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Would you buy a turntable? (1 Viewer)

FeisalK

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technically, you are right - resolution is applicable when discussing a format that breaks up analog sound into pieces. the smaller, and greater number of pieces = the higher the resolution.

what if the sound wasn't broken up in the first place...?


USB turntables - the ones in existence right now are somewhat below par.
 

King Ghidora

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I still have a decent turntable from the old days and about 100 albums that survived in playable form. Albums sound great for the first 10 times you play them but I don't care what kind of equipment you have or how well you take care of the vinyl (which was a chore btw) the very act of dragging a needle around a vinyl groove is destructive to the sound quality in short order. The only albums that I still have are either collectibles or albums that I recorded to cassette immediately after buying them and only played them again if my cassette failed for some reason.

At first I was disappointed with the sound of CD's but they have improved exponentially since the early days of digital. And anyone who thinks that albums were always great sounding should talk to someone from the recording industry in that era and ask them about what it was like trying to get a good pressing that sounded the way it was supposed to sound. Digital may have lacked a lot in the beginning but today it exceeds the quality of vinyl IMO and that's just regular CD's.

I'm sure vinyl would have improved also if it had remained the mainstream media it once was but it hasn't. I suggest that anyone interested in going back to vinyl listen to a few examples from the 1960's. Yes there were big strides in quality in the 70's but they still lacked the detail and tone quality of today's digital products. And I'm talking about when they were brand new. Try listening to any album that has been played 50 times or more and you'll think the technology must have been popular in the stone age.

BTW I recently upgraded my receiver and now I don't have a phono input. I kept my old receiver just to use as a phono pre-amp. I'll keep it in the attic with my turntable so I can play my vinyl if I ever feel the need again which gets less likely all the time.

Vinyl is almost strictly for scratch artists now IMO. Yes it could sound great when new but it could also sound really bad when new and it almost always sounded really bad after you played your vinyl a few dozen times. I could notice a difference after one dozen times.
 

King Ghidora

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Wish I could say that about the re-mastered version of Aqualung I bought on CD. It is far inferior to the original CD and the vinyl.

BTW I would have agreed with Neil Young when CD's first came out but that's been a long time ago now. The problems of the early generation CD's are all gone now IMO. The sound is not thin like it used to be. It's just as full as the vinyl of old albums and far more full on newer recordings. For one thing there's no way you can play vinyl with the level of bass a CD can produce because it would skip all over the place. Heck I can make my CD's skip all over the place when I want to with the level of bass it's possible to produce from CD's (I do have a seriously powered system I guess but that kind of bass is common these days if you're willing to look for it). That alone adds a huge degree of advantage for CD's. No vinyl I ever saw could do that because it was so subject to skipping. I did see some systems that would produce the bass if you recorded your vinyl to tape first but of course you're losing substantial sound quality by doing that.
 

Tony J Case

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I wouldnt do the USB turntables. I'd go with something like the Audio-Technica AT-PL120, some extension RCA cables and a copy of Audacity. It requires a bit more running around getting everything set up, but it's easy and quick to dump records to my hard drive. The PL120 is a great turntable, well worth the extra money above and beyond the ION usb turntables.
 

Lee Scoggins

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This and Icky Thump are too notable new releases that are reference quality or close to.

Also good is Donald Fagen's Morph the Cat which has some of the best bass I have ever heard.
 

Jamey K

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I'd like to have one to burn off the titles I have that will never be released or that the record companies won't. My prime example is Atlanta Rhythm Section's awesome live double LP.

In my band days, we ran across musicians bands who had their own 45's or LP's done and we would exchange records with them. I have a lot of those from people who never got signed and I never saw again. I'd love to have those on CD and in my ipod.
 

Philip Hamm

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Unless you have a pro audio quality sound card with truly hi-fi analog to digital conversion, you'll probably get noticably better sounding digital audio files from a USB model than even the best analog model ever made going through the minijack line in on your sound card. I use an E-Mu 1212m audio card which allows up to 192/24 recording. I haven't authored any stereo DVD-Audio discs yet but I could if I wanted to.
 

KurtEP

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Sounds reasonable. I've tried ripping vinyl a few times using a fairly decent turntable and receiver combination (basic ProJect TT and Marantz 2225) and my the minijack on my laptop, but the results were not impressive by any means. It did give me a way to listen to a few otherwise unobtainable albums in the car, though.
 

Lee Scoggins

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Be careful with some of the cheaper USB tables as they don't sound so hot in my experience. Better to invest in a budget audiophile table like a entry Rega or ProJect and put the analog inputs into a sound card on your PC or Mac.
 

Jamey K

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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?
 

King Ghidora

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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.
 

Raymond lee Leggs

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

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...
 

Greg Bright

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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
 

FeisalK

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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.
 

Philip Hamm

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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.
 

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