Vinyl and digital - Comparable spend for comparable SQ?

[Lagonda]

Sorry that you haven't gotten a reply yet.

I guess people have become tired debating vinyl vs digital.

I can't help you here, just noting that the calculation for spending on vinyl gear should probably include the price for all those vinyl records, which can accumulate to a very significant expense, perhaps in the same ballpark as the vinyl playback gear itself.

I have many, many thousand dollars worth of CD's and SACD's, had i only bought vinyl all those years

 

[Lagonda]

It is important to stay real and consider the actual costs… and when people start bullshitting about $1000 setups blowing away all the format opposition it’s just that. BS. If I could get back in to a good analogue setup with an affordable (and accessible) great vinyl library I’d go back in again but I’d be thinking $40-50k for a good vinyl rig to operate and maintain plus even two to three times that for a great library on top that I’d see worth investing a lot of my listening time in.

I’ll be honest if I had to listen to many of the examples of music nominated as peak vinyl sonics I often might not bother… it’s content dependent. I don’t want to be tied to chasing only either near unobtainium LP source material or listening to any second tier music to get in a few peak audio moments… that’s not where my listening is focussed. I follow where the music goes. Some people are happy listening to ultimately sonically driven music choices and feeling understandably completely validated… if I could afford both formats and libraries I’d love it but when it comes to being directed mostly by music it’s about where the music is and for each to follow their own musical journey.

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.

 

[Al M.]

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.

 

[the sound of Tao]

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 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.

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.

 

[sparkie]

I do get it. 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.

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.