Would I be wasting my money to get a turntable?

only if you do not want to play records....

Go for it. It’s just better. Stay up late at night better. And don’t buy the BS about building an album collection. A lot of my faves came at $15-$25. Discogs is your friend.Forget about the ritual of handling the records, reading the inserts etc. Vinyl sounds better and in most cases a lot better.

Unless you have vinyl to play and WANT to play it. OR… you want to collect vinyl and WANT to play it, get a turntable, but only if you are concerned with the nostalgia you feel by playing vinyl and you enjoy the ritual of handling and playing vinyl. If not, unless your vinyl rig costs $100K, your sound quality will be better playing digital or streaming. That’s my 2 cents.

@fritzenheimer

There is conversion of the analogue signal to digital in my system. I don’t find that to be a problem. In fact, it can be a big advantage due to a reduction in noise, distortion and interference.

Only you can tell if vinyl is for you. Some of us think it is glorious. I tried to live without it for a few years, but found streaming and CD rips just didn’t give me the same pleasure. As you have seen, others have quite jaundiced views of vinyl. In reality, there are both pros and cons. It’s a matter of personal taste and judgement.

There’s no getting away from the fact that it can get very expensive both in terms of gear and discs. However, it is possible to dip your toe in the water at fairly modest cost with a ProJect turntable for example. My two sons and daughter have done just that with great success.

You don’t need a huge collection of discs. How often do you think someone with over a thousand plays every disc in their collection? Better to enjoy a few discs. I started out with just a dozen a year ago. Of course, I have many more now, but I am still a listener not a collector.

I find vinyl is a different sort of listening. I still have streaming alongside it to explore new music. I buy the vinyl version of albums that I particular like for a deeper dive into them and a more immersive experience.

@fritzenheimer Master tapes from the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and into the 80s have all degraded. Some are lost. So if you want to hear any recordings from this era and want to hear them at their best, you use a turntable and get LP pressings as original as you can. Many of the digital remastering projects suffer compression that the original LPs don't have.