I have many, many thousand dollars worth of CD's and SACD's, had i only bought vinyl all those years
Vinyl and digital - Comparable spend for comparable SQ?
- Thread starter dgale
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I am listening to Bob Dylan "Blood on the tracks' right now, a first issue i picked up used from facebook marketplace for $7, i just cleaned it and it sounds much better than the SACD, CD version and MoFi release i already own.
I have many, many thousand dollars worth of CD's and SACD's, had i only bought vinyl all those years
To each their own. It's a free world. I don't miss owning LPs at all, except for the attractive large covers. I do like to enjoy them in friends' systems.
I do get it… the challenges of dealing with different masters especially and early originals with analogue can be extraordinary. Digital after a long run at a fairly significant go at improving has still not outpaced the sonics of great analogue… and if I could I’d have both for slightly different focuses. But I’d also be wanting the ideal and that’s not really going to work given what I’d be chasing and working within my budget.I am listening to Bob Dylan "Blood on the tracks' right now, a first issue i picked up used from facebook marketplace for $7, i just cleaned it and it sounds much better than the SACD, CD version and MoFi release i already own.
My challenge is that most of the music I want is more available to me as digital releases and as often as I pitch it to myself I simply can’t do both formats properly… it’s mainly cost but also the time to give over to the different needs of the two formats and curating a very specific performance oriented library.
I’ve got over 4000 jazz albums in a library of which 2/3rds are analogue from the 50’s through the 60’s and early 70’s… then a third are current jazz mostly from 2000 on.
There’s a similar number again in classical but quite a few are whole cycles and collections but the albums tend to be a greater number of later recordings with about a third from post war to the late 70’s and the rest starting from the 80’s but with many from the last few decades. There’s probably a few thousand either alternative, rock, EDM mainly from the 80’s onwards.
If I didn’t have real world constraints I’d probably run two separate systems… one all analogue and one just server based digital with their own libraries and be completely content.
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Problem with digital audio on SACD, CD, MP3 is, that it is gain staged and in some cases clipped and repaired. That is why it has a shallow depth to the mix. Other things come into play also as some subtle harmonics are never captured by the ADC because it has to be above a voltage threshold to be captured.
Since I have a room and a garage full of pro audio gear, I was able over time find pieces of processing gear that restored the sound of the vinyl recording. Even though I will not give up my record collection. Its nice to hear how it should have been released on new tracks.
The two processing gear I found and the connection chain that undo the digital limiting + clip integration is: DBX 1BX with impact restoration into an Aphex Aural Exciter 204
On older recordings, I find that they brought into digital, but at higher reference level so dropping the peak from -.1dbfs to -1.5 brought back how the mix sits in the sound stage on vinyl. Problem is you have to go through and "unmaster" every track.
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Always great to have a range of choices but one benefit I’ve come to appreciate in having just one format for music now is my focus gets away from me getting as caught up in comparing sonics between sources and formats and focuses me into comparing music performances which more and more has become a larger part of my listening journey over recent years.
I still highly value fidelity and am lucky to have a setup that has taken me a long time to refine but is now for me fully musically immersive and engaging. I’m not as compelled as I once was to be dissatisfied or disappointed by marginally lesser sonics because I’m not as drawn to be comparing it to something that is in some ways better. Maybe 10 years ago I was much more likely to choose music based more on recording quality but now it’s less than ideal music performance that is the deal breaker for me. I’m much more fulfilled by the content of my listening when it’s essentially determined by the music rather than primarily the recording.
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The storage format in digital is actually more important than its sampling frequency. The only digital storage format that degrades the signal is the MP3/MP4 formats used on online streaming and portable audio. So if you stay away from those formats, you are ok. CDs is a little different story as over time, they changed the scaling so that it has a louder sound with cheaper reproduction equipment. But it takes very little to scale it back. Processing is the main thing to avoid in digital because in a lot of instances, they sound better for no real reason at higher sampling rates. Which is what people battle in music production and try to find a better plugin but the real piece of gear always seem to win. 48Khz is the lowest real professional sampling rate for recording now these days but the battle there was finding good conversion. Tube audio gear in reproduction gear that doesn't deploy lots of negative feedback will naturally restore most if not all what was lost recording it. Hence why people get into tube gear, but this effect of restoration happens on the line level and tube output stages in amps are a waste of energy because they never did that job really well to begin with. That is why I'm an advocate for line level tube gear.
To answer the OP, I spent approximately £70,000.00 on my analogue-only gear. I have a fair LP collection consisting of everything from charity shop purchases to lacquers (even a couple of MoFi digital-to-vinyl one-steps) but all together nowhere near the cost of my system. And I have seen some digital front ends that people in this user group own (read Wadax) that exceeds the cost of my system and records combined.
Something I have always kept in mind when buying records and the equipment needed to play them is that I can leave it all to a relative in my will so that they can enjoy it for as many years as I have. Many of my records are very hard (or impossible) to find on Discogs and were never made into CD, or if were, do not sound as good. Same the now ubiquitous digital-to-vinyl pressings that predominate the market today.
You can hear digital examples of a massive quantity of music from a streaming network, that you subscribe to, but after you pay for that experience what have you got? You can’t pass on those listening sessions to anyone else.
I have a comparable digital system: Innuos Pulsar/Holo May L2/HQ Player. Cost me £8,700 with cables, so about $11,000.
My vinyl was way more - it’s an Artisan Fidelity level CTC Garrard 301 twin arm (Reed 3P + Groovemaster III) - cost me about $20,000, but Artisan would likely charge $60,000+. Add say $8k for two phonostages (Whest and RCM). Various cartridges. So lots of duplication and redundancy.
The important difference is that the turntable was a labour of love (not much labour on my part) and brings a smile to my face every time I see it, whereas the digital system is just an ugly collection of black boxes. The turntable will see me out and be inherited by my vinyl loving son, the digital gear seems to have a much shorter lifespan.
The good news is that I enjoy both, whatever takes my fancy at the time, and I don’t consider either to be superior over the other. For me, the digital v. vinyl argument only becomes an issue if I prefer to listen to one because of negative feelings towards the other. Thankfully, I got past that point some time ago.
Funny that, I’m a fairly recent convert to off-board upsampling everything to DSD And using a very powerful solid state amplifier to deal with the impedance curve of my speakers.
Upsampling for editing purposes was created in the late 1980s to give engineers greater dynamic range and bandwidth and hence make the job easier. The fact that it has benefits in the playback chain is a separate and unrelated issue and arose almost by accident.
I think currently, the difference in quality between "low end" and "high end" digital gear, in relation to their price difference, is much less steep than that of vinyl playback systems. This is because vinyl playback is a mechanical process, and incremental improvements may involve very costly engineering solutions. With digital gear, cleaver circuit designs and better parts quality do make a difference, but the actual cost in implementing these measures is much lower. This is why we can find DACs (the Weiss 204 for example) that most people can't tell from machines that cost 10 or even 20 times as much on blind auditions. But I suspect most people can tell right away whether a $2500 or a $25,000 vinyl rig is playing. That's why I advise neophytes to allocate their resources first to the loudspeakers, and then to vinyl playback if that is what they fancy, but start with a (relatively) modest digital system and only spend the money if they can find something worthwhile to upgrade to.
The price tag thing is a bit misleading because if you go into the used market you can get spectacular value for analogue product that is as good as new. Vinyl gear usually also has a lot of expensive non-productive bling that costs money. So if you are on a budget, it's usually pretty easy to get very good value and it gets a lot better the more high-end you go. The last purchase I made was a Gryphon Diablo 300 + DAC. Someone paid £24,500 for it a year ago, I got it for £9,500 with a Gryphon main dealer warranty. My son has a hand-me-down Mitchell Orbe turntable, about 25 years old, excellent performer. You can pick them up for $2,500.
I find that the more i spend on a particular record, the less i play of it (with a needle turntable)
Of course, in the second hand market, it is more of a value for money proposition. People who spend six figures on a turntable don't tend to buy second hand stuff. Personally, I have been using a Garrard 301 for the past 30 years, picked up in London with an SME3012 and a slate plinth for £1K. It has been modified since with new bearings etc, but is still serving me well. I can't imagine spending a lot more for a vinyl rig, and spent the money on tapes instead. We have to be fair about the extremely high end turntables. Some of them are of cause mostly bling, but there are also a few that are truly innovative. The high cost is due to the cost of development, which has to be recuperated by selling a product in a niche market.
You can pick up a 301 and SME3012 these days for about £3,000, maybe a bit less, which is probably less than £1,000 30 years ago. I picked up a 301 last year for £1,200. It's now a top spec Classic Turntable unit (brass platter, upgraded bearing) with two good arms on a Carl Ellis plinth with a hard high gloss lacquer finish. The only difficult bit was getting the lacquer finish. I had to get it done by a friend who has a large workshop and fully certified spray booth. He does everything from cigar boxes to superyachts. It took 5 weeks to do the lacquer, for which he charged me £400.
Garrard 301 component build
I don't remember, did I say Hugo supplied me with my Phasemation stuff, also Reed 5A tonearm? Are you in Norfolk? I think you did. I'm not in Norfolk, although from North London it's a couple hours and we sometimes pop up there for the day if there's an exhibition at Houghton Hall, or stay for...
www.whatsbestforum.com
I think digital is far more "you get what you pay for" than analogue, which sort of makes comparing the two very difficult if not impossible.
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Shop for a used phono stage, turntable and tonearm.
https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649906358-parasound-jc3-balanced-mcmm-phono-stage-in-champagne/
$1799
https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/650139154-vpi-prime-with-3d-arm-and-prime-isolation-feet/
$2750
Buy the cartridge new with microline or similar stylus profile.
Soundsmith Paua Mk II
$4000
Hana Umami Red
$3950
Lyra Kleos
$4065
Invest in the WallyTools, or use their service to obtain shims specific to your cartridge. You won’t get a great result if the stylus is misaligned.
$495
Get a Degritter to clean records.
$3280
A little over $12,000 done and dusted.
I use the Innuos Zenith Mk 3 as well. I'm using an Ansuz switch ahead of it.
Tomorrow I hear the Statement in a well-curated system.
Stan
One thing I have learned is digital is ,of course, infinitely more accessible than vinyl- however, it is as much an abyss as the vinyl in cost to get something approaching my vinyl rig. I know digital can be phenomenal- but I am not there yet and I have invested a not insignificant amount just to try.
I have several thousand albums and still have many of my first ones purchased when I was a very young teenager. Starting today with vinyl would be impossible on the software side. Either format can be had for the listening at a very inexpensive level. However, been caught up in the rabbit hole for over 40years does not allow for inexpensive.
I have several thousand albums and still have many of my first ones purchased when I was a very young teenager. Starting today with vinyl would be impossible on the software side. Either format can be had for the listening at a very inexpensive level. However, been caught up in the rabbit hole for over 40years does not allow for inexpensive.
I am doing an experiment that turns out to be a lot of fun. I wanted to see how much quality I can get for around US$5000 on analogue. Not vinyl, but tape. I already have a Nagra T Audio and about 300 titles on master tapes, but I want to see how close I can get to this with commercially available tapes (mainly 4-track). I have spent about $2500 on a totally refurbished Revox B77 with new output board, and another $2500 on tapes. Since I buy mostly classical, the cost averages out to be about $25 per tape. Some can be as little as $10, and the most I have spent so far is $100 for a still sealed copy of Oistrahk playing the Beethoven violin concerto, which would cost $1000 for a VG copy of the original LP. I also spent $200 for an as new set of Readers Digest Beethoven symphonies (5 tapes), conducted by Rene Leibowitz and recorded by Kenneth Wilkinson at the Kingsway Hall. I also bought all the Heifetz violin concertos on RCA. I will be writing up my findings, but just a summary, I have been quite shocked at how good these tapes can be. I played a tape of Janos Starker playing the Dvorak cello concerto and Kol Nidrei on Mercury last night. I am going to get rid of my Speakers Corner reissue, let's put it this way. Until you have heard what these recordings should sound like, you don't know how bad some of these reissues can be. The same goes for the Starker Bach Cello Suites, since I have the original RFR1 LPs that sound 100X better, even with the clicks and pops. I swear I will not buy any more Speakers Corner reissues. Given the cost of some of these famous recordings on original LPs, I think the 4-track tapes have been overlooked and are real bargains.
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