Considerations before going down the vinyl rabbit hole

The interesting question is what to do if you are the friend that is asked to help. If the person you are trying to help can hear, you can mess up a friendship with disappointed expectations.

On the other hand, I helped a family member get a vinyl setup going with a nice hand-me-down turntable/cart to which I added a $200 phono pre and they think it sounds great. To me, it wasn't as good as a cheap digital path, but they had heard that vinyl sounds great and now they had a vinyl rig, so they were happy.

As you say in the open, it smart to be super hesitant about getting folks into TT's.

 

When you say "something I gave up back in the 90's after moving", I assume that you don't still have your old vinyl LPs sitting in boxes somewhere? That's a really relevant part of the equation. I decided to spend some more money on new gear, but I already had my old vinyl LPs. There are plenty of people selling used vinyl on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, used record stores are out there (I have a good one 2 miles from my house), but don't expect those records to have been well cared for, and if they are in excellent condition, don't be surprised to see asking prices that are double what they sold for new in the 1980s. New vinyl pressings are even more expensive, and if they were from digital masters, many people will ask what's the point of putting a digital source on a vinyl LP.

 

I’d be willing to get into vinyl even though all the warnings - I wouldn’t expect great things from the get go, and I am certainly not frustrated by constant tweaking and trying different things out.

However the #1 reason I haven’t gotten into it is the cost of buying records! I live in a pretty small city, and there aren’t tons of used shops or places to go crate digging, and no folks locally who are offloading tons of cheap good quality records that would match my tastes.

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine who has been a vinyl guy forever warned me not to even consider getting into it unless I inherited, or was given, a good chunk of vinyl to start with, otherwise I will be severely limited in my music choices for a very long time, or broke from trying to build up a decent enough library to make it worth it. Of course, if you have a big bank account maybe this is not a consideration, but I’d rather stick to digital and spend more money on making that rig sound amazing.

 

I had Sol as my first turntable and it wasn't too hard setting it up. Probably with higher end carts on it I would have invested in alignment jig or what not but yeah. Technics 1200/1210gr is a good choice.

 

I am perfectly content with my U-Turn Orbit Custom. I bought it second hand from a member here for $300 and it sounds really really good. 50+ year old vinyl, once cleaned, sound incredible since the 2M Blue rides the walls instead of the fucked center groove. The U-Turn Pluto phonostage was a matter of convenience, but it sounds good to me. I am not a tweaker, once I find something that sounds good I leave it alone.

What I like about vinyl isn't necessarily how it sounds compared to digital. It's a different sound that to me doesn't have to be significantly better to be worth it.

It's also about the hunt for vintage records in good shape. Flipping through cartons and finding a gem.

 

I have helped a couple friends of my son get set up, and last I heard both of them had sold their decks and moved on. Small sample size, but...

 

Thankful for this thread, as I've been debating going down the vinyl rabbit hole for awhile now. And since it was the introduction of the Sol that actually re-ignited my curiosity about vinyl, here's my 2cents on "who is the Sol right for?"

Basically one group the Sol might appeal to is the "serious" beginner that's fine with some growing pains because they want to get things "mostly right" the first time out, without spending over four figures to do so. In that sense, Sol fits Schitt's MO of pushing affordable hi-quality to the unwashed masses pretty well. I also like the idea of getting back into vinyl with a turntable that I can grow with for a long time, at least until I can join ORFAS.

Full disclaimer, I've only collected around 50 pieces of mostly crappy punk/hip-hop vinyl in the late 90's and early 00's - much simpler times when I had no idea what hi-fi was. But even before I knew what "digitutus" was, the music from these records sounded a bit more natural, warm/smooth, etc. even on my crappy Stanton and Pioneer turntables.

 

yeah, prices of records have gone up, but its still reasonable if oyu know where to look for. was lucky to buy all my jazz records almost 10 years ago before this whole vinyl boom, but the prices for good re-issue blue note, columbia, prestige (buy OJC reissue) have increase about 30%, still not too bad

 

1. If you have no idea what you're doing, vinyl will sound like shit.

2. You need good records from close to when the recording was originally released. Almost everything modern or from the 80s onward, has been digitized at once point in the production process. The exceptions prove the rule.

3. The repress records you buy now will sound like shit and are for collectors and hipsters. The CDs will usually sound closer to the original tapes and LPs than modern pressings from the tape. Tape decays. There's been no whale blubber in it since the 70s. Dubbing loses information and is a lossy process. The losses from tape decay are greater than the gains of adcs. The digital transfers of various baked tapes ARE IT and were often from a random dub copy. Often that was the only tape and no tape exists in 2020. Sometimes these were done in the 80s. The tapes are just gone for so many records. A needle drop cd > an lp made from a needle drop.

4. The benefit to vinyl is that very good condition older LPs were closer to the tapes than CDs in time and space prior to the late 80s. CD was a secondary release format until then. Often one LP pressing is the actual release. The American or European pressing was secondary. The same was true for 80s CDs but less priority was given to them until the later part of the decade. That 60s-70s LP or late 80s - early 90s CD will be the closest you can get outside of some big stuff like Led Zeppelin (80s CDs were from metal nakamichi compact cassettes. The 1990-93 stuff is the George Marino ones with more bass. The current remasters are the closest to the og tapes but you might not like that.) The Beatles (NOT THE HORRIBLE REMIXES), Iron Maiden (nothing but OG British LPs and a couple of the Japanese CDs sounds remotely hi-fi but the recent CDs are at least warm).

5. Pressing something to vinyl from a tape or digital file is a lossier process than better analog to digital conversion from the late 80s onward and digital to analog conversion from the late 90s onward. You can run things through a better modern interface before the decay REALLY STARTS. Sure you'll imprint the box tone on it but that will be it for quite a few passes. For anything non-linear like compressors and many eq types, hardware is infinitely better than software. The gains beat the losses of other conversion steps. Doing this analogly meant more dubbing down, which is more detail loss to get to the consumer rather than a few rounds of ADC -> DAC in recording, to a patch bay, bussing, and then mastering.

6. For vinyl, you can't release whilly nilly and not have it sound like total shit. The mastering engineer had to optimize it for a more limited format. To cut a record on a lathe is an actual physical skill. Random assholes with money can't claim to be vinyl mastering engineers like they can now by buying towers and throwing money at an acoustician. Sometimes drastic sound changes from the mix down happened to various pressings in various regions. They couldn't feed 50 hz sign waves into a Waves limiter.

7. The noise level of the medium, mastering process, cutting lathes, RIAA curve, and the process of playing vinyl records means they can never be as flat as a good DAC. The RIAA curve and the physical characteristics of various cartridge types prevents a normal treble response but the treble response inherently cannot have digital nasties, only analog nasties. A converter can have both. The whole system must be tuned to individual masters and pressings. The benefit is you avoid the shitty parts of a lot of digital to analog converters. You can't shove the cheapest possible opamps in a project box with a laptop switcher and sell it as better than a tube phono to a clueless weebs larping as scientists. Sorry virgins, BURL > RME despite the transformers and WTF discrete opamps. The other parts (better clock, power supply, power rails, caps, etc) MATTER MORE! Hitting it so it peaks at -.5 dbfs on your computer is too hot despite what some Ayatollah says is haram in broken english. A turntable is not a black box like the typical converter is.

8. The cost of a great turntable is much more than a great DAC. The buy in to a decent DAC is about 400-500 bucks used, 600 bucks new for cut down version of pro audio multi-channel studio converters. The best two channel stuff is about 2000 for AD-DA and more for more special shit. Try buying a decent phono without more special shit. It doesn't exist.

9. With both analog <--> digital conversion and any cartridge or phono pre-amp, you're at the mercy of the designer and manufacturer. Vinyl just lets you not use a black box where the only tweaks are getting an oscilloscope and audio analyzer, upgrading caps, the power supply, opamps, rebiasing everything, and building a totally different sounding piece of equipment. This is what the best pro audio modding guys do with inferior pieces. THEY GUT THEM. That RME rack mount piece can be gutted and then reclocked to not be a piece of shit. These guys are not above gutting an 8000 dollar Lavry Gold. Your cheap 8 channels of AD Presonus or Focusrite piece? Modding it costs more than the piece of shit is worth. Chuck it.

9. Meanwhile you can get a technics, get a better tone arm, get a better cart, get a better phono pre, and go to down. With a converter? All the typical guy can do is buy a different one. The average middle aged fart can't mod SMT boards in a garage and then be told he can't hear a difference because his room and speakers are DSP bullshit with some crappy aluminum drivers and ridiculously flared waveguide . He will hear a difference tinkering with his turn table and buying the Stereophile gear and other crap. Meanwhile I'm here putting <1% to 5% or more percent THD per box (or very good plugin. 95% of them suck) on f'ing records because it sounds better. If you flick the switch on the typical boomer's hifi or reddit sound cloud producers' JBL 305s, you won't hear shit until you deck that shit and and make it sound nastier than Hepatitis A hobo shits on a California sidewalk.

10. Now you're typical 2020 Billboard top ten hit? That's a tuberculate bum leaving HIV-infected needles and hepatitic diarrhea all over the place. A vinyl pressing will just be exactly the same shit without the ridiculous subbass that covers up the distorted to hell everything else on a shitty car subwoofer. This music is meant to be lossily streamed off Karen's iphone with her 2.1 kids named Tailor and Turner in the car on the way to the Cheesecake Factory or Golden Corral depending on their family income.

 

Adjusted for inflation, yes, most of them are definitely cheaper today. For those of us that were spending $5-6 on new albums back then, spending more than that to buy that same album used today, seems like a lot, at least it does to me. I think the reason for that is because of your second point though, that "access to music is next to nothing today." When I was buying vinyl albums for $5-6 a pop with money from my paper route, it didn't seem like that much to me, but the only options were to listen to FM radio or buy vinyl, cassettes or 8-tracks. Today, spending $15 per month on Qobuz or a competing service, is nothing for what you're getting.

For people hunting for vintage vinyl, another place to check if you have one near you, would be a place like a Goodwill Store. They're less likely to know the relative value of what they are taking in than the used record stores. Maybe you can luck out now and then with some $1 LP finds, but they can be pretty picked over as well.

 

As someone who has been considering vinyl for a long time, it’s helpful to have a thread like this and to better understand why people say getting good sound out of vinyl isn’t easy.

 

Hey, Marv... can I bypass the internal phonostage? If not, is there a DIY option to bypass?

 

Why would you recommend vintage gear to a newbie? It just gives them one more concern along their foray into vinyl. I think a case could be made for "Start out with an LP-120 and a 2M Red," but recommending vintage to an absolute vinyl virgin is a decent-sized ask IMHO.

 

I had a short love affair with vinyl from about 2011-2014 and I wish there had been more naysayers back at that point. It was the promise of a holy land where no brickwalled masters went to print that sucked me in. The chief deciding factor for getting out was record cost/availability. The music I liked was $25-30 an album; it was either new or swarmed by collectors. Other entire genres I enjoy on digital had zero vinyl pressings. Vinyl can make a lot more sense if you already have huge stacks of records or if you can buy what you want cheap. We're in an era where you can typically get CD quality digital at $5~ an album. Vinyl starts more expensive and the gap only grows as you add to your music library.


Just to recount my experiences: I started with a vintage Dual 1209(unknown cart, random old receiver phono) which arrived damaged. Got it working, SQ wise it was maybe about as satisfying as a cheap portable HP + MP3 player solution. $200
Next I bought a Graham Slee MM only phono stage & a Dual 701 with a budget Audio-Technica cartridge. Major improvement, it actually sounded very digital, reminded me of the ASUS Essence STX soundcard I started my audio journey with. $600
I ended my vinyl foray with a SOTA Satellite, Magnepan Unitrac Tonearm, Nagaoka MP150 combo with the same G-S phono. It seemed like it was on the same level as the Ultra-Fi DAC I owned at the time. The table had a more rounded spacious sound. The DAC had better timbre. This setup was a total of $1500, 3x the cost of the DAC.
You can get a far more resolving modern DAC for $200, probably even $100 if we assume you're willing to tolerate some noise/finicky issues(which you probably are if you're looking at analog.) And if you want that stereotypical analog sound there are other NOS DACs you can hunt down(the Metrum Flint is worlds better than the Ultra-Fi.)

Now it's possible that I just made a poor choice with the phono-stage(it was one of the best reviewed $400 units at the time) but the value equation just wasn't there. I had three tables with distinctively different sound signatures(from stereotypical bright thin 'digital' to round full analog. I obsessed over forums, set-up, matching cartridge compliance to tonearm mass, etc. My opinion at the end was that I'd achieved the same level of sound quality at increased cost & effort.
I would not recommend getting into it without a goal in mind, a plan, a decent chunk of FU money, and a desire to spend hours measuring, tweaking, and remeasuring. This of course assumes you want more than an 'experience' & conversation starter.