Digital is far better than vinyl

On the one hand, it takes me 45 minutes, 55 seconds to listen to a 45 minute long CD. That’s if the CD has been put away properly in its alphabetical position and I can readily find it. It takes me 51 minutes to listen to a 45 minute long vinyl record. That includes removing the record from its jacket, de-ionizing, cleaning, cueing the tonearm, taking the preamp off mute and jumping into my seat before the music starts. And I hope that I don’t nod off at the end of the playing side of the record just to be jolted out of my slumber by the loud "CER-CHUNK, swap, Car Chunk" when the stylus drops into the holding groove. Even better these days, I can stream for hours with my iPad in my lap never getting up out of my chair. And if I nod off, I wake up to some strange song I have never heard that Roon has selected for me.

So for an old guy like me, digital has its benefits. On the other hand, vinyl still rocks. Nothing better than listening to music while watching the tonearm bob up and down in the warm glow of tubes.

“Nothing better than listening to music while watching the tonearm bob up and down in the warm glow of tubes.”

@tonywinga

I am curious, do you turn off tubes when streaming music?

I can't.  My DAC has 8 vacuum tubes and my Linestage preamp has 6 vacuum tubes.  My phono preamp has the same 6 tubes.  Even my CD Transport has vacuum tubes.  I'm proud to say that my music server is simply a faceless computer but using a Keces power supply with an OLED display.  

I know, I must seem like a Neanderthal to some.  However, all but a couple of my lights in the house are solid state (LED) and I haven't had a vacuum tube TV in over a decade.  That's something.

I have a fun story.  When I was 18, I worked at the railroad yards in Indiana the summer before college.  This was 1976.  I was mowing grass and stopped at this shack near the hump to use their restroom.  The hump is how the train cars are sorted.  A locomotive pushes the cars up the hump and then the cars are cataloged and coast down the hill to a giant mass of tracks where they are switched to new trains being built.  It's a hub for sorting the train cars to their next destination.  Anyway, this shack I found housed an analog computer that used RADAR to read the speed of the railroad cars coasting down the hump and apply brakes accordingly.  I walked in and first saw a large room full of wet cells (batteries).  The main room was maybe 20x30.  A guy was sitting at a desk at one end.  The other end had a small meter reading miles per hour in front of windows looking at the hump and the cars rolling down.  On both sides of this room were banks and banks of chassis full of vacuum tubes- hundreds of tubes.  This giant room held the computer whose one task was to control the speed of the train cars.  I commented to this guy that he must stay busy changing out vacuum tubes.  He said he hadn't had to change a tube in 15 years.  The tubes were fed a constant DC voltage from the wet cells and apparently had little stress.  

One of the coolest things I have seen.  The railroad yards had some fascinating technology back in the day.

@tonywinga 

That’s quite a story, thanks for sharing. I do miss the tube glow but not the cost of tweaking with highly sort after tubes :-)