By the time I was old enough as a kid to buy music, cassettes and boom boxes were the thing and cd’s were just a couple years away. So I never got into vinyl.
Now, back into audio last few years, vinyl just seems like too deep a rabbit hole right now with digital so good and so much further for me to explore on that trail now. But maybe some day when I get older and have more time.
Interestingly, my younger brother (low 40’s) has had a $500 Audio Technica TT for 15 years, and now has about 500 LPs. He doesn’t have a high end system (B&W 20 year old speakers line below the diamond and just a top cuurrent Yamaha AVR). I talked him into getting a Mani phono pre at least.
Anyway, at Christmas I sent a Cambridge 851n streamer dac that I wasn’t using home with him to play with.
Went to visit him a few weeks back and brought one of my unused power amps (Edge W) with to swap in.
First we listened to his setup, and even with my more expensive 851n digital his TT sounded better through the AVR.
When we ran the 851n dac direct into the Edge W, bypassing the Yam, the digital pulled ahead. For some reason the TT through the Mani thru the Yam as preamp to the Edge W didn’t really click.
But anyway, to wrap this up he said for convenience he listens to 80% digital but when he is in the mood for analog the 20% of time he enjoys that most, but carving out the time to be in that mood is the issue