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It costs me $100 a week to listen to vinyl

I know the math is obvious, but with the price of high-end moving coil cartridges averaging $5000.00 and with me averaging 20 hours a week of vinyl listening, I was disturbed to calculate that I am paying $100.00 per week for the privilege of listening to my own records?
I realise that doesn't include the depreciation on my equipment or electricity costs etc so please don't remind me of this?
How smug those who can bare digital must feel about this?
And how much worse for those committed to valve replacements in their pre and power amps?
How can we expect younger audiophiles with mortgages to pay, families to raise and education to provide for to afford the price of entry into an analogue system with such a potential maintenance impost?
I realise there are cheaper cartridges out there and the MMs are a bargain compared to the MCs, but once 'hooked' on vinyl, the desire to 'upgrade' is encouraged by the reviewers and the audio magazines continually announcing a newly anointed 'Kingpin' cartridge which is inevitably a moving coil with a price approaching the GDP of Namibia.
There seems to be no critical challenges to the assumed supremacy of MCs over MMs except for the lone crusade of Raul on this Forum?
Well I have taken the 'Raul challenge' and switched to a 15 year old MM cartridge which cost me $300. The 'running costs' of this are obviously a 'snip' compared to my $5000 MC but the best thing is the revelation that this moving magnet cartridge (and probably many more), are not only as good as some of the vaunted MCs in the market place, but better than most and sometimes by a considerable margin.
As Raul continues to implore us.........."try it, you may be surprised?"
128x128halcro
paulfolbrecht
603 posts
 
Quit listening to the reviewers. I think anyone who truly has an ear for acoustic music realizes that a < $2K vinyl setup with a <$500 (or even <$200) cart beats any digital there is, and can be entirely musically satisfied.

Get a 103 or 103R (with a suitable arm!) if you don't want a high "hourly rate" with your vinyl.

(My other hobby, or rather at this point perhaps I should say my other former hobby, was flying, where $100/hr for the experience is reasonable. For listening to music - hardly!)
chayro
2,998 posts
 
If we have any boat owners here - divide the total cost per year of ownership by the hours actually spent on the water. What do you come up with? Quite a bit.
halcro's avatar
halcro OP
2,664 posts
 
There is a rub, where can you find this stuff and be sure it is still in good nick?!
I don't think the cost of a really good re-tip for a MM cartridge involves nearly as much as for a MC?.........so to find a gem from the past and have it re-tipped should have it sounding like new?
axelwahl
788 posts
 
Hi Halcro,

re-tip an MM, ja now fine... I guess you go get a new cantilever insert --- at least in my part of the world.

Have done that to an e.g. SUMIKO Pearl and put the next better elliptical in it.
Sound? SUX, unless we are into lower Mid-Fi to really go save some bucks.

The trouble might be, that we (I, who else?) lost some know-how with these babies, and the reviews don't help much either. Just go check out those point system evaluations, AUDIO, Streo-Play, STEREO, that I know of. Top of the pops MM gets 80 out of ~110 and that's the exception!
So 80 points = 80s sound? I don't say it is so, but it sure makes folks go rather for some Mid-FI HO-MC in my experience, and a shame it may be ---- but COOL (-: ‘cause MM sux… yeah?

A sign of hope I see: Ortofon's new M2, where would that one come into it? $$$ ?

Axel
jaybo
4,478 posts
 
as a kid, i sold needles and cartridges(the days when record and music stores stocked them). our most exspensive cartridge was under 50 bucks, and yeah it was state-of-the-art. today i'll allow myself the splurge on occasion, but unless i'm going deaf, the finist mm's are still as good to me as the finest mc's, and way less costly and 'fussy'. cartridges may be the heroin of this addictive hobby.
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