Dear 18764: do you know what is better than owning a vinyl rig? Having a friend
who owns a vinyl rig. That's right, find a friend with a nice turntable and go
listen at his house. Take your own records over and clean them on his cleaning
machine. Use some of the money that you save to buy him a few records as gifts
and always bring some Chinese take out with you so he actually looks forward to
your visits.
Sure, digital sounds like crap; but do you know what it takes to get good sound
out of 19th Century technology? It takes a lot of money, time and yankee
ingenuity, aka tweaking. You will be trying to reproduce beautiful music out of
molded in squiggly grooves, moving at low speed, with a tiny chip of rock.
Could it be anymore medieval? Heck, the LP concept was probably put together
by a couple of engineers over beers as a bet. "Lets see how tightly we can
pack grooves onto a 12" disc and still get music out of it and see if people
will buy them."
Your friends will think that you have lost your mind when they see you spending
8 minutes prepping a disc for play, carefully cueing it up just to hear some tones
with background noise (tell them its supposed to sound like that) that gets really
edgy when down to the last track. Next, you'll be shopping for a vacuum tube
amplifier that throws out more heat than music just to have that charming
nostalgic glow to go along with the spinning vinyl and bobbing tonearm.
Use your money to get into HD Audio. Once you have invested in a state of the
art HD Audio DAC, you won't feel so bad when a new state of the art DAC comes
out a year later. You can just think of all the money that you saved not getting a
vinyl rig so that you can upgrade.
Once you start down the vinyl path be prepared to upgrade, tweak, throw things
against the wall, pull hair out and use naughty words. Remember as you snap off
a cantilever that it is ok. It is part of the learning process. Some records will
sound better than others. Some records will have skips. Its that one out of a
hundred great sounding record that will have you pawning the china for that
next level preamp, phono cartridge or even turntable.
If I haven't convinced you yet, lets do the math...
Process to play a CD:
1. Push button to open drawer
2. Select a CD and place in tray
3. Push button to close drawer
4. Press play on the remote once you have settled into your favorite listening
chair
5. Listen to 46+ minutes of beautiful music, doze off in your chair
Total time to prep= 20 seconds or so
Total listening time= 46 minutes
Listening time to prep time ratio= 138
To play a record:
1. Inspect and clean stylus (2 minutes)
2. Select record and remove from jacket
3. Clean record on your cleaning machine (1 side) (4 minutes)
4. Place record on platter
5. Clamp record (optional- but you will get there) (1 minute)
6. Start turntable and cue tonearm (40 seconds)
7. Turn up volume on pre amp (10 seconds)
8. Run to listening chair before music starts (5 seconds)
9. Listen to 23 minutes of beautiful music, then jump out of your slumber when
you hear the big "KER CHUNK" as the stylus falls into the locking
groove at the end of the record.
Total prep time= 8 minutes
Total Listening time (1 side)= 23 minutes
Listening time to prep time ratio= 2.9
So as the math shows, digital music offers a listening time to prep time ratio 48
times greater than vinyl. Think about all the extra time in your life you will have
to a) listen to more music b) get a life.
There, I hope that helps you decide.
