Since May 2021 I have reverted back to an all digital system. I ran analog gear as a teen back in the 1980's, sold it off by 1987 as I got into CD audio pretty early on (June 1984). Slowly built up my CD collection and often using Columbia House through the 1990's.
I fell back DEEP into vinyl by 2003 and spent crazy money buying and selling and trying all sorts of vinyl gear from numerous turntables to phono cartridges, to phono preamps, to vinyl cleaning including vacuum machines etc. Of course I took advantage of thrift store shopping for used vinyl from about 2003 till 2016. I lost interest in adding to my vinyl collection when I reached close to 1000 LP's. I did start buying new LP's around 2011 till 2019. But the costs were just getting too high for my budget.
I also around 2008 got back silly big time in buying cassette decks and even reel to reel tape decks, along with huge amounts of tapes, over 600 blank audio cassettes and a few dozen blank reel to reels. I was buying most deck on impulse off Ebay or at thrift stores and fiddled around with each for most till the novelty wore off and resold each deck. I had a couple of keepers but most just came and went with me just throwing more money away. It was like an addiction until between all the vinyl stuff and the tape stuff I realized I was crazy and kissing good money good bye.
By 2019 I sold off all my remaining cassette decks and all the hundreds of tapes, all at a financial loss but good bye and good riddance. The 11 years of such with tapes was fun at times but depressing as well, too much for me and my absolute disregard for money being wasted on it all.
By 2019 I after keeping my CD's in large CD binders for years and as such out of sight out of mind, this was one of the reasons why I got bigly into LP's as they were on shelves easy to pick out and use, the CD's never got played much except for in my car. I put my CD's back in jewel cases and on display. From such I began to actually play through my CD library and really began to enjoy the sound on my current A/V system. It became fun again and yes so easy to live with CD's as you just plop them in a CD player and hit play to listen without having to get up and flip sides over and to screw around with cleaning them.
I began to notice that when playing a CD I was just listening to music, clean, powerful and no background noise. I would then put on LP's and no matter how good they sounded or clean they were I always knew I was listening to a vinyl record. It got annoying to me.
I also began running A/B comparisons between my CD's an their LP twins in real time and EVERY time the CD outperformed the LP, especially the inner grooves. It was close at times and others it was NO CONTEST the CD sounded more lifelike.
I also began a serious purge of my near 1000 LP's. Noting that I had hundreds bought for years that I had yet to listen too. I surmised that I listened to to maybe 40-50-60 LP's on a regular basis and a few dozen more only periodically. It was all just collecting albums and wasting shelf space. I quickly purged and or sold off near 800 LP's thinking I would live with about 200 that I really liked.
But with all that has been going on globally with the never ending covid stuff and in my life along with realizing how much money I essentially threw away on analog gear, tape decks, tapes and LP's etc. The sight of my turntable setup began to really depress me. I had to rid myself of it all and that is what I did by May 2021.
I recorded about 120-130 LP's onto CDR's for posterity, though I find it hard to listen to these as the recorded along clicks, pops, groove noise and inner groove distortion bothers me much now as I am so use to my commercially bought CD's again. But once done all my analog stuff was gone and this page in my life was turned. I'm not saying analog is bad or wrong or not to be enjoyed by others, but for me from 2003 until 2021 it was enough, enough money spent, time wasted on cleaning and shopping around on buying hundreds of LP's I never even played.
I have about 300 CD's. I enjoy physical media and do not run streamers at home but listen to streaming music on my phone for personal use only. I'm a product of life of owning physical media (CD's, BluRays, DVD's and Video games for the Playstation) and I enjoy owning CD's and buying new CD's which are even when brand new a fraction of the cost of their vinyl LP counterparts.
My A/V rig includes for CD and other disc playback my Oppo BDP 83 which sounds great to my ears, a Philips CD-101 which I bought new in 1984 and have found out over the years a family member had it in storage and gave it back to me and a Panasonic DVD Recorder I keep to once in a while off load programs on my PVR to DVD discs.
I'm pleased with my set up now and I am now having some peace of mind after getting more or less over the money spent on my analog side for 18 years.
That is my analog to digital story. :-)
