What few realize is that we...or at least most of us, actually program a recording for a certain order of listening.
One of the great things about Vinyl
Is I find myself listening to recordings all the way through.
Rarely do that with CD's and/or streaming.
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Thank you @ddrave44
From some much earlier questions.
My digital and analog ends sound the same… 99+%. I have all Audio Research Reference… and of particular importance the Phono stage and DAC. My turntable cartridge is a Koetsu Rosewood signature… carefully chosen for its detailed but warm organic presentation. So, it is not by accident both sound the same versus equally satisfying but different. Both ends provide the detailed but natural / musical presentation I want. |
@sokogear I just did some A/B listening with the dust cover both on and off of the turntable. It's a draw. No dust cover gives me slightly better imaging and wider soundstage. Dust cover gives me slightly better tonality. My test record -- a very old domestic EMI/Angel recording of Gilbert & Sullivan's Mikado. |
@jjbeason14 I clean my LP’s with the Record Doctor VI. I have been using various iterations of the Record Doctor for years now. All new records are cleaned with Super Deep Clean fluid followed by regular Record Doctor fluid. Inexpensive machine that does the job! |
@hifiman5 --- I had a rec-o-vac for several years. Whenever I'd take a record off the shelf I hadn't played in a while I'd run it through the thing. And yes, It improved the sound in every way. Less groove noise. Better imaging and more intelligible lyrics...in particular more understandable baritones. Better instrumental timbres, especially massed strings. Less spitty sibilants. It raised an ungodly noise when it was operating but so what? The trouble is that the device was not quite as bulletproof as it could've been. I had to get it rebuilt twice. When It came time to rebuild it a third time there was nobody to go to for repair. I ended up donating it to the local Salvation Army. I hope somebody was able to make it work again. |
@oddiofyl @dogberry You are both right! I was fortunate to get on the record cleaning train as a young audiophile using a vacuum cleaning machine called a “Rec O Vac”. After inserting the album vertically into the machine, you turned it on and the machine rotated the record while very fine, soft bristles lifted dust out of the grooves as the dust was then vacuumed away. Because of using that machine, even my 70’s and 80’s LP’s sound great. Using now a MC cart. with a Microline stylus which rides deeper in the grooves than the more modest elliptical carts. of yore those albums are satisfying to listen to. Anyone remember the “Rec O Vac”? |
I think you have your priorities right! Clean records are much bigger improvement over a change in cartridge. If all vinyl magically came out of the sleeve ultimately clean, then even small cartridge changes would be apparent. Without clean vinyl, big cartridge changes are hard to hear. |
It is all purely psychological. Both formats are capable of excellent sound quality. Which one predominates does not depend on any characteristics of the media but rather the quality of the mastering. I play records because I have been doing it since I was 4 years old and there is something comforting about the ritual aside form the fact I have thousands of them. I must have hundreds of duplicates in both formats. Which I prefer in any give instance depends not on the format but other factors. You can not avoid digital. The vast majority of modern recordings are digital and most older music has been digitized as it is a much better storage medium. It is not that one dislikes digital but rather having a preference for the distortion added by the vinyl process. |
@unreceivedogma 100% agree. Top-ranked equipment, well I have top rank sound with less than SOTA equipment but I have NO noise problem with the overwhelming majority of my 28,500 LPs. His system is faulty. A high end analog system minimizes surface noise and record defects to the extent that they are either unheard or nominally heard. My Japanese vinyl DtoD discs are SILENT other than for the music. Rumble, groove roar-I haven't heard rumble since I was 15 (52 years ago) listening to my Dual 1209 with a Stanton 661 or Grado Sig 1. I have a Townshend seismic sink under a VPI TNT VI/SME IV modified, SDS speed unit = ZERO groove roar or rumble.
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The link to a description of my system is posted above. I just had my hearing checked. It’s normal for my age. You do need to keep the records clean. I don’t know what to say. For the overwhelming majority of my records, noise is not an issue. For me, the analog is a better experience than the digital. |
i listened on top-rank equipment using a 10 grand turntable with a top-rank shibata stylus, a direct-to-disk record that had been cleaned, surface noise [rumble, groove roar, hiss, ticks] was unmistakable through speakers. perhaps my hearing is keener than most, as i've always protected it. i can hear the residual noise on a dolby-A-encoded master tape. |
“One of the great things about Vinyl Is I find myself listening to recordings all the way through. Rarely do that with CD’s and/or streaming” That’s your prerogative but it does not mean that CD / Streaming is any less gratifying. Maybe your CD / Streaming system sucks…LOL! Most vinyl setups (seen here on virtual systems) has lot more $$$ vested compare to CD or streaming setups. Heck, most vinyl aficionados de-facto streaming benchmark is Bluesound Node 2 😊 |
@ghdprentice You said it all. With 28,500 LPs and now 11,000 CDs, I listen through to the entire CD (if the performance warrants). I don't know which format I will listen to nightly (2 hours). It all depends on the performance/music. However, where I have both the LP and the CD, sonics dominate so it could be either format. |
I'm certain I've mentioned this a dozen times, but I'm retired. I now live in a small town that doesn't have a lot of places to hang out in so I have plenty of time to indulge in stereo listening. The views out my stereo room windows are fabulous, and the glass windows don't upset the imaging particularly much. I don't find the rituals involved in high-end listening onerous in the slightest. Just type cast me as the cheerful old audiophile! |
If you list out the mundane tasks of ANY ritual - whether by religion or for pleasure - it looks so unjustifiably tedious, that any uninitiated observer would surely exclaim "WHY would they do this?!". You either derive joy from the ritual and its byproducts, or you don’t do it. If it’s joyful then the prerequisite work doesn't weight heavily. I’m sure digital enthusiasts look at us like we have 2 heads lol. |
Occasionally, rarely a song or two starts I can't stand, so I will get up and manually cue the arm to bypass it. Easy if it is the last or first song on a side. As far as @edcyn 's comments: You gotta stumble over to the turntable. Lift the often balky turntable cover, making sure that it doesn't go crashing down if you don't do it right. Keep the dustcover off, it adds distortion unless it is has no hinges, and then will be a challenge to cover the table easily without dealing with wires You gotta lift the arm and move it back to its rest. Get a cuing device (like a Tru-Lift) in case you can't get right over to the table to lift the arm when the record is done. Makes handling the arm easier when you move it back to rest as well. You gotta turn the record player off. No you don't - just be careful when changing sides or records. Turn it on once per listening session and switch from 33 to 45 and back as needed. You gotta unscrew the record clamp and safely stow it away. Don't use a clamp unless it is a warped record. You must lift the vinyl off of the platter, taking into account the sometimes goodly amount of static electricity that has built up between the vinyl and the platter in the meantime. Put your system in a room without carpet. You forgot about brushing the dust off the record before you drop the stylus, and getting the record off the shelf, removing the jacket from the protective vinyl sleeve, and taking the inner rice paper sleeve out of the jacket and replacing them when you're done. It sounds like a lot, but well worth it!
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@mijostyn This👆 |
Unless I am interrupted or using the music as background fill I always listen to an entire album straight through. An album is an artistic statement. You do not look at an important painting by staring only at the left upper corner. There are bad albums that might have one good song. I will download the one good song and put it in one of my background play lists. |
"You must lift the vinyl off of the platter, taking into account the sometimes goodly amount of static electricity that has built up between the vinyl and the platter in the meantime." This used to make my hair stand on end. It wasn't until I lost (most of) my hair that I realized how important this was in my life. I moved on to digital. |
"Had I been streaming I may have not taken the time to listen beyond one or two cuts. " Does this make any sense? All things being equal. Why would the fact that the music is streamed have an effect on how many tracks you listen to? Is it that playing vinyl or a cd requires you to get up out of your comfy seat to change albums? Whereas, with streaming you can just sit on your duff and jump from song to song. Next time you stream, pick an album, put your iPad in the next room and then sit down to listen. |
Everything about vinyl is fun. Browsing them, buying them, looking at them, playing them, it's all fun. I know some will say the inconveniences outweigh the positives (or at least cancel them out) which I can appreciate. Of course there will then be technical criticisms of the medium. I can appreciate those as well. I think all would agree that handling/playing CDs, and scrolling through endless, homogenized letters on a screen has nothing on handling a beautiful sleeve, hearing the sound of the stylus hit the lead-in groove, and watching that handsome turntable, with it's shiny black disc, put a show on for you in your living room. The romance is rich with the latter; non-existent with the former. "Fun of use" is no contest. In regards to those endless, homogenized letters on a screen I scroll through, I find the homogenization of music this way robs the individual works of their individuality. Miles Davis may sit between Minutemen and Mickey Newbury...scroll, scroll, ho-hum..it's all the same..."files"... Obviously they are not remotely the same. Furthermore, each individual album in an artist's catalog has its own identity. These things are diminished in a digital format, and maximized in the vinyl format. I want to appreciate the uniqueness of artists and their individual works from their catalog. Music is very special, meaningful and important to me, not just another utilitarian application, appliance, another "app," another bunch of "files."
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My great fortune is that from the very start I had a record cleaning system. First was the old dishwasher brush with liquid squirt bottle and then an amazing little machine called a Rec O Vac. The Rec O Vac was an upright plastic machine in which you placed your LP. As it spun, the tiny , soft hairs lifted dust out of the grooves to then be vacuumed away. As a result all of my original 70s, 80s etc LPs sound quite good. For the last many years my various iterations of “Record Doctors” ( thank you Audio Advisor) have been maintaining the old vinyl and protecting the new. |
I have about 1000 lp's. Some close to virgin, some have lived thru the party wars of the 70's into the mid 80's. I am looking to sell either individually or as a bundle..any advice other than keeping them. We are downsizing and I also own about 3400 cd's and regularly listen to about 40% of those. The lp's are worth more and larger thus they go first.. i dont check this site regularly..any thoughts I would appreciate email to [email protected] |