Is a vinyl rig only worth it for oldies?

Rauliruegas,

I'm with you. I know guys who still swear by running instruments through a certain piece of analogue outboard gear. You can get depth that is hard to get otherwise. Plugins cannot do this... Yet!

Dear Chadeffect: Thinking on " loud voice " there is something that maybe has more influence in why people do not like digital when they love analog, let me explain:

years ago when CD started the CDP were really " bad " and in our each one audio system we can easily aware of all the drawbacks of that digital technology. Those early and " primitive " DACs were part of the problem ( not the digital technology ".
The resolution of our systems were high and the CDs can't hide no one of its problems.

What happened through the years: digital technology ( DACs ) started to improve year after year, even today is almost month after month,. Today we have DACs on CDP with an incredible 32 bits on resolution with very high sampling too.

What's my take down here: that many of our audio systems has lower resolution against the today top digital technology and to really appreciate what today ( and in the future. ) digital can shows us we need better audio electronic designs wirth better : dynamic range, lower a lot lower distortions of every kind, wide flat frequency response, lower noise floor, lower crosstalk, faster response, etc , etc. All these could means that today the problem is not the digital technology but our each one system that was supersede by the digital technology.

We ( almost all ) live in an anachronism when we are using tube electronics ( IMHO an " arcaic " technology with no single advantage for digital. Please this is only an example and I don't want to open a window here, my words are with all respect to tube lovers and tube designers. ) that per se is a heavy limitation for today really high resolution: tubes can't cope with the today digital specs, even SS designs must improve about because several of them can't cope/mate with the digital advances.

Gentlemans, please think on that.

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.

Rauliruegas,

I completely agree. Even though I have fallen in love with an old SET for my playback!

In the past we had to cover up the harsh reality of the sound that came out of DACs at the time, never mind the quality of the recording/mastering etc.

The lastest DACs have a purity that needs no help. For Hifi purposes, I believe, even though I have slightly fallen from the path, that you should playback exactly what is on the source. i.e the system should add nothing.

Now I do realise that in practise some recordings need some "help", but good and great recordings need none. The problem is it is so subjective. Hense a site like this with many opinions on what is best. Let alone an understanding of what the record you are listening to really sounded like. As for most people they only ever heard it on a couple of systems which could be adding or taking away all sorts of elements.

Imagine listening to hip hop on a lowther with a 300b amp or even a quad 57 and quad 2. You would only hear half the record! So imagine having an opinion about the bass if that was your reference!

Raul, are you still designing a tonearm for analog playback? And do you now prefer digital to your analog and all of those MM cartridges?

Mapman, I got back into vinyl 9 years ago because I feared that high res digital would evolve slowly. Which it has and not for technology reasons. Big record companies drag their feet because as you know they are afraid of unauthorized copies and high res digital makes that easier. I believe that is one reason why redbook CD is a compromised format.

There is a lot of stuff I can buy now on vinyl that is not available via high res digital. Plus all the vinyl you can find used. 192k/24bit recordings are expensive and rare. I don't know what the sales figures for high res digital (IMO that would have to be at least 96k/24bit) are but I think it is even more of a nich market than vinyl. Honestly, if anyone knows please tell.

Its kind of useless to just talk about vinyl vs digital with out breaking it down. Getting into vinyl from scratch will cost some money which sucks since I think that keeps people out of it. But you don't have to be rich to put together a TT rig that will consistantly beat red book CD. But it will take money and time to get the most out of vinyl. And if you are determined a high level TT set up will distance itself from CD.

Going forward, there is no doubt that digital will surpass vinyl LP. But it will take a major shift on the powers selling music for that to happen. If that happened and there was a standard for 192k/24bit or higher then that would be a sea change IMO. IF you could buy that kind of quality at current CD prices it would all but kill the vinyl market. Its possible now but why does it not happen?

TD