Freeper audiophile opinions

[djf]

In the last two months or so, I decided to brush off my turntable.

You know, those big heavy things that spin these black things around.

Now I have over 200 CD's. And most of my records were kinda abandoned in the late 80's when I got married. But lately, I have been seeing (and buying) records again at garage sales, etc.

I have the Bang & Olufsen 1602 with the MMC20EN cartridge, getting picked up by a Radio Shack (Believe it!!) STA-80 receiver into my main setup, dual Behringer A500 amps (460 wpc) into the Polk SDA-SRS original speakers.

The sound is astounding. I have a number of albums that I also have on CD and there is simply no comparison. A good friend of mine who is an electrical engineer and has done alot of audio work confirms what I say,he says he can see it on the scopes. Better transients and more complete harmonics. More consistent bass.

So I am curious about FReeper opinions. A resurgence of vinyl maybe??

This ain't yur grandmas i-Pod!!!

[Tamatoa]

Would not mind getting your set up and the list of all the equipment you are using to turn those albums to good sounding cds.

[Tamatoa]

Would not mind getting your set up and the list of all the equipment you are using to turn those albums to good sounding cds.

[filospinato]

I’ve got my turntable setup in my garage, I’ll throw on some wax when I’m working on one of my MGB’s, some Led Zep, Doors or CCR. I’ve been collecting vinyl for a decade or so now, lots of bands still put it out. I’ll wait for new release dates and try and score the limited color first pressings. Cut my musical teeth on my dad’s LZ and Clapton records in the early 90’s, still prefer vinyl to CD’s.

[BADROTOFINGER]

Nope. I have 18 gigs of music on my iPhone. Vinyl can’t compete with that...

[djf]

I had about 200 albums and when we bought our house, I left them with a friend and they got lost in the shuffle. The ones I’ve been picking up I check pretty close (for instance I got Rolling Stones Undercover and a Heart disk), both have just a few minor clicks, but otherwise, they are excellent.

Especially the Heart album. Those gals could really belt out a tune!

Dunno. Just sounds way more musical to me. Even the studio recordings have a way more “live” feel to them.

If anyone knows of a GOOD, RELIABLE source for used or better yet new vynil, please post it! Thanks!

[ProfoundMan]

A resurgence of vinyl maybe??

Most definately. I sell LP's online and business is pretty good. Check ebay for deals - also gemm.com, therecordranch.com and musicstack.com. Lots of deals to be had if you don't mind hunting a little. There's also a good forum at the recordcollectorsguild.com - lot's to learn there.

Welcome back to the land of vinyl.. Rock on!!

[ducdriver]

Vinyl Rules!

The only thing that comes close are SACD and hi-resolution downloads, but the selection is relatively small. Lots of vinyl out there.

I became aware of the superiority of vinyl about 10 years ago. Great equipment is expensive, but retains value pretty well. There are bargains out there in old LP’s, and soon you will learn which recordings and performances are great, along with which labels tend to be better than others. There are now also some audiophile 45rpm records (33-1/3 size) that sound even better than the standard 33-1/3 lp’s too.

There are new vinyl records being produced. Some are made from the old tapes, others are new. One of my favorites is the direct to disk, but there are not many of those. A Bing search should turn up many vinyl sources, and there are also stores in many cities now that carry both new and quality used LP’s.

[pankot]

I have enough LPs bought when I was younger—Classical and New Age—to build a house. Now it is CD’s and cassete tapes out the wazoo. My opinion now? Vinyl beats them all on a very good sound system. Always the sound is richer and deeper on vinyl.

[politicalamity]

I have actually been buying vinyl of my favorite albums from the past to frame and hang up in my office. Recently, I have been looking at turntables so I can actually listen to them like in the past as well.

A lot of artists now also have a special order vinyl editions of new music they have out. I think the interest in vinyl has always been there but it may be growing.

Thanks for starting this thread. I will be watching it as I am in the market for a turntable.

[djf]

Big difference between quantity and quality.

I’d invite you over to hear the Polks but I’m not sure your fillings would be able to handle them...

I have literally had pictures fall off the walls when I pushed them.

[JoeProBono]

RECORDS! I remember records.

[One Name]

I’m old school but couldn’t afford Bang-Olaffsen. Do have a decent Pioneer TT, and a lot of old wax. We do CD’s and everyone but me has Ipods.

If it’s worth listening to it’s worth running a discwasher over before dropping the tonearm.

[djf]

Thats it. B&O.

Handmade replacement cartridge will run me about 400 bucks. I should get one now before the guy who makes them is six feet under!!!

[Greysard]

If I'd want to listen to high quality audio I would encode all vinyl with something like FLAC. This is because vinyl will wear out, and it makes sense to record it once and keep in digital form forever. Just use good encoding hardware, not your standard PC audio card.

With regard to vinyl vs. CD - it all depends on how the music was produced. The CD, being 100% digital, allows you to encode anything - any sound that fits the dynamic range. The vinyl, being limited to the physical track, allows you to encode some sounds, but not the other. During production these limits were known and taken care of.

So if someone is intent on producing a super-wideband CD (with 41 kSa/s you can encode up to 20.5 kHz) he can do it. If someone wants to record the same 20+ kHz onto the vinyl, that might be not that easy.

The dynamic range of the CD is also larger. If you have 16-bit samples (which are the standard today) this yields 96 dB. This is a huge range. The dynamic range of vinyl is about 80 dB.

So all things considered, IMO you should take all the vinyl that you have and encode it (without lossy compression!) into the digital format. Then you can make backups, listen to the music wherever and whenever you want, and the original media will not be worn or scratched.

With regard to your friend's opinion, the transients are defined by the frequency response of the channel, and the frequency range of the CD is limited only by the filter after the DAC. You can build as good a filter as you want, just throw OAs at the problem. Expensive audio cards (FireWire or USB) already have those filters done right. The card in your PC most likely has abysmal performance, since they can't afford too many components.

With regard to "more complete harmonics" I don't know what it means. A harmonic is really an unwanted artifact produced by nonlinearity of something in the channel. Harmonics do not exist at the source, they are added by the machine that recorded the music and played it back. In reality both the instrument and the ear are highly nonlinear, and there are lots of harmonics produced naturally, but here we want to evaluate an ideal channel.

All in all, a modern digital recording and playback system is far better, technically, than the vinyl. The main difference is in what is recorded.

[Yardstick]

Well, I'm an EE and I am not convinced by the either the technical arguments or my own listening that vinyl sounds better than CDs. I think they are basically on par with one another, though I think it takes more work and more money to get vinyl to sound as good as a CD. However, I will say that I listen almost exclusively to vinyl these days and enjoy it much more. I just think it's fun to pull out a record and put it on and set the needle down and enjoy the electro-mechanical coolness of a spinning platter and all that. Plus the sense of history you get when you look at an old gatefold from the 60s or 70s. It's just a much more interesting and evocative experience. The other thing is you can get vinyl records left and right for about five bucks.

As for equipment I've got a Yamaha CR-640 receiver and a Pioneer PL-600 turntable. Both from about 1980. I bought them both about a year ago because I got on a vintage kick for some reason. The Yamaha I bought because I like its brushed aluminum and green incandescent lights:

The B&O tables are super sleek but apparently it's getting tough to find styluses for them. I think only one company still makes them, called Goldring.

[djf]

Vinyl does indeed wear out.

But I am not sure recording it to standard CD wav format really is better. It’s only 23KHZ, I know, people will say that unless you’re some kind of bat you can’t hear the difference, but I swear it sounds different to me!!

I kbow for a while back in the 80’s I transferred a bunch of CD’s to R2R (I had a nice Sony R2R that would go to 7 1/2 ips) and playing it back from tape sounded better than the original CD’s!

[voveo]

The best sounding system I have heard playing vinyl was built by SoundSmith using a cartridge called the Strain Gauge on a top of the line VPI table.

The best amps I ever heard were the Moscode 402au, VAC Phi 300.1 and Tenor OTL. The best speakers one used plasma tweeters from Lansche Audio and then Von Schweikert speakers sounded excellent. The best wire/interconnects was Nordost and Cardas. The best digital was Esoteric and DCS.

Now if I only had an extra $100,000 to spend, oh well, I guess my computer speakers will do.

[Rodamala]

dual Behringer A500 amps (460 wpc) That kind of amplification is redonkulous. Why call in an airstrike to drop napalm on a gopher, when all you need is one 22LR round? My MC-240 does just fine powering a pair of 16" Bozaks. The neighboring farm doesn't need to hear what I am listening to... I can't think of ANY reason to ever have my gain over 10%.

[Senator Pardek]

Folks of a certain age group (like me!) can "tune out" the pop and hiss. Kids can't. The analog sound of vinyl on a tube hi fi is killer.

My pop had a Fisher setup from 1960 with a tuning eye. Even the static between radio channels sounded sonorous.