Hi all, I am a long term listener to exclusive digital gear, through CD's first and the last number of years from a server through a DAC. But a couple of months ago I added a turntable to the stable and I want to share my experience of it herewith.
My analog gear is not comprised of a Primary Control Kinea DD turntable, a Gravity tonearm from the same brand, a Lyra Etna cartridge, a Signal Project Atlantis phono cable (DIN to XLR), and a Aries Cerat Talos Reference phono stage.
As I like to take some pictures, here you find some
Why choose Primary Control? As everyone warned me about how fussy a turntable can be, I wanted it to be as little fussy as possible yet without compromising on the typical sound benefit a turntable should bring. Therefore I was looking for a high end direct drive turntable that is not only of extremely good quality but also visually matching my other gear and pretty stealthy.
The Kinea from Primary Control was ticking all the boxes! A few audiophile friends that came along in the last couple of weeks, owning themselves some big systems were all impressed with the quality of the turntable, which indicates that it was a correct assessment.
Functionally of course, playing vinyl is a whole different experience than piloting a server on a tablet from your coach! The 'only' upside I see to it is that you are kind of obliged to listen to a whole side of an album, listening (and appreciating) therefore also other tracks you normally would skip. Soundwise however, the upside is a whole lot bigger, more dynamics, more depth, better tone, more resolution.
There is an important BUT though, a lot depends on the quality of your digital gear of course as it determines the gap with the analog. In my case, the sonic upside is not systematically there though more often yes than not!
I have quite a number of albums in both vinyl and in digital quality, this allows me to very easily compare the two sources by simply switching the input on my preamp and sometimes the difference is really big, but again not systematically.
I think I now ended up listening 50/50 to digital and analog. If I had to choose to ditch one of the sources, it would be really hard to make a choice, except for those albums (and there are quite a lot of them) where the difference is really there
My analog gear is not comprised of a Primary Control Kinea DD turntable, a Gravity tonearm from the same brand, a Lyra Etna cartridge, a Signal Project Atlantis phono cable (DIN to XLR), and a Aries Cerat Talos Reference phono stage.
As I like to take some pictures, here you find some
Why choose Primary Control? As everyone warned me about how fussy a turntable can be, I wanted it to be as little fussy as possible yet without compromising on the typical sound benefit a turntable should bring. Therefore I was looking for a high end direct drive turntable that is not only of extremely good quality but also visually matching my other gear and pretty stealthy.
The Kinea from Primary Control was ticking all the boxes! A few audiophile friends that came along in the last couple of weeks, owning themselves some big systems were all impressed with the quality of the turntable, which indicates that it was a correct assessment.
Functionally of course, playing vinyl is a whole different experience than piloting a server on a tablet from your coach! The 'only' upside I see to it is that you are kind of obliged to listen to a whole side of an album, listening (and appreciating) therefore also other tracks you normally would skip. Soundwise however, the upside is a whole lot bigger, more dynamics, more depth, better tone, more resolution.
There is an important BUT though, a lot depends on the quality of your digital gear of course as it determines the gap with the analog. In my case, the sonic upside is not systematically there though more often yes than not!
I have quite a number of albums in both vinyl and in digital quality, this allows me to very easily compare the two sources by simply switching the input on my preamp and sometimes the difference is really big, but again not systematically.
I think I now ended up listening 50/50 to digital and analog. If I had to choose to ditch one of the sources, it would be really hard to make a choice, except for those albums (and there are quite a lot of them) where the difference is really there
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