Vinyl. Is it me? the producer? cartridge? Record?


It's no surprise that some recordings sound significantly different than others. Different studios, engineers, musicians, arrangers and instrumentation.

I probably have over 1000 albums ranging from 50's jazz, 60's folk, jazz, rock, psychedelic, classical etc.. and I can probably find certain recordings that sound fantastic on my system from any genre. Others not so good.

I am running a Music Hall 5.2 Goldring 1012GX, Scott 340B Vintage Tube amp, Silver stranded cables, Custom Klipsch that would basically be similar to Forte 2, with a 15" self powered sub.

I enjoy the the treasure hunt vinyl offers. It's great when I find an album that:

1: I like the music
2: The album was properly recorded
3: It's a nice clean copy

Of the 1000 records, I probably have 30 real standout recordings that really shine on all levels. It's great to find them.

While I can still enjoy less than perfect recordings if I like the music, it's still much better to have the whole enchilada experience, especially when sharing my system with guests, friends, family etc.

While I have read some who feel the Goldring is a bit shrill or harsh at times, I tend to put the blame more on the session engineer for adding high EQ to the recording or not recording the lower frequencies properly.

If all my records sounded harsh I would blame the cartridge, or some other aspect, tubes, tonearm etc.. but this is not the case. Some recordings simply sound correct, and I would not want them any other way.

At times I feel some of the lesser quality recordings would sound better on a different kind of set up. Probably a system with a much more colored low end, with the higher frequencies rolled off quite a bit. But on the downside, the really good recordings I have would suffer tremendously.

Do some of you feel the need for two systems where you might say "these recordings sound best over here, and these ones are best played on this other set up?"

One thing for sure is that anytime I have both a vinyl and CD version to compare... vinyl wins hands down every time..unless it's one of these new vinyls that was cut from a digital source. (they can't fool me)

Thoughts anyone?
astralography

Showing 1 response by xti16

In my personal opinion I think your problem is the speakers. The 30 that sound fantastic, I'm guessing are very laid back recordings. I am not a Klipsch fan. I had to live with my sons KG 4.5's - KLF-10's and KLF-20's and to me the KG's were the least harsh/forward of the bunch. Now I do recommend Klipsch for someone who is just starting because they are a lot of speaker for the money. But I do warn them that with long term listening you will get listeners fatigue. So far all 3 people I recommended Klipsch to agreed in the long run.

That being said when I use EL34 tubes in my Octave it takes my power down to about 40w. My speakers are Dynaudio C1 signatures which are 85db @ 1w. Not very efficient compared to any Klipsch. I mention this because should you ever consider better speakers make sure the Scott has sufficient power to drive them properly.

You have my thoughts regarding your question and again this is my opinion