My Analog Journey - Opinions Sought

ghdprentice,

I am in a similar place as you are, except all of my gear is fairly modern TOTL CJ tube equipment. I too have a well appointed modern LP12 and it is sporting a Grado Aeon 3 cartridge. Although I have just North of 3K vinyl LP's my wife laughs that there are really on 50 or so in regular. The sound is wonderful. However, in the never ending search to get my digital (currently using Cary DMS 600) closer to that of my analog set up, I have earmarked $15K- $20K . That may sound lie a lot to some people, but my LP12 has that amount in it without the $6K cartridge included. I have two other TT's: a new Rega P10 with a Transfiguration Proteus D cartridge, and a Nottingham System Deck with a Koetsu RSP. At 64 years old with a progressing retina disease, I find it easier to have several TT's set up which I can swap in and out rather than changing a cartridge on a tonearm. From an ease of use, and an economics view point, digital gives a good bit more value. 

+1 for both posts from @ghdprentice .  My experience is identical to his and I could not have articulated it better.  I only use my vinyl rig when I have a recording not on Qobuz, which is not often, or if in a nostalgic mood to play a rare record like a red vinyl 78 of Enrico Caruso or a special edition Benny Goodman record.  

I've done serious seat-time with state-of-the-art digital source equipment (i.e.  streaming & CDs) and relatively affordable good quality analogue source equipment (i.e.  non-Mikey Fremer astronomically priced TTs; phono stages; carts; etc.) and continue to prefer well recorded & engineered vinyl or analogue sound over digital.  Like vinyl, digital recordings can be poorly mastered & engineered, as well, and streaming sources can vary quite a bit in sound quality.  So, when equalizing for such variables as much as possible (i.e.  comparing apples to apples, oranges to oranges, and using clean vinyl), my ears still prefer vinyl over digital.  This is certainly not to say that well sourced & recorded digital isn't as good.  it's just different.  To my ears, digital is almost too clean, too perfect.  It's missing something, something I find difficult to describe, a feel of realism or actually being there, at the musical performance.  This will seem totally paradoxical but maybe it's the absence of the feeling of ambient sound on vinyl, even though clean records on a good analogue system come from a totally black background.  I don't feel that with digital.  It's either sound or nothingness.  On the other hand, maybe it's just because my ears are children of the 50s & 60s and grew up with vinyl.  Maybe it's neuroaudiological conditioning.  At any rate, I listen to and thoroughly enjoy both digital and analogue realms.  Digital, of course, is far more convenient, especially when entertaining guests, and much less demanding of your time & attention (e.g.  flipping records, cleaning styli, dusting off records, cuing up tracks, etc.).  For those of you who disagree and much prefer digital over analogue, that's OK!  It's still a free country ... for now anyway.  VIVE LA DIFFERANCE!  After all, it's really all about the love of music, isn't it?

While I still have two turntables (cheap) I got rid of 90% of my vinyl years ago. I do however still have a CDT that I use every once in a while to listen to the 2600ish CD’s I still have. I do have about 2200 albums ripped on a NAS that I listen to every now and then,  but I am really getting lazy and streaming more and more. 

OP before I became involved on analog seriously. I bought good sacd players Marantz Sacd players SA 10 and Ruby . Thinking that sacd is very close to vynil? Not until I heard a very good analog set up to my friend house . He is using Lyra delis MC with SME 10 tonearm.I knew there is something special on vynil then that digital don’t have.i fell in love on vynil . I end up spending more than 20k for my 2 turntables and phono preamps and cabling.