I want to love vinyl, but...

This too! Whatever makes one happy!!

 

That's one of my points, vinyl is not for everybody and it is certainly more expensive. For some people even CDs can't compete with the convenience and comparatively lower cost of streaming.

 

I buy records, CD's and Stream (local hard drive and Tidal). I prefer the sound of vinyl when it is a good pressing.

I am about due to replace my cartridge and realised another cost comparison most don't mention. The cost of cartridge replacements for me is at least double the cost of Tidal and Roon subscription for the same period. That is even before the cost of records.

I will still keep my vinyl though, but only ever play it when I am looking for a sit down and listen session with no distractions - the cost of wear on that stylus is not worth it if my partner wants to have a discussion while the music is playing.

 

Depends on plenty of factors.

1. Your gear.
2. Your ears.
3. Your tastes.
4. The convenience VS sound quality difference debate.
5. Your budget.

If you have low-end gear, you're unlikely to hear vinyl sound the way it can and you'll be left wondering what the fuss is about. If your ears have lost their edge, perhaps better gear wouldn't even illustrate how vinyl can sound and it wouldn't matter anyway. Should you hear the difference, perhaps you won't find it to be big enough of one or might even prefer the sound your DAC provides. And lastly, if you don't have the budget to enhance the quality of your vinyl rig to a degree that would make enough of a difference for you to care, there's no point in even analyzing this at all.

In short, if you prefer digital, there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever. Sell the records and gear, then use that $ towards something that'll be more rewarding. However, should you want to experiment by upgrading, you could look onto the used market for a better turntable and a quality dedicated phono preamp which would certainly make a world of a difference and you can then judge for yourself whether it reinvigorated your enthusiasm about the format or if you'd rather just move on.

Lastly, if flipping an album is too much, none of this matters, really.

 

I had a Dual 704 before which isn't an awful turntable but isn't the best either. The Gold Note really opened my eyes to what vinyl really can offer. Now I'm hopelessly hooked but it's okay, I'm loving every minute of it!

 

I didn't know how good digital could sound until I added a Denafrips Ares II to my system this summer. Not long after the Denafrips arrived, my phono-preamp developed a weak left channel. Normally I would have sent it in to be serviced right away, but CDs are sounding so great at the moment that I'm having a hard time finding the motivation. Sure, 10-20% of my record collection would still beat digital in my system, but before the Denafrips it was probably more like 98%. I'll send the phono-pre in for repair eventually, but it will only be to play the albums I already have, as I won't be buying many records going forward now that I know how good CDs can sound. I can only imagine how good DACs will be in another 10 years.

 

If you leave vinyl behind you must send your vinyl to SH vinyl lovers to take proper care of your soon to be orphaned collection.

 

If there's a weak link in your gear, that would be it.

I started buying used Jazz in the 90's. OJC's were really cheap, Japanese pressings not so cheap, but excellent quality. The more recent Blue Note and Impulse LP's are ok, except for a couple of warped LP's, and 180 grams at that. Some of the audiophile label Jazz releases are incredible, but with shipping and exchange on the US dollar, they're getting very expensive.

Please fill out your equipment profile for those interested in you vinyl front end.

jeff

 

Starting a record collection today makes little sense imo based on cost alone (and I've been a collector for 30 years). If you want physical media, it's a golden era for CDs. People are literally throwing them away. Start hitting up thrift stores and picking them up for pennies on the dollar. Plus, new release CDs are often <50% the cost of the equivalent vinyl. Otherwise just stream. And I say this as a diehard physical music collector (vinyl + CD).

 

I'm a relatively new vinyl fan. When I was old enough to buy my own music, cassette tapes were the format of choice for me to play in my walkman. From high school till about two years ago I purchased CD's exclusively. Vinyl as a comeback format didn't make sense to me until my wife purchased a turntable and a few albums for me for Fathers day and now I'm obsessed.

I struggle with a little bit of an attention deficit. Vinyl sort of forces me to slow down and listen to an entire side without holding a remote and flipping through tracks and having trouble deciding on what I want. You pick an album and it's a commitment for that little period of time and everything sort of stops and it's just me and the music. I love that.

I tell people all the time, Vinyl doesn't really sound better, but it sounds different... In many cases it's less sterile and because it is a dedicated Hi Fi format meant to be played at home I think they lay down the real thing, it's not that digital can't do that, it certainly has a way lower noise floor and more potential dynamic range, but because digital is a convenience format that most people listen to with ten dollar earbuds, they decide to compress the hell out of it and make it sound as decent as they can on cruddy playback systems. Digital caters to the needs of the many and not the audiophile in many cases.

Also, Vinyl is a hobby for us obsessive compulsive types. I've always collected something. Ball cards, action figures, comic books, novels, physical music. Vinyl is amazingly satisfying to collect.

That said, I've felt some of your pains. I've gotten brand new albums with terrible surface noise, not many, but a few disappointments. I know certain pressings are from 24 bit digital masters so they are not true analog, but they can still sound very good. I'll say though, of all the Beatles reissues I own, easily the best listen is a 70's pressing of the White Album that was given to me, it was gently used and after a good cleaning you can simply hear the difference, the rawness of tape to vinyl.

It's not all the time but I have a few reissues that when I popped them on, it was like I've never experienced those albums prior. The Violent Femmes debut comes to mind. The vinyl has texture that my CD doesn't even come close to. I'm not even a huge John Melancamp fan but the Reissues of Uh Huh and Scarecrow are so good, it's like you have never heard Pink Houses before, you have heard the song literally a thousand times and all of the sudden you are listening to the vinyl and it's like holy cow, that's what this is meant to sound like.

Not trying to sell you on it, I think anyone who appreciates music enough to pay for it is a fantastic, I don't care how they consume it. I just wanted to give some perspective from my experience on why there are knuckleheads who put up with vinyl because I'm honestly surprised I became one sort of by accident. It's one of those things that doesn't really make sense but you still love it anyway.

 

Amen. The reason I got into vinyl in ~2005 is because it was still cheap. I could go to my local shop and leave with a bag full of good stuff for $20.

No way in hell would I start a vinyl collection now. The prices are ABSURD. I would do CDs for sure - get a decent transport and a Chord Qutest and call it good.

 

lol, your icon, or what ever it is called, is Dead.

To me that means you listened to a lot of audience tapes or 20++ gen soundboard tapes. Crazy to think of the lack of audio sonics we listened to. I still have over 100+ Dead and Jerry Band cassettes I’d never part with. Not to mention all the live shows we saw.

I still love my old vinyl, and some new too.

My New vinyl is only my fav albums of the past that I’ve tracked down, and I’m happy with that. I some how got into classical vinyl when I got back into vinyl, but to be honest, that’s the worst genre of music for vinyl. I’ll never buy a classical new pressing of classical going forward, but I’m happy I did for the introduction.

That being said, I’m sorta bummed I got shut out on RSD2020 with both Bowie’s, The Who, Galaxie 500, and John Prine. Oh well. Sorta weird RSD has become an itch.

 

It's the 80's all over again, just in reverse. Back then, people were literally sending their records to the dump.

jeff

 

Ditto. The future belongs to digital loyalists only; fook analog !

 

Writing as someone with several thousand vinyl records, bought over 4 decades....just buy CDs. They’re great value these days and the QC on new vinyl is often lacking.

I only really buy vinyl these days for stuff unavailable on CD.

 

Ahh the ole vinyl vs CD/digital debate.

1) Hype. Vinyl unfortunately has always had people saying that a $300 turntable will beat $3,000 CD players - and unless the CD player was truly terrible - that was not the case and it is still not the case. Cheap turntables just have too many weaknesses to overcome and they are not overcome.

2) Vinyl as retro - so cheap turntables do not sound very good but people like retro and they want to recapture their youth or something. Vinyl then becomes a purchase about a whole bunch of things not related to sound quality. But they tell everyone vinyl is better - and so people jump on board and like the OP are scratching their head like "well this turntable sounds flat, lifeless and oh - it has surface noise!! And the discs are warped or scratched or my cartridge doesn't quite line up and inner groove distortion is horrendoues - bah this vinyl is CRAP Sandwich dipped in cat vomit.

3) Good vinyl - $5,000 and up. The cost of entry to get quality vinyl replay is, unfortunately, pretty substantial. When I say good vinyl I mean where surface noise is low - the dynamics are big and this includes arm cartridge and a phono stage - AND it all has to be in a commensurate system int he $15k and up range. If you're not willing to get to the land of crazy prices - then it's not really worth doing. The reason for all of this is because Vinyl is a contact related medium. You need an excellent stylus that digs deep into the groove and does not shift left or right - you need a table that doesn't have a noisy motor sitting under the platter, you need the speed to be bang on - many are not - they run slightly fast (or worse slightly slow). Then the arm needs to be high quality. Feed the sound into a top flight phono stage that has large dynamic scale and on and on it goes. A cheap turntable just suffers too many issues. They will play a record but you will never understand what the fuss is about - I owned a NAD 533 which is a Rega P2 clone - made by Rega for NAD with NAD's logo and colour (same with Edward's Audio).

Price of vinyl. The price of vinyl has not really increased. 2020 dollars are exactly double 1990 dollars. So $20 record in 1990 is a $40 record in 2020. Same with Coca Cola and bread. If your salary has not doubled since 1990 you should work for a different company or complain to the government. The issue is wages have not kept up with inflation but COSTS have kept up with inflation. So the costs have doubled but wages have not and so the $40 record seems soooooo high when really it is pretty much exactly the same. But min wage was maybe $7.50 in 1990 and it's $10 now. It needs to be $14-$15. And because it's not then everything seems more expensive.

This is true of stereos - a $6,000 speaker seems a lot but back in 1990 this would have been $3,000 and there were tons of $3000 speakers back in 1990.

I'm a k-12 school teacher and teacher's buying power related to inflation is down a whopping 50-60% from 1985. Thus, salary versus cost of inflation is down 50+% (half) what it was in 1985. And teachers are hardly alone here. You can probably research loads of other fields to find similar. It's one of the reasons I moved to Hong Kong because teacher wages and government wages keep up with inflation. I have taught here for 9 years and every year I have had a cost of living inflation increase of 2.9% to 4.9% While teachers in Canada were taking 0-0-0 contracts and then 1.5% or so in other years. So if you take my salary from 2011 to now my base salary has increased 30% while had I taught in Canada it might have gone up 6-7%. Coupled with Canada paying teachers a lot less to start with and it's a double whammy. Add that the Income/sales taxes in Canada are 4 times higher and it's a triple whammy.

This is not getting any better either from what I can see. There is so little disposable income for most Canadians (and presumably Americans) that $399 turntables is about all anyone can afford and it's just not enough IMO to get really good sound from vinyl.

Lastly, do note that a LOT of LPs do come with digital download cards and some even include the CD version. So if they come with the other versions that does help with the value proposition since the LP may be $25 and it comes with the CD or download - if you bought just the download you may have paid $22 so the LP is only costing you $3. It depends how you look at this I suppose.

Here is an example - I bought Halsey's manic LP - $21.99 and it includes the digital download card inside. ($11 in 1990 money)
Halsey Manic LP

Sound is excellent - no noise - no tics - it's pretty excellent.

Second hand LPs can be expensive so where possible I buy new. There are some added niceties on vinyl formats like picture discs coloured albums limited edition pressings that can increase in value over time. Downsides are some LP versions have less tracks - Halsey has a few tracks missing that you will get on the CD or download - but this happens in reverse as well where the LP will have bonus tracks not available on CD or download.

 

My son wanted a table few years back when I A-B'ed a bunch of my albums (played by a modest 1998 Pro-Ject) with the corresponding CDs and- like me- he liked the albums every time. So I hunted down a Debut Carbon at a good price 5 years ago, which was at our house for months while he waited to move to a longer term residence.

I was really disappointed with the sound, feeling like the analog advantage was gone. It seemed like the sound was pretty identical to CD. I kept it, as it didn't seem like I'd find better at the price. And it worked fine, tracked well and he had records- he'd bought the Beatles Mono Box, for example. But last Xmas, I had him bring the table home and we slapped on a new cartridge (a Sumiko Rainer). The table only stayed for 3 days, but I thought it was transformed from sterile to full, fleshy, and inviting. The things I like about analog.

That may not work for you, however, which is fine. Audio Advisor assured me they wouldn't think I was scum if I returned the cart, so it seemed worth a try.

I continue to think vinyl can be nice as a niche for the younger set if one has some records. There are the "classic" records, some of which have gotten nice re-releases that can be found at reasonable prices. There are albums a person may like, but are unlistenable via CD, for which even "digital" vinyl can provide relief. (Fleet Foxes for me, for example.) There's the almost inexplicable satisfaction of having the document. But I wouldn't counsel anyone to get into it "just because".

 

I love CDs and LPs; but i do find lps a bit of a hassle. I have many cds that sounded too harsh for me but i invested in a Schiit Loki that simply cured the problem. I will continue with both formats but i can see why some might give up on LPs.

 

I should also add, my duaghter (15) got a turntable for her birthday this year, and she absolutely loves playing records. But, she hasn't had to buy any herself, so cost is irrelevant!

 

I really like your writing and perspective in posts...so are you saying that “real” vinyl appreciation has an even higher entry point to make a difference than say Reel to Reel?

What’s even better is your take on Canada regarding teaching and the cost of living. It seems we (American’s) are being flooded by Canadian “scholars” on how off we are, our decline, and how we should be so much like Canadians. (Alluding to a Rolling Stone Article and how awful America IS)

 

From looking at the OP's profile, I'd say quit. You gave it a shot, it wasn't for you. I'm fully invested in vinyl. I quit CDs in the mid '90s almost entirely. I'd only buy a CD if it wasn't available on vinyl and bought a lot of used vinyl when clean copies were easily obtained and inexpensive. So not completely vinyl, it was more than preferred. Then SACD happened, I ignored DVD-A because Sony had the Columbia catalog and was fully supporting it. But then Sony wasn't, stores were selling off their inventory. I bought up what I wanted because they were cheap, but it was time to move on. I upgraded my turntable to make the most of all the vinyl I'd bought cheap. I was done with digital and audiophile labels were reissuing stuff. This was when DCC, Classic Records and Sundazed along with others were getting licencing on a format the Majors were ignoring. I think, if you'd have followed my path, you'd be more entrenched in vinyl. That being said, the tables have turned. Optical Discs are personae non gratae. MoFi and Analogue Production are still mastering SACD, but I think it's just to create DSD masters for the future sales as downloads. Their SACDs take years to sell out, while the vinyl sells out almost as fast as they can press them. Used CDs are cheap. A lot of record stores sell CDs with Buy Two Get One Free permanent sales just move product. It's a good time to buy CDs. I think all those Audiophile Gold Disks are gone and being hoarded by those that saw the writing on the wall. But there's still probably more CDs out there than there is vinyl. Even if you're just ripping them for easier access, there's a lot to be said for CDs. I'm past this. I bought what I wanted in used vinyl before it became expensive. But if you'd rather not deal with the peculiarities of vinyl playback, it makes a lot of sense to explore what's out their in CDs.

 

For me vinyl is all about the experience ... I like it ... much more than digital formats.

Sound? Not depends on the format.
Hassle? I like to clean records on the RCM, to use the carbon fiber brush, to put the record in the table, ... In actual times where all must be quick, easy ... and at last ... boring.
Expensive? Think about people who invest in 1k meter on cables, a 3k dac, 3k sacd player, ... or vintage cars, etc

I'm in my 50s and something I saw many times is that some people needs to justify what they like. And sometimes it's not enough with thinking about the good you have ... You need to see the bad on the other options.

You don't need to do perfect decisions ... sometimes you simply enjoy vinyl, and you can do it. It's better? I have my opinion, but I repeat ... listening to vinyl makes me happy ... and that's all I need to know.

 

If I didn't already have a pile of scavenged records and a great turntable, I'm sure I'd be fine with digital.

But, I was buying all of this as stuff in the days when no one wanted it. Turntables, records, tube separates, etc.

Now, I add a few records to the collection every once in a while. And I enjoy how great they sound.

 

If vinyl is not doing it for you stick to CDs. You will be happier and wealthier - what's not to like.

Me, I prefer a bit of both vinyl and CD, and I do also recognise that I have a rather nice TT and that it takes time, effort and money to get the best from vinyl.

 

Im a 62 year old and on RSD I talked briefly to a guy maybe 22, in the queue just ahead of me. We were both queuing for one record in particular, and enthusiastically agreed it is a great record. It was released originally in 1972.

This has something to do with why I like vinyl. In spite of scare stories about it disappearing, it's still being bought and loved by all sorts of people, all ages, even women.

I should add im very picky about quality, and have had my share of disappointments, but this doesn't put me off vinyl.