Interested buying a Turntable, a good idea? - Page 3

Vinyl also wears, can be damaged/warped. The needle can cause excessive wear. Vinyl and turntable use is an all consuming activity. Vinyl is almost always more musical but less accurate means of recording reproduction. In the digital domain, sophisticated processing, conversion to the analogue domain can produce a more enjoyable experience. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by AJHeadfi 

Vinyl and turntable use is an all consuming activity. 

Very true, which is a double-edged sword.  Yes, it's more work, but that simply means that I value the results that much more.

It's certainly not for everyone, though.  

A good friend of mine thinks that I've lost my mind.  He told me I'm going to raise my daughter to ride down the street in a horse and buggy blasting her gramophone.  I'm cool with that.  

Hey man, I'm a newcomer to analog audio. I gotta tell you, it will consume a lot of your time and money to play with vinyl setups. If you have the money, I highly recommend you get new sets at retailers instead of salvaging or getting used parts/tables from other people. You'll need good experience to judge whether what you're buying is good or not. Things may look great, but the parts don't sound as good. Some might look ragged and worn, but they are vintage and are very high in quality. It's really time consuming and pursue oriented. But, but if you are passionate and have the patience to hunt each part and component, with enough perseverance you will come through.

You can check out my adventure from the turntables thread. For the past 3 weeks I had been hunting for the components one by one, only with the guidance by other more experienced friends that I am able to stand firm.

I need to warn you, with improper care and low quality parts, your music will, WILL, sound worse than 56kbps bitrate songs. Amplify that with the speckling sounds it make, and the distortions it introduce, plus the probability that you might damage your records rendering it permanently crap-sounding even if you use great parts. Definitely not for the faint of heart.

You might want to get a part time job too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by penmarker 

Hey man, I'm a newcomer to analog audio. I gotta tell you, it will consume a lot of your time and money to play with vinyl setups. If you have the money, I highly recommend you get new sets at retailers instead of salvaging or getting used parts/tables from other people. You'll need good experience to judge whether what you're buying is good or not. Things may look great, but the parts don't sound as good. Some might look ragged and worn, but they are vintage and are very high in quality. It's really time consuming and pursue oriented. But, but if you are passionate and have the patience to hunt each part and component, with enough perseverance you will come through.

 

You can check out my adventure from the turntables thread. For the past 3 weeks I had been hunting for the components one by one, only with the guidance by other more experienced friends that I am able to stand firm.

 

I need to warn you, with improper care and low quality parts, your music will, WILL, sound worse than 56kbps bitrate songs. Amplify that with the speckling sounds it make, and the distortions it introduce, plus the probability that you might damage your records rendering it permanently crap-sounding even if you use great parts. Definitely not for the faint of heart.

 

You might want to get a part time job too.

The bold parts alone would make this the truest post to a beginner Vinyl head ever. 

To be honest - and one reason my ancient Technics SL-7 and Shure V-15 have lasted so long - is that back in the day, a turntable was used for one thing 90% of the time: transfer to tape.  It wasn't just playing stuff in your car stereo that made cassette tapes so popular.  In fact, most car stereos didn't have Dolby and Type II tape capability for years after they existed in the audiophile world.

The #1 reason to use the turntable was to tape it.  From then on, you listened to the album from the tape deck - over and over and over, with no wear issues.  JMHO, but that analogy applies today.  A good turntable could be used for doing needle drops to digital.  That's not implying at all that you should be going to one of those cheap USB turntables - far from it.  GIGO.

That's sacrilege to a turntable enthusiast, I suppose, but it might be an easier way of looking at it in your initial pursuits of turntable investment/hassle vs. enjoyment.

In response to the thread title, yes, it is a good idea. But it won't come cheaply.

Unless you can find a vintage turntable in good working condition, there are no new turntables under the $400 mark that are worth considering. I'd recommend at the very least a Rega RP1  ($449). It comes with a pre-mounted Ortofon OM5e, which is a fairly decent cartridge. The 2M series performs better on that tonearm, but the OM5 should be enough to get you started. Check to see if you have a dealer locally that you can visit and demo one. I wouldn't recommend the Pro-ject Debut (too much motor vibration), and I haven't heard the Music Hall MMF-2.1, but it looks very similar to the Pro-ject.

Buy locally if you can so that your dealer can set it up for you. This will save you much time and frustration that comes with learning how to align a cartridge, set tracking force/vta/antiskate, etc.

You will also need a record cleaning machine. Yes, this is absolutely essential to getting good sound from vinyl. Let's face it; dirty vinyl sounds terrible. If your vinyl isn't clean, you will end up asking yourself why you spent so much money on a turntable and cartridge only to have it sound terrible. I almost gave up on vinyl before I got my KAB EV-1. It can be found at (http://kabusa.com/frameset.htm?/) for a little under $200 shipped.

Originally Posted by AJHeadfi 

Vinyl also wears, can be damaged/warped. The needle can cause excessive wear.

Only if the stylus is worn, misaligned, or using an improper tracking force.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AJHeadfi 
Vinyl is almost always more musical but less accurate means of recording reproduction. In the digital domain, sophisticated processing, conversion to the analogue domain can produce a more enjoyable experience. 

This is highly subjective. My experience has been the opposite, but to each is own. Done right, analog sounds better to my ears. But you have to do it right.

Quote:

Originally Posted by calipilot227 

 

Only if the stylus is worn, misaligned, or using an improper tracking force.

 

 

This is highly subjective. My experience has been the opposite, but to each is own. Done right, analog sounds better to my ears. But you have to do it right.

True, true and true. But it's all analog as you can't hear digital.

Like the OP I'm looking to add a vinyl component to my headphone rig.  I've been thinking of taking Skylab's advice from another thread and spending my money on a decent vintage direct drive TT.  Skylab said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that essentially spending under $500 or so will very often buy you a much better sounding vintage DD rig than an entry level belt-drive like a Rega RP1 or Pro-ject Debut, etc.  

Perhaps not the route for everyone, but as I've had more experience with Direct Drive anyway (used to own 2 Technics 1200s) I'm going to go that route and see what it gets me.  

That said, a guy here locally to me has a Luxman PD-277 for sale and is asking $225.  http://www.vinylengine.com/library/luxman/pd-277.shtml  Definitely within my budget, and it looks kinda nice to boot. 

For a bit more, I could opt for a Micro Seiki DD35 table which is just gorgeous (to me anyway)

Thoughts?

Oh man that Micro would look awesome next to the Harbeths when they come in. lol

Quote:

Originally Posted by MorbidToaster 

Oh man that Micro would look awesome next to the Harbeths when they come in. lol

I saw it first.   It's been on the DFW craigslist for a few months.  Guy is asking $500 and says its mint.  I might see if he's willing to deal, but I don't know if that's even a reasonable price.  Might ask Skylab. 

I'm looking into future table upgrades that will match the speakers, but for the most part looks be damned. I just want a good table.

Well Tempered Labs is still in the lead. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by dmcs414 

 

I saw it first.   It's been on the DFW craigslist for a few months.  Guy is asking $500 and says its mint.  I might see if he's willing to deal, but I don't know if that's even a reasonable price.  Might ask Skylab.