great vinyl sound cost as much as great cd sound

The Scout is a great TT and has an awesome upgrade path to the Super Scoutmaster, which is in the same league as your emmlabs stuff for vinyl. IMHO, I think you would be hard-pressed to spend only $2500.00 for TT,arm,cart, and Phono stage and get equal resolution as the emmlabs. I am willing to be proven wrong, and I hope someone else can recomend otherwise.
But I would persue the aquisition of the Scout, and start building an analog rig around it...upgrading pieces as finances allowed. You will not be disapointed with a good quality vinyl rig!

I just got into vinyl, and I'm very pleased. It's no question for me, given a record and a CD, the record will sound better. Period. I have the same recording on CD and on vinyl from Phillips, the record sounds better. Both formats have advantages and disadvantages, it's all about trade offs. But from an absolute sound perspective, records sound better.

I can't say I've heard the EMM gear, however, dont they convert PCM to SACD and then do the DA conversion? I think the new Teac Esoteric converts SACD into PCM and then does the DA converstion. Sounds like it can go both ways and be successful. I haven't bought into the SACD/DVD-A format so I really can't comment on sound quality here. Just an observation.

A record player will open a larger selection of music for you to choose from. If you get a clean record with a good recording, then the sound will be out of this world if you are use to CD sound. Give it a try so you can hear for yourself. My CD transport is rarely used these days.

I, too, own the EMM Labs CDSD & DCC2. I think you would spend $2500 on just the WIRE to hook up your vinyl rig- tonearm cable, interconnect for phono stage to DCC2, power cord for phono stage. The actual total cost to add vinyl playback is very high, if you include everything you need. From time to time I consider getting back into serious vinyl playback. To equal or better the EMM Labs combo in the analog realm would, IMHO, cost in excess of $30K at retail. Turntable- $10k, Phono Stage- $10k, Tonearm- $3K, Cartridge- $4k, Wire- $3k, Accessories- $1k. Of course, you can assemble a listenable vinyl rig for far less than $30k, but I think it would take $30k MINIMUM to beat the EMM Labs gear. I know several EMM Labs owners who have well in excess of $50k invested in their vinyl playback systems and, if the truth were to be known, probably listen to their digital more often. I ADORE great analog playback and definately PREFER SUPERLATIVE ANALOG to digital, but the high price of admission, the inherent inconsistancies of vinyl playback and- to a lesser degree- the software duplication and inconvenience (no remote control) keeps me from jumping back in.

If I spent that much on a digital rig, I woundn't want to know that vinyl was better, lol. Seriously:

Maybe I'm ignorant in the realm of high$$$ esoteric digital playback, but it took literally *seconds* to hear that vinyl was better than any digital rig up to $3500 I've heard in my home, with qualifications. I have a VPI Scoutmaster with Dynavector 20xL, a MuFi A308 Amp with inboard phono stage, Vandy 3A sigs, and Audioquest cables with the little battery packs. I also sprung for the VPI record cleaning machine, an absolute must.

To be precise, I only listen to used Classical, which tends to be better pressed,mastered and better handled. People typically condescendingly refer to vinyl as "laid back" and "warm," which is true, but it's more than that: what stunned me right off was the front to back space, the sense of a hall, (environmental cues), the quickness, the detangling and clarity of textures, such as simultaneously plucked low harp and string bass, and--for the most part--the explosive dynamic range, even on good recordings back to '58. With the record cleaning machine, about 98% of my records are CD quiet. For the first time I've listened to the vinyl counterparts of CDs I've owned since the '80's and heard things I've never heard previously. Shostakovich sounds like a different composer. Solti breaths more.

To be fair to PCM, I've been delighted to find that digital records sound better than their CD counterparts as well, esp. the early London/Deccas. Digital Lps were pressed up until '88 as far as I've found.

I earnestly urge you to take a listen to vinyl if you like Classical. I can't speak for pressings and recordings of other genres, so I won't. I've never enjoyed my music more, and I haven't even purchased an outboard phono stage yet.

Classical music was my driving factor for my turntable. I was really tired of hearing Classical on CDs, and on top of that, selection of classical music is no where near what is available on vinyl.

I use to wonder if vinyl would top my expensive digital front end, until I heard a vinyl rig with a familiar recording I had on CD. There was no comparison, and the vinyl rig was very modest using a vintage turntable and an Ear phono pre ($1200 retail).

Once I actually heard a record played (and it was really nice to hear a recording I had on CD and was very familiar) it was no question, a turntable was in my future. I thought I would start out with a modest turntable, but I ended up going half way up the mountain. I did go for a vacuum platter which is really nice, especially for warped records which play fine now.

On top of that, I've purchased so many used LPs for several dollars a piece that are just amazing recordings. If you get into vinyl, don't forget about getting a record cleaner, this will be important if you want to start buying used records.

CD definately has advantages (primarily convenience at the cost of sound quality) too. There are bad sounding records just like there are bad sounding CDs. But what a turntable does for me is open up a much much larger selection of music than limiting myself to the CD format.

As for SACD or DVD-A, this is even a smaller subset of music than Redbook CD. Granted the sound is better than CD, but how much music is there available? And has Sony dropped SACD all together? I don't know.

What's really on my mind is are we going to see the High Definition video formats go through an ugly battle (BlueRay vs HD-DVD) and both formats fail just like SACD and DVD-A? Let's hope the industry learns from their mistakes.