Do You Regret Selling Your Turntable and Albums ?

The first time I bought a record, Lyndon Johnson was president.  At one point, I had some 1300 albums in the collection.  I pitched out about half of them about 15 years ago because we were living in house that just didnʻt have room for them.  Iʻve had some very good tables over the years and could pretty clearly hear the differences between digital and analog recordings.  I had about 20 recordings in both mediums.  There were things about each I liked better than the other, but in the end, none of it was that important.

Last year I sold all of the records and table.  I ripped about 1/4th to digital before doing so.  

No.  I donʻt miss them.  They took up a lot of room as well as dedication to get them to sound as good as they can.  The digital stuff works exactly the same every time I click a mouse.  I have about 1500 albums on digital, far more than I have time to listen to.  It all fits on a single 2TB, 2 1/2" hard drive hanging off of a miniPC running Linux/JRiver.  It sounds terrific.  The records and table took up a lot of room.

At age 74, I donʻt want to be one of those guys who eventually gets dragged off to Assisted Living and having to deal with getting rid of stuff.  Better to do it now.

I have my music data backed to to 3 other hard drives, on 3 other machines, besides my playback machine.  My data is about as secure as it can be.

I held on to my vinyl for decades without playing it during the CD/SACD craze.  My wife hounded me every time we moved (4).  I always managed to find space that didn't infringe on hers.  Fast forward to 5 years ago.  Moved into our forever home and built a dedicated room - all analogue.  I'm sooo happy I held onto my Vinyl.  To my ears, nothing beats vinyl.  I took great care of my records in the day and 50 year old albums sound awesome today.  I must admit that I did gain some pleasure initially by showing my wife the Discog pricing for things she wanted to discard.  I agree with the advice of listening to both vinyl and disc in your system to see what appeals to your ears the best.   The space that a turntable takes up is negligible.  Things change in life.  Never close a door that you don't need to.  Keep the vinyl.

I’d say keep the vinyl. It’s not just about sound quality...if it is about that much at all.  Having and playing vinyl records is simply a different experience.  

Two things I did to make vinyl a more unique activity:

(1) Display your best, newest, favorite, or some other selection of vinyl like record stores do it so that you can flip through them easily rather than looking at the spine.  Hard to do that with the entirety of a large collection, but say, top 200, makes it fun to flip through.  Accessible to others that way as well. 

(2) Bought a high quality Allen & Heath 2 source mixer and crossfader to use 2 turntables, 2 preamps (or the internal mixer’s preamps but not as good as my real ones) so that I can cue up one record while the other is playing...and kind of crossfade albeit my TTs are not of the DJ sort. 

I’m sure #2 makes you cringe but I do that not so much for the quality listening as the experience. To me the quality difference of analog is not super compelling, if it is there at all.  I like the feel, the smell, the process like mixing a martini and relaxing, and that one is listening at the very least to an entire side as originally intended by the artist. 

And at least for me many of my records carry memories - the stain on the jacket, the ones that I bought used that had weed in the creases, the concert ticket in the sleeve...I can even remember what store -- or what record club -- I bought many of them from. 

Sold all my vinyl, collected since late 60s (about 2000 records) in the early 90s. 

Around 1996 after reading about how much better vinyl sounded and finding a plethora of used records at local stores, I started collecting again. At the same time my interest in high end audio skyrocketed. Now I'm all in with about 2000 records and two turntables worth about 20 grand. 

Is it better? That's not always the case as vinyl, CD and streaming are all very gear dependent. Do I listen to vinyl mostly, no, streaming is much easier. When I do take the time for vinyl it is very nice indeed. Like many here I am in my 70s and have been thinking lately about pairing down records and gear.

So to answer your question. Yes I regret selling the first time, but see a day when I may do it again. Too much stuff is not necessarily a good thing, matter of fact it kind of holds you down

@audphile1 I took your advice and briefly setup and listened to a couple favorites.  I liked it well enough to plan another session and delay the decision.

@blackbag20   I’m still on the fence. Today I’ll lean to digital, tomorrow towards analog. I realize it’s all so permanent if I let go of the albums. Permanent for me anyway. I could not justify the expense of replacing them in the future.

Thank you all for taking the time to comment and share your experiences. The more I think about this, technically it could be considered the second time this decision has come up for me. Back in the late 70’s I bought a new Pioneer SX-680 and matching two-way speakers, and PL-400 turntable. Queen’s album JAZZ could have been my first purchase and sounded GREAT. Several moves deciding on a career, more moves as I got married and raised a family. The stereo components gave up the ghost one by one. Music was still important but having the best sound quality was not. Fast forward to a few years ago when I retired and got interested in audio again, I was happy that I kept my albums all these years. As has been mentioned by several people, it’s not just the sound... it’s the experience and memories.  I thought this would be easier.