Vinyl***What If***

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michaelgreenaudio

... having one input is better sounding than multi inputs ... systems are designed to favor one input over the others. Meaning if you tweak your system to work it’s best with your vinyl it will not sound as good with your tapes, cds or streaming.

I’d agree that this was once the case, back when LP was the dominant music format and every preamplifier included a phono section by definition. But these days it’s not necessary - or desirable - to tweak a system to offset a deficiency in the source. Instead, problems with a specific source should be resolved at the source, and its connection to the preamp.

My system includes many sources: CD, LP, tape (reel and cassette) FM and streaming. And their best, each source sounds remarkably similar to the others. I know that sounds like heresy to some, especially the analog crowd, but once you reach a certain level of performance, differences between the best of the various technologies become smaller and smaller.

In my system, the variation in the quality of recordings means that not every source always sounds its best. But the problems lay with the source recording. I’m not going to tweak my system to accommodate bad recordings.