Would you buy a turntable? - Page 4

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

That's good to know. I know several people who have the USB turntables and they love them. They aren't audiophiles and I personally haven't heard what their TTs or ripped files sound like.. I do like the idea of plug and play with them though.

I'm torn between getting something quick..something I can walk away from when I've ripped everything to my hard drive. But..I want everything to sound good. What would I do with a higher end TT once I went through all of my vinyl?

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

With this and a good analogue TT, I don't see how a cheapie usb TT could beat it. The secret is the RIAA equalization.

http://www.amazon.com/ART-USB-Phono-...4563745&sr=8-1

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

It's been a while but I've seen phono pre-amps for plugging into an input at a normal line in level. Or you could do what I'm doing. I'm keeping my old pre-amp/tuner for no other reason than it's got a phono input. I can run the tape monitor jacks into an input on my new receiver and essentially have a phono pre-amp available. I know it adds a whole box but I won't be using it often. If I did want to use it often I could hide it well enough to run a turntable through it without anyone knowing it was there. I actually have a bunch of old receivers I could do this with but the HK pre-amp/tuner I have wouldn't generate much heat or draw much current. Heck I still have an old receiver hooked up just so I can operate my cassette player by remote. It took some creative connections to do it but it works like a charm. I just turn it on to have control over my cassette deck. I haven't actually used my cassette deck in a long time though so it's likely going to join the turntable in the attic soon because I have limited hook ups available on my new receiver. I could just use my old pre-amp to feed the aux input on my new receiver and use the old remote to control which device it relays the signal for. At some point this gets a little ridiculous though.

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

Well of couure I'd by a turnable But the I'd have three

I already have two old soundesign turnable receivers both about 10 watts per channel... If i run them through efficeient speakers or even better a powered speaker system these not so little things can kick serious ass ...
which leads me to beleive soundesign receivers aren't really that bad if you run them through the right speakers and take good care ot them...

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

This is where a good stand-alone CD burner comes into play. I've copied literally hundreds of albums to CD from my 32-year-old Technics SL-1300 TT w/ Grado Red to a Harman Kardon CDR 26 burner with no time or trouble invested other than listening to the albums and finalizing the discs. I tried the computer method once. Never again. And I don't intend to replace this gem of a turntable anytime soon.

Greg

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

Yup. Great solution.

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

I think the point nowadays is to convert the LP into digital audio format on hard disk, playable through some component like the Soundbridge, Squeezebox, Sonos or Sooloos (in increasing order of cost)

With the fall in hard disk prices you could possibly get a terabyte for under US500(?) enough to house most peoples library of music in lossless (FLAC for example) format.

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

Right. As I've posted, the best turntable in the world run into a mini-jack on a regular consumer-grade motherboard built-in audio card is not going to produce very good results. I like the box that MarkMel suggested, and Greg's idea of a dedicated audio CD burner is a great way to get hi-fi quality analog to digital conversion as well. Something like my E-mu 1212m costs just a little more and is a lot more powerful.

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

Copying vinyl to CD-R to get better sound quality than CD: Try explaining that one to the alien invaders.

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

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

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

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.

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

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.

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

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.

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

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

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

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.

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

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.

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

mostly popular music CDs issued after the start of the loudness wars sound terrible

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

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.

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

I'm planning on purchasing this ( http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product...=1&topnav=&s=1 ) someday so that I can turn all my records into digital files. I have some great records that are not even available on cd that I would love to download into my ipod.

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

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

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

Wow. Just wow. 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.

Re: Would you buy a turntable?

So say you. Again. I don't buy it. Again.