Vinyl seems...interesting.

The biggest advantages of vinyl are access to music and buying used.  There are tens of thousands recordings that never made it to digital, so you need a turntable to explore them.  Even better, you can usually find all sorts of used vinyl on the cheap - sometimes you'll get a big box for $10 or $20.

 

There is a learning curve for vinyl and you'll have to pick up a few new skills for setting up a deck.  It's not that bad and anyone can learn, but there's more than just plugging in a CD player and pushing "play."

 

I won't go into the argument over digital and vinyl other than to say that vinyl can sound excellent.  But vinyl isn't worth the trouble unless you're mostly interested in finding new music.  The new 180g audiophile pressings are nice, but you'll get hit for $40 or $50 apiece.  You're better off buying good CDs and SACDs.  For vinyl, you should be interested in exploring music.  Going to a junk store, finding 20 LPs that you've never even heard of but look interesting, then paying $5 or $10 to take them home.  That's where digital has nothing on vinyl.

 

If you want more information on decks, setup, and much else, go read the articles by the Vinyl Anachronist.

Well, you'll find lots of country on vinyl.  It's the old rock and jazz records that get picked over by the serious collectors.  For whatever reason, country, classical and others aren't as desirable.  You can find all sorts of classic country for next to nothing.  I love it because I'm a huge fan of classic country and alt.country.

I am also quite interested in vinyl but know very little about it. What is a good record player to start with?

 

Also how the hell am I gonna copy my vinyl down to iTunes lol :-)

2 good entry level brands that I know of - Rega (British) and Pro-Ject (Czech or Austrian I think). I have a Pro-Ject debut esprit (the one with the acrylic platter), got it for about 400 USD if I remember rightly.

 

I love it - not for weekdays but the ritual of vinyl is great fun on a Sunday afternoon

 

Pro-Ject actually make a turntable with USB out if you really want to copy to iTunes...not tried it myself though...

Music Hall put out a USB deck rescently as well.  It comes with all of the software necessary to import your vinyl into iTunes.

 

Bill

Yes, Pro-Ject is an austrian brand but their product are manufactured in the Czech Republic, i have an Xpression III and it is great for the money in both sound and build quality, highly recommended.

 

 

Their latest entry-level offering with unipivot tonearm seems interesting too, it's called the Essential.

Interesting take Erik, I've often wondered myself what some of the fascination with vinyl is. At times I wish I still had all the vinyl I had collected through high school and college. I left it all in Ohio when I moved to Florida, and it's long since gone. I miss it sometimes. There was something magical about going to record stores back in the day and flipping through records and searching through bargain bins.

 

I just rediscovered something I had on vinyl back in the day and need to add to my CD collection.

 

If anyone wants to do needledrops, the NAD PP3 has a nice ADC and is a good phonostage.

 

I can't seem to find the link now, but there's been a lengthy discussion of affordable used turntables in the source section.  I haven't played with too many, but a lot of people have found old decks in the free to $100 range and were able to tune them up.  If you get an old deck, one of the best resources is Vinylengine.

The NAD PP3 is a phono stage. You have to have a phono stage of some kind because records are equalized with the RIAA curve. There's a long, technical explanation of why that's necessary (found at Wikipedia, if you're curious), but it helps to make a record play as long as it does and have fairly small grooves. The phono stage adds a lot of the bass information back in, sort of like a fixed graphic equalizer.

The PP3 does this, but it also has an ADC (analog-digital convertor) that turns the analog output into digital. Hook a USB cable to a PP3, and you can use a computer to record a LP. This is commonly referred to as a "needledrop." Several members here do a lot of them - look for posts from LFF if you're curious. He's a talent and really knows his stuff.

I've been looking to get into vinyl as well and am curious about the amplification. I have a Technics SL B-100 and i cannot get it past a whisper. It plugged into was on an Onkyo TX-SV545 receiver. Does this mean it needs a pre-amp? What exactly does a pre-amp do?

If your receiver has a "phono" input, you must connect the turntable there, otherwise you'll absolutely need an external phono preamplifier, as a normal line level imput lacks not only the needed gain but also RIAA equalization, which is part of the record playback system, you can't do without it.