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In Reply to: Not so fast... posted by Aurelio S. on June 06, 2001 at 10:17:25:
Why NOT buy used?
I'm a mechanical idiot, I can design, modify and build my own amplifiers, but I'm not quite so comfortable around things mechanical.
But you want to know what REALLY scares me? Disposable Asian crap technology that is designed to be used a few years, has proprietary parts that get crushed in a Japanese or Malaysian dumpster after the (very brief) warranties on the original equipment expires (they don't want you to fix, they want you narrow-nosed DUMMIES to buy MORE of this disposable junk!), and basically have ZERO user-serviceable parts in them, anyways!
I've bought plenty of used Hi-Fi equipment, because the horrible bit is how random the technological developments are, and as far as regular CD goes, the technology basically DIED in all-in-one machines by about 1991/2. Outrageous? Maybe. But I have three machines, none newer, and I CAN'T FIND ANYTHING NEWER THAT SOUNDS BETTER! I am still awaiting my demo of SACD, but CD is such a god-awful pathetic imitation of analog (I love electrostatic speakers, and CD sounds so bad that it is UNLISTENABLE with every electrostat I've ever heard, yet the same electronics and speakers sound GLORIOUS with LP...what's the score here?) that I remain DEEPLY sceptical. I guess I'm just a Missouri country boy...
What goes wrong in an old turntable? You gotta put a couple of spots of oil in the platter bearing and on the motor spindle once a year? Change a belt every few years?
You have to bother to put it in a place where it won't bounce or feedback (it may seem weird, but the best place is the floor! I dare anyone here to try it! Beats any and every stand you can buy, at any price, every time!), You have to buy a few "accessories" for it? And what happens to those accessories, the pucks, the clamps, the spikes?
Do they suddenly pack up and go south, turning into petrified goat turds when the clock strikes midnight at the end of the 2-year warranty? Funny, people will complain about the limited lifespan & high-cost of a replacement needle, but think nothing of throwing their expensive CD player into the dumpster when it starts permanently mistracking because the laser wears out! And have any of us priced the cost of installing a new laser for our players, lately?
What goes wrong with an old turntable that you would be afraid to buy it? If the platter spins, the bearing is probably OK, right? If you hit the power switch, and the motor turns the platter, then its OK, right? Does the arm move? Set the tracking force and anti-skate to zero (with the stylus guard in place, please!), and blow gently or prod the arm gently and let it glide across the record playing area. And then up and down. Did it "stick" at any point? No? Then the bearings in the arm are primo! It did stick? A little bit? Hmmm, you've got a maybe there. Definitely? OK, either you're going to buy a new arm or you walk...
Try fixing a dead laser that easily!
So you have some adjustments. Overhang, azimuth, tracking force, antiskating. Maybe you have to adjust the tonearm height. Do you need a $100 special Swiny Test CD with $1000-5000 worth of lab equipment to do this? And the engineering knowledge to know what to do with this gear to make the adjustments? A service manual for every turntable? If you don't want to spring for a record-cleaning machine (OOOH! It's got a MOTOR in it! Complicated and unreliable, run and hide!), don't you have a dealer remotely near you that provides record cleaning services? So pay the man the 75 cents or whatever and get 'em cleaned! You don't have to spend $200+! How many records are you going to clean? Do you ever clean your CD's? Don't buy filthy records! And don't try "wet-cleaning" them with Rover's tongue, or that lovely bottle of Corona that you're holding in your left hand! You scratch a record, it makes a "click" every time it goes around. Scratch a CD bad enough, and you're LUCKY if it just makes a "click" every time it goes around, and it goes around alot faster, doesn't it?
Don't feel like forking out big bucks for cartridge alignment guages?
Give your local dealer some chump-change and let him do it for you! You think you'll need to do it every other day or something? Or even every week? Or even every YEAR? If you change the cartridge, the arm or the whole turntable, then you need it done! If you plan on changing cartridges, arms and turntables like you do undergarments, then MAYBE you need to have your own alignment tools...It would be NICE, but do you need this??? And again, once you got 'em, are they gonna wear out? Become any more obsolete than they (ha ha) are already??? I can think of worse investments. Like little edge-cutter gizmos from Germany to shave your digital discs to obsessive-compulsive perfect circumference....only what? $500? $600?
Buy a used table for $200, $300 or $400. A buddy of mine just bought a beautiful CJ Walker turntable, from a retail store! For $60!!! It needed some setup work and a cartridge, but it sounds BEAUTIFUL. If I heard a CD player that sounded that good for less than $2000 I'd BUY IT ON THE SPOT!!! A cartridge you should buy new. But not an arm or turntable. You don't need a degree in rocket science to figure out either how to operate a record player or how to fix what gets worn out or broken. YOU CAN SEE IT. IT'S ALL RIGHT THERE. If purchased from a reputable manufacturer, your turntable can last THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. Try that with your Sony CD flayer! My turntables are both over 15 years old, and the only thing I've spent money for are new belts ($20, OOOOH!) and new cartridges every two or three years ($200, OOOOOH! That's a whopping $66 a year!!!).
CD technology is like transistor amps vs. tube ones. Low-maintenance, comparatively lousy sound and disposable VS. routine maintenance, comparitively superior sound and built to last a lifetime.
I've made my choice, and I listen to CD extensively. But vinyl it ain't, and I've gotten FAR more musical value for my dollars with LP than CD ever remotely has provided me with...CD is FALSE convenience, because there is nothing convenient about unsatisfying sound once you're used to what even a relatively cheap but well-though out analog rig can do for you...
Follow Ups:
You are all over the place, man. Get a hold of yourself! ;-)Gosh, where to begin?
> > they want you narrow-nosed DUMMIES to buy MORE of this disposable junk! < <
I've actually been told my nose is kind of on the flat side and that I'm pretty smart. ;-)
> > and as far as regular CD goes, the technology basically DIED in all-in-one machines by about 1991/2. < <
I humbly disagree. I own a $500 Rotel CDP from 1991. As recently as last year, I compared it to a $500 Rotel CDP that a friend of mine was auditioning and considering buying and it blew my old one away in the same system.
Furthermore, I think SACD and DVD came to fruition because of (or perhaps in spite of) redbook CDs, so I think the current technology owes much to the CDs of the late 80's/early 90's.
Remember Reagan's trickle down economics? Same idea with technology. Reaganomics didn't work because no one wanted to trickle any of their money downward - but with technology it works. Just ask any of the designers in this asylum if advancements in technology were built off existing technology.
> > I am still awaiting my demo of SACD < <
To which my original post "Not so fast..." was comparing vinyl, but hey, that's okay. I liked reading your post anyway! ;-)
> > I love electrostatic speakers, and CD sounds so bad that it is UNLISTENABLE with every electrostat I've ever heard, yet the same electronics and speakers sound GLORIOUS with LP < <
Well, I agree and disagree here. I own a set of SL3 ESLs and my CAL CL-10 is VERY listenable through them, so I disagree that CD sounds bad with every 'stat. Would an LP playback system sound better? dunno - never tried it at home but heard the SL3 with better electronics and LP at dealer before I bought mine, and yes, it sounded better than redbook CDs. But was it the LP or was it the $10,000 of associated equipment?
> > I guess I'm just a Missouri country boy... < <
I understand. I'm from West Virginia originally. My sister and cousins had all gone and gotten themselves knocked up, so I was forced to leave home and find myself a purty German gurl < < ;-)> > What goes wrong in an old turntable? You gotta put a couple of spots of oil in the platter bearing and on the motor spindle once a year? Change a belt every few years? < <
I wasn't necessarily thinking long-term after I bought it, rather how it was treated by the previous owner and what might happen to it during shipping.
> > You have to buy a few "accessories" for it? < <
Hmmm? Le'ts see how much "a few 'accessories'" will run me? The following came from Elusive Disc's website. I consider these essential at the time of purchase of an analog rig...
$210 for their least expensive record cleaning machine
$12 for 1 oz of record cleaning solution
$15 for surface cleaning brush
$100 average cost of a record clamp $25 for stylus cleaner
$15 for the cheap Shure stylus force guage
$35 for the cheap Protrac cartridge alignment tool
$24 for 4 vibrapods (assuming you have a base to put the 'table on)That comes to $411 for "a few accessories" and I'm probably forgetting a few! And we should mention that this is all going on the assumption that one's preamp has a phono stage! If, like mine, it does not, then you add another $500 (and that's being generous) for a phono stage. This is of course before we purchase the turntable, arm and cartridge.
> > Funny, people will complain about the limited lifespan & high-cost of a replacement needle, but think nothing of throwing their expensive CD player into the dumpster when it starts permanently mistracking because the laser wears out! And have any of us priced the cost of installing a new laser for our players, lately? < <
In the 18 years I've been involved in high-end audio, I've never known an audiphile whose digital source started mistracking permanently because the laser wears out. Perhaps you're referring to the "Asian crap" as you so elequontly called it. ;-)
> > Set the tracking force and anti-skate to zero (with the stylus guard in place, please!), and blow gently or prod the arm gently and let it glide across the record playing area. < <
I'm sorry, but if I just spent a couple grand on an analog rig, I'm not blowing or prodding anything. I'm buying the accessories I need to make sure it's done correctly.
> > It did stick? A little bit? Hmmm, you've got a maybe there. Definitely? OK, either you're going to buy a new arm or you walk... < <
You wouldn't have this dilemma if you bought new, right? OK, thanks.
> > Try fixing a dead laser that easily! < <
Again with the dead laser!
> > So you have some adjustments. Overhang, azimuth, tracking force, antiskating. Maybe you have to adjust the tonearm height. < <
Good God, I'm getting tired just reading about it! ;-)
> > Do you need a $100 special Swiny Test CD with $1000-5000 worth of lab equipment to do this? < <
No, but neither would I be relying on "blowing" and "prodding" something. As I said previously, some items I feel are essential.
> > If you don't want to spring for a record-cleaning machine (OOOH! It's got a MOTOR in it! Complicated and unreliable, run and hide!) < <
The machine I priced was manual. I roast my own coffee manually using a Whirly-Pop cranker, so I think I could handle the machine.
> > don't you have a dealer remotely near you that provides record cleaning services? So pay the man the 75 cents or whatever and get 'em cleaned! < <
75 cents? This isn't 1970, my friend. A few trips to the dealer and you've paid for the $200 cleaning machine. And by the way, like I have time to go to the dealer. What happens if I spill something on a record? I go to my dealer with just one LP? You know, you're making a strong case for why NOT to have an analog rig.
> > Don't buy filthy records! < <
So this probably rules out 99% of the $.50 - $5.00 record "bargains"!
> > And don't try "wet-cleaning" them with Rover's tongue, or that lovely bottle of Corona that you're holding in your left hand! < <
Waste a Corona to clean my record? Think again, my friend! ;-)
> > You scratch a record, it makes a "click" every time it goes around. Scratch a CD bad enough, and you're LUCKY if it just makes a "click" every time it goes around, and it goes around alot faster, doesn't it? < <
Now, I'm not a bithead (I know what you're thinkin';-) but isn't there such a thing called "oversampling" that can potentially "catch" a defect in a CD and correct it - whereby I would never even hear the scratch or mistrack? Sure there is - my old Rotel has it and it's played many scratched CDs just fine. Could any analog rig do that?
> > Don't feel like forking out big bucks for cartridge alignment guages? Give your local dealer some chump-change and let him do it for you! You think you'll need to do it every other day or something? Or even every week? Or even every YEAR? If you change the cartridge, the arm or the whole turntable, then you need it done! If you plan on changing cartridges, arms and turntables like you do undergarments, then MAYBE you need to have your own alignment tools... < <
Okay, I'll give you this one. Scratch the $35 for the alignment tool.
> > I can think of worse investments. Like little edge-cutter gizmos from Germany to shave your digital discs to obsessive-compulsive perfect circumference....only what? $500? $600? < <
EVERYTHING in high-end audio is ridiculously expensive - not just these gizmos. That's why it's "high end". ;-)
> > A buddy of mine just bought a beautiful CJ Walker turntable, from a retail store! For $60!!! It needed some setup work and a cartridge, but it sounds BEAUTIFUL. < <
But does it sound better than SACD? (remember my original post?)
> > A cartridge you should buy new. But not an arm or turntable. You don't need a degree in rocket science to figure out either how to operate a record player or how to fix what gets worn out or broken. YOU CAN SEE IT. IT'S ALL RIGHT THERE. If purchased from a reputable manufacturer, your turntable can last THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. Try that with your Sony CD flayer!
So you're saying that an analog rig, with all its constantly moving mechanical parts, some rubbing together, can last the rest of my life - while a CDP with NO moving, rubbing parts other than selector knobs/switches will run out sooner? Funny, my cousin bought a Dual turntable and a Revox CDP at the same time in the late-80's. Used them both equally. Guess which wore out first? He still owns and uses the Revox (sounds like shit though because the technology was still in its infancy).
> > My turntables are both over 15 years old, and the only thing I've spent money for are new belts ($20, OOOOH!) and new cartridges every two or three years ($200, OOOOOH! That's a whopping $66 a year!!!). < <
But if you had a digital rig for 15 years, and assuming it never broke, you'd have NOTHING to replace because of wear and tear. Right?
> > CD is FALSE convenience, because there is nothing convenient about unsatisfying sound once you're used to what even a relatively cheap but well-though out analog rig can do for you... < <
Sorry, don't buy it. Yes, a relatively cheap analog rig will probably sound better than its comparable CDP. But when you start talking $2k as in my CAL CL-10, I think the gap narrows and you have to spend more on the analog rig to get it to sound better. False convenience? If your standards are that high that convenience is not a factor, then I applaud you. But to me - a very good CDP and ESPECIALLY SACD get me close enough, if not equal to analog, so the convenience of digital wins over.
Thanks for your post. I enjoyed it immensely.
Respectfully,
Aurelio S.
Aurelio:
When I said the technology "died" in 1991/2 I meant in CD players, not garbage toys made with the usual crummy Philips parts (Rotel, NAD, maybe even Arcam). And therefore I meant the "best" CD players you could buy, not the worst ones! I'm sure the newer Rotel sounds better. The old one is probably screwing up, meaning that the laser is heading south on you! Or it's just a typical Rat-Hell botched piece'o'junk (quality made in Taiwan, along with NAD) and the sound quality of any of them is pretty random. Maybe a new one is better, maybe not!
As for what made vinyl sound better with your M-L SL3's, the $10K worth of electronics or the vinyl, it was the vinyl...
As far as making electrostats sound listenable with CD, I guess your sensitivity to listening fatigue is another factor. I'm too young to die, but it's getting harder to rock'n'roll...
It's pretty difficult to "abuse" a turntable, although tonearms can get abused (installing cartridges without taking the arm off the turntable, assuming that it doesn't use a detachable headshell or have non-precision uni-pivot bearings like a Hadcock/Mayware or Naim arm) and of course stylii get bent out of shape all the time...
As for shipping, well, yeah, it COULD get damaged. So could a CD player...
As for the $411 for the "few accessories" that you'll need for the turntable, take away the silly record-cleaning machine and its fluid and you're well under $200. And those accessories are not consumables, you can sell them on if you ever decide that you don't want them, and if that happens, what would you end up losing? $100? $50? Heck, you might even end up MAKING some money!
If you've been in High-End Audio for 18 years and have never seen a CD player laser die, you are either extremely lucky or smart enough not to have kept any of the bio-degradable machinery long enough to see the inevitable happen...As for only happening to what I cheerfully refer to as "Asian Crap", what CD flayer isn't? There is some dutch crap, but other than that, EVERY CD FLAYER ever made has Asian parts in it, and most High-End machines just use the same cheap junk that Sony & Philips do, because that's the only source for it!
You think Wadia, Meridian or Levinson make their own lasers? Boy, you'd better think again! I've seen Denon CD players that break down annually, others that ram the laser into the discs when it gets weak because it can't focus properly anymore and make lovely radial scratches in them in the process, a couple of Technics players where when the laser wore out the cost of replacement far exceeded the value of the machine (and after only about 3 or 4 years of use!)...
I have a beautiful Dual CD120 player that a buddy of mine gave me, mint condition, a front-loader with a vertical clear disc door and the coolest loading mechanism you've ever seen. It still works, sort of...but it makes these magic-marker squeaks, mutes, chirps and generally sounds pretty bitey when it decides to play a disc, which it can never start at the beginning of anymore...ditto a little Radio Shack machine I've got that also works, but only if the discs aren't more than about 45 minutes in length! Otherwise it just plays selected excerpts, by happily skipping across the disc in "record" time...breathe on it and you can further accelerate the maniacal process. I also used to have a NAD 502, which burned out its display (turned out to be a cheap incandescent bulb soldered to a circuit-board, I was actually able to fix this nonsense myself) and then also got the skippies, again, "dead laser". What do you think makes these players skip? Invisible scratches? Never seen a player skip? You've got to knock a record player with an elbow or set it up dead-wrong to get it to do anything remotely as ill-mannered...
"I'm sorry, if I've just spent a couple of grand on an analog rig (Where are you getting these ridiculous numbers from? You could probably get something better than your CD player used for $150 with a brand new, half-decent phono cartridge!) I'm not blowing or prodding anything, I'm buying the accessories I need to make sure that it's done correctly".
And what would those be? A tonearm bearing friction guage? Sorry, there is no such thing! But have you spent the $5000 to make sure that your laser is optimally focussed in your CD player, taken an engineering course to learn how to do it, spent the $25-75 for the service manual to get the model specific instructions to do same, as well as buy the obligatory $100 Test Disc to optimize the "eye" pattern on your oscilloscope? How about adjusting the least significant bits on your DAC(s), to optimize low-level linearity? Assuming that your machine uses a good enough DAC that the manufacturer bothered to allow you to make these adjustments without having to modify the circuit board to install potentiometers and relevant circuitry to the appropriate DAC pins?
You think these pieces of junk leave the factories optimized? No! Of course not! You just plug the junkbox into the wall, hook up some RCA's and away you go! Hey, perfect sound forever man, as long as you have no idea what perfect sound is, you're a happy guy!
There are internal adjustments in CD players for tweaking the low-level linearity of the DAC's (I have a quad-DAC Yamaha, and it has adjustments for four of the LSB's on each DAC! That's SIXTEEN DAC adjustments!), for adjusting the focus of the laser (usually a couple), for adjusting the laser intensity...have I forgotten any here? The only difference is that you can set up a turntable, but only a laboratory can set up your CD player. But hey, if it works, you're happy, right? For guys with that attitude, they used to make turntables with fixed counter-weights and P-mount cartridges that plugged into tonearms with absolutely no adjustments. And full automatic operation. You still had to select the speed (bummer!), but I think even Bang & Olufsen made models where you didn't have to even do that( but they had those pesky tracking force adjustments, instead).
Maybe I am out of touch about what a dealer charges you to use his fluid on his machine (and his labour to do this!). But you make it sound like I was suggesting that they'd charge you 75 cents a COLLECTION, I did mean per record, doncha know...Then you ask what you'd do if you spilled something on only one record, like if not having this $210 Whirly-Pop record cleaning machine in your own house and having to take that one miserable record to a dealer with a machine to clean it would be the most horrible inconvenience in the world...Aurelio...Baby!
What would you do if you spilt something on a CD??? I know I throw 'em away, and I like to do that with ones I don't spill things on, either. Maybe you could clean your CD's with the Whirly-Pop machine too, would that convince you that it could be a worthwhile investment???
As another poster mentioned, $12.99 for CD's is OK, but you'd want to buy vinyl for a buck a (whirly) pop, so now you're going to tell us that you can't see how you'd justify the $210 for the record cleaning machine? Hey, save $12 a disc (and what about tax!), and Mr. Record Cleaning machine pays for himself in less than two dozen music purchases, even allowing for the cost of cleaning fluid (and you can make your own, I do and I don't pay no buck an ounce!) at retail.
But you're the lad who wants to drop a couple of G's on a record playing rig, so if you think that's what its about, why buy filthy old yard sale records when you could spend $5 a (whirly) pop and get clean ones that were actually treated with some respect by previous owners instead? I've bought literally THOUSANDS of nice, used records, and I doubt that even 1% of them really need cleaning. They all play fine, sound pretty quiet and all that!
Oh, another thing. Oversampling is about getting better sound (a desperate and wasted endevour as far as CD is concerned). It has nothing at all to do with error correction, and no doubt it contributes to errors of its own if not properly implemented. What you're thinking about is something called "interpolation", which is error correction. If the idea of scratches and (whirly) pops bugs the heck out of you, you could always look around for one of those 1970's "click & pop" suppressor accessories that were sold by companies like RG Dynamics and SAE. Of course, they screw up the sound, but that's nothing compared to what CD does to the sound, so you can implement digital-type solutions in the analog domain. I personally can hear the interpolation making increasingly bad guesses as my discs get older (try listening to a player go through a heavy thumb-print on a disc while wearing headphones and listening to a sustained note held by a female vocalist. Pretty funny.), so I'll take the clicks & pops instead, please. The cure here is definitely worse than the disease...
"So you are saying that an analog rig, with all its constantly moving mechanical parts, some rubbing together-can last the rest of my life, while a CDP, with NO moving, rubbing parts other than selector knobs/switches, will wear out sooner?"
You REALLY don't know how CD players work, do you?
A CD player has a platter, a platter motor precisely controlled by a DC servo fed from information it gets from a very complex microprocessor that monitors data input flow, the laser moves up/down and left/right to follow the very rapidly spinning disc (approximately 5-10 times faster than an LP spins) and try to follow a "groove" of spiral lands & pits embedded on the discs' surface that each occupy only 1/100th the space a groove does on an LP, with no mechanical guidance to lock it in place (the laser signal is read by a photo-detector, which is in itself segmented into fractions so that it can decipher how the laser is drifting off alignment and send an electrical signal back to the laser servo electronics to tell them how to adjust this!). The CD is CONSTANTLY changing speed, since the LINEAR velocity is what counts with this crapnology, not the far-simpler rotational velocity of the record player. Variations in exact speed are supposedly not important, as long as the microprocessor's buffer is neither under (fart, burp, mute!) or over (same) fed with data. Oh, and laser's wear out, the mechanical parts that guide it are prone to wear and gumming up, and deterioration in the electronic parts in the servo (like cheap electrolytic capacitors, of which you'll find dozens if not hundreds in the whole machine) add to the fun, along with the CD spindle motor developing play and wearing out and responding less well to the servo signals with age. And then there is the loading mechanisms, which screw up more often than anything else. One of my Denon's occasionally needs a helping hand to shut all the way (and won't play unless tapped with a friendly middle finger), and one of my Yamaha's won't open its drawer at all unless you let the player "warm up" for 10 to 15 minutes before hitting the "drawer open" button anywhere from two to ten times...I've had that machine open, no belts are slipping and nothing is gummed up. The loading motor is getting tired, ditto the one in the Denon...
CD players are over-complicated electronic "toys", and to attempt to repair old ones is like taking Old Yeller to the Vet for a heart transplant. Maybe you can keep him going another six months or a year, but he's on his way out, and nothing is going to stop the process.
What "rubs" in a turntable? The belt doesn't "wear out", it usually dries up! When that happens, it loses its resiliency and stretches and then starts slipping. $20 and life is wonderful again. Turntables have a motor, the better ones use AC jobs that have maybe a resistor & one capacitor attached to them. After 10 or 20 years, the motor may start to get noisy and act like it's going to die soon. So you spend $75-125? and get a new one. See you again in 20 years! If the turntable is a cheaper job with a direct-dive motor or a DC servo, then things are a little more complicated. But DC servo motors usually cost less than $50 and were once plentiful, and the electronics that control them are quite reliable and relatively simple to troubleshoot for any decent tech. No custom microprocessors to control them, so no worry about getting the parts to do that!
As for your Dual turntable Vs. ReVox CDP comparison, maybe the problem is Dual, not the technology. Dual used DC servo motors in their later turntables, and my Dual CDP is dead as well! The ReVox sounds like crap not because it's an early example of the technology, it sounds like crap because it's a ReVox. All ReVox solid-scrape stuff sounds like crap! Ever listen to an A77, B77 or A700? I can assure you, I've had many an open-reel machine, and transistor ReVox is firmly at the bottom of that barrel.
If a digital rig lasted 15 years, and nothing "broke", it would still not be the more economical option to the turntable. It is a total disaster waiting to happen, not a simple old soldier in need of the odd replacement part. Once the CDP gets old enough, the whole rig is GARBAGE. You can't just easily swap the laser out of it, or remove the motor/spindle/servo assembly and throw it into some other player. This is all brand and model specific stuff, you can't just take a screwdriver to it, and good luck getting any support with it! Compare that to getting support for a Rega, Linn, Thorens, J.A. Michell or VPI. As far as comparing performance in the 2K range, I must totally disagree with where you are going with the analogy. The more you spend on digital, the LESS it improves relative to the cheaper models. The opposite is true with a turntable! Sure, there gets a point with them where more is merely just to get increased decadence, but by that time you'd be well north of $15K, and the difference between a $15K digital rig and a $2K one is far smaller than it is with turntables!
So c'mon! Put up yer dukes!
Cheers,
-Joe R.
> > So c'mon! Put up yer dukes! < <No, I'm not going to put up my dukes, Joe. I've expended way more energy than is necessary on this thread (not just you), but I enjoyed reading your post (seriously). It was quite thought provoking (and humorous - I liked the cleaning my vinyl in my Whirley Pop comment :)
Suffice it to say that I must have "bronze ears" or perhaps "silver ears" (as opposed to "golden ears") because my $2k digital rig sounds very smooth and not at all fatiguing to me. I can listen to it now with a bad amp in the chain. I think the system will sound even better once I switch to a powerful tube amp. In addition, perhaps I have indeed been around lasers that degraded but I've not been able to tell (even my old Rotel, which was hailed as sounding better than CDPs twice/thrice its price, still sounds good to me).
Furthermore, the SACD players I've listened to in dealer shops this past year sound even more refined and smooth than my CAL - not unlike analog. I've listened to analog rigs that cost less (in some cases 75% less) than my CAL, but I did not hear the resolution from these tables that I hear from my CAL. So, I must humbly disagree with you that a $150 analog rig will sound better than my CAL.
The analog rigs I auditioned a few years ago DID eventually get better than my CAL - especially in resolution and smoothness - but only when we got into the higher end VPI and Basis models, which I could not afford. For a moment though, I did consider a VPI HW-19 Jr. So, with the dealer's help, we priced out everything I would need: 'Table, arm and cartridge (can't remember models as its been awhile); along with the accessories I listed in my previous post. It was the dealer's advice to purchase a manual record cleaning machine (which he did not sell) after I told him I would probably purchase most of my vinyl second hand. When all was said and done, the damage was close to $2k. But then, I realized (duh!) that I had no phono stage. I did not want to buy a mediocre one, so I started thinking it was probably going to cost me closer to $3k for a setup that I still did not believe had equaled my CAL in sound - it came close, but not equal or better. At least not to my ears.
A few months after my near assimilation into the vinyl collective, I found out my wife was pregnant, so that cinched it for me. I did not want to have a delicate audio component like a turntable in my system where it would be accessable to a small child who could easily break it (you should see what she does with my knobs and CDs!). Not to mention, I knew I wouldn't have the time to go looking for vinyl.
Now, with SACD coming so close to analog (again, to my ears), I doubt that I will consider analog, again. I value convenience. I think it's only a matter of time before SACD, or whatever technology comes after it, makes the whole digital/analog debate a moot point. And with the convenience that digital offers, I want to be positioned to take full advantage of it.
I'm not sure if I addressed your post, but all of the posts I've made to this thread are beginning to run together, so I apologize.
Respectfully submitted,
Aurelio S.
> > I did consider a VPI HW-19 Jr. So, with the dealer's help, we priced out everything I would need: 'Table, arm and cartridge (can't remember models as its been awhile); along with the accessories I listed in my previous post. < <[Ahem!]
VPI 'tables are already equipped with a reflex record clamping system, which begs the question of why you felt you had to spend an extra $100 on one, as you indicated on your list of accessories and tweaks which you felt were necessary? I'll leave the Vibrapods, etc alone for the moment...
> > Furthermore, the SACD players I've listened to in dealer shops this past year sound even more refined and smooth than my CAL - not unlike analog. < <
Can you please explain how you can compare a CDP you have at home to another player you heard in a dealer's system, and then compare the whole shebang to an analog rig which you heard in yet another dealer's system some three years ago - discounting *numerous* variables - and arrive at a conclusive statement about their respective sonic constraints? TIA
> > > > I did not want to have a delicate audio component like a turntable in my system where it would be accessable to a small child who could easily break it (you should see what she does with my knobs and CDs!). Not to mention, I knew I wouldn't have the time to go looking for vinyl. < <
I have a daughter about the same age as yours, Aurelio, and she's been taught to respect the hi-fi since day one. She *never* touches any of the gear or the records, but sure likes to dance around at the drop of a hat.
Best Wishes,
Felix
My dad's got a Sony CDP-302 cd player made in April 1985, the thing has no problems whatsoever, and never has. I'll say nothing about sound quality, however :)Just thought I'd share that.
--jeff
> > I guess I'm just a Missouri country boy...Just last week you were Canadian, Joe. What gives? Did our last presidential election convince you to emmigrate from the provinces?
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