My digitalized turntable experiment was successful; questions raised

[n4k33n]

After a short first foray into vinyl which ended with a dead belt engine, I've been wanting to get into vinyl. I wanted to know if it were possible to create a good vinyl rig on the cheap.

What I bought:
Ion Turntable, TTUSB10. I got this particular one because it seemed like it was cheap and ready to run. I got a good deal and picked up a new for $90. I tore out whatever oem cartridge was in it and threw a $60 grado cartridge.

Grado Cart: I think the exact one I have is the grado prestige black. I'll have to check on this. $60

M audio audiophile 2496 pci. I'm using this for it's rca analog in. I sample the vinyl at 24/96 (its max) and send it on to the dac via digital coax. I picked this up on craigslist for $50

Total project cost: $200


I decided this would be a digital vinyl rig. Meaning I am outputting everything to my dac, which is a Headroom Ultra Microdac. This upsamples whatever I am sending it to 24/192. This is a great top rate dac and I use an astrodyne power supply with it.

My setup:
Ion turntable w. grado cart
M audio audiophile 2496
Headroom ultra microdac 24/192
misterx ppa v2 headamp w/ steps
sennheiser hd650



Findings and thoughts:

This setup was setup in a very pragmatic way. I knew I didn't have a ton of money to play with and I wanted to max out my setup utilizing my current components.

Although I don't have a ton of experience with vinyl, I can say that this setup blows away the ones I have heard. I think this kind of setup is needlessly thrown out as a valid idea, and many people think digitalized, vinyl somehow losses its "magic". My personal findings have confirmed (to me) that at this price (and probably a few hundred higher), digitalizing vinyl (with a good dac) was the best of all possible ways to get into vinyl. Now I can benefit from superior mastering of vinyl using my current equipment

I don't see setups like this much on head-fi so I thought you all might be interested in my findings and take questions.

Thanks

EDIT:I forgot to add this, I am using an external phono stage I bought at Fry's Electronics for $30. I figured a battery driven external phono stage would be better than anything internal the Ion had

[memepool]

Originally Posted by n4k33n

After a short first foray into vinyl which ended with a dead belt engine, I've been wanting to get into vinyl. I wanted to know if it were possible to create a good vinyl rig on the cheap.

What I bought:
Ion Turntable, TTUSB10. I got this particular one because it seemed like it was cheap and ready to run. I got a good deal and picked up a new for $90. I tore out whatever oem cartridge was in it and threw a $60 grado cartridge.

Grado Cart: I think the exact one I have is the grado prestige black. I'll have to check on this. $60

M audio audiophile 2496 pci. I'm using this for it's rca analog in. I sample the vinyl at 24/96 (its max) and send it on to the dac via digital coax. I picked this up on craigslist for $50

Total project cost: $200

If you like what you hear you should definitely look into getting a better turntable at some point. The Ion is convenient I'm sure but it's not especially "Hi-Fi" and if you are splashing out on new vinyl it can sound so much better than this.
It needn't be expensive either as you can pick up something like a Pioneer PL-11 2nd hand for 50 USD which will sound literally 10 times better than the Ion. What was the table you had belt issues with?

[n4k33n]