As a soon to be 6 year old in 1964, I requested Let It Be for my birthday. In '71 I bought the Concert for Bangadesh at the local Korvettes for something like $13 - my older brother and father thought I was nuts for having bought such an expensive 3LP set.
Cut to the late 80's living on my own in NYC. I got my first high end stereo - Quad ESL63's with the full Crosby mod. I had heard the ESL 63USA in a computer/stereo store and had never heard such realistic playback.
I was heavily into CD's at that time, especially those marked "DDD," of course not realizing the era's flawed digital masters and numerous analog to digital and back steps required at that pre digital mixer era.
I got the Quads set up with some great Spectral gear (all bought used through Audiomart - anyone remember that?) Just for fun I fired up my old $100 technics turntable I got in junior high and my jaw dropped. I couldn't believe that such a cheap and old table sounded better than my close to $750 highly rated Phillips 880 CD player.
At that point I found a used Well Tempered table from a dealer and bought a used Spectral MCR - it was out of alignment and was able to get my money back and got the then brand new Lyra Clavis. I put the table on Goldmund cones, which made it so much faster sounding, and tweeked everything with blue tak.
At that time I was living in NY's east village and passed great stores like St. Marks Sounds (and half a dozen other record shops) every day on my way home from work.
At that time in NY, everyone was getting rid of their vinyl. By the milk crate load, people would bring in promo pressings, japanese, german, MoFi, CBS half speed and some original pressings into these stores. The clerks knew me by face and what I was looking for, and would go into the back to drop off a stack of LP's in front of me that had not yet been put out for sale. This was almost all rock.
I did overbuy a bit - sometimes getting doubles of mofi and japanese titles, simply because they were there. Most LP were in the $4 - $13 range ($10-13 for 1/2 speeds and imports) I got a few excellent white label promos as well.
Then I started getting curious about jazz. I had bought a few suggested audiophile jazz lp's and really liked what I heard. I then discovered Mercer St. Books and a guy by the name of Brian Singer. He had an amazing mental catalog of great sounding/performance jazz LP's, and I proceeded to buy tons of stuff from the store at usually reasonable prices. (This guy had a separate apartment just for his huge collection of LP's) I even bought a small collection of classical.
All in all I bought approximately 3500 LP's over a few year period, and have added to that mostly Blue Note era, Pablo's and some great reissues as well as new LP releases from that time forward.
Last year I finally upgraded the table to a top quality rig (Raven One and Phantom arm) I am finally hearing what was really on those LP's after all these years, thanks to this amazing front end.
I really like the break needed to change LP's during listening. The sound is so overwhelming and so high in drama when played back at realistic volumes, that I need those few minutes to reflect on how amazing the recreation of these masterpiece records are. I also have a pretty good (though innexpensive) digital playback rig consisting of a PS Audio DLIII fed via USB.
I just find that digital, though it can be excellent sounding, doesn't move me nearly to the extent that vinyl playback does. Hence my listening these days tends to be over 90% LP.
I am now thinking of getting a state of the cart, which should expand on my vinyl enjoyment even more. Even if someday a better quality playback medium surfaces, I won't be able to amass such a great collection of music.
And now with vinyl achieving hipster status, we no longer have to defend our choice in playback formats. Add to that the fact that 10-15 years from now, the CD will be obsolete, but the LP will still stand as a vital, viable format.
Cut to the late 80's living on my own in NYC. I got my first high end stereo - Quad ESL63's with the full Crosby mod. I had heard the ESL 63USA in a computer/stereo store and had never heard such realistic playback.
I was heavily into CD's at that time, especially those marked "DDD," of course not realizing the era's flawed digital masters and numerous analog to digital and back steps required at that pre digital mixer era.
I got the Quads set up with some great Spectral gear (all bought used through Audiomart - anyone remember that?) Just for fun I fired up my old $100 technics turntable I got in junior high and my jaw dropped. I couldn't believe that such a cheap and old table sounded better than my close to $750 highly rated Phillips 880 CD player.
At that point I found a used Well Tempered table from a dealer and bought a used Spectral MCR - it was out of alignment and was able to get my money back and got the then brand new Lyra Clavis. I put the table on Goldmund cones, which made it so much faster sounding, and tweeked everything with blue tak.
At that time I was living in NY's east village and passed great stores like St. Marks Sounds (and half a dozen other record shops) every day on my way home from work.
At that time in NY, everyone was getting rid of their vinyl. By the milk crate load, people would bring in promo pressings, japanese, german, MoFi, CBS half speed and some original pressings into these stores. The clerks knew me by face and what I was looking for, and would go into the back to drop off a stack of LP's in front of me that had not yet been put out for sale. This was almost all rock.
I did overbuy a bit - sometimes getting doubles of mofi and japanese titles, simply because they were there. Most LP were in the $4 - $13 range ($10-13 for 1/2 speeds and imports) I got a few excellent white label promos as well.
Then I started getting curious about jazz. I had bought a few suggested audiophile jazz lp's and really liked what I heard. I then discovered Mercer St. Books and a guy by the name of Brian Singer. He had an amazing mental catalog of great sounding/performance jazz LP's, and I proceeded to buy tons of stuff from the store at usually reasonable prices. (This guy had a separate apartment just for his huge collection of LP's) I even bought a small collection of classical.
All in all I bought approximately 3500 LP's over a few year period, and have added to that mostly Blue Note era, Pablo's and some great reissues as well as new LP releases from that time forward.
Last year I finally upgraded the table to a top quality rig (Raven One and Phantom arm) I am finally hearing what was really on those LP's after all these years, thanks to this amazing front end.
I really like the break needed to change LP's during listening. The sound is so overwhelming and so high in drama when played back at realistic volumes, that I need those few minutes to reflect on how amazing the recreation of these masterpiece records are. I also have a pretty good (though innexpensive) digital playback rig consisting of a PS Audio DLIII fed via USB.
I just find that digital, though it can be excellent sounding, doesn't move me nearly to the extent that vinyl playback does. Hence my listening these days tends to be over 90% LP.
I am now thinking of getting a state of the cart, which should expand on my vinyl enjoyment even more. Even if someday a better quality playback medium surfaces, I won't be able to amass such a great collection of music.
And now with vinyl achieving hipster status, we no longer have to defend our choice in playback formats. Add to that the fact that 10-15 years from now, the CD will be obsolete, but the LP will still stand as a vital, viable format.