Vinyl

[JeffB]

Anyone else into vinyl records? My wife gave me a turntable recently and after fumbling around with it for a couple weeks with it connected through home theater surround, I finally I decided to pair it with a vintage amp and similar vintage speakers to see what it really had to offer. And searching for good quality old stuff was fun as hell too.

Wow! Now I've gone from 100% streaming music, to skeptical about vinyl, to intrigued, to fully converted. I sit down in the evening after kids in bed and pick out an album to play, beginning to end, with a cocktail in hand.

Great way to decompress and really hear music instead of just searching and listening to a few min before fast forwarding to something else. I love it. And this is coming from a tone deaf dabbler with no musical talent at all. I lack the language skills to describe the difference in sound with vinyl and vintage amp, but now having experienced it, I can't imagine giving it up.

Anyone else converted or re-converted?

 

[slowrider]

Sweet set up. I've keep my records from the 60,70,80s all 900 of them. Every once in awhile we spin a few vinyls. Marantz amp, Garrad table and Bose speakers. Neil young, cinnamon girl.

 

[Bill Talbot]

I didn't have to 'reconvert'... never stopped listening to the albums I had!

 

[JeffB]

I didn't have to 'reconvert'... never stopped listening to the albums I had!

First album I ever bought was on cassette .... I didn't know what I didn't know -

 

[Read Blinn]

Analog is analog — all the sound, nothing clipped. (That includes cassette, BTW.) I've never spent much money on music, but I'd go back to analog — noise, schmoise.

 

[Jim Kenney]

Jeff, many of us oldsters grew up with a set up like that in our bedrooms. The teenager with the biggest stereo won the coolest kid in the neighborhood award. To this day I really can't judge how much I like an unfamiliar song until I hear it at a pretty high volume. I shake my head about young folks who have only experienced music through earbuds. I have a bunch of old records, but not nearly as many as slowrider. Occasionally I play them on a crummy Victrola all in one machine. Kind of a travesty, but that's the only functional record player I have at this time.

 

[JeffB]

Sometime in early middle school, I got the rack system with floor speakers for my birthday. But it was dual cassette with equalizer and tuner amp. Mix tapes were the rage. About mid 1980s. Then came the CD. My parents still had the technics phono and amp with some huge "bookshelf" speakers and a bunch of vinyl. I would love to have that stuff now, but I'm confident they sent it all to the landfill at least 30 years ago.

 

[crgildart]

I'm still rocking one of the earlier JVC 5.1 home theaters.. Amazed it still blows 100w through all channels and sub. You can run a turntable through most newer ones but you need to ground it to the metal case instead of the ground plug older ones have..

Technics turntables, bottom one is older one I got around 1988 on its 3rd belt with a sketchy drive motor. Top one a friend sold me for $10. Works well but not as nice as the older one.. But hey, spare parts to keep spinning wax. Honestly, I rarely get the table down from the top shelf but fun once in awhile..

Home theater up top, 100 watt speakers all around the room, subs on the floor but only one hooked up.

Albums on the bottom, not a lot but every one I ever bought through the 80s and the best were given to me by my older sister.. family heirlooms!
Had way more cassettes, probably over 500 CDs.. I actually had an 8 track in my first car Ka KLUNK!

 

[JeffB]

I'm still rocking one of the earlier JVC 5.1 home theaters.. Amazed it still blows 100w through all channels and sub. You can run a turntable through most newer ones but you need to ground it to the metal case instead of the ground plug older ones have..

Technics turntables, bottom one is older one I got around 1988 on its 3rd belt with a sketchy drive motor. Top one a friend sold me for $10. Works well but not as nice as the older one.. But hey, spare parts to keep spinning wax. Honestly, I rarely get the table down from the top shelf but fun once in awhile..

Home theater up top, 100 watt speakers all around the room, subs on the floor but only one hooked up.

Albums on the bottom, not a lot but every one I ever bought through the 80s and the best were given to me by my older sister.. family heirlooms!
Had way more cassettes, probably over 500 CDs.. I actually had an 8 track in my first car Ka KLUNK!

Love it. New album for collection this week - I visit the local record store about once per week and pick out something, general rules being to support the local guy and pick an album instead of a compilation, and then listen through instead of spot songs here and there. Getting ready to pour a bourbon and put it on.

 

[neonorchid]

-
Technics turntables -

They're back in production and I want one!
http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/technics-sl-1200g-turntabletonearm/

 

[noncrazycanuck]

my garage looks a lot like of that. My "wall of sound". Been collecting since the 60's and acquired some lot older collections
78s 45s 33's tape,,cassettes cds, direct drive turntables cassette players , reel to reel, cd players and a big amp to power 6-250w speakers.
volume goes to 12, but over 5 the garage door starts vibrating.

 

[cosmoliu]

^^^ Yeah, I saw that review. Totally new turntable to 21st century specs. I still spin a Linn Sondeck from the 80s. Watch out @JeffB - The path to audiophile nirvana can be a pretty slippery slope.

 

[Doug Briggs]

I had an old Garrard turntable that used to be connected to a Heathkit amp with homebuilt speaker cabinets containing 12" coaxial speakers. My parents gave me the speakers and I used them the way they were meant: LOUD

I have a Technics turntable that gets connected to a pre-amp and run into my computer now. I recorded about half my collection (150 or so albums). If you have heard my music played at the Beach or elsewhere, you've likely heard my vinyl conversions. I need to get that set back up and finish recording my collection. While I enjoyed the process of listening to albums, it is a bit tedious and not transportable.

My first album:

 

[François Pugh]

I have two turntables, and a massive receiver from 1969 with a bad hum and a tingly feeling when you touch it. Neither turn table works. I plan of fixing all of it when I can afford to, but other things (skiing, canoe camping, scotch, beer, etc. ) seem to take priority.

Records can sound clean if you don't leave finger prints on them. The trouble is they will wear out.

 

[BS Slarver]

^^^ totally agree and relate with @cosmoliu about chasing the audiofool quest for perfect sound.
Moved from albums after a while, yes the sound is pure but as @Doug Briggs points out it can be tedious to say the least.

When mrs C allowed me to upgrade the home theater, I think she said......
" if you really need to " I was out the door before she could finish the sentence.
Now rocking a growing blu ray collection along with Spotify on NAD masters separates and PSB imagine 5.1 - done chasing the perfect setup, for a while.

 

[crgildart]

I've heard good an bad about re-issued albums. They're the thicker variety like the "good" albums record stores would get as samples.. I have a couple on the thicker virgin vinyl that were special ordered back in the day. Digital and CDs may be cleaner, but I'll still argue that nothing beats the PUNCH on accents via vinyl.. and hearing the needle sing is an added bonus even if it wasn't intended to be part of the mix. On the good end, should my 1987 JVC home theater rid ever die I should be able to get another one with a Phono setting now that records made a mild comeback.

 

[scott43]

Meh....been there done that. I'm so frickin deaf now anyway I wouldn't be able to hear any differences anyway!!!

 

[Philpug]

Yes, I too miss my turntable, a Bang & Olufsen Beogram 3000, the sound it put out through my Sony ES amp and Polk 10B's was so warm. I had a nice collection of ablums with a few Mobile Fidelity Half Speed Master Recordings. What I also miss was listening to whole albums, there was a certain flow from song to song that in many cases told a story. The third thing I miss, is album art, Roger Dean's work on the Yes ablums, The Rolling Stones and Elton John used to have really cool artwork.

 

[graham418]

I gave up on the vinyl years ago. I was tired of schlepping cases of records around when i moved , so I sold them all to the used record store ( I got like a buck a pound or something) I have a big collection of CD's now. Its a lot more convenient format than vinyl, in my mind anyway. Eventually, as my house has gotten smaller and smaller, and my girlfriend moved in with her CD's, everything is loaded onto the computer now. And the CD's are in boxes in the storage closet. I have some 70's era Marantz receivers that I use and several years ago got a digital - analogue converter (DAC). It uses some algorithms to make the sound better. Not sure how , but with the Marantz, it sounds great.
I gave my old turntable (Dual 504) , Sherwood receiver , and speakers to my girlfriends nephew, who is now enjoying the current revival in vinyl, having never heard it in the first place

 

[slowrider]

Album art, yep.