Why would anyone buy a vinyl playing setup?

Creed_Clicks · November 2018

The vinyl I bought, I think I've only played a few records so far on my sister's player. The rest are in storage. I'm not sure if having a small collection of records defeats the purpose of having a "collection". But it might be a good thing in that I might only buy 1 or 2 records a year and actually listen to them properly. It just seems so much easier to stream and/or play CDs

BigLicks67 · November 2018

I've got music on all formats, I even have a fully working twin deck Kenwood tape player. I like listening to my old records so I have a turntable, but I also buy new vinyl but on a limited basis for particular artists. Most of my purchases are CD's or downloads. I don't see any probs with enjoying all the formats that are available.

viz · November 2018

I am aware of the irony of trying to demonstrate the beauty of vinyl by recording it on an iphone and uploading it to a low res video site and you people listening to it on your phones! - but I thought it might be interesting for people to hear what a good record player can convey in terms of detail at least.

Obviously you can’t hear any of the fullness and depth, or even some details, and definitely not the balance of frequencies that actually sound in the room, but the level of detail that comes across may be surprising to those who haven’t heard records before. Or maybe not. I don’t know!

https://youtu.be/F_A8D6bTaPY

roberty · November 2018

viz said:

I am aware of the irony of trying to demonstrate the beauty of vinyl by recording it on an iphone and uploading it to a low res video site and you people listening to it on your phones! - but I thought it might be interesting for people to hear what a good record player can convey in terms of detail at least.

Obviously you can’t hear any of the fullness and depth, or even some details, and definitely not the balance of frequencies that actually sound in the room, but the level of detail that comes across may be surprising to those who haven’t heard records before. Or maybe not. I don’t know!

https://youtu.be/F_A8D6bTaPY

I love 80's pop on vinyl - plentiful and non-collectible so affordable! 80s pressings sound great as well, even the light pressings, better than most new stuff I think

Is that a Rega @viz? ; What speakers are you running? Sounds like a nice rig

viz · November 2018

roberty said:

I love 80's pop on vinyl - plentiful and non-collectible so affordable! 80s pressings sound great as well, even the light pressings, better than most new stuff I think

Is that a Rega @viz? ;; What speakers are you running? Sounds like a nice rig

Yes, 80s was definitely the best decade for music

it’s a Kuzma deck and PMC speakers. They’re both really neutral.

robinbowes · November 2018

viz said:

I am aware of the irony of trying to demonstrate the beauty of vinyl by recording it on an iphone and uploading it to a low res video site and you people listening to it on your phones! - but I thought it might be interesting for people to hear what a good record player can convey in terms of detail at least.

Obviously you can’t hear any of the fullness and depth, or even some details, and definitely not the balance of frequencies that actually sound in the room, but the level of detail that comes across may be surprising to those who haven’t heard records before. Or maybe not. I don’t know!

https://youtu.be/F_A8D6bTaPY

I just played the song on Spotify and it's miles better than this.

R.

viz · November 2018

robinbowes said:

I just played the song on Spotify and it's miles better than this.

R.

roberty · November 2018

viz said:

roberty said:

I love 80's pop on vinyl - plentiful and non-collectible so affordable! 80s pressings sound great as well, even the light pressings, better than most new stuff I think

Is that a Rega @viz? ;; What speakers are you running? Sounds like a nice rig

Yes, 80s was definitely the best decade for music

it’s a Kuzma deck and PMC speakers. They’re both really neutral.

No way, I have PMC speakers too. They are perfect I'd say, near enough. The only speakers I've owned that sound just as good with all genres and decades of music

lasermonkey · November 2018

I have a pair of PMC TB-2s in the home studio and they sound so good that I'm tempted to replace my Mission 752Fs with a set.

viz · November 2018

lasermonkey said:

I have a pair of PMC TB-2s in the home studio and they sound so good that I'm tempted to replace my Mission 752Fs with a set.

Yes, or maybe some twenty 21? There was a pair on ebay for 750-ish recently

Phil_aka_Pip · November 2018

lasermonkey said:

I have a pair of PMC TB-2s in the home studio and they sound so good that I'm tempted to replace my Mission 752Fs with a set.

I've never liked Mission. KEFs every time for me

Matt_McG · November 2018

I have a turntable and listen to vinyl at least half of the time when I'm at home.

I don't have any mystic belief in the intrinsic superiority of analogue gear, or disdain for digital. The other half of the time I'm streaming to a Raspberry Pi with a DAC hat on it, that sits behind my hifi preamp, and that sounds great, and a lot of my daily listening is MP3s on my phone, which is also fine.

But, a decent turnable with a decent cartridge -- and I'm not talking megabucks here, I have a second hand low-end Linn and a 100 quid Shure cartridge -- sounds pretty good. Which opens up a whole world of second hand stuff, plus means I can still play the dozens and dozens of records I've owned since I was a teenager, plus the couple of hundred others I've picked up over the years.

I like jazz and classical music, as well as rock/soul/RnB, etc. Which means that there's a huge amount of good quality stuff out there to be had, super cheap, on vinyl. Plus strange oddities. I have a load of Soviet pressings of classic 40s and 50s swing music, for example, which I got for free when a place I used to work was throwing them out. Similarly, big boxed sets of eastern European pressings of Shostakovich and Prokofiev that I paid a couple of quid for. Some of which are hard to get on CD, or aren't on Spotify.

It takes me no longer to pull a record off the shelf, which is right there, in the living room, with the turntable at head height and put it on, than it does to go to my laptop or open an app on my phone, and scroll around to choose what I want to here, and then set it running. I like the fact that it forces me to resist the temptation to flick, or chop and change.

roberty · November 2018

@Matt_McG are you running Volumio on your Pi? Bloody brilliant. I had an off the shelf streaming DAC but wasn't impressed by the buggy firmware

roberty · November 2018

Here they are, Pi DAC measurements, perfect conversion, pretty much: http://archimago.blogspot.com/2016/10/measurements-raspberry-pi-3-hifiberry.html?m=1

robinbowes · November 2018

I bought one of these a while back, but have never got around to using it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1815752970/hybrid-tube-amp-for-the-raspberry-pi/description

It supports Volumio.

I've never really had the inclination to bother because I've got quite a few Squeezeboxes which fulfil my streaming needs.

I should maybe give it another go.

R.

lasermonkey · November 2018

Phil_aka_Pip said:

lasermonkey said:

I have a pair of PMC TB-2s in the home studio and they sound so good that I'm tempted to replace my Mission 752Fs with a set.

I've never liked Mission. KEFs every time for me

I'm not a huge fan of Mission in general, but the 75X Freedom range is pretty damn good IMO.

Matt_McG · December 2018

@roberty No. I use PiCorePlayer, which is Squeezebox/LMS based. A few of the plugins are a bit fiddly — e.g. streaming hi bit rate audio from last weeks Radio 3 or 6Music, say — but it is a setup I know well.

barry2tone · December 2018

Fourteen minutes, but reasonably interesting.

steveledzep · December 2018

That video referred to "loudness wars" (google it) which is compression of the music on the cd format. It robs the cd of the balanced frequency extremes and was done by producers to make their recording stand out on low-fi reproduction such as radio. When cd first appeared, a lot of back catalogue vinyl music was put into the digital format and the majority of it sounded very poor compared to the original. I speak as a vinyl lover with about 400 lps from the seventies. I use a Gyrodec/Roksan/Ortofon MC combination through MF amplification into Piega loudspeakers.
It's a shame that the engineers for the most part got it wrong as cd has the potential to beat vinyl reproduction in many ways.
Like others here, I love to have a listening session rather than just background noise. The critical listening reveals the shortcomings of both formats, but my preference is for vinyl for the vintage of music I prefer to listen to. Yes, I'm a dinosaur !

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Why would anyone buy a vinyl playing setup?

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