Starting over with vinyl


Having just acquired new MMGs after a decade without music (yes, what a long strange trip it has been), I will begin to rebuild my music collection.

The question is "vinyl or cd"?  I have a collection of 100 or so CDs and no vinyl at all.

My system is Adcom GTP-500, GFA-555 and MMGs.  An Onix XCD-88 and Denon DCM-280 take care of the CD side.

Musical preferences are folk, bluegrass, jazz, classical and rock and roll (60s and 70s) and female vocals.

My last turntable was a Revox B970 and before that there was a Technics belt drive with a Shure V15 cartridge.

Buying used, what would be a reasonable starting place with a budget of $500 for equipment?  And is there anything I should know about the phono stage of the GTP-500 (checked out and functioning as designed) that would steer me away from vinyl?

Thanks in advance for your responses
kythyn
kythyn,

I suggest you not be in too much of a hurry. You have many decisions to make, and lots of suggestions in various directions, plus the urge to try to save money by getting used equipment. For example:
There is a Debut Carbon on sale here for $299 and it is in Florida north of where I am. Seems like a no-brainer? There are two Pro-ject RM 1.3s with Sumiko Pearls available at $425 from the same store. Are these worth the additional cost in your opinion?
Notice you say Debut Carbon? If it’s not a Debut Carbon DC, then it’s the older model. The newer DC model has a voltage regulator that provides more accurate speed control, which I think is well worth the money. The regular Debut Carbon was discontinued around 2-1/2 years ago.

Ditto for the RM 1.3. The successor is the RPM 1 Carbon that goes for $499. The Carbon indicates that it has their newer carbon fiber tonearm; I consider that tonearm easily worth the extra $25. Both the older model and the Carbon version come with the Sumiko Pearl, which is the other highly regarded $99 cartridge. I haven’t heard it, but I heard the Ortofon 2M Red on a Debut Carbon and was very impressed.

Another consideration: a pair of Mye Stands is close to $600, which gets you within sniffing distance of the Magnepan DWM bass panel ($800). IMO you would get more benefit from DWM’s bass extension, and you can get a noticeable improvement in clarity and detail by putting weights on the MMG’s feet instead of the expense of Mye Stands.

Disclaimer: I haven’t heard a Magnepan with Mye Stands, but I *have* heard the DWM panel with the mini-Maggie panels. I also put some encyclopedia volumes on the feet of my Magneplanar 1.7s and noticed a significant improvement in imaging, clarity, more organic presentation, etc. For cosmetic purposes I swapped out the encyclopedia volumes for a set of these tripod sandbags. These made the Maggies sound even better. So for about $33 in decorator sandbags and $5-10 in sand, you can obtai much of the benefit of the Mye Stands and have a $550 head start on the DWM bass panel.

There are many possibilities in electronics, but the NAD BEE series of integrated amps work well, particularly with Magnepans. The high end store where I bought my Maggie 1.7s used the NAD C 375BEE to demonstrate the 1.7s and they sounded wonderful with great dynamics, clarity, musicality, and detail. The little brother C 356BEE should be a good match as well if 80 wpc will be enough for your listening area.

kythyn,

I have the older Debut Carbon but upgraded it with the speedbox and acrylic platter, it's a decent setup with as much cartridge as you can afford. I have the super MMG's myself (on sound anchor stands) with two DWM panels on Mye stands. IMO there is nothing the combination can't provide save the low HZ I get from a Salk sub. Together it's pure sweetness.

One thing I would strongly suggest is Tidal lossless streaming, it's just Good! It will help with music discovery to help rebuild you rebuild your music library.

I also strongly recommend Tidal lossless streaming. Save a lot of time looking for CD. At home, I use Oppo 105 32bit DAC for decoding Tidal 16bit stream. Super quiet background and good dynamic. On the road, I am using mobile device with USB 24bit DAC.

Another vote for a DAC and monthly subscription to Tidal. I have over 2000 Jazz records from the 50's and 60's which I love dearly but it cost me a small fortune to build that collection to say nothing of the analog system.

Until I heard Tidal and other Hi rez digital downloads streamed through my MusicVault M7 to my PS Audio Directstream DAC, I always preferred vinyl. There are lots of very good DAC / music streaming solutions for less than what I spent (as suggested above) and the price to quality ratio is rapidly dropping. This is the way of the future. IMHO.