One of the great things about Vinyl
Is I find myself listening to recordings all the way through.
Rarely do that with CD's and/or streaming.
I think you have your priorities right! Clean records are much bigger improvement over a change in cartridge. If all vinyl magically came out of the sleeve ultimately clean, then even small cartridge changes would be apparent. Without clean vinyl, big cartridge changes are hard to hear. |
@oddiofyl @dogberry You are both right! I was fortunate to get on the record cleaning train as a young audiophile using a vacuum cleaning machine called a “Rec O Vac”. After inserting the album vertically into the machine, you turned it on and the machine rotated the record while very fine, soft bristles lifted dust out of the grooves as the dust was then vacuumed away. Because of using that machine, even my 70’s and 80’s LP’s sound great. Using now a MC cart. with a Microline stylus which rides deeper in the grooves than the more modest elliptical carts. of yore those albums are satisfying to listen to. Anyone remember the “Rec O Vac”? |
@hifiman5 --- I had a rec-o-vac for several years. Whenever I'd take a record off the shelf I hadn't played in a while I'd run it through the thing. And yes, It improved the sound in every way. Less groove noise. Better imaging and more intelligible lyrics...in particular more understandable baritones. Better instrumental timbres, especially massed strings. Less spitty sibilants. It raised an ungodly noise when it was operating but so what? The trouble is that the device was not quite as bulletproof as it could've been. I had to get it rebuilt twice. When It came time to rebuild it a third time there was nobody to go to for repair. I ended up donating it to the local Salvation Army. I hope somebody was able to make it work again. |
