Why vinyl

As we know vinyl and the toys to play it are not perfect, many if us need a challenge that we can call a hobby in the quest to get it right.

It’s interesting that vinyl enthusiasts are chasing the detail and precision of digital, while the digital crowd is chasing the warmth of vinyl. Several forum members have repeatedly reported that their digital rigs sound almost identical to their vinyl setups. My feeling is that audiophiles are ultimately aiming for the same goal, just using different means.

It’s interesting that vinyl enthusiasts are chasing the detail and precision of digital, while the digital crowd is chasing the warmth of vinyl. Several forum members have repeatedly reported that their digital rigs sound almost identical to their vinyl setups. My feeling is that audiophiles are ultimately aiming for the same goal, just using different means.

Great observation !

 I think you are right. It is my own impression too .

I choose to be pragmatic myself  choosing digital tough...

Vinyl to me represents a bygone era of my youth and how I was able to acquire a collection of music to play at my leisure. Which is what I suspect is what collecting music, for most, is about.

I’m a soon to be 73 year old who grew up in Washington, D.C. in a musical family in a very memorable time period of the 60’s and 70’s. My dad had bands that toured the surrounding Washington Metropolitan Area, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. They gigged on weekends as every band member, including my dad, had a day job. Rehearsals were held mostly at our house in the basement and would draw friends and neighbors peeking through the windows to get a glimpse of the performances.

I had a paper route  (The Evening Star) that kept me busy and paid enough to begin collecting my favorite records that began with vinyl 45 rpms. It seems a little crazy now, to by a popular record (vinyl) to listen to it over and over again, but that was a time when having your favorite record and sharing it with your brothers and sisters and friends was a thing to do. There were many conversations to be had and there was learning the new dance steps so you could showoff your moves at the next dance (usually in the basement of someone’s home).

Later became the every two weeks (payday) trip to the record shop to buy more records to continue building a collection of music. It was a big deal to have a record collection because not everyone could afford to buy recorded music. Most relied on waiting to hear their favorite tunes on AM Radio, at home or in the car.

I used to go with my dad to visit my uncles and watch and listen to them have conversations about the famous artists of their time and the LP records they had collected. Then out would come the vinyl, 33’s and 78’s of the great performers of their day from Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Tommy Dorsey’s Big Band to Duke Ellington (who was a Washington, D.C. native), etc.. This was not my favorite music but I enjoyed the banter between them and grew to appreciated their love of music and the lessons bestowed on me about music and how to listen to well composed and performed music by the best in the business. All on vinyl…

For me vinyl began as the only way to collect recorded music. It had little to do with sound quality and more to do with the journey of seeking out the music that I wanted to have and what it took to find it. Often times the search took you to many records shops before finding the albums you sought, but that’s what it took and it was an adventure doing it, especially when you found what you went searching for because there were times when you came back empty handed. Records were sold out and you had to wait for the replenishment…Imagine that today!

My vinly journeys continued in the early 70’s in Los Angeles with bi-weekly (payday) trips to the infamous Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood where on some occasions you would see a celebrity doing the same thing that I was doing, flipping through the rows of vinyl LP’s…Later yet in the mid-70’s, Amoeba Records on Haight St. in Haight-Ashbury San Francisco, Tower Records on Columbus Blvd. and Bay St. in North Beach. Then as a treat, going to the East Bay in University Village next to Cal Berkeley where the trifectas of record shops was Tower, Amoeba and Rasputins Records within a couple of blocks of each other. This was mecca for music buying. I would spend hours rifling through the rows of LP’s to find the music on my written list.

Then the 80’s bought an end to buying vinyl records as music CD’s became the new medium after 8 Track Tapes (the absolute worst music medium period - my opinion) and Cassette Tapes fizzled out. I continued my collecting music on CD’s, amassed another collection of 1000-plus cd’s until the advent of Napster. Yet another new journey began to create a new way to collect music, ie; Mp3’s and the myriad of better quality files, AIFF, Lossless Compression, FLAC, etc.

I have followed all of the mediums as they have changed, to now, Streaming. I’ll not comment on which I think is the best medium to date but I will suffice to say that with today’s technological advances in  High End Audio Equipment you can put together enough components to play almost any medium of recorded music and hear it with as much satisfying fidelity as you may want that will suffice for all but the most discerning among us. I can stream music using digital Hi-Res tracks from Tidal that play through my system with all of the detailed nuances of 180-220gram vinyl.

I still have most of my collection of vinyl LP’s that began in the late 60’s until the next new medium, the Music CD replaced vinyl as the popular way to buy and play your personal favorites. However, I still enjoy taking out my vinyl LP’s with all of the rituals and fanfare and listen to music that takes me back to another time with remembrances of what was happening at the time that music was produced.

I have an all McIntosh system with tube preamp (C2600), tubed bi-amped MC275’s, MC550 SACD/CD player, running through KEF Reference 205/2’s and double REL-812 subs, CS200 Streaming DAC, MP 100 Phono Preamp and my most recent addition a MT 10 Turntable replacing a Pro-Ject Extension 10 Evolution Turntable with a Sumiko Pearwood Celebration ll Cartridge…So I think the question isn’t, “Why Vinyl ?”. My question is “Why not enjoy it all?”.

@gjfalls Excellent first post. Welcome daddyoh..