How Much To Rival Good Digital Playback

My personal experience is in-line with what 4yanx has written.
I used to own a Music Hall MMF-5. I had the orig. tonearm wires cut off & female RCA jacks installed so that I could use my own cables. Other than this the TT was stock. Incl. tax & this mod. it cost me $480. My trusty-rusty H/K HD7625 CDP was bought for $400 (retail $560 but I got a good deal). I can confidently inform you that the MMF-5 bested the CDP by a long shot. The vinyl was simply more emotionally involving. I ran the MMF-5 into my CAT phono stage, which is dead quiet. So, other than the expected groove noise, the system was just as quiet as the CDP when the music played. Of course, the better I scrubbed my LPs, the lower the this noise got (upto a certain pt).
The performance of the MMF-5 could be improved & I checked the AudioAsylum for MMF-5 tweaks. I found a # of them such as employing blu-tak on the motor, using the Ringmat instead of the felt mat, using a silk string or audio cassette tape instead of the rubber belt, upgrading to the G1042 MM cart. Most of these tweaks cost very little. Also, when I was shopping for the MMF-5 I found that HCM Audio offered the MMF-5 with G1042 MM for $75 more than the stock. So, it was possible to get higher grade perf. at a marginal extra cost right from the get-go.
In conclusion: I'm saying here is that it cost marginally more than my CDP to get far better sound.
AFAIK, the present owner of this TT is still enjoying it!

I started with a piddly little collection of less than 20 LPs! However, I knew that vinyl was the way *I* wanted to go. So, like other members who have posted this:
* Make sure that you want to go the vinyl route. I.E. ensure that you can endure some "pain" as vinyl play-back is seldom plug-and-play.
* Make sure that you enjoy seeking LPs at Salvation Army, Goodwill or your local store.
* Make sure that you can clean these LPs so that you can maintain a high quality sound.
* Make sure that you will be able to endure the pops & clicks on many used LPs as their prev. owners probably took minimal care of the vinyl. If you like music (rather than being analytical of the sound each & every time you sit to listen) then you might be able to endure the pops & clicks. I know a bunch of friends who just cannot stand the thought of vinyl!
* Make sure that you can endure this high maintenance hobby 'cuz (make NO mistake) it IS one!
* Most of all, make sure that you have the vinyl mind-set. How many CD-ONLY guys will walk up to the rack & flip the side of the LP??

It's a lot of fun to spin vinyl both from the music & memories pt. of view BUT the opinion is HIGHLY personal.

I envy your access to used vinyl 4yanx. I am in east TN. A great place to live but not a vinyl mecca. Most the stuff I have found either on line or locally used that I have been happy with costs as much as a CD or more, but they sure sound better and I don't regret buying them.

I do not want my vinyl rig to rival my digital. My goal is to make them sound as close to each other as possible. In order to do that w/in my budget, I have a KAB modded Technics SL1200 MK2 and a Parasound CBD-2000 belt driven transport (being modded in Dan Wright's shop at this time). The mods in the 1200 make it closer to digital's positive attributes and vice versa for the belt driven transport. I understand my mental framework is radical but it *does* make a lot of sense! The people that push for analog, even with cheap rigs, ALWAYS omit the fact that digital has PERFECT pitch. I can infer that they can't hear differences in pitch...

I recently bought a Nottingham Spacedeck and Spacearm, Audio Research PH2, and Acoustic Zen Matrix ref balanced cables - this $3500 investment totally recaptured musical reproduction in my system. Love it, rarely play the digital front end any more. Invest more than the minimum, you will be rewarded

tom

I tend to agree with Pbb in the sense that to get good digital playback is cheaper than to get good analogue playback. The 4-1 ratio is bit much, I tend to think its more like 2-1.

In order to have a fair comparison of costs, you have to start with a line stage, no phono built in. The phono stage is to analogue what a DAC is to digital.

Sure in terms of enjoyment, PRaT, musicality, cheaper analogue systems can get you that for less than digital, but digital advances in technology have made it far less expensive to get a fairly decent playback system. Where digital has an advantage, is in the quiet background and the detail retrieval.

For analogue to have both quiet and detail, requires : (a) stable, quiet TT/arm, (b) good cart AND (c) matching low-noise phono. While (a) and (b) are not a problem for most systems, (c) can be quite costly.

For digital, I've always held the belief that separates will inevitably trounce integrated CDPs, and good separates (those that get the PRaT right) are not cheap. The two areas that digital playback fails miserably are in (a) dynamics, and (b) noise - RFI/EMI(!). If you think digital is quiet, think again. The "quiet background" of digital actually has hidden noise which mask detail and hinders dynamics. The solution is in clean power. I've found that by using a particular powercord, you can get back the dynamics and natural, fluid presentation of analogue.

On the analogue front, I've recently acquired a new arm, which again makes analogue far superior to digital. Details to follow...