Going SACD or analog?

Marakanetz,

I envy you being able to find near mint or new vinyl for an average of $5. My experience is that desireable recordings by preferred artists in near mint or new condition are a minimum of $10 excluding shipping costs. Please share with us your source(s) for used vinyl.

Patrick,
I usually go for records in downdown NYC or I know a few places in Brooklyn and Queens.
I've established my following classic rock collections of Jethro Tull $4/per album; Yes $2 per album, Led Zeppelin $3 per album, Dire Straits $2.50 per album, Roxy Music and its members solos $2 per album... You're not going to beleive but I've grabbed the Metallica albums and singles for as low as $2 per piece that looked basically brand-new from garage sale but due to my age I had to sell it on ebay right the next day after I bought them :*). I thought that I would live them for myself to listen to it again for a while but I realized that I couldn't stand for 15 min to listen to it. They sounded superb on my Michell.

Progressive rock I've acquired in Germany along with the bunch of sophisticated electronics, european jazz-rock for the average of $6. Please note that German pressings in general are superior to US since they produce less noise and more clarity.

There are some original albums in my collection that only a few hundreds of copies were made. Some of them never released on CDs. Most of these albums will die with me or live after me and will never be sold.

So whenever you'll be in NYC just shoot me a note and I'll tell you a few different places where to sweep the cheap and mint records maybe we'll meet than on some of these stores. Or the best thing you can do right now is to give me a list of wanted artists and I'll bring you the pricing in NYC and if you're agreed I'll buy them and ship them to you.

In my opinion you are going to need to purchase half speed 180 gm masters or better to get the full benefits of analog over SACD. Standard vinyl, while very good at times, is not, again in my experience, going to outerform SACD at least to a significant degree; given the hassles.

A friend of mine who is into vinyl almost exclusively pays upwards of $50.00 plus and sometimes even north of $150 for high quality vinyl. Even then some of those he has to send back because of quality issues. He goes through a pretty rigorous cleaning method before he ever plays them as he is a very detail oriented individual. Even he complains about the difficulties in maintaining and finding good quality viny.

I have listened to his system and good quality vinyl does sound excellent, admittedly out performing SACD in most instances. But standard vinyl simply isn't there especially considering the hassles.

Again just my opinion

Chuck

Alberporter, I have no desire to have this as a saga of digital vs. analogue, tt vs. CD, and on and on. The question posed by the gentleman was put as if he were at a crossroads. My answer to him was not to look at it this way and to keep CD playback even if he chooses to get a tt. I see nothing ballistic is what I said. Granted I have never heard anything close to the expensive equipment you have, so I may have no idea how gentle your set-up might be on the fragile grooves. Insofar as a cleaning machine, which was one of the suggestions made by another poster, granted dirt and grunge in the grooves is not a good thing, but the groove once damaged never heals, unlike biological systems. The gentlemen here was not asking what to buy for 50K but with 3k, preamp included. This should give very good playback capability if he buys in the used market and if his purchases are carefully thought out. In closing, yes, I find that a noisy record is not enchantment, ticks and pops break the spell for me, and I find it disingenuous when people do not mention the shortcomings of vinyl when someone too young to remember (I presume here) when it was all that was available inquires as to taking the tt plunge, and even more so when the person intends to do away with CD altogether. I take good note of your admission that at least thirty percent (30%) of you record library is noisier than CD or SACD. It is very hard to embarrass me BTW. I take you at your word that your record playing equipment is topnotch. At this stage SACD is not a substitute for CD. At least an SACD player can play CDs, which the last time I checked is not the case for a turntable. Let's not make any of this personal. Good day.

The postings following mine say everything that needs to be said about the performance and value of LP.

It is clear that many others at this site, who like me, own both digital and analog find the LP a superior format.

My comments to iloxi@att.net did not discourage him from enjoying his CD collection. I advised him to follow his attraction to analog, advice that would give him a wider range of content to choose from and an opportunity to decide what made him happy.