2. analog
  3. 1243076608

It costs me $100 a week to listen to vinyl

I know the math is obvious, but with the price of high-end moving coil cartridges averaging $5000.00 and with me averaging 20 hours a week of vinyl listening, I was disturbed to calculate that I am paying $100.00 per week for the privilege of listening to my own records?
I realise that doesn't include the depreciation on my equipment or electricity costs etc so please don't remind me of this?
How smug those who can bare digital must feel about this?
And how much worse for those committed to valve replacements in their pre and power amps?
How can we expect younger audiophiles with mortgages to pay, families to raise and education to provide for to afford the price of entry into an analogue system with such a potential maintenance impost?
I realise there are cheaper cartridges out there and the MMs are a bargain compared to the MCs, but once 'hooked' on vinyl, the desire to 'upgrade' is encouraged by the reviewers and the audio magazines continually announcing a newly anointed 'Kingpin' cartridge which is inevitably a moving coil with a price approaching the GDP of Namibia.
There seems to be no critical challenges to the assumed supremacy of MCs over MMs except for the lone crusade of Raul on this Forum?
Well I have taken the 'Raul challenge' and switched to a 15 year old MM cartridge which cost me $300. The 'running costs' of this are obviously a 'snip' compared to my $5000 MC but the best thing is the revelation that this moving magnet cartridge (and probably many more), are not only as good as some of the vaunted MCs in the market place, but better than most and sometimes by a considerable margin.
As Raul continues to implore us.........."try it, you may be surprised?"
128x128halcro
lewm
12,472 posts
 
Peterayer, Are you sure of your math? Lets assume the 911T was used as a second car, and you put 5000 miles on it per year. After 8 years, that's 40,000 mi. Do you mean to say that you had put $80,000 into that car over 8 years? (Of course, if you drove it more than 5K miles per year, the calculated expense goes even higher.)
I have owned over two dozen Porsches since about 1973. In the late 80's and early 90's, I did a full restoration on a 1955 550RS Spyder, including bodywork, a total engine and transmission rebuild, new interior, and a $12,000 paint job (all by top class professionals). The total cost was less than $80,000. (I did a lot of the disassembly and re-assembly myself.) You must have had a very bad car that you really loved.
buconero117
2,311 posts
 
Great to 'hear' you switched. You can now be called a value based listener.
cerrot's avatar
cerrot
1,700 posts
 
Life is expensive. If you do it right.
mingles
791 posts
 
Halcro, may I ask what your 15 year old MM cartridge is?
johnnyb53
3,510 posts
 
I have an Audio Technica AT150MLX, one of the better MM carts out there now. Yes, I know there are better--or certainly more expensive--MMs, but I'd still place it in the top 5% performance-wise.

Anyway, the replacement stylus (remember those?) is $180 for a gold-plated boron cantilever and nude MicroLine stylus, which I consider to be a very good value. At 1,000 hrs per stylus, that's eighteen cents per hour, or $3.60 for every 20 hours.
More to discover