New Vs Vintage Turntable?

[Dan Dare]

Here we go. Vinyl is irretrievably flawed, vinyl lovers are in denial, etc, etc.

 

The truth is that the best of any format sounds great. It's also true that it is more expensive to get a decent sound from vinyl, but once you get to that point, it does sound a bit special. At its best (which is undeniably expensive), it can rival, perhaps even better other methods of music reproduction. You don't have to spend telephone numbers - £2k tonearms, etc - but the base/entry point for quality is higher than it is for other formats.

 

If you have a strictly utilitarian approach to life, vinyl probably isn't for you, but the majority of us don't live that way.

 

Yes, pride of ownership is a factor, but a liking for nice things applies to many aspects of life. We don't all drive economy cars, wear simple, functional clothing or eat bland but perfectly nutritionally balanced food. We like a bit of luxury and even a few toys. Nowt wrong with that.

 

In my experience, those who claim vinyl is fundamentally flawed (what method of music reproduction isn't flawed in some way?) have never heard it at its best.

[ezbass]

22 minutes ago, NancyJohnson said:

I concur with @BigRedX, some stuff - like my old Sparks, Sweet, Mott The Hoople singles - needs to be played on an old Dansette.  No amount of £2k tonearms are going to make those babies sound better.

 

3 hours ago, BigRedX said:

For me, any records I bought as a teenager simply don't sound right unless they are played on my old dansette that cost £8 from a junk shop in 1973 and played one side of the stereo mix much louder than the other. These are versions/mixes of those records I am used to and everything else sounds wrong no matter how superior the reproduction might be.

I bought Who Do We Think We Are? by Deep Purple and I wore out the intro of My Woman From Tokyo and it skipped like a beast. When I hear it now, it sounds wrong, without that jump.

[BigRedX]

23 minutes ago, prowla said:

• It's about the music not the system.

 

This and only this.

[BigRedX]

12 minutes ago, Dan Dare said:

In my experience, those who claim vinyl is fundamentally flawed (what method of music reproduction isn't flawed in some way?) have never heard it at its best.

 

But there is no denying that it imposes a number of artistic limitations on what can be reproduced with regards to low frequencies, phase and panning as well as impacting on the running order of albums.

 

It's a matter of fact that should we decide to release a version of the album my band are currently recording on vinyl, it will most likely have a different running order to the digital version because the track that we want to close the album will not sound as good at the end of a side on vinyl. Also one of the tracks where we have done something interesting with the panning of the notes on the Bass VI will need to be at least partially collapsed down to mono. I've already checked what the effect will be and it has negatively affected the stereo movement and spread of the track and is particularly noticeable on earbuds/headphones.

[Alicatt]

1 hour ago, prowla said:

• It's about the music not the system

The system has to be able to reproduce the music too

[Leonard Smalls]

23 minutes ago, Alicatt said:

The system has to be able to reproduce the music too

Indeed...

Though I know hifi buffs who reject entire genres of music because it's not recorded in a sufficiently high fidelity way. 

As a result when you go to shows you tend to hear mainly wet ECM (or worse!) type jazz, or breathy female vocal stuff - it's mainly about listening to the soundstage, or bass extension, or air'n'space and "inky black silences". It's the hifi they're into, not the music! *

 

*Though I'm a fine one to talk, I happened to look up my power amp recently and they're £13k now!!! 

[Beer of the Bass]

16 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

Indeed...

Though I know hifi buffs who reject entire genres of music because it's not recorded in a sufficiently high fidelity way. 

As a result when you go to shows you tend to hear mainly wet ECM (or worse!) type jazz, or breathy female vocal stuff - it's mainly about listening to the soundstage, or bass extension, or air'n'space and "inky black silences". It's the hifi they're into, not the music! *

 

*Though I'm a fine one to talk, I happened to look up my power amp recently and they're £13k now!!! 

Is that "wet" in the sense of being recorded with a lot of reverb (which I know ECM tends towards), or "wet" in the sense of Molesworth disparaging his classmate Fotherington-Thomas (utterly wet and a weed, etc)? 

Though it gets the point across either way! 

[martthebass]

I thought ECM stood for Electronic Counter-Measures........I'll get me coat.

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, Alicatt said:

The system has to be able to reproduce the music too

 

My Dansette played one side of the stereo image much louder than the other. Because I rarely listened to my records on other peoples systems, the only time I could tell it was making an obvious difference to the sound was on 60s recordings that had stereo mixes with the vocals panned to the quiet side of the stereo image. For everything else I was perfectly happy with what I could hear (or not) because I didn't know any different. When I finally get a system that played both sides of the stereo image at the correct volume I found that lots of my records had additional instruments quite prominently in the mix that I had not been aware of previously, and IMO the addition of these instruments did not always improve the recordings.