For every one person who buys an LP 10,000 people buy a digital file.
Let's fix that. For every one person who buys an LP two people buy a digital file.
Vinyl LP Sales Hit New Highs in 2021, Surpassed CDs – Billboard
What is the “World’s Best Cartridge”?
I believe that a cartridge and a speaker, by far, contribute the most to SQ.
The two transducers in a system.
I bit the bulllet and bought a Lyra Atlas SL for $13K for my Woodsong Garrard 301 with Triplanar SE arm. I use a full function Atma-Sphere MP-1 preamp. My $60K front end. It is certainly, by far, the best I have owned. I read so many comments exclaiming that Lyra as among the best. I had to wait 6 months to get it. But the improvement over my excellent $3K Mayijima Shilabi was spectacular-putting it mildly.
I recently heard a demo of much more pricy system using a $25K cartridge. Seemed to be the most expensive cartridge made. Don’t recall the name.
For sure, the amount of detail was something I never heard. To hear a timpani sound like the real thing was incredible. And so much more!
This got me thinking of what could be possible with a different kind of cartridge than a moving coil. That is, a moving iron.
I have heard so much about the late Decca London Reference. A MI and a very different take from a MC. Could it be better? The World’s Best? No longer made.
However Grado has been making MI cartridges for decades. Even though they hold the patent for the MC. Recently, Grado came out with their assault on “The World’s Best”. At least their best effort. At $12K the Epoch 3. I bought one and have been using it now for about two weeks replacing my Lyra. There is no question that the Atlas SL is a fabulous cartridge. But the Epoch is even better. Overall, it’s SQ is the closest to real I have heard. To begin, putting the stylus down on the run in grove there is dead silence. As well as the groves between cuts. This silence is indicative of the purity of the music content. Everything I have read about it is true. IME, the comment of one reviewer, “The World’s Best”, may be true.
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@atmasphere , I agree! I by current music on LP all the time. There is plenty of money to be made on LPs but it is no where what it use to be in the 70's. My children love music. They turn me on to new music all the time like Black Midi. They have absolutely no interest in LPs. They represent the vast majority of young people. If I were a betting man I would bet LPs will be dead within 50 years. I won't be here to see it. I spin records because I have been doing it all my life from the age of 4 and like most humans I hate change. If I look at my own purchases it is about 50/50 LPs to digital files. What does that say? |
+1 Absolutely. The resurgence happened in response to the unending disappointment in the CD. But at last digital… both CD and more importantly streaming has reached equal or better (high Rez streaming) sound quality in many component combinations and will continue advancing. Without the sound quality advantage vinyl just becomes nostalgic.
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Well... The LP has continued to advance as well. QRP (Acoustic Sounds) sorted out that vibration was the primary cause of surface noise in LPs and so installed damping to reduce it- and makes vastly quieter LPs as a result, rivaling the noise floor of Redbook in that the electronics become the noise floor rather than the LP itself. Then there have been advances in amplifiers; before I sold off my LP mastering system I was really thinking of replacing the original mastering amplifiers (which were state of the art in their day) with some class D modules, perhaps our own, as they are more stable, more reliable, lower noise and lower distortion. Finally the real limitations of the LP are in playback, not record; tonearms and cartridges have continued to improve. So while this is all incremental, saying the LP doesn't have the sound quality is a bit of a stretch- its still got potential just as digital does. |
Dear @mijostyn : " my own purchases it is about 50/50 LPs to digital files. "
What does that say? , its says what you states.
Mijo, there are different contexts where any one could be rigth. Normally audiophiles aroun sites as Agon, wbt, ve, ak and the like bougth digital LP re-issues and some ( the smaller ) new realeases and normally we buy through: ed, md or as. You can go to all those sites and read that the people that buy LPs normally are re-issues. USA is only one of de world countries and belongs to one of five world continents. I want to put an example of wht'a happening in my country where exist around 35KK of young people and where just does not exist LP stores and the audio dealers you can count with the fingers of your hands and nothing more. The majority of those people not even know of the existence of vinyl and almost all use streaming to listen the MUSIC they like. You can see in the subway or in the street those young gentlemans listening MUSIC through they cell phones through apps as tiktok, spotify, prime amazon and the like.Do you think that in the countries of Africa exist " hundreds " of LP stores? however the KKK people there listen MUSIC through streaming/apps digital and you can go around other world Continents and you will see. Well the majority of the population in the world are those kind of people that does not cares about analog rig but only " listen " and they does in that way. Along that there are thousands of " hackers " that listen by free as many world plattforms where you can listen by free and no suscription at all. In that whole context my post is not false in any way. Period. Nothing is exactly as Billboard says.
In reality I don't care on that issue because from some time now, like it or not, digital is the King no matters what. R.
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