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goodbye to vinyl. . . . grr ------ longish rant

Ever since i got into hifi (which, admittedly wasn't too terribly long ago), i have been one who appreciates the sound of a good, pristine vinyl pressing played on a nice high-end rig. i love the fullness of the music, the lack of glare and grain, the ritual of putting the big black disc and flipping it after 28 minutes or so. over time, my rig got more and more expensive (and better sounding) and my vinyl collection has only marginally grown.

i'm currently using a teres 265, sme arm and VDH colibri cartridge and i've never heard anything sound as nice. ever.

so, where's the problem?

a few things:

one - the modern music i listen to is not too terribly often released on vinyl. and when it is, i usually have to import it from the UK. imagine what bulk rate shipping across the atlantic does to vinyl. it may have sounded good once, but once the postal service is done with it, i have an oversized frisbee to trow to my dog or an uncanny reproduction of bacon being cooked if i actually put the needle to it. (assuming it will even track with all of the warps in it) now, this would be ONE thing if it only occured with the few albums i order overseas, but i would expect a company like clssic records to have better better QC than a mom and pop shop in liverpool. wrongo. two $39+ records were in lousy condition. not warped, just nasty . . . with a film on them. the vpi did not help at all. i am ending up buying 2 copies of everything i buy - one vinyl and one digital. the vinyl one in hopes of a good pressing and the digital one because i never actually get a good pressing of the former.

two: a good deal of what i like consists of stuff like the velvet underground, david bowie, lou reed, iggy and the stooges, etc. the re-releases of all of these sound way worse than the remastered cd's. so, logically i should get original pressings of the lp's for good sound, right? wrong. keep in mind the bands i'm talking about. 90% of all who listened to them in the 60's and 70's were people like me - ie can't take care of their software. many of them did more drugs than lou, iggy, and david combined. i swear that if you scraped the film off of one of my used lou reed lp's and smoked it, you'd be higher than nick nolte on an LA freeway. nasty. so, after purchasing these, scraping my stylus and sanitizing my room - i end up listening to the cd remasters and loving them. oh, and don't even ask me about the copy of the moody blues' "on the threshold of a dream" i bought once here on the 'gon. i wouldn't let my dog's mouth come near that thing.

3. - why is it that when albums are released on vinyl they are sometimes mastered from the 16/44 source?!? hey, let's mix the worst of BOTH formats! and why do you sometimes have to purchase and open the damn thing to find out?!? and why don't they state on the outside whether or not they'refrom the analog master? when i bought wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot on vinyl, i couldn't wait to put it on my table. imagine my surprise when it sounded (gasp) nearly IDENTICAL to the CD, only *not as good!* i checked the liner notes. it didn't say *anywhere* what it was sourced from, but believe you me, the vinyl pressing - whatever the source - was sonically inferior to the cd. another $19 wasted. i wouldn't be so upset if it weren't so common and if i didn't know that it could be any better. my LP pressings of the SMITHS' catalogue not only obliterates the CD counterparts, they're (depending on the album, mind you) some of the better sounding things i have. and my miles davis kind of blue. and my other brilliant pressings which make this all the much more difficult to do.

anyhow, my vinyl collection is no longer growing, due to my fear of lousy pressings. my cd/sacd collection is growing steadily as digital technology keeps getting better and better and i find that i have twice as much money tied up in my analog rig as i do my digital, which leads me to another burning analog question - why do you have to spend twice as much on a vinyl rig to make it sound better than a digital one? don't get me wrong, it can sound better, take this for instance - my brother has a $250 cd/sacd player and about a $600 turntable rig. i'd rather listen to the digital. why? it sounds better. now, my analog set-up sounds beter than my resolution audio opus 21, but not by the margin it should at over twice the price. and sacd?!? holy crap! the difference between the vinyl and sacd is barely audible. this is in NO way meant to be critical of vinyl playback, but an SCD-1 (borrowed) sounds so analog that, aside from the low noise-floor, i would have guessed it was my turntable playing.

so, i've reanalyzed my situation and realized that, given my situation, it doesn't make sense to have my money tied up in an expensive analog rig anymore, when i am more satisfied with digital at the moment.

so, i'm giving up the vinyl ghost and hoping audiogon helps me off my analog rig quickly so i can reinvest all of my source budget into cd, sacd, and dvd-a. i'm hoping sicerely that the meitner dac6 will be the answer to my woes.

to those of you enjoying and loving your turntables - i envy you and wish you the best of luck. those of you who've been touting the virtues of digital - i'm starting to lean more to your side. here's wishing that no such bad luck befalls me on my quest for perfect sound forever.

thanks for reading my rant. have a good one.
lazarus28
dougdeacon
3,338 posts
 
Pbb, we're all still in shock. If you've always had a TT shame on us for not noticing. :)

Obviously one way to find out if you have enough gain is just to hook it all up and listen. Theoretically a .47mv cartridge will need at least 80dB of gain to avoid pushing your tubes above the noise threshold. (I'm assuming an ARC PH3 and LS 8 MkII have tubes.) I have a .5mv cartridge and 86dB of gain, which is more than enough. I could easily get away with a bit less.

I'm sure you know this but surface noise is a function of:

1. the quality and condition of the LP
You've already decided to control this by buying only new. A new record shouldn't be scratched or damaged, but don't assume it will be clean. It ain't necessarily so. They ought to wash them before they go in the sleeve but they don't. Be prepared to deal with it.

2. the cleanliness of the LP
Controlling this is simplicity itself, all you need is patience and a scrub brush. I always play a clean record while I scrub, just to remind myself why I'm doing this stupid task.

3. the turntable
The better the TT the quieter the record. Since you've just upgraded you should expect an improvement. Enjoy!
twl
3,251 posts
 
I agree with Doug's statements.
jyprez's avatar
jyprez
241 posts
 
Pbb,
I can empathize with you. I invested about $3000 recently to get back into vinyl with a Michell Gyro, OL Silver arm, Shelter 501 cartridge and Sonic Frontiers signature phono stage. (I think the PH3 is better but I got a great steal on the SF). Anyhow, there was a great deal of self doubt and anxiety in the process as I had been away from vinyl for over 20 years and only had about 50 jazz LP's from my college days. I thought I must be nuts to invest in the past instead of moving forward with a new SACD player. My biggest concern was, would I be able to find enough software to justify the investment in hardware. The first thing I did was buy every new LP I could find that I liked. This set me back $1500 from 2 massive orders from Acoustic Sounds and Music Direct (they love me now and give me great discounts). Then i started searching GEMM for good used stuff. I have found a fair amount but it hasn't been cheap.
Last weekend, however, I scored a real coup. My local vintage jazz record store emailed me to say some old jazz collector had just sold off his 1000 LP collection of mint stuff to them. Needless to say, I got to the store as it openned and I'm now set for life! I still listen to CD's for new recordings. But LP's have a special niche - classic 50's and 60's jazz (like that great Art Farmer album you mentioned!) These are just so much better on LP.
Bottom line ... no regrets here. I'm already thinking about my first upgrade.
swampwalker's avatar
swampwalker
5,138 posts
 
Well I'm going to add my $.02. The gospel among analog fans seems to be that you couldn't touch even a moderate analog set up without spending 2-3X as much on digital. Well I bought a SOTA Star Sapphire, rebuilt Benz Micro L2, New OL Silver MK1 and Lehman Black cube/PWX (all on the Gon, total cost a litle over $2K). Had the arm and cart mounted by SOTA. Dropped it in and have been underwhelmed so far. My digital front end was, first a CAL CL-10/Monarchy DIP/Classe' DAC combo that used cost me less than $2K. Now my EMC-1UPSE blows the analog away for less than $1k more. Not having a problem yet with noise or warps, or anything else. What am I doing wrong? Any suggestions? I'm not very good w/delicate little parts and the naked cantilever/stylus of the Benz scares the %$#&* out of me, if you are going to suggest monkeying with it. The sound is flat, less detailed less involving than the CDP. No excitement. Is it a break-in issue on the Benz? If not, then I will probably do what was posted above, go back to a much more modest analog rig for the old vinyl I have, smoke the residue on the 60s/70s rock LPs, and enjoy the redbook system I have put together until the format wars are over.
twl
3,251 posts
 
Swampwalker, it's hard to say what the problem is from your description. My first guess would be that the phono stage may be set to a gain setting that is not high enough. If you need to turn the TT volume up higher than when you use the CD, then you might try the next higher gain setting on the Black Cube. Also, try loading the impedance for the Benz at 22k instead of the usually recommended 47k.

Another thought would be that maybe the VTA needs dialing-in. That can make a noticeable difference, and Sota couldn't really do that for you. They might have got it close, but you may need to tweak it in. Also, you might try tweaking the tracking force a little, up or down, to get the sound the way you like. This analog stuff is a bit tweaky, and you pretty much need to play around with the settings, in a minor way, until you get it where you want it.
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