John1 nails it.
I've been buying music and building out my stereo system since I could ride a bike in the '70s. I migrated seamlessly from vinyl to CD's by the '90s and though I had a great turntable rig, I spent more and more money upgrading to higher and higher quality CD players (my speakers were Infinity RS1b's and later Genesis III's w/subs. By the '2000s I had put my turntable into storage and had not heard a record in at least a decade. I was definitely aware that digital sound was improving and that SACD's and hi-rez had really made huge strides in quality. Generally speaking I was happy with my by now all digital setup.
By around 2012 I began to notice vinyl records showing up in my local music stores and, probably for nostalgia's sake, I bought a few releases here and there-- and I set them aside to just enjoy the covers.
By 2013 I was still buying CD's but had 5 or 10 new vinyl records I'd collected along the way. My own original collection of vinyl (nearly 1000 titles) had been long ago put into (proper) storage.
So later in that year my wife asked me if I ever planned on playing any of my new vinyl records. I decided I should at least setup my turntable (SOTA Star Sapphire, Souther Triquartz arm, Clearaudio Veritas MC cart) and maybe do an A-B comparison on a couple of titles I had on both CD and vinyl. Daft Punk's Random Access Memories was one of them. I picked up an inexpensive (Musical Fidelity V-LPS) Phono Stage- my McCormack preamp had no phono input-- and set everything up, got my levels matched, sat my wife down beside me and asked for brutal honestly. First, we played a CD track off the album-- it sounded fantastic. Then I switched to the same track on vinyl. Our immediate, as in it only took 5 or 10 seconds, response was jaw-dropping. All of this musical information that we had apparently been missing just came flooding in. Soundstage became bigger, more focused. Bass gained an organic kind of musical authority-- it just sounded more real, more "there". And it was not a subtle thing. It was shocking. I was back on vinyl from that minute forward.
It is hard to put into words just how profoundly this experience effected me. It was like rediscovering how much better a real meal tastes compared to a fast food version of the same-- it was that obvious.
So yes, I do appreciate the beauty of wooden boats. Fiberglass just won't cut it for me anymore.
I've been buying music and building out my stereo system since I could ride a bike in the '70s. I migrated seamlessly from vinyl to CD's by the '90s and though I had a great turntable rig, I spent more and more money upgrading to higher and higher quality CD players (my speakers were Infinity RS1b's and later Genesis III's w/subs. By the '2000s I had put my turntable into storage and had not heard a record in at least a decade. I was definitely aware that digital sound was improving and that SACD's and hi-rez had really made huge strides in quality. Generally speaking I was happy with my by now all digital setup.
By around 2012 I began to notice vinyl records showing up in my local music stores and, probably for nostalgia's sake, I bought a few releases here and there-- and I set them aside to just enjoy the covers.
By 2013 I was still buying CD's but had 5 or 10 new vinyl records I'd collected along the way. My own original collection of vinyl (nearly 1000 titles) had been long ago put into (proper) storage.
So later in that year my wife asked me if I ever planned on playing any of my new vinyl records. I decided I should at least setup my turntable (SOTA Star Sapphire, Souther Triquartz arm, Clearaudio Veritas MC cart) and maybe do an A-B comparison on a couple of titles I had on both CD and vinyl. Daft Punk's Random Access Memories was one of them. I picked up an inexpensive (Musical Fidelity V-LPS) Phono Stage- my McCormack preamp had no phono input-- and set everything up, got my levels matched, sat my wife down beside me and asked for brutal honestly. First, we played a CD track off the album-- it sounded fantastic. Then I switched to the same track on vinyl. Our immediate, as in it only took 5 or 10 seconds, response was jaw-dropping. All of this musical information that we had apparently been missing just came flooding in. Soundstage became bigger, more focused. Bass gained an organic kind of musical authority-- it just sounded more real, more "there". And it was not a subtle thing. It was shocking. I was back on vinyl from that minute forward.
It is hard to put into words just how profoundly this experience effected me. It was like rediscovering how much better a real meal tastes compared to a fast food version of the same-- it was that obvious.
So yes, I do appreciate the beauty of wooden boats. Fiberglass just won't cut it for me anymore.