Is Vinyl Worth It

The late Harry Pearson made this comment: "If you want to enjoy your digital, stop listening to vinyl."

As a person who has over 5000 vinyl albums in his collection and about 2000 CDs, I can say that to my ears vinyl is superior, especially from the point of getting you involved in the music from a soulful standpoint.

At this point, I listen to CDs for convenience ... and to vinyl for the music. I have a lot of mono jazz recording from the 50's. I can put Paul Desmond, June Christy and Lester Young right into the room by playing a 60 year old record that sounds absolutely amazing.

We had an audio group meeting a few days ago. It was a tribute to a audio buddy that recently passed away and was into vinyl almost exclusively so vinyl only. One of the guys later commented to me on the ticks and pops, discrete as they were, and how it made things unlistenable for him, just couldn't get past that aspect of vinyl. So there you have a reason by some to avoid vinyl in addition to the inconvenience. I myself am waiting for the day when I listen to an orchestral recording on digital playback and the strings sound as convincing to me as they do on a good vinyl system. There just seems to be more musical relevance and natural ebb and flow to the music but we all hear different and value different things. This is clearly less about the music than how it is presented as I also enjoy digital, it can be most involving but the two formats are different enough that what may be good enough for the goose is less so for the gander.

Although I have not lived with vinyl since my teenage record player days, I have listened to numerous megabuck vinyl rigs at shows (as much as 500k), and heard some of these rigs with vinyl and digital, and though the vinyl often sounded very nice, I have not yet had a religious experience.

I know what you vinylistas will say: show sound sucks, and I need to hear a good home set-up.

Well, not all show sound sucks, and if I haven't heard something that makes me say, "Ah, *now* I get it!" what would motivate me to undergo the hassle and expense?

Tubegroover,

There are some that can't get beyond the tick/pop situation.

A friend of mine several years ago tried to go whole hog with vinyl. He bought a Nott table, Plinius phono stage, Clearaudio cartridge and about 100 records. He lasted for about a month before he walked away from it all. He just couldn't handle ANY surface noise.

The silver lining is that I was able to pick up quite a few near mint records on the cheap....;-}}

Shakey

Dealing with the ticks/pops/surface noise/echos IMO is age dependent. Many audiophiles under 45 grew up with cassettes and then went on to cd's never becoming accustomed with vinyls shortcomings.