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. 

[Alicatt]

The recoding studio I worked for back in the 1970's had just stopped making their own records, I can remember them when they did make them in a small shop in a back street of the town. Then they moved to bigger premises, they got two industrial units on the local industrial estate, one was the office and recording studio, the other was a tape duplication plant, where they had 3 high speed tape duplicators and an endless loop tape bin that tool 1" master tapes the tape decks came from Gauss C-Tech (spell?) I was hired to look after the tape duplication and the recording equipment and desk in the studio, most of my time was spent in quality control of the cassettes as the 12" pans of tape came off the recorders.

The company was very particular in what master tapes we took to make cassettes from, frequency range was the always being tested, mornings noon and evenings. We did our best to squeeze as much out of the cassettes as possible, different tapes needed tweaks to the bias to get the best playback from them.

Just after I left they moved to making CDs 

 

One funny thing from back then, they guy that took over from my job also got to take over my ex wife 

That freed me up to travel and get a much better job, tho only peripherally with the music industry in that I provided security services/CCTV for events and the police 

From T in the Park 1999 setting up microwave links for the police to get CCTV back from the event, also my car had a UHF link to the police helicopter to send/receive images

[NancyJohnson]

6 hours 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.

 

I have a mate who owned an extremely high end hi-fi business.  We're talking installs running into the tens of thousands; another of my mates is one of his clients.  It's ridiculous money changing hands (£750 for a turntable power supply, I mean, WTAF??).

 

Anyhow, I reckon I've listen to enough records on high end kit and - while it's a personal opinion - no amount of money thrown at various set ups is going to convince me that those crackles and pops and surface noise etc. would be worth the outlay.

 

Could you imagine if, in an alternative universe, CDs actually came first, then 100 years on some wag said, 'Hey look, I've invented this, it's 7" bigger, made of black plastic.  It's prone to scratching and if you play it a few times, it'll actually sound worse!  You won't be able to use it anywhere other than in your house and the hardware will cost a fortune.  It's great, and oh, it's going to cost you three or four times more than those CD things.'

[Dan Dare]

1 hour ago, NancyJohnson said:

I have a mate who owned an extremely high end hi-fi business.  We're talking installs running into the tens of thousands; another of my mates is one of his clients.  It's ridiculous money changing hands (£750 for a turntable power supply, I mean, WTAF??).

 

Anyhow, I reckon I've listen to enough records on high end kit and - while it's a personal opinion - no amount of money thrown at various set ups is going to convince me that those crackles and pops and surface noise etc. would be worth the outlay.

 

Could you imagine if, in an alternative universe, CDs actually came first, then 100 years on some wag said, 'Hey look, I've invented this, it's 7" bigger, made of black plastic.  It's prone to scratching and if you play it a few times, it'll actually sound worse!  You won't be able to use it anywhere other than in your house and the hardware will cost a fortune.  It's great, and oh, it's going to cost you three or four times more than those CD things.'

 

That's just my point. Never mind the crackles, pops, etc. What does the music sound like?

 

Look, I get it. You don't like vinyl. That's fine. Others of us do. We're happy for you not to. Why can you not be content for us to like it without trying to prove you're in the right and we're wrong?

[BigRedX]

9 hours ago, Dan Dare said:

That's just my point. Never mind the crackles, pops, etc. What does the music sound like?

 

For some of us those pops, clicks, general surface noise and low frequency rumble just get in the way of the music.

 

I suspect that those who still champion vinyl have never spent countless occasions arguing with record store employees about whether the scratches on your newly bought album and single were already on when you bought it (they were) or put there by your mis-handling. And you've never spent an afternoon going round all the local record shops looking to see if any of them had a copy of a particular album with the hole close enough to the centre for you not to feel seasick when you listened to it (there weren't any).

[Dankology]

I love vinyl and 100% agree with the above comments pointing out its flaws and the slight perversity of preferring it as a format.

 

Surely it's good to throw these ideas around once in a while, all the more so in a setting ostensibly aimed at discussion and debate?

 

Another current thread here has seen some ill tempered comments that were prompted by people noting some uncomfortable but ultimately potentially valuable legal issues re replica instruments. I like being encouraged to challenge my established views and think about things I might not initially be comfortable doing - big stuff and the less consequential stuff too.

 

 

[Leonard Smalls]

11 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

would be worth the outlay.

Worth is a strange old concept...

Some folks think that going to a gig with 50000 other people and paying £400 for the privilege is worth it.

Others  are happy to pay £500000 for a pokey flat in Willesden Green.

I know a vastly overweight bloke who spent thousands on lightweight components for his Kawasaki while losing no weight of his own - it was worth it to him!

And most bizarrely of all (arguably!), folks pay thousands for a personal number plate whose main two functions are to aid the police in recognising your motor, and to aid the public in determining the character of said number plate owner.

At least with a high end vinyl set up  you can attempt to appreciate your music in as much high fidelity glory as you feel it is worth!

BTW, in my experience, a well put together and high quality turntable/arm/cart set up minimises surface noise of all kinds...

[Leonard Smalls]

Double post!!

Edited 1 hour ago by Leonard Smalls

[BigRedX]

5 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

At least with a high end vinyl set up  you can attempt to appreciate your music in as much high fidelity glory as you feel it is worth!

BTW, in my experience, a well put together and high quality turntable/arm/cart set up minimises surface noise of all kinds...

 

IME the biggest improvement most HiFi enthusiasts could do would be to give their listening environment some proper acoustic treatment.

 

You might be able to minimise surface noise with expensive playback equipment, but there is nothing you can do to eliminate pops and clicks caused by damage or defects to the actual grooves of the record or fix a pressing that is off-centre. Most of the vinyl I want to listen to is 40-50 years old and exists in runs of no more than 500 copies, so trying to find a pristine example, if one even existed in the first place is an exercise in futility. The best I can do is record it onto my computer clean up the audio the best I can by drawing out the pops and clicks in the waveform and then sell the disc on to some other sucker.

[xgsjx]

To me, the point of vinyl is as much the physical side as the audible side. 
It’s the interaction of reading and admiring the art on the sleeve, taking the record out of its sleeve and placing it on the platter, turning it on and placing the needle, then sitting and listening to the first side, then you get to do most of that again to listen to the other side. 
Sound quality compared to another format is irrelevant. The only other existing formats that have a similar interaction are CD & Cassette. 

[prowla]

11 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

 

I have a mate who owned an extremely high end hi-fi business.  We're talking installs running into the tens of thousands; another of my mates is one of his clients.  It's ridiculous money changing hands (£750 for a turntable power supply, I mean, WTAF??).

 

Anyhow, I reckon I've listen to enough records on high end kit and - while it's a personal opinion - no amount of money thrown at various set ups is going to convince me that those crackles and pops and surface noise etc. would be worth the outlay.

 

Could you imagine if, in an alternative universe, CDs actually came first, then 100 years on some wag said, 'Hey look, I've invented this, it's 7" bigger, made of black plastic.  It's prone to scratching and if you play it a few times, it'll actually sound worse!  You won't be able to use it anywhere other than in your house and the hardware will cost a fortune.  It's great, and oh, it's going to cost you three or four times more than those CD things.'

Yikes - I'll be spending £3k (s/h) on a power supply for my network streamer in the forseeable!

https://www.naimaudio.com/products/naps-555-dr

(I was going to invite you round for a listen, but maybe not! 🙂 )

[dmccombe7]

1 hour ago, Leonard Smalls said:

Double post!!

Perhaps you were posting in stereo without realising it. 😂

Dave

 

[Phil Starr]

52 minutes ago, xgsjx said:

To me, the point of vinyl is as much the physical side as the audible side. 
It’s the interaction of reading and admiring the art on the sleeve, taking the record out of its sleeve and placing it on the platter, turning it on and placing the needle, then sitting and listening to the first side, then you get to do most of that again to listen to the other side. 
Sound quality compared to another format is irrelevant. The only other existing formats that have a similar interaction are CD & Cassette. 

It's funny how people who differ over whether 10" speakers sound better than 15's and upgrade pickups on perfectly good basses also differ over vinyl and CD's

 

If like me you have a collection of vinyl at home and just want to play it on something that won't degrade it any faster than you have to then any of the modern £500ish turntables will do the trick. I'd probably avoid vintage decks just because these are mechanical devices with bearings that wear. I want something I can use for the next 20 years without having to source parts. Once you get into hearing the difference it depends upon the cartridge you are using and the amp and speakers. There's no point sonically spending £1500 on a turntable if the speakers aren't equally revealing. The argument for the used Linn is surely that you like the way it looks and you can get your money back if you sell it whilst the poeple who lusted for them 40 years ago are still alive and feeling stirrings (note to self: sell that old Sex Pistols single)

 

FWIW I have a Rega Planar 2 with the better tone arm fitted, can't remember which one. I've had it for years and have only had to replace the belt and needle. You don't have to replace the whole cartridge but spare needles aren't always available for such old gear. I've gone from Thorens TD160 (rumbled like hell) to a Pioneer 12D to the Rega. I used the Technics 1200 in my disco days. A mate has the Linn with the top arm at the time and the external power supply. It did sound better than mine in the shop but not through his amp and speakers. We spent many happy hours comparing systems to find that some records sounded great on his system and others better on mine. Nowadays we do almost all of our listening via streaming but it is nice sometimes to get the vinyl out and wallow in nostalgia, definitely worth spending £500 on that. Go for a decent cartridge though, it makes more difference than the turntable and will conserve your vinyl.

 

Then just love what you have, if you've ever played bass with a drummer I doubt your hearing is still 100% anyway.