Cheapest Analogue Setup to Conquer Best Digital

Any music with quiet passages (as you know silence is an integral part of music) on vinyl LPs should normally send you up a tree. The great pretence is that vinyl is more involving, more liquid, more musical, more detailed... the list goes on, you get my drift. The simple truth is that there is great confusion between the benefits of analogue and the reality of vinyl records. The way vinyl records work is quite simple: a more or less pointy piece of diamond applies tons of pressure to a vinyl groove more or less covered with ridges. Not a pretty sight. Every time the record is played, it is diminished in its quality. Herculean efforts have been made over the years to perfect this flawed system. The results are laudable, but appear to have reached a point, a good number of years ago, which is akin to trying to walk or, better yet, run on flippers. Just look at the ridiculous lengths to which some manufacturers have gone. Yes, turntables remain popular with a very limited number of persons for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is quite an affectation to espouse turntables and to preach that gospel. Secondly is involvement: analogue turntables are simply more fun than CD players because you almost constantly have to tinker with them. They give you some kind of pleasure from the mere mechanical aspect of it, from the tactile aspect of playing a record on it. No little drawer with everything done inside the machine, away from view. Thirdly, if you have that great thick, undamaged pressing, with just the right turntable set-up and preamp (yes, phono requires a real preamp), if the dust that normally is present in your listening room does not settle too much on the record even as it plays and if the moon is shining just so, you will swear for those few magic moments that this is way superior to any of that digital CD garbage. As a hobby, a turntable and vinyl records are great. As a source of enjoyable playback of all the music that is out there, forget it. As a tool for archival reasons, I think you should have one. But remember one thing, all the goodness that is raved about by vinyl fans will usually dissipate like the morning dew once you go against the limited number of pressings that are actually playable. However, there is pride in knowing that you will become a true audiophile, since what you will listen to will be dictated not by the music you actually enjoy, qua music, but by what you find on pressings that a) were properly made to begin with (seven out of ten are rejects), b) have been stored properly to avoid warps and c), since we are almost always talking used records, will have been played with decent enough equipment not to destroy the quite fragile grooves. The means will dictate the ends. Be certain of one thing though, the crackle, ticks and pops are always there, the best table/arm/cartridge combination will never remove these, regardless of price and set-up, so unless the kind of music you listen to always has an unrelenting instrument to hide the surface noise, you either become very selective in what you will actually put on that turntable or will invent some sorry excuse to say either that the surface noise simply does not exist or that it does not bother you in the least, unless you go all the way into the realm of magic thought and contend that you actually enjoy something less than a black background on which your music appears. What you will be forever searching for is that one elusive disc that is for oh such a brief moment perfect. The only way to prove the superiority of vinyl is to have a demo with very specific records, of very specific music, played just so, to induce a false sense that analogue is superior to digital, that turntables are better than CD players. The nicest argument I heard, is that a very expensive turntable currently available puts the surface noise of the record on a different sonic plane than the music itself so that it doesn't bother the listener. Yeah, sure. This is so strange as to be unbelievable. Trust me, there is nothing endearing about surface noise. Our analogue friends seem to want to make of necessity virtue. The best advice you have gotten so far on these pages is to limit your expenditure. There is a wide choice available at very good prices. I would recommend a Linn LP 12, with whatever decent arm is already installed on it, with as many of the Linn improvements and modifications already installed on it as you can afford for the budget limit you should impose yourself. The cartridge poses another problem, since if improperly cared for or used for a good long time, the stylus will be damaged or worn out, and every record you play will be permanently damaged by it. Re-tipping or stylus replacement will prove costly and frustrating, or both. Probably a good idea is to buy a new cartridge, there still is some choice available at reasonable prices. In closing, please don't think that a turntable will generally provide more musical enjoyment than a good quality digital front end for general listening of a wide variety of music. But, if you must, by all means go for that long road to analogue Nirvana. You will soon realise, unless you join the cult and wear your blinkers 24/7, that the journey is long and that the truly enjoyable stops along the way are few and far between, unless a steady diet of audiophile pressings by less than great musicians is enough to warm your heart. Don't give up that digital front end just yet.

Pbb, i think that anybody that thinks that only one of the formats does everything best is lying to themselves or delusional. Both formats offer advantages over the other in different areas. While i will agree that vinyl has a LOT more maintenance to go along with it, it really can sound much more "liquid" or "lucid" on many recordings.

My girlfriend, who hasn't listened to LP's in years nor ever owned a good "stereo", was utterly amazed when i played some tunes for her via the TT. The first words out of her mouth were "I don't remember records ever sounding this good". My brother, who is 25 years old, owns a quad-amped system and grew up with CD's instead of records, said that he didn't think that vinyl could be so quiet or sound so good. It was good enough for him to buy a TT and start listening to vinyl.

Both of these reactions and opinions from people that thought "vinyl is dead". The "funny" part about all of this, especially after reading your response, is that it all came about because i bought a turntable / arm / cartridge combo that set me back $150 on Ebay and wanted to show them how good it sounded. To top it off, the records that were oh - so convincing to the "vinylly challenged" audiophile and non-audiophile were never maintained that well and were lucky if they had been "discwashered" once in a while.

Like i said, a well set-up vinyl system can be done for under $1000 ( so long as you already have a phono stage ). It might not be state of the art, it might not challenge the finest that digital has to offer, etc... BUT it will get you to the point that MOST people ( civilians and audiophiles alike ) would find it both "enjoyable" and "musical" to listen to. Like anything else, achieving 90% of your goal may be cheap and easy. It's that last 10% that kills ya in terms of budget and labor... Sean
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My own experience also differs from Pbb's. Adding to the above, I have found that the major (financial) drawback to vinyl playback is the phono stage: IMO a reasonably priced TT set-up (~1,2 k) with a great phono stage performs very well vs. excellent cdps. This includes resolution and TONAL BALANCE, along the musicality and "liquidity".

No reference to "audiophile pressings" here: the LPs I use are chosen on content and I freely admit that they are rarely disc-washed.... (I'm lazy...;-))

As to pricing... Caterham & Sean voice my experience too.

Sean, I would appreciate a list of those great recordings you are talking about. By the way, if you read my post the way it was intended to be read, I have not said that there is nothing good left to be said for vinyl. Instead of being delusional or other nasty words used, I think I am quite realistic in stressing that, overall, a quality CD player will provide better service, more enjoyment and a better sound quality than even the best turntable/arm/cartridge combination. The operative term here is "overall", as in "generally" or "more often than not". Yes, you can set up a demo playing to the analogue front end's forte and compare it to CD playback emphasizing CD's minor flaws and come up with the well worn arguments over an analogue turntable's vast superiority. That only proves my point that the good sounding recording will dictate the music you actually listen to. It should be the other way around: you should buy the music you like, and the equipment should overall, generally and more often than not reproduce it as accurately and pleasantly as it can. A lot of music will never find it's way onto CDs. For that reason alone a music lover, young enough not to have one pre-CD days (in some ways I wish that were me), should buy a decent turntable. To insist that the sound to be had from one will be superior to proper, current CD reproduction is, I think, wishful thinking. By the way, direct to disc recordings are the ones I still feel have an edge over any other medium. That's a generalization, I know, so to be more specific let me say, in closing, that I will now go and play my Canadian Brass, Umbrella recording UMB-DD5 lp, but I will do it just once because I know for a fact it won't sound as good the next time it's spun... Regards.

WOW! Pbb sounds like a lover scorned. What will the digital afficienado do when the digital format-de-jour becomes yesterday's news? Will he weep for the format or curse it? Will he continue to tweek the old format with his trusty green pen? Will he place his outdated machine on the latest generation of sandbox foundation or replace the interconnects all in an effort to make is sound "more like analog"? Or will he toss his love (and his thousand CDs) away like an old shoe to get the latest nuclear-powered system that Madison Avenue will, no doubt, once again proudly proclaim to be "the perfect playback system"?

Of course, there are plenty of bad CD recordings just as there are plenty of bad LP recordings. Although, many of my friends have listened to a random LP at my place and are astounded because they have believed the hype that CDs are "perfect" and somehow better than vinyl, yet they are actually hearing otherwise. In fact, CDs almost didn't make it in the marketplace because of poor sound quality when they were first introduced. (They have obviously improved.)

Saying that a "quality CD player" (whatever that is) will better provide the subjective qualities of service, enjoyment and sound quality than "even the best turntable/arm/cartridge combination" is as irresponsible as saying that vinyl is an absolutely superior medium. Both take time and effort to maximize their performance and both can be simultaneously rewarding and frustrating.

For those who are fans of digital playback, Audiogon offers a digital subject forum to debate the multitude of digital formats (warts and all) and which one comes closest to analog. This particular forum (Analog Forum) is for folks who enjoy and want to get the most from analog (warts and all).

To answer the original question posed by David, my experience is that, from an overall sonic perspective, around $3K to $4K (full retail) will get you into an analog rig that will compete with just about anything that digital has to offer, assuming that both are playing reasonably good recordings.