Vinyl or wait for the new stuff??

Fun to read your reaction, Doug S. ; I have to say it was a bit of a chore reading through the spelling quirks but I understand it helps not to take all this too seriously.

No commercial CD player for 12 years after the Linn, you say ? I don't know. When I was selling in Canada in1974-5, we hadn't heard of the Linn yet. The Ariston RD-11 was the best we had ( and it was miles ahead of the rest and cost an astronomical $ 800 ).

Hi-fi was last on my hobby list in the early 80's but surely there was a commercial CD player by 1984 or earlier ?

My point is still pertinent in any case--the Linn being costly, relatively few people had heard it and could compare it to the new CD medium. It took time for Linn-type technology to influence the industry enough for people to try to duplicate the essential points for less money than the LP12. There just wasn't enough lead time for the LP playback revolution to establish itself firmly enough to counter the CD lie campaign.

That doesn't mean there's no point in finding out, by listening, if vinyl is what you really want. I wanted to point out that the CD's premature ascendancy in the market was what kept vinyl an interesting listening experience in comparison. Vinyl can undoubtedly be surpassed, and perhaps will be in the next technological cycle. Right now, it has something the other medium doesn't. The other medium knows this and is still trying to reach its full potential.

hi tobias,

cd-players became commercially awailable in 1984. i double-czeched the linn website to werify its introduction of the lp12 in 1972. there were plenty of excellent-sounding, reasonable-priced turntables around at this time - both prior to, & after the intro of the lp12. the venerable ar-xa (correct model #?) is *still* a respectable piece, tweeks awailable to this day allow this humble 'table to perform up there w/the best of 'em.

i guess, bottom line is i must disagreee w/the point yure making. imo, good turntable technology was entrenched even *before* the linn intro, and the audiophile end of the audio industry was *extremely* cognizant of the lp's superiority over the cd, when cd was 1st introduced in 1984. in fact, most audiophiles know it's only been in the last couple years that cd-playback has been able to even approach winyl as an ultimate software playback medium. cd overwhelmed winyl not cuz no one was aware of winyl's superiority, but cuz cd was aimed at the mass-market, & the audiphiles were yust overrun by the sheer number of folks who tink the latest-n-greatest is what's adwertized in rags like stereo-review, and sold in stores like circuit-city. ;~)

i *do* agree that the cd's "premature ascendency" is what's kept winyl around as a wiable playback medium, tho - there *are* enuff folks out there that are interested in the quality of the *sound*, regardless of what the mass-media sez! :>) i'm sure winyl *can* be surpassed by another "technological cycle". but, i'm not sure when this may occur - certainly i don't see it happening anytime soon. there's no incentive for the music industry to push a higher-resolution digital format for audio, as the masses tink redbook cd is as good as it gets, awreddy. the sacd/dvd-audio wars will be fought more over the multimedia/surround-sound mass-market, & audiophile-quality audio-only software will be yust an afterthought. yust my opinion, of course!

regards, doug s.

Why not look at "L" cassette, or 8-track, or any one of the hundreds of formats that have come and gone, or will go as soon as they cook up some other inferior media. I have 30 year old vinyl that I will never trade for shinny bits of smoke and mirrors.

If you wish to get into Vinyl, you MUST get a record cleanner and invest the time to care for your records. My personal fav. is VPI 17F, and the Last products. If you want to start w/ a cheep entry to try it out, Look at the offerings from Music Hall, a music:$$ ratio that can't be beat.
Happy listening

Several years ago, my kid and I did his science fair project on "Vinyl Vs. CD." We had 4 LPs and CDs with the same source material, both classical and rock. Front ends were VPI HW19 Mk III with Benz Glider and Marantz 65 SE playing through a Musical Fidelity X 10D. Rest of system was the same. We had 10 listeners do A-B comparisons. I carefully matched the sound pressure levels.

Result - Vinyl smoked the CDs in all respects. Everyone preferred the vinyl sound.

Now, a more expensive CD player might have been a different story, but those were the results.

Besides, where else can you get great music for only a few bucks a pop? Get a good record washer and replace the inner sleeves after washing and you get great sound for alittle money.

Joe

It seems silly to post this to a thread that's almost a year old, but...I can't resist. I've had the great pleasure of comparing top flight digital and analog front ends. Hi-end digital smokes low end digital by a long shot. Makes the unlistenable actually pleasureable. But a mid run turntable setup outperforms a top notch CD rig even worse. A top tier turntable you ask. Fuhgedaboudit! I suspect this lies mostly in the crappy software the record companies feed us, but that's a discussion for another day. The harmonic structures, decay, ambiance, musicality, fluidity and engaging nature of the analog disc has yet to be replicated, even by SACD. One day, somebody will have the b*!!s to spend $40 or $50 grand on an ADC and put out some decent CD's and maybe we can find out what digital is really capable of. Till then, vinyl will be king. Long live the king! I hate to admit this, but the ritual of putting on a record really makes listening to vinyl all the more involving. If you're finding that life is making more and more demands of your time and the treasured moments you spend in front of the stereo are being whittled away, shouldn't you spend those moments listening to the best medium there is? Well, as Forest used to say, "That's all I have to say about that".