New user phono question. Comes with free story.

Justin,

I’d doubt you’ve harmed any of your records playing them a few times at 2g. But if the past owner was careless about that, what else was he not paying close attention to? If that cartridge has been run for hundreds of hours at 2g it probably isn’t performing too well any more. I don’t see the purpose in repeating the previous owner’s mistake and setting it back to 2g. The only real rule is the manufacturer’s recommendation.

I was going to point out to the CD fans that it’s possible to spend thousands on a CD player/DAC and still find that vinyl involves you more. I bought, after many expensive errors an Ayre C-5xe, their last multi-format disk player. It cost about 8kCDN in 2005, and it’s still the best CD/SACD player I’ve heard. But I choose to play records rather than CDs or SACDs. And at that time I was using an RP3 and a Shure V15 VxMR (maybe a quarter of the CD player's cost). That made me go full time back into vinyl. But then I saw you had proved it for yourself with your brother’s turntable.

I’d replace that cartridge if I were you. Something like a Nagaoka MP-110 will cost you $150 and should be enough to do the job. Buy a Spin Clean for $80 and use it. Those would be my recommended first steps and I’d want to know the results before spending a penny more of your money. We don’t know for sure if the rest of your bargain Sony is performing as it should yet.

OP,

Thank you for your kind words. If, for some reason you get into the Portland Oregon area, please contact me. I’d be happy to meet up. I am very jealous of where you live. I am very ashamed of being a US citizen. Much of my career was living internationally… apologizing for our politics and politicians. If I was younger, I would move to Canada or Northern Europe… or better yet a small island in the South Pacific.

But aside from where we live. Audiophiles are generally far between. Putting together a great system is not easy anywhere… although it does get easier in large metropolitan areas.

If I was younger, I would move to Canada or Northern Europe… or better yet a small island in the South Pacific

The french dropped nukes on some of those.

The digital source sounds better, as in WAY better. On digital, listening gives me that first date butterflies feeling every time, and I just want to turn it up, and up some more. On vinyl there is just less, less of everything…

Maybe just stay with the digital then?

I have an old TT, and it has been great and sounds stunningly good to me.
And it is a bit better than the iPad pushing the bits through a DAC.

it is so good, I’ve decided to rebuild it with a new motors controller, arm, and cart, etc.

Digital seems easier and cheaper, but I also read about people spending up on power conditioning and other things, that the TT does not seem to care about.

Basically I am not sure you can get better sound then digital, at some of the lower price points.

@ghdprentice   Your first post +1.  OP should stay digital.  He has limited resources and knowledge of record players.  His record player is poor and probably not well set up.  No wonder his present system can't match Amazon Music, although not being interested, I don't know the SQ of that.   He should check out the parameters of the Amazon offering and perhaps move to a better quality digital source.

Unless you already have a substantial vinyl collection you are way better off sticking to digital sources. Building a vinyl system that will compete with digital is expensive and time consuming. Vinyl is a PITA. Why so many of us love it (includes me) is a mystery. But with thousands of records I have little choice. My vinyl rig alone will cost all told $70,000. That is ridiculous.