Help educate Analogue rookie

Do you like to go to garage sales sometimes in the summer? Do you like to poke around on ebay every once in a while? Do you like hanging out at record stores with all the hipsters and their complicated shoes? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then you're a prime candidate for vinyl. Finding, collecting, and playing vinyl is not a pain in the ass--it's fun, lots of fun. Enjoy.

Lots of digital vinyl is pulled from 24/96 masters. So it digital, but it must then be downsampled to 16/44.1. No such limitation is inherent with vinyl - the 24/96 can be converted straight to analog. How well the company does this varies, but unless you have access to some great digital gear (dCS, Meitner, Linn CD12, etc) i think you may be better off with the digital vinyl!

Aaron

Buy yourself a modest turntable rig to start. A Pro-ject or Music Hall with a decent cartridge. Get it setup by someone who knows what they are doing. Get two record cleaning brushes, a carbon fiber brush, a zerostat gun, a good stylus cleaner and a starter kit of fluid from Audio Intelligent. Don't get into vinyl without at least a record doctor record cleaning machine. By now you have spent around 800 to $900. Buy some good LPs new, at least half high quality 180g pressings or better. Mix in a few yard sale LPs. Clean all of them well using the AA cleaning ritual. Also, if you don't have phono stage on your pre you will need to spend a couple of hundred on one. IF all this hasn't scared you off, live with this rig a year or so and then decide if you want to plunge deeper. If you start having feelings like Oregon then your hooked on vinyl. Background noise can never be eliminated completely but cleaning records well can take a lot of noise out. Damaged records will always have pops and clicks. As far as the difference between Analogue and Digital-even good digital, well analogue sounds smoother (best term I can come up with). When you are there you will know...