Lastly, there is something known as "dumpster diving". This entails visits to local thrift stores to scrounge through their collections of used LPs. Prices can be cheap ($.25-$4) but it can be dirty and time consuming to sort through all the rejects to find anything of interest (artist, music, and condition). Who knew there were so many copies sold of Firestone Christmas music, Ray Conniff and Herb Alpert?

For anyone who has a collection of LPs they set aside when they sold their turntable years ago or have been given a collection by a family member or friend, that could be a different story. But starting from scratch with no current software could present a real challenge -- for both time and expense.

So Jeff my advice would be to find a friend with a decent analog playback system (not a dealer, you want a relaxed, unhurried experience) and spend some time listening. If you find that you appreciate what vinyl offers and you are willing to face the time and expense of building both the component parts and the LP library, then by all means go for it.

Johnnyb, my intended point was that starting a record collection today could quickly become expensive. Considering the broad alternatives for purchase (and please notice I included on-line sources) at say an average of $20/record overall, a modest collection of 200 LPs would cost $4K. Yes, bargains will come up and someone could buy them for less if they didn't mind getting dirty and spending quite a bit of time. So it was not about inflation, rather what buyers face today.

I posted because no one else said much about the records themselves and I hoped to help Jeff with that added perspective. But I'm lucky, I began buying LPs in high school and never stopped.