Vinyl - One Word - WOW!!

Welcome to the club. I'm sure you'll find it a slippery slope in many ways. Equipment tweaking, treasure seeking, and aural euphoria. But don't give up on digital. If anything, the format can help you find good and bad vinyl. I don't konw that you need to spend 10s of 1000s of dollars to improve your listening experience. I mean you can but if you're starting out you don't want to have buyer's remorse about a piece of equipment that can't make a bad recording sound good.

I've found that when I buy vinyl vs digital (CD or HRes Files) it's very much about the release date and the matter in which it was recorded. Learning how to tell the difference between an original/second pressing vs a decades later remastering.

I have original jazz pressing I got from my father that I have duplicates of on CD and they both have places in my music collection. And sometimes I find digital to be better than vinyl for newer releases. It's all part of the hobby that goes beyond casual listening.  I know a guy that has remained committed to 8-track for decades because he loves the sound and even has a deck in his car.

Project was the brand that brought me back to vinyl for a while. I didn't stay, but I learned some respect for what a good LP playback rig can do. 

Great hearing this! There is nothing like a good sounding record, nothing. I do not have an expensive setup but sure love your excitement! I remember 35 years ago, cant remember when.  I heard a record really good for the first time. Is fun. By the way, you can do it on the cheap if you find good used table and match up the cartridge correctly to your phono-stage. A huge difference for me was getting a decent phono-stage . Big difference in sound and that is just with MM. Enjoy the sound. 

I remember records sounding better...sometimes. when I was young, my ears were better.  My ears are good for my age, but I can tell my high frequencies are not as good. So, I have a more powerful tweeter. The problem with vinyl is you can get a new records with clicks and pops, warps, the wow and flutter, the dust, the wear every time you play it. It will degrade and your record investment lathed down over tme. Stone age technology. Sure, in some cases vinyl can sound better with everything perfect, which is a far reach. Not worth the headaches and loss of investment

I always find these analog vs digital debates entertaining. Many good points on both sides here, but they are unlikely to convince the many folks that are heavily invested in either, or confused about which path to follow.

In some fundamental ways these two are different experiences. I often compare music to food. Different flavors, textures, aromas, for different occasions, resulting in different experiences. And that, I think, captures the spirit of this debate and the experience of listening to music in an audiophile context.

For one thing, playing vinyl involves many more steps. Proper care and feeding of your equipment and media are essential to your long term enjoyment. It’s fiddly to say the least. And yet I find that selecting a disc, dusting it off and carefully lowering the stylus focuses my attention in a way that helps me to engage in the practice of listening.

It’s necessary to point out that there are many ways to listen and that is only one. I also love to create and listen to playlists and that is something that isn’t really practical with physical media but a total hoot with a streamer and a Tidal description. Exploring new music is another good example. Different horses for different courses. I deeply enjoy both.

But my affection for vinyl is rooted in an episode I had a long time ago. During a visit to Simply Stereo here in the Chicago area back in the 2000’s this very subject came up and they offered to setup a comparison just for me to ‘hear’ what they were talking about. They quickly put together a system of relatively affordable components and asked me to pick out something to play. Cafe Blue by Patricia Barber was then in frequent rotation at my house and seemed like good choice since I knew it to be a great sounding CD.

I was surprised at how easy it was to hear the difference. The CD sounded good but the LP sounded richer and more fleshed out. The differences were easily apparent to me. CDs were supposed to have greater dynamics, but it didn’t sound that way to me. My preconceived notions of the superiority of CD as a format were seriously altered. Over time I eventually upgraded my entire system but bought a Debut Carbon to further explore what I now knew I had been missing. It lead me to where I am today with an RPM-5 and a PS Audio phono-pre and a distinct love of Blue Note reissues.

The most important lesson I have learned in my journey as an audiophile is to trust my own ears. I was a skeptic regarding analog sound until I allowed myself to trust what my own ears were telling me.

Analog playback requires a commitment in time, money, space and effort. It is in many ways out of step with modern life, so the resistance to it is easy to understand. It is not for everyone. But there is something beguiling there that is often difficult for some to quantify or even describe.

So my suggestion is to listen for yourself and then decide if there really is something there for you. Regardless of what you choose you will have learned something from the experience. Maybe even to trust your own ears.