I have a few Denon, Telarc, Deutsche Grammophone and direct to disk vinyl records that sound great.

Yes, they were expensive at time of purchase.

I never went away from vinyl records. That said I also have reel and cassette tapes and an excellent redbook CD deck with outboard DAC.

With proper cleaning and maintenance (I use both the Disk Doctor system and Nagaoka CL-152 Record Cleaner) vinyl records played on a quality turntable and cartridge set up with the proper tracking geometry and force will not exhibit pops and clicks.

There is something perceptibly different between vinyl analog and CD digital playback to my ears as well as many others. Call it warmth. Call it whatever. Bottom line is that I enjoy it!

quote:

The comeback of vinyl records mystifies me

Yep. Even if one has the ears to tell the difference, and the equipment to make it so that said difference actually had some chance of existing so there'd be some audible distinction, vinyl loses every comparison with respect to convenience, durability, duplication and transport, access, etc. etc. etc.

So glad to have gotten past wow, flutter, pop, stylus cleaning, record cleaning, clicks, scratches, acoustic feedback, finding the record, having to put the stylus down in a particular place if not playing the whole side start-to-finish, flipping the records, putting the record back, potato-chipping.......

My advice for people considering retro-grading to the old days: get a good system, RIP your music into FLAC or other lossless format, and let software play you a few hundred hours of your favorite songs with zero effort from you ....and THEN tell me how much you miss vinyl.

I spent 5 or 6yrs working in, or hanging out at rock clubs that featured original bands. I like the sound of digital recordings, but they certainly don't sound like live music. Vinyl gives some of the imperfection that is rampant in a live performance. Of course, my hearing is shot from said rock clubs, and lots of 223 shooting. Oh yeah, 30yrs in the airport.

Next thing you know, they'll say they don't understand why someone would have a transmission that doesn't shift itself.

I can't name a single CD I have that plays as well as my original LP's on my Mac 1900 and B&O 3000 with ML1 speakers. CD deck is a Rotel.

I did just remove the Teac cassette deck from the system. It played great too with recordings off the vinyl onto TDK. Have not played a cassette in years

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:

quote:

The comeback of vinyl records mystifies me

Yep. Even if one has the ears to tell the difference, and the equipment to make it so that said difference actually had some chance of existing so there'd be some audible distinction, vinyl loses every comparison with respect to convenience, durability, duplication and transport, access, etc. etc. etc.

So glad to have gotten past wow, flutter, pop, stylus cleaning, record cleaning, clicks, scratches, acoustic feedback, finding the record, having to put the stylus down in a particular place if not playing the whole side start-to-finish, flipping the records, putting the record back, potato-chipping.......

My advice for people considering retro-grading to the old days: get a good system, RIP your music into FLAC or other lossless format, and let software play you a few hundred hours of your favorite songs with zero effort from you ....and THEN tell me how much you miss vinyl.

There is certainly something good to be said for being able to listen to Beethoven's entire 9th Symphony all the way through without interruption.

I wonder why DAT (Digital Audio Tape) never made it big? As I recall, DAT and CD came out at about the same time. Maybe it was perceived that CD was a better medium, and the newer technology (a laser light reading the disk without ever touching it) superior.

I think DAT was the best of both worlds - a digital recording on an analog medium. Am I wrong?

quote:

Originally posted by bald1:
I never went away from vinyl records. That said I also have reel and cassette tapes and an excellent redbook CD deck with outboard DAC.

With proper cleaning and maintenance (I use both the Disk Doctor system and Nagaoka CL-152 Record Cleaner) vinyl records played on a quality turntable and cartridge set up with the proper tracking geometry and force will not exhibit pops and clicks.

There is something perceptibly different between vinyl analog and CD digital playback to my ears as well as many others. Call it warmth. Call it whatever. Bottom line is that I enjoy it!

Interesting turntable. What make TT and cartridge, please?

I have a Thorens 125 Mark II, belt drive.

quote:

Originally posted by .38supersig:
Next thing you know, they'll say they don't understand why someone would have a transmission that doesn't shift itself.

That others enjoy shifting gears is fine with me, but yes, I'll take automatics for myself thanks.

Brother if I could afford a driver I'd simply dispense with the entire task.

Drat! I dropped my monocle again. You gents carry on with the vinyl discussion whilst my minions fetch me another.

quote:

Originally posted by fpuhan:
I wonder why DAT (Digital Audio Tape) never made it big? As I recall, DAT and CD came out at about the same time. Maybe it was perceived that CD was a better medium, and the newer technology (a laser light reading the disk without ever touching it) superior.

I think DAT was the best of both worlds - a digital recording on an analog medium. Am I wrong?

Anything involving tape will be more expensive to make as far as media and probably the player with potentially less reliability. Also a tape will not be able to move between/among tracks near as quickly as an optical CD/DVD disk which makes it less convenient. Higher cost at less convenience does not make sense. I am sure there can be a perceived difference between digital audio and analog audio but I believe that is largely subjective preference.

quote:

Originally posted by GWbiker:

Interesting turntable. What make TT and cartridge, please?

I have a Thorens 125 Mark II, belt drive.

Here goes Mine's a belt drive too.

George Merrill modified The AR Turntable with Sumiko Premier MMT tonearm, VTA-16 base, and Premier PIB-1 phono interface box.

[Mods: Merrill acrylic subchassis/tonearm board, upgraded high torque AC motor with Foucault shield, inner platter balanced and lead coated, new spindle, bearings and oil well, new springs. From Merrill/Scillia Research an acrylic platter with a Whitacre copolymer ring available.]

The table is supported and isolated from room vibrations by a combination of Immedia Finite Elemente/Ceraball isolation feet, a 23 3/4' x 15 3/4' slab of polished Brazilian granite, a set of MapleShade IsoBlocks, and a Target VW1 Pro wall mount turntable shelf.

Denon DL-304 (0.19mV @ 1.2g) & Denon DL-103D (0.28mV @ 1.5g) low output moving coil cartridges in Orsonic AV-1 anti-vibration and Sumiko HS12 headshells; Extremephono stylus cleaner; PIB-1 w/HomeGrownAudio Super Silver cables; 592g SC-101 spindle weight; Disc Doctor and Nagaoka CL-152 vinyl cleaners; Audioquest anti-static brush; Herbie's HAL-O Jr tonearm dampers

I'm using a DIY step up transformer for my low output moving coil cartridges, currently running Cinemag CMQEE-3440As. This gives me some additional gain over the ≈60dB or so the Odyssey Tempest preamp's MC stage I'm running provides.

Damn...$700 USD for a Denon DL-304?

quote:

Originally posted by GWbiker:
Damn...$700 USD for a Denon DL-304?

I assume that's the current price which is quite a bit more than I remember. I got mine a number of years back through a good contact who was a friend of an exec with the importer. Saved megabucks at the time.

And as an aside I've been a loyal Denon MC user since my first (a DL-301) that I bought in Akihabara, Japan, back in the early '80s.

Prices for a lot of TT accessories have gotten crazy in recent years. Take that Orsonic headshell I cited above. I paid $8 in '83 in Japan when I bought it with that Denon cart. Do a search (e.g. https://www.hifishark.com/search?q=orsonic+av-1). Today they're going for $200 or more! <gasp>

quote:

Originally posted by fpuhan:
I wonder why DAT (Digital Audio Tape) never made it big? As I recall, DAT and CD came out at about the same time. Maybe it was perceived that CD was a better medium, and the newer technology (a laser light reading the disk without ever touching it) superior.

I think DAT was the best of both worlds - a digital recording on an analog medium. Am I wrong?

One thing to keep in mind is that a 5 inch disc copy can be merrily stamped out to their hearts desire. Cheaper.

Every magnetic strip has to have the audio recorded onto it at a speed that will result in marginal loss. Spendy.

El Cassette and the MiniDisc were superior technologies for their day, but they never caught on.

The same can be said that BetaMax had better playback qualities than VHS, but VHS was cheaper. If video quality were king, everyone would have had a $3000+ (in 1982) U-Matic VCR before the CED and Laserdisc players made a good run for it.

The U-Matic was built like a tank. You could bounce a transmission off of it and solder the pieces back together. Some of them are still in use today.

Even if totally analog music reproduction has an actual qualitative benefit over digital, which I have doubts about, the question is basically moot with any modern recordings because virtually all music produced now and over the last decade or two is recorded and mastered digitally.

When you put a converted-to-analog digital recording on vinyl, any possible drawback of digital audio is still present but you add all the drawbacks of vinyl as well (like lower dynamic range, less channel separation, and more noise).

I do understand the tactile and aesthetic appeal of vinyl, as well as vinyl making listening more intentional and almost ceremonial. I have a decent turntable and a fair bit of vinyl.

I think a lot of the bad rap digital audio got for audio quality among discriminating listeners in the early days of CDs was partially due to crappy equipment and partially due to a lot of early CDs being very badly mastered. In today's era of online streaming services, of course, the audio quality of the streamed music is noticably worse than a CD because of significant compression.

With good source material and a good DAC (digital-to-analog converter, the bit that actually turns the 0s and 1s into an analog signal), digital audio sounds fantastic.

maladat,

I will not hesitate to state that I enjoy the heck out of my redbook CDs. Some have been mastered exceptionally well. Outfits like Mapleshade* stand out.

But not all vinyl is recorded and mastered digitally first. There are still rare studios that use old upgraded and refined analog equipment. Their products are exceptional and identified as full AAA. See https://www.analogplanet.com/category/aaa-vinyl. Their dynamic range exceeds anything found on CD.

*Mapleshade records live to two-track analog, transfer to digital at a rate 100 times faster than the CD standard, and use no add-on EQ, reverb or noise reduction electronics. Recordings are made with only 2 to 4 microphones and no cables longer than 20 feet. The resulting sound has startling, "in-the-room" clarity, raw and exciting, full of the life that few studios capture.

Sure, there are still places out there doing fully analog recording, but they account for a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the music currently being produced.

quote:

Originally posted by maladat:
Sure, there are still places out there doing fully analog recording, but they account for a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the music currently being produced.

I did say "rare studios" above.

quote:

Originally posted by bald1:
Their dynamic range exceeds anything found on CD.

I am surprised by this. Vinyl records are usually quoted as having dynamic range of 50-60 dB, with exceptional pressings maybe reaching 70 dB. 16-bit digital audio has a dynamic range of 96 dB.