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Is a vinyl rig only worth it for oldies?

I have always been curious about vinyl and its touted superiority over digital, so I decided to try it for myself. Over the course of the past several years I bought a few turntables, phono stages, and a bunch of new albums. They sounded fine I thought, but didn't stomp all over digital like some would tend to believe.

It wasn't until I popped on some old disk that I picked up used from a garage sale somewhere that I heard what vinyl was really about: it was the smoothest, most organic, and 3d sound that ever came out of my speakers. I had never heard anything quite like it. All of the digital I had, no matter how high the resolution, did not really come close to approaching that type of sound.

Out of the handful of albums I have from the 70s-80s, most of them have this type of sound. Problem is, most of my music and preferences are new releases (not necessarily in an audiophile genre) or stuff from the past decade and these albums sounded like music from a CD player but with the added noise, pops, clicks, higher price, and inconveniences inherent with vinyl. Of all the new albums I bought recently, only two sounded like they were mastered in the analog domain.

It seems that almost anything released after the 2000's (except audiophile reissues) sounded like music from a CD player of some sort, only worse due to the added noise making the CD version superior. I have experienced this on a variety of turntables, and this was even true in a friend's setup with a high end TT/cart.

So my question is, is vinyl only good for older pre-80s music when mastering was still analog and not all digital?
solman989
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rauliruegas
13,103 posts
 
Dear Lowrider57: I'm a music lover and I still enjoy my analog set up but I'm not talking of what we like or dislike but more what is " right " against what is " wrong ".

IMHO we can't cover up the sun one " one finger ", we have to understand what happen in each one of our analog rigs during playback and IMHO what happen there is that those " " hundreds " links where the signal must pass degrade distort colored the cartridge signal where in de digital medium does not happen in that huge way.

The analog LP medium IMHO is not only imperfect ( nothing is perfect not even digital. ) but extremely faulty during playback.

Anyway, like all of you I'm still enjoy it.

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,407 posts
 
I tend to agree with Raul's latest stated position on both digital and vinyl.

DIgital signal processing is much more flexible and accurate in general than analog. I doubt anybody familiar with both technologies in detail could dispute that? CD redbook specifically was a compromise format but one that was well thought out and is now quite mature and very well executed for the most part these days. The potential for digital audio is wide open from a technology perspective. What happens will mostly be determined by the usually open market business drivers as determined by what people want and are willing to pay for.

On the other hand, the 331/3 vinyl format may have some untapped potential still as well that can be realized still by modern technology, but most of what occurs here will be quite expensive and not to far removed from a laboratory experiment in terms of complexity and cost and is not likely to find a wide market, especially as digital continues to evolve.

HEy, look, I'm an old time vinyl record playing lover, but the facts are facts. Some things continue to progress due to the value proposition and some do not. BEtween digital and vinyl, guess which one will continue to progress in a manner that works well for most? In many cases, the gap has already been closed between 331/3 vinyl and digital and digital is obviously continuing to move ahead at warp speed while vinyl is barely moving on the grand scale of things.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,935 posts
 
Hi Mapman, I can't agree with you on the 'laboratory experiment' comment. We have a cutting lathe that we set up with the stock electronics, then we substituted a variety of amplifiers and did the same cut with each of them.

You can take that lacquer and thus hear the difference between the amps on any system. We are now using our own amps that we modified for this purpose (the mods were only to make the amplifier easier to use with the cutter and were very slight).

It was easy! And also an advancement- we now have the world's first transformer-less vacuum tube cutting system.

If you were to talk to Acoustic Sounds, you would find that they have found a variety of ways to improve the pressing machines as well. These are all easy changes, the only reason you don't see more people doing them at various plants is that they are too busy to take the gear out of service!
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,407 posts
 
Hi Ralph,

Glad you responded. I was thinking of this very initiative that you have mentioned prior.

A laboratory, whatever it's actual form, is wherever innovation takes place. That is what it seems to me you are doing in attempting to push the edge of what is possible with vinyl and I can easily see how it would well be successful.

The next step is to take a product to market and watch the market grow.

I think there is a niche market still obviously for new and better vinyl recordings and gear capable of playing it. It may well transition out of the "laboratory" stage and become a success. I truly hope it does, and might even set the benchmark for the immediate future sound quality wise in some regards, but there is no chance of vinyl winning the race over the long term, right?

Obviously its up to the OP who wondered and others to determine in the end for themselves whether a vinyl rig is worth it to them or not for new things in addition to for oldies.....
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,935 posts
 
but there is no chance of vinyl winning the race over the long term, right?

Not sure about that, and right now, I'm not sure that the major labels think that either. I think they are tired of putting out CDs and then not being able to sell their stock as the download thing has really hurt them. So they have been turning to LPs as something they can sell that has a little more immunity. Its funny, in 1985 most of the labels were saying that they would be done doing vinyl by 1987; here we are 25 years later...

So as a result finding music on vinyl these days is the easiest its been in years. BTW 1993 was the year of the least vinyl production.

Now if they can come up with a digital format that denies duplication we might see digital experience a resurgence. But right now the LP industry is a growth industry and any player in it has as much work as they can handle.

I had arguably the best digital system made (Stahltek, $72,000) in our room at RMAF. The designer was there. I played him a cut on both the digital (192KHz 24-bit) and LP. He simply turned to me and said 'Digital has such a long way to go...' He was not mad- he loves analog, and I think its that pragmatic approach that is why he makes the best digital.
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