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RE: Reviewers with LP - how many are there ?

Posted by RGA (R) on March 6, 2017 at 18:39:12

In Reply to: RE: Reviewers with LP - how many are there ? posted by J. Phelan on March 6, 2017 at 16:17:53:

I think another aspect to this is that the older reviewers who grew up on LP and have 10,000 or 20,000 album collections were mostly against CD from the start. That is a massive investment in a recorded medium that unless you are supremely wealthy you don't want to dump.

And CD did stink it up in the beginning so it was easy to write off the format.

I grew up on CD though and vinyl had to convince me. I wasn't one of the 60 year olds telling people that a Rega P2 was better than CD at 10 times the price. I read this endlessly on forums - $500 turntable beats $5000 CD.

So after a relatively horrible second hand Dual I bought said $500 P2 Clone (a NAD 533 with the famous RB250 tone arm) and a Goldring and then a Shure M97xE cart). Depending on the recording (oh yeah the recording which is 95% of to sound) the Turntable would win but so too would my modest Cambridge Audio CD 6.

And as you rightly note - even when I liked the vinyl better - it was never free of surface noise nor a lot of bad sounding vinyl (new or used).

Growing up with vinyl - you accept surface noise because that's all there was. Every turntable no matter which model - you will get surface noise and pops clicks and generally higher noise floor.

If you grew up with CD none of that exists - the sound is noise free. So it's very difficult to be listening to a piece of music where a female singer goes into her belting range and you hear sibilance or a loud pop. This doesn't exactly hold your ability to suspend your disbelief.

Having heard some very premium machines though - the weakness dwindle greatly and there are certain strengths which CD lacked - ambiance cues is a big one - it's the same reason modestly priced SET amplifier pulverize SS amps at 10 times the money.

The problem is for me - the entry turntables I don't think are particularly good - not against CD. You have to spend in the $3k+ range and even here - is it worth the hassle? For a newbie who has no vinyl is it really advisable to get into vinyl? Unless you have buckets of money - it's not.

And you still have to put up with the surface noise. In this day and age few are willing "to put up with" something. Lose a button on the shirt out goes the shirt. If you can hear past the up front weakness for the in the back strengths then vinyl has merit. If it is about music though then when a format has significant music content unavailable on the other formats it is a worthwhile format to own. But it's not about music for most people. It's about buying that special audiophile disc with the percussion solo to wow your friends.

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