A few vinyl questions from a newbie

Kind of an aggressive response haha!

 

A truthful response based on my experience over the decades.

 

But he’s listened to ‘many high end systems’...

 

Riiiiiight...

 

I honestly don't understand the people who keep telling me to start with $4000 devices. Yes, the 19 y/o with a £200 player can afford that.

 

Because they think everyone is as wealthy as them. It is the reason I don't belong to any audiophile sites.

 

I was actually on a subreddit before this. A guy over there would downvote every one of my comments on the thread deliberately meant for assistance, and then give me advice not related to my question. I honestly love this sort of thing but the audiophile side seems kinda off-putting...

 

Actually I don’t think it is always. Discogs is an example of many people complaining of records skipping when they are playing them on players that are barely suitable and will mostly be inferior to digital hi-res playback. It’s just being honest about what the limitations are. Vinyl isn’t a cheap hobby unless all you are interested in is joining the hipster movement.

 

There are people who love music and those that love gear. I fall into the former category but a good number of people on sites like this are more interested in gear and you can tell who is who by their posts and decide whose advice/thinking more closely parallels your

 

This.

I love music, and records are just another way of listening to music. Like I said earlier, I'm the type of person who has a big collection of old consoles because I enjoy that sort of thing too. I got into them during the pandemic because I wanted something to tinker with while self isolating (I'm critically vulnerable) and I found one of my favourite hobbies. When I see records I see those 2 things combined and not only is it a great way of listening to music it's just, for lack of a better description, a really cool way of having some of my favourite songs in a physical media other than a CD. I mean, look at some of that box art! You could put that on display!

I don't need to spend a metric butt load of money to be able to listen to it and enjoy it and nor do I consider myself part of the hipster crowd. Give me a decent starter whatever, be it a record player or something for some other hobby, and I'll be happy with that.

 

There is a third category, people who love music AND gear with the purpose to extract more out of the music.
Hey, but there is no right or wrong, the human race is just divers.....

 

I found that out a long time ago. Those audiophile sites are full of snobs that think everyone else's system is substandard based on nothing other than the cost. I never criticise anyones gear because I haven't heard it.

 

In my experience, it can go both ways.
I’ve come across people who found my €4K turntable a cheap piece of crap and I’ve come across people who found it total retard to spend 4K on a turntable.
Same for basically every other audio component I have.

 

My minimum advice in that case is buy a deck that doesn't damage now expensive records. That would be an AT 120X with AT95E cartridge. Also for cleaning a Disco Antistat or devise a manual cleaning system not involving the sink. If you are into old consoles / radiograms look out for Dynatron. Better models came with a Lenco L75 deck. There is a whole forum 'Lenco heaven' dedicated to fettling these.

 

For me the quest has been about utilizing the means to recorded music which is over all most satisfying. And, so far, 5.1 multi-channel music on SACD and FLAC downloads via an OPPO-205 have pleased me the most, delivering a life-like breadth and depth to music absent from stereo media. Now, listening to stereo from CD, Vinyl, or streams is akin to drinking a Coke gone flat, no fizz. Of course, since much of the music I am attracted to is in stereo, not multi-channel, I have continued to explore means to stereo pleasure which might better delight. In this exercise vinyl playback has mostly been about digitizing it to make it convenient; yet, Apple Music has now made digitization of my LPs pointless. So, for stereo pleasure these days I mostly stream and download via iTunes.

 

120X is what I have! And the antistat is definitely what I'm set on. I'll be picking up that and some distilled water when I next get paid. Did some reading on it, distilled seems safer from a health viewpoint compared to deionised.

 

Demin water may be easier to get hold of in the UK. I'm lucky enough that I get clinical grade (Nuclear Level Clean) "free" from work. Also, Amazon sell distilled/ionised I think, as well as IPA.

 

I suggest go to a chemist and buy/order a 5 litre container of purified (medical grade) water. Not really much more expensive.

 

Same thing isn't it?

 

I use a Spin Clean,and I agree that a 180G record is a tight fit,I rinse in tap water as its Pennine Grade soft,pop the washed records into a drying rack and cover with a plastic bin bag to keep air bound dust off,then leave for a day to fully dry before playing.
You might want to use a external phono stage in the future,its a good idea to look under the radar and seek out a good used brand that many inexperienced buyers new to record playing/collection are not familiar with.
As an example for one TT I use this,its tape loops feed into a Nad preamp.

DUAL PA 5030 Stereo Integrated Amplifier Audiophile Concept High Current | eBay

 

Why can you not love both?

 

Distilled is by evaporation and condensation and deionized or demineralized is by water treatment, e.g. filters, reverse osmosis, ion-exchange resins, electrode Ionisation, etc.

 

AFAIK, the general consensus is that distilled water is more pure H2O with no calcium and less minerals than deionized/demi water.

 

The ACC SEES anti static brush (presumably you're referring to their carbon fibre brush) should be fine if you're playing new records and you don't want to get them wet. If you're playing used records then really the only way to remove decades of debris is by washing them.

In my experience these work very well.

Yes, but there are ways to reduce these. For instance, if you're using a felt mat you should consider swapping it for something anti-static like a rubber one.

 

Interesting that the film doesn't show them using the Milty as per their instructions ...as in not 12 inches away from the record surface and not in 4 different locations around the record ie the triangle approach plus centre ...