best 'affordable' turntable with moving coil cart

04-13-09: Richmon
I really need to spend alot more time with a turntable, cause the difference between that 50K Lp system and my humble rig was not noteworthy. Maybe a longer audition in my home will reveal this proported superiority of analog over digital.

You may not hear significant differences in "critical listener" mode. I find that the biggest differences between CD and LP are in how they make me *feel*, not in the identifiable sonic differences in A/B comparisons.

The differences in digital and analog is best demonstrated by the shift in listening habits since the onset of digital in the late '80s. Popularity of the great storytelling vocalists has been replaced by the mimicry of Jessica Simpson and the vocal gymnastics of Mariah Carey and the like. Groups with a musical message who could write songs and play instruments have largely been replaced by pop-synth, sampled beats, rap, and hip-hop. Classical music, which suffers worst with what red book does to the sound of bowed strings, dropped from a respectable 5% to a near unmeasurable market share.

People gravitate to what sounds good on the medium at hand. By that standard, red book and below doesn't convey subtlety well, and LPs--the era of Sinatra, Bennett, the Beatles, Heifetz, Rubinstein, and Horowitz--did it particularly well. It's boom & sizzle vs. the music that resides between the bits.

Just stumbled onto this almost 7 year old thread of mine an thought I'd report back. I ended up buying a Music Hall MMF7 after a short time with a free B&O turntable.

I rarely play CD's anymore, almost exclusively listen to vinyl, way more fun, toe tapping and engaging. Critical listening is in my rear view mirror, I just enjoy the warm sound of vinyl way much more. Having access to cheap vinyl is a big piece of this, I live in an area with record shows and vinyl shops galore so I'm constantly picking up new to me lp's.
Next stop will probably be a VPI prime with an ART-9 cartridge, there's not a speck of regret re-immersing into vinyl.

Really glad to read that it worked out for you. Your experience has some similarities to mine. In 2007 I had gotten to the point where I was going to go all-in for HD digital or drop it for vinyl. At the time I didn't have a turntable, but I had an LP and SACD of the same direct-to-disk recording of the Buddy Rich Big Band. I'm very familiar with Buddy's sound as I'd seen him live five times and had several recordings of his band. 

I took the SACD and LP to my local high end store, and I was able to play both disks through an all-Linn system I'd never be able to afford, sourced from a 5-figure Linn SACD machine and a Sondek turntable. Of course, the SACD sounded very good, dynamic, detailed, low noise, etc. But when I switched over to the LP, the SACD sounded bleached and threadbare by comparison. It wasn's subtle, and the effect was immediate and very apparent. 

Within days, after listening exclusively to digital for 20 years, I bought my first turntable in 31 years. I started with a couple of good budget cartridges--Ortofon OM20 and Shure M97xE. I started hitting thrift shops, used record stores, and their bargain boxes. It became easy and cheap to acquire entire discographies of Steely Dan, The Police, and many more. Many of my favorites are 99-cent specials.

For six straight months I didn't ever listen to one digital file, whether CD, SACD, DVD-A, or HD download. To this day, nearly 10 years later, I listen to vinyl exclusively at home. 

Since adding the turntable, the 2-channel living room system it sources has grown from a modest nearfield system to handwired PTP all-tube line and phono stages, a 200 wpc mosfet amp powering a pair of Magnepan 1.7s augmented by two subwoofers. My cartridges include an Audio Technica AT150Sa (Shibata stylus), a Shelter 201, and an Audio Technica HOMC mono cartridge, each mounted to Jelco or Yamamoto headshells. I now have over 1500 LPs, most culled from thrift shops and used record stores. I also have several audiophile reissues that knock my socks off.

I get no end of pleasure from it, and spinning two or more records invariably puts a smile on my face for the rest of the day. A 4-hour listening session has the same effect for the rest of the week.

I rarely play CD's anymore, almost exclusively listen to vinyl, way more fun, toe tapping and engaging

Glad to hear you have embraced vinyl again.  Like you, this is my go to medium for 95% of my music listening.  Not necessarily because it sounds better but because it sounds different.  And I make a much more emotional connection to the music that's gets the toe's tapping that digital seldom would. 

Thanks for the excellent suggestions. Originally I was considering a VPI Scout or MMF9.1, but reading others accounts of their re-entry into vinyl, it seems many are disaapointed so I thought I'd go slow and start cheap and see where it leads

So I guess all those people you sited 8 years ago were wrong.  Sounds to me like your ready for a VPI now.

Paraneer wrote:

Glad to hear you have embraced vinyl again. .... Not necessarily because it sounds better but because it sounds different. And I make a much more emotional connection to the music that's gets the toe's tapping that digital seldom would.

The way I put it is, "I'm not going to get into an argument about which sounds better, but I know that analog *feels* better. As with your "emotional connection," spinning vinyl puts a smile on my face and a bounce in my step. And that emotional connection and lifting of spirits--isn't that a prime function of music?I'll spin vinyl for as long as I have the spare time. With digital, it's often a relief when I'm done and turn it off.