Questions for a Vinyl Reunion

I was happy to ditch vinyl for CDs in the 80s for the convenience and the lack of surface noise. I never took care of my vinyl, and most of it was pretty scratched up. I did, however, save some of my favorites that were still in good condition.

About 6 or 7 years ago I decided to go headlong into vinyl. I got a particularly large bonus and went for a pretty nice TT and phono stage, and started buying used vinyl from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and some audiphile quality (but expensive) reissues- primarily jazz.

I was so blown away by the sound that I went crazy buying LPs and went from about 30 titles to over a thousand in a year.

I listen to digital when it is just for background, or to hear something that I don't have as an LP, but I have purchased most of my favorites on vinyl if it is available.

Welcome to the dark side, and enjoy.

 

thank you. can i ask what your table / cartridge are?

 

I came back not quite two years ago, I made a substantial investment (for me) in a new Vinyl front end. I still have the first album I purchased when I was twelve years young; Beatles '65.

I lost the vast majority of my Vinyl collection many years ago and have been slowly trying to replace most of it in the past couple of years.

I don't own a single download, I enjoy the Vinyl ritual as much as the analog sound, it's of my time and has been like reuniting with an ole friend.

 

I have a VPI Aries 3. The original cart was a Dynavector 20XL, but I just got a Van Den Hul Colibri.

 

After (3) nights of listening to old albums sounding OK but definitely not like I remember them, I decided that the phono preamp in my vintage Marantz receiver was holding things back. So today I took a drive to Music Direct and picked up the phono preamp module made for my amplifier and installed it to the chassis. Definitely an improvement but my cartridge still needs some break in time. My cartridge is of the "smooth" variety and it definitely is that. The good thing is that album noise / pops and static are virtually non-existent and the music shines through cleanly, even during quiet passages.
Playing these albums is quite a mind trip, I keep wondering if anything is going to spill out when I open some of the double albums. And yeah, it was the 70's after all and I must have participated, as evidenced by the fact the my Santana Abraxis album was in amongst the 3 album set "Welcome Back My Friends..." by Emerson, L and P. Apparently record producers were also caught up in the times and inhaling more than just patchouli inscense. I played side (1) of the 3 album set, then flipped it over and found the flipside was side (6)!? So now I have to go rummaging through the other 3 LPs, including the Santana that got mixed in somehow, just to find side (2). It was quite a bit of work. You can't do that with a CD or download from I-Tunes!
The sound is growing on me but I am not ready to make a judgement call just yet. It's free flowing, kind of natural, often very real but the key word I keep looking for is honest. The sound from vinyl (so far) is just plain honest.

 

Back into vinyl for a few months now and am acquiring a nice but smaller collection than the one I sold at a garage sale back in '90. (what was I thinking?) Anyway....just simply enjoying the whole vinyl experience again....sound, art work, and the mechanics of it. As a add on, I also acquired a vintage reel to reel tape deck and some new tape and am currently working on some vinyl to tape mixes of my favorite music. Takes a whole lot longer than copy and paste.....

 

Another welcome back!

My reunion was in Oct. '08 when I got 10 album frames to hang some old faves over my desk. In the 18 yrs since I had switched to CDs I greatly missed 12" artwork and resented 5" 'booklets' and stupid silver discs, and reminded myself of it every time I opened a new CD. So when I dug out my boxes of old albums to find the ones I wanted to hang up, all I could think was 'oh my god I miss records..' and then I pulled out my old turntable...

I've bought about 4 CDs since, only because they were dirt cheap at Half Price Books.
I do play CDs I make from occasional downloads and stuff I get from the library- but if I'm buying, it's vinyl.

And my 10 framed albums turned into 50.

 

Update- completely blown away!
I received my first new vinyl in over 30 years! the other night, Dave Brubeck, "Time Further Out". I believe I have hit on some extreme system synergy or something where the new Grado gold1 cartridge is a perfect fit for jazz music.
The second or third cut starts playing and literally it sounded so natural, like the band was live in the room, especially the saxophone and drums. I know people often say that, but I mean it- the band was in the room- it was spooky!
I have to attribute it to the Grado I guess, so natural sounding and extremely quiet with respect to surface noise. Literally blown away.

 

After (2) weeks of listening to LPs I have not had a desire to play a single CD or buy one. I did order a couple more LPs but since I have a good size stack of vinyl from storage, I should be set with music for quite a while.
The experience has totally rekindled my affection for Jazz and Jazz fusion which has been somewhat dormant in favor of indie rock. So far the renewed journey is awesome. The three decade vinyl hibernation period has turned into an appreciation and value of the medium that would not have been otherwise possible.
Still not sure what the ratio of vinyl to CD future purchases will look like but I must say if my favorite artist announced a killer release was shipping tomorrow vinyl would be my media of choice.
On the system side of things the new cartridge is breaking in nicely and I truly love the sound quality experience.
It hit me the other day that playing music on vinyl sounds more natural than CDs but I'm not about to say better entirely.
With a good recording, vinyl sounds as if the artists are in another room and they are somehow connected to my speakers. It is a real-time experience.
Whereas a CD sounds like reproduced, copied artificially sweet music and is definitely not real-time. Does that make sense?

 

Update 7/19/14. Nealy 6-weeks into my vinyl reunion I thought I would share my listening habits about vinyl and other sources.
The initial luster has not faded but some reality has set in, plus some desire for audio tinkering.
My turntable sounded a little muddy / boomy and I attributed it to sound vibration sensitivity. Dynamat is an indispensable material for damping vibrations in mobile audio so I ripped apart my plastic turntable base and investigated if Dynamat could help. Sure enough, the area directly under the parked tonearm is a large flat panel, perfect for receiving and responding to vibration energy. I added a nice layer of dynamat followed by thin strips to form an X pattern to add structure. The cross pattern also ties the flat panel to the side walls, platter recess and front mount. Basically building a sub structure under the tone arm. Then adding more material under the base wherever it made sense. I used up a decent sized sheet of the stuff.
The sound test revealed a nice improvement, less boomy clearer bass, more definition, clearer and less cloudy, and it was even less sensitive to the tap test, damping feedback much better than the untreated base.
Then I started getting the cartridge upgrade bug because the current Grado gold 1 sounds great and makes anything sound pleasing, it really takes the edge off, but I recall my old audio technica at122 sounding better. After some research I checked my old AT body and it measures well, no age degradation, so I ordered a new upgraded stylus for it. The new stylus is a nice upgrade from the original (which was a nice shibata) and I expect to hear more detail when it arrives.
In the mean time I have really been enjoying the access to all of my old records! Some were truly buried treasures that I never played when I first bought them, my tastes and musical appreciation have really changed!
One such record, Jean Luc Ponty "The Gift of Time" must be close to the last vinyl record I bought before putting everything away. It was released in 1987 and I do not remember ever playing it. Wow! What an amazing record and a great display of the awesomeness of what the vinyl sound is! Holy cow do I love this record and I cannot stop playing it. Smooth jazz violin, great drums, bass and percussion in melodic arrangements. I feel like a kid again just playing records over and over. I never do that with CDs!
Thanks for the recommendation to Discogs. Great selection! I have orderd a couple LPS from them, it is very reasonable as well as convenient. Also found some good deals on amazon. So far in the last 6-weeks I have only bought (1) CD and that's because it is a new release and the vinyl isn't available. And I have only played one CD on my system as well. Everything else is vinyl (except in the car of course).
I am re-hooked. Thanks very much to everyone on this site who really triggered the idea to go back to the spinning platter. What a blessing.

 

I started with vinyl, shifted to CD in the 80's and returned to vinyl about a dozen years ago. Slowly at first. Upgraded my TT (indeed my whole system). Ultimately jumping in whole hog. Now my listening is 90% vinyl 10% SACD/CD. No regrets. Vinyl is so much more "organic ," real, and emotionally involving.....IMO.

 

I never left vinyl as I already had a substantial collection of LPs (some 2,000) by the time the nail was driven into the vinyl coffin (1989?). I acquired some CD/SACDs over the next few decades for albums not found on vinyl, but it never got beyond about 500 or so. CDs were a convenience format for me and a way to get some music I couldn't get otherwise. I've since sold the vast majority of them.

Fast forward to today and my vinyl collection now sits at about 3,000 with hundreds of audiophile and various original pressings from all over the world. My collection is my pride and joy and I cherish every album I have.

 

Wow. Great posts. I see I am not alone rediscovering vinyl. I started a couple of months ago after reading all the posts about how nice vinyl sounds. I have a record collection from the 60's - 80's that was packed away. I still had my turntable, a 36 year old MCS 6601 with a Shure M95HE. The cartridge is virtually new. I bought it about the time CDs came out and it never really got play time. I cleaned up my turntable and found everything working. After reading posts about record cleaning I washed a record with some dish soap and a microfiber rag, dried it off, put it on the turntable and dropped the needle in the groove. I was stunned at how good it sounded. It was like hearing the music all over again. I went through the boxes of LPs I had. They had been packed away when I was in the service and hadn't seen the light of day for a couple of decades. I found some LPs that were brand new, still sealed. What a joy to open them and read the notes while listening. I've since picked up some new LPs.

Something else I'm doing is recording my LPs to lossless 48K 24b files. I find listening to these almost as enjoyable as listening to the LP. I plan on getting a music player - Fiio X3 24Bit/192K Lossless Mastering Quality Music Player - so I can play these files in my truck.

 

excellent- you got a nice jump start on your vinyl return.

 

Some unopened ones ! Very cool. And yeah, it is cool to read the liner notes. You learn so much, learn about the players and how they sound.
So far the only bummer of this whole re-discovery deal are the missing records I'm noticing. Must have sold or (possibly thrown out!) during moves, etc. or when I bought the CD. If I had only known! Including a missing mint copy of Dark Side of the Moon! Dang it, what an idiot!

 

Welcome back to vinyl!

I never really left vinyl for CDs as I had a large (800+) collection of vinyl Lps, that I couldn't afford to re-buy on CD. I bought my first CD player in 1987, just as the first Beatles' CDs were coming out. Even though I bought some CDs of vinyl Lps I had, I kept the records too. '87 was the same year my beloved Pioneer PL-10 (bought new in 1975) needed a new belt, so I sold it and bought a Technics SL-DD22 direct drive P-mount turntable which I equipped with an AT-331LP cartridge (considered one of, if not the best P-mount cartridges.) I continued to listen to my records through the years along with CDs, though my Lp listening did decrease somewhat. Fast forward a few years to Internet days and I discovered that there is a lot of vintage gear for sale online and I re-connected with quadraphonic equipment (I have around 250 quad Lps) and set up a dedicated quad system in my den. I bought a Technics SL-1200MK2, which allowed me to put my Audio Technica AT-14Sa back into service. I really enjoy listening to those old quad discs, in spite of their many shortcomings. I discovered this site a number of years ago, and began buying new vinyl, mostly on the recommendations of the folks on this site, including our gracious host. By the way, since you're close to Music Direct, you should check out some of the remasters that Steve has done in recent years, I'm not sure how many are still available, but I would urge you to seek them out. In particular, Fleetwood Mac Rumours on 45rpm, Joni Mitchell Blue, James Taylor Sweet Baby James, and though I believe it's out-of-print it's worth seeking out Roy Orbison's All-Time Greatest Hits. (I see there is an "Original Master Recording" on MD, not sure if it's the one done by our host, perhaps he'll chime in if he reads this.) All have superb sound quality, and you'll feel like the artists are in the room with you. I've recently upgraded to a really nice new table, cartridge and phono stage, and new speakers. I'm rediscovering all of my vinyl once again on this new set-up.

 

Exactly what he said. +1.

 

Wow! I upgraded the stylus on my original Audio Technica AT122LP and swapped out the Grado Gold 1. Apparently the Audio Technica MM bodies / generators of that area were identical and you could go to the top of the line just by upgrading the stylus.
The stylus I upgraded to is from the AT152LP is a linear contact (apparently the best shape you can get for maximizing detail) with a nude shank (diamond bonded directly to cantilever) as well as a beryllium cantilever. This is the lightest mass achievable from groove to generator and the response and detail pulled out of the grooves is nothing short of stunning. This is the best 189.99 I have ever spent in my audio history. Detail and clarity are phenomenal along with the smooth analog sound.
The Grado was great for some music and can really polish the harshness in weaker systems and recordings but is trumped in every way by the AT and the differences are not subtle.
I did get a little scare because the first album I played on the new stylus was the latest Jack White "Lazeretto". Apparently one side tracks from the inside out- very strange. i was wondering what was going on when playing this record- I thought the new stylus was defective or the vinyl was. I was ready to send it back until i read an extensive thread on SH about the bizarre features of this record. Whew!
Nude shank beryllium cantilever stylus highly recommended if you have the opportunity.

 

Update 10/25/14.
Nearly (5) months after the original post (which questioned and wondered what reuniting with vinyl would bring about) vinyl is still going strong! It is (by far) my preferred music playback source. New CDs are few and far between. New vinyl is a great new experience! I am blessed to live near Chicago which has so many awesome new / used record stores. If you enjoy vinyl and are an out-of-towner, it's worth the trip! Dave's records, Dusty Groove and Lori's Planet just to name a few.
The sound quality is often not as good as equivalent CDs but the process is so involving and enjoyable.
I wonder if it is part of a nostalgic trip though. I wonder if people in their teens and twenties who like vinyl enjoy "the ritual" so much or why they enjoy it so much. I just love going to the basement, looking for a record or having one in mind, firing up the system, cleaning the record and needle, sitting back and enjoying some awesome chill time at the end of a long day.
Part of it is the time of life. When my children were younger, I would simply not have the time to do this. But now I do!
Something about "the ritual" seems to involve the length of an album side. 20 minutes or so seems like the perfect length of time. Then you change sides or play another. I seem to get more involved with the album as a work of art as well. The physical media, the cover, the vinyl disk, the song titles, the art work, the credits. For myself, I become more familiar with what the artists are intending during the vinyl process. I learn the song titles, learn the album sooner, and just looking at the cover can have an opinion or recollection about how much I like the album (or don't). Often with CDs or digital media the titles and artists and songs become a blur. There is not so much of a connection. With vinyl, there is.
Without question, vinyl is here to stay in my personal mainstream. Thanks SH forum members for sharing your love of the same.

 

I'll quote Raylinds to start: "I was happy to ditch vinyl for CDs in the 80s for the convenience and the lack of surface noise." Same for me, exactly.

I gradually traded in all my vinyl for CDs, mostly in the 80s, the last of it around 1999. From 1985-2005, I amassed a large collection (~3000) CDs, mostly jazz imports. In 2007-8 I ripped the entire collection to FLAC and started moving to digital file playback instead of discs.

Through the years I'd see pristine vinyl in used bins and 2nd hand stores, and think about what good deals they were. I mostly resisted with all the bad memories of surface noise, hassles with hum and turntable isolation, having to change the lp every 15-20 minutes, etc.

Then I broke down and started picking up selected lps. I found a SL-1200 MKI table for $80 and picked up an AT440MLA cart from Amazon for $99. I set up the table just for kicks and to play with at parties and such. Then I got a Spin Clean. Wow, what a difference a clean record makes! I've now built my collection back up to several hundred lps, including most of the classic rock titles I had back in the 70s.

I currently do not have a CD/disc spinner set up. After a recent move, my plan is to have a vinyl rig and a nice DAC in our main living area system. When the urge strikes, I can play lps but I also enjoy the convenience of digital file playback, and not having to store and fiddle with CDs. And it is ironic that now, at the twilight of the CD era, DACs have finally gotten to where a mere mortal can afford digital sound that is quite good. But its also great to spin vinyl and it sounds better than it ever did back in the day.

 

Tony

Glad to see you are getting back into vinyl again.
I guess for me I never stopped buying vinyl. I have several CDs also but always preferred the vinyl version if one was available.
And I hate that tiny CD cover art.
Hopefully after you get the old turntable set up again you'll have many hours of vinyl enjoyment!
Take care

 

It's a great hobby; if you have the space, the inclination and the gear, records are a nice way to listen to music. I ditched my vinyl collection back in 2011 and don't have any requirement or need to go back to it but for all that, I'd be a complete liar if I didn't admit to lusting after a serviced Garrard 301, with an
top arm and a Martin Bastin plinth. See below...