I want to love vinyl, but...

As to the subject at hand, nobody has to love vinyl. It's fine. I like it and CDs and cassettes and reel to reel. I could probably do without cassettes if forced to and I already do without reel to reel. I read about FOMO in a post above and it applies to so much in this hobby, and life in general really. The human mind is a strange thing.

 

What really has turned me off to vinyl is the lousy production quality. I've had warped records, scuffed records, FILTHY (covered with gritty debris) records... It is a PITA to clean a record, listen to it all the way through, find out it sounds like a$$, and then go through the return process.

When the vinyl is done well - mastering AND production - it is wonderful, but no more wonderful than a CD that has been well-mastered and actually functions as advertised.

I like vinyl, but if I can get a good-sounding release on CD, I'll opt for the CD over the vinyl LP every day of the week.

 

From your first post it sounds like vinyl is not for you. Nothing wrong with that. All the issues you describe are valid. I would advise to sell what you have and put it into upgrading your digital playback or system.

 

Getting into vinyl now and buying the mainstream pressings/dishes made from digital files is NOT worth it. May as well burn your money. However, if you are hunting down well mastered and audiophile quality pressing then its more rewarding and the money within reason is justifiable.

 

Couldn't agree more with this. I've always said "With vinyl you need to go big or go home unfortunately" in order to fully recognize the sonic benefits of vinyl. Many disagree and that's of course fine. It's simply my experience that sub-$1500 digital playback system will blow away a vinyl playback system of the same price. I enjoy both formats.

 

I like both CDs and vinyl

 

It is a long journey to get your records sound so good that you cannot stop listening anymore! And this means spending money ( thousands...) and endless fine tuning and adjusting. The best records are the old ones, say 50 -70 ties!

 

Good vinyl replay actually starts at around $500. Too suggest $5,000 really asks if people that believe that listen with their wallets???

Personally, I can’t imagine having a main system without LP, CD, and streaming playback. Each has its own valuable merits.

 

Most of the frustration I run into with vinyl users has more to do with getting albums clean, than anything else.

Pops and ticks and detergent residue do not make for enjoyable listening, no matter what gear you're using.

Forget everything you've read about record vacuums and ultrasonic, get yourself an AT 6012 pad, 91% ISO, and a lazy susan with some sort of pad, and you will be well on your way to nearly silent vinyl.

Everything else will fall into place after you achieve truly clean vinyl.

 

I love vinyl, but it's overrated. It's expensive and fussy. You can get great sound from a well-mastered CD for a lot less. There seems to be a lot of people jumping back into vinyl who convince themselves that what they're getting from their inexpensive vinyl setup is miles ahead of CD playback. If it sounds good to them, more power to them, but I think a lot of them have been brainwashed. You need to make a significant investment in hardware, time, and records to be able to match the sound quality you can get from CDs or high-res downloads. Then you can figure out if you like vinyl enough that it's worth it.

 

I have been buying used LPs at the thrift store here near where I work for about 20 years now - I have thousands - and for the first few years they sold for 50 cents each and later for a dollar each. The ones I have cleaned so far out of that lot play really well with minimal tics and noise.
And I tell you, some of the recordings from the late '50s into the early '60s are just the most fabulous recordings I have ever heard! Spaciousness, air, separation and delineation of instruments and voices, etc. -- better than any recording I've ever heard, including and especially new LP pressings.

 

Get your vinyl playing system right and it is so rewarding- it does not need to cost bundles either.

That said if the analogue sounds gets you.... it can be a slippery slope.

 

The main appeal of vinyl for me are the titles that are only available on the format, not that it sounds better.

 

I still think vinyl is cool in a retro way, kinda fun. BUT no interest on my part in using it any more. It is way too convenient to stream stuff.

The sound...depends on your particular tastes. I cannot stand vinyl's snap crackle and pop (sorry, even on great setups with cleaned records at shows...) and the wow/flutter, and the sometimes higher noise floor.* All other manner of distortions. Some folks feel there is "something" better about it but I am NOT one of them. That's not to say all CDs sound great, as many of those are butchered in the recording, mixing, mastering.

*Some setups I've heard have been very quiet. But another big variable with vinyl is the quality of the pressings themselves-I once returned several copies of a Jimi Hendrix LP because they all sucked.

 

This is a part of vinyl listening I enjoy. It makes me pay attention to the LP and the way the original albums story was meant to be told. Most of my digital listening ends up being playlists from my server or genre shuffling (I have about 1k cd's). As far as sound is concerned, I've experienced superior sound often from vinyl when compared to the CD Rip (lossless).

 

I don't think we know what the OP's motovations are with that regard?

He definitely has not expressed a love for vinyl.

As member @Dennis0675 has mentioned.

Oh, it appears that you are Dennis0675!

I don't know if it is a dissatisfaction for me or that I was not all that satisfied with the media to begin with?

Wanting better is just seeking a higher level of satisfaction.

With digital in particular, I can listen to ripped physical media equally as well as directly from a CD.

I don't think that concept translates as well with vinyl.

Owning physical media does free one up from the mercy of the Internet.

A nice media library, whatever the format, gives you complete autonomy over your music.

 

I’ll never understand why people throw or give away records or CD’s when they became “obsolete”. When I switched to CD’s in the 90’s, I kept my records even though I no longer had a turntable. Thirty years later when turntables came back in fashion, I bought one and had an instant record collection to listen to. The same with CD’s when I went to streaming. Makes no sense to get rid of stuff you paid good money to get - you never know when you’ll want to listen to it again.

 

On my system, vinyl sounds infinitely better than digital. Far better imaging, soundstage, and detail. I suppose I could upgrade my DAC, but there's also something about playing a record. It's an action that's different every time. It's a performance. I spend all day on a computer, there's nothing satisfying about sending a file to open or play. Plus the last thing I want to deal with is hard drive space. Streaming is a fine way to listen music outside my collection and test drive future record shopping ideas. I've got hundreds of CDs, and maybe will buy a CD player in future, but they're mostly for the car now. But sure, without the vinyl bug I can see why money can spent elsewhere for a different experience.

 

I donated a couple hundred CD's to a Goodwill Bookstore that has a very nice music section. Not your standard Goodwill store. I also buy LP's($2) there so I appreciated their existence. Everything is on my server anyway.

 

What do you hope to accomplish with a thread like this? Validation from strangers? I wouldn't go to a Banana Discussion Forum and start a topic on why I think bananas suck. I simply eat other fruits and expend as little of my time and energy on banana-related endeavors as possible.

 

This pandemic has put a complete stop to my couple of records a week spending habit I still spin but the flow of new stuff has really dried up. Will prices come back down to earth on used records as shops compete for traffic?

 

Same.

I really enjoy the experience of using and maintaining a machine with moving parts and indulging in all the rituals around it. I enjoy all the arcana and esoteric nomenclature. I enjoy the fact that vinyl rewards being neat, tidy, and fastidious with audible improvement. I enjoy reading about all the engineering challenges around getting turntables to work at all, much less perform with high precision.

It's fun. But the instant it stops being fun, I'll kick all this stuff to the curb, who cares.

 

For me its simple.

I use streaming formats and flac downloads to listen to shows (mainly Phish and Grateful Dead) and albums that are expensive or rare on vinyl. It is great and I enjoy it a lot. However I just have more fun with records and for multiple reasons that are completely subjective, I think they sound better for the most part. Older albums anyways. There isn't much of a gap with most of the newer stuff that isn't all analogue, and I get not wanting to spend the money on the records, especially when they aren't being pressed well.

Still, with some of the audiophile records and some of the older stuff from the 60s and 70s vinyl can be unbeatable often times, and I have yet to run across a digital recording of anything from any era than can sound better than my best sounding records, which there are a lot of them. That said, streaming, downloading, and CDs are by far the best value and can get you into audiophile territory the easiest with the least amount of money.

imo, it is all good, and no format out there beats going to a live show, in a venue with good acoustics.

 

I hear you. It's a hobby with upside and downside. The upside is the hunt. For me, it is finding vintage stuff in great condition at a great price. It can sound great. The downside is when I shell out $30+ for a reissue of a 90's album that was no better than my CD or digital. I have to remember to be very careful buying new stuff and new reissues. I am trying to focus my LP acquisitions on stuff that was "made" for vinyl like vintage metal and vintage funk, older jazz...

 

I love vinyl records. Have done so for over 50 years. And I still have many that I bought way back in the 1960s.
But these days the attraction of CDs is the extra material that you can find on them. Box sets with outtakes, live shows and rare mixes are a real incentive to go with the CD releases.
It seems that bands are finding more and more ways to resell their music, over and over.
Add some outtakes, put it in a box and voila, you've got a sale to someone like me who already owns the album, but wants the extras.
How about that upcoming KC 1969 box set. How many copies of the first KC album do I already have? A few on both vinyl and CD. But I am certainly going to buy the new box set.

However, if I want to hear the album in all its glory, I will play the vinyl. There's just no comparison.
It's like a time machine that takes you back to the year it was released. It just sounds like it did back in the 1960s. It brings back memories.
CDs are more "modern sounding," if that makes any sense. The music is still great, always will be.
But its that intangible feeling that vinyl evokes that keeps me coming back to vinyl.