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Would you buy a turntable? (1 Viewer)

FeisalK

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if you did a needledrop of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' latest LP, it would probably sound better than the CD release.
 

KurtEP

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I just caught a segment on "How It's Made" on the vinyl LP. Fascinating. I've seen CDs being made, but this was much more interesting.
 

Philip Hamm

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Simple.

(1) The idea for me wasn't to get "better sound quality than CD" it was simply to put my vinyl on CD for the convenience and portability that the CD format offers. A CD-R costs $1, the new CD costs $10. Say I have 200 records that I don't want to re-buy on CD, I just saved $2K by transferring my vinyl to CD. (and that's not including stuff that would be more expensive like my Karl Bohm Beethoven Symphonies).

(2) Many CDs are mastered very poorly. Fewer Lps are. I would be willing to bet that a few of my LPs recorded to CD sound better than the commercial CD because of poor mastering of the CDs.
 

MarkMel

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The advantage of an analogue recording is that there is no loss of information. If the source recording is analogue, the LP transfer would be a true reproduction of the music. If the source recording was digital, I do not think there is an advantage when listening to an LP pressing as there would be missing information as a result of the digital.

I remember when CDs first came out they used to put a little code on the back. Something like AAD or ADD or DDD. This would stand for Analogue source, Analogue mix, Digital master. I always looked for AAD. I don't think these are on CDs anymore because they are all DDD.

There are very few analogue recording studios left. I know the White Stripes record to analogue. I suspect that there will be more analogue studios opening again in the future.

A/B a White Stripes CD vs LP, you will hear the difference there.
 

Mike OConnell

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No, I would not buy a turntable..... because I still use my late 70's vintage Toshiba direct drive turntable. I have replaced the cartridge and I am using a Grado Green. My local shop thought it would be an appropriate fit for the turntable. Basically, spending much more would be like putting a high-performance engine in a used Chevy entry level car. Lots of power, but no way to use it!

I do want to move the turntable from my bedroom receiver with in-wall speakers to my home theater, but I need to pick up a lower-cost (want to stay below $50) decent quality phono preamp for my Anthem D1.

Any suggestions? Anybody have any experience with these:

http://www.phonopreamps.com/tc750pp.html

Thank you,

Mike
 

Lee Scoggins

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Here's my view on the pros and cons of considering a turntable...

Pros for Vinyl Entry
**Great new music coming out.
**Some reissues are superb and the definitive version of an album.
**New quality audiophile masterings are currently focused on analog. Not sure how long this lasts.
**Most LPs simply sound better. Analog is a hirez format. Redbook CD is not.
**It's a lot of fun.
**You can find many gems sonically and performance wise for dirt cheap $.

Cons for Vinyl Entry
**It can be expensive.
**It is high maintenance.
**Redbook is sounding better these days.
**A lot of new recordings are digital original recordings.
**LP pressing quality is highly variable.
**You have to get up and change sides and make sure the stylus lifts at the end of a side. Of course, this forces you to listen to the record and not as wallpaper.

If you do go vinyl, please consider a good record cleaning machine. My VPI 16.5 has made a big difference in sound quality. :)
 

JeremyErwin

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I've got a Technics SL-B200 turntable. It needs a new belt, among other things, Probably a new cartridge, and I'd eventually need a pre-amp, because running it through a old receiver is a bit awkward. If I buy the replacement parts, is it going to sound half decent? Or will I be throwing good money after bad?

I've got more than 100 LPs that have not been played in years.
 

King Ghidora

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I was only suggesting using an old receiver for those who already had them lying around in a closet or an attic just waiting to be useful again. Phono pre-amps aren't that expensive. But right underneath my turntable I have at least 3 old receivers or pre-amps ready to do the job. I have lots of places to hide otherwise unused equipment too.

And cleaning vinyl is an important job that shouldn't be ignored. Even a small layer of dust can affect sound quality considerably. I'd have to look hard to find my vinyl cleaning equipment probably. IMO it's just not worth the trouble since I have 95% of my vinyl on CD's anyway. Some CD's do sound terrible compared to their vinyl counterpart. That would be my main reason for wanting to hear the vinyl versions again. Aqualung was mentioned before in this thread and I think it's a perfect example of vinyl sounding far better than CD because of bad re-mixing. But as the decades have gone by CD's have gotten much better in this department IMO at least on most albums.
 

King Ghidora

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I guess I missed out on buying any of that stuff from the loudness wars. I stopped buying rock CD's when I pretty much had all the classic rock stuff and everything since the 80's sounds like regurgitated crap from the 60's or just an excuse to annoy people with repetitive bass tones. Barbie music has no appeal for me and neither does imitation r&b when the real stuff was so much better.

I've become a musical hermit I suppose. The only new CD's I get are bluegrass but I mostly listen to one of the 2500 albums I already own. No loudness wars stuff for me.

Plus I have never released any of my material with brickwalling as the mixing method. I abhor it and I just won't do it. I get complaints about my stuff not sounding as loud as CD's people buy from stores but if they want that trash they're welcome to it. I prefer my productions to sound like they should sound instead of loud for loud's sake. I guess I'm just a holdout from an age long ago but even my bluegrass recordings get complaints because even that line of music has come to expect maximum loudness instead of maximum realism. It's easy to push any track to it's maximum if you don't mind forgetting dynamic range but it won't sound at all like it should sound if you do that. Yet I still get complaints from people who are used to buying CD's that sound loud. I've heard people say they have to turn the volume control up louder to hear my recordings. "Good" is what I should tell them in response but I usually say I'll try to make it sound louder the next time. But I'll be danged if I'm going to push every frequency right to the limit. If they want that they better find someone else to record their stuff.
 

FeisalK

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Lucia,

i think all along we've been discussing digitizing once, using good (better?) equipment to a hard disk in lossless format (FLAC, ALAC or WAV if HDD space is no issue). the ability to convert that to a format for your iPod is a by-product :)
 

Philip Hamm

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Wow. Just wow.:eek: This is so wrong on so many levels. LP has lots of limitations. Frequency response, distortion, signal-to-noise, etc. etc. etc. This post is indicative of a complete non-understanding of how digital recording works. I suggest doing a little research. Start here.
 

Lee Scoggins

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Philip,

Many of the limitations you cite have largely been eliminated by better design. These days a good quality table is equivalent soundwise to hirez digital. Tim De Paravicini, a noted audio designer, estimates that 24/384khz sampling would be required to match the quality of a good analog recording. Bob Ludwig believes that LP is equivalent to 100khz sampling, over twice the redbook resolution.

There are also limits to the Nyquist Theorem as it only addresses sampling for a continuous signal. Transients require more sampling than Nyquist suggests.
 

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