Thank you all for your comments. It has been very helpful hearing folks different perspectives. And I realize that the vinyl vs. digital debate can escalate to an all out smackdown among Agoners/audiophiles. I guess I never owned a vinyl rig (pre-teen in the 1970s) and so I grew up on the digital sound and while I am acclimated to that sound, I have grown to learn and appreciate what digital does well and what it does not do as well over the past 3-4 years which is when i started down this crazy audiophile journey and as my playback system has improved over this time. I recognize that this may still turn out to be an exercise in futility as I may decide that I do not want to deal with all the "headaches" for some and "rituals" for others that comes with optimizing vinyl playback, or I may not be able to look past the surface level clicks and pops that is endemic to the format (even with the most assiduous cleaning systems/rituals). I get all that. But I guess this is what the quest for "better" sound reproduction is all about and that is why I wanted to ask peoples' opinions about the best approach to entering vinyl as opposed to specific equipment recommendations (of which there are many threads on Agon).
Having said that, on the equipment side of things, one of the things that is clearly more complicated in evaluating vinyl playback is the whole issue of component matching (table, tonearm, cartridge, phono, and phono cable) and how to compare among different vinyl rigs. This may make auditioning different vinyl rigs at local dealers a bit meaningless because a vinyl rig one auditions will be a function of whatever set-up is being used at a particular dealer (i.e., you could hear Brand A turntable at dealer X and you can walk away unimpressed with that audition for whatever reason and you will write off that Brand A tt when in fact it could have been a poorly matched cartridge to that tonearm or poorly matched cartridge to the phono stage being used, etc...). The dilemma of having so many variables that determine what the overall vinyl rig sounds makes the auditioning process kind of a hit or miss proposition. Any thoughts on how to try to adjust for this in the auditioning process, or is it just the nature of the beast and one has to rely on the dealers matching components to show off the best capabilities of whatever rigs they have on display? I don't know if I was clear on that but your thoughts would be very appreciated. Thanks.
