Rejoining the vinyl bandwagon . . . had lots (~14k records, +/-) of vinyl in the past; sold it off to a record store. Did digital only for a long time; just got back to vinyl - and now own four turntables. Ouch!
Anyway, there’s a sense of . . . ease when playing vinyl that I don’t hear from digital. Obviously depends on the record and which TT I’m using at the moment, but that’s pretty consistent - just seems easier to listen to.
Anyone else have a similar experience?
Yes.
Not the fourteen thousand rekkid thang. But, yeah.
Shocking amount of folks still believe digital is without fault. But it reveals itself continually as having lots of issues. This is not to say that all vinyl is magical.
I started off on tape, then CD until I sold all my CD’s around 2012 and moved wholly to digital.
But I found I lost a LOT of the love I’d had for music, I was just either randomly playing tracks through shuffle, or just playing the same playlists over and over.
In my 20’s I shared a house with a DJ who had a really nice record collection. I loved the sound. I’d been collecting records since 2000 and had about 100 odds and ends, mainly singles and EP’s. Then my parents donated me their old collection in around 2015, and then in 2017 my family clubbed together and contributed towards my Rega Planar 3.
That gave me the impetus to build up a really nice system which is finally reaching the end of it’s journey at the end of this month with the purchase of some speakers (been using a Naim Muso DSP speaker up until now).
I would never go back, not just for the sound quality which along with my tube amplifier is as you say - just so smooth and “easy” (perfect word for it), not just for the tactile appreciation of each and every album and the thought that’s gone into the physical packaging and pressing, and not just for the enjoyment I have in finding the best pressings or hearing about pre-releases early enough to get a signed copy, but for the way it’s completely reintroduced me into HOW to listen to a record.
I now rarely play just one or two tracks, I invariably listen to the whole album.
And I ENJOY it again, I absolutely love it, this is what I was missing with digital.
4 years later, I’ve just celebrated 900 records in my collection, and a system that I’m so utterly proud of, I’ve bought it component by component and it’s been so worth the effort and time.
Not since I started recording at 2496 and 24192 all the time. There is smoothness in that.
Vinyl can sound excellent, but I have never had a phono stage in the $2K range or higher, so I have probably not heard my vinyl in the best way.
My take is that it costs more to do vinyl right than to do digital. A $1K SACD/CD player sounds excellent. A $1K TT set up is just the beginning.
I started buying LPs in the late 60s thru the mid 80s, sold my TT and went digital. One good thing I did was keep all my vinyl even tho I couldn’t play them. About 7 years ago I purchased another TT, now have 4 and 3 years ago the wife started hunting LPs and we have bought about 1500 from local auctions , estate sales and anywhere else we can find them… I think she has wiped out our area of LPs because they are getting harder to find.!!
Clearly a sense of ease with vinyl playback. Though vinyl does have its issues, warps, skips pops, off center discs… You get the idea. Digital has its advantages, but at the end of the day vinyl is my format of choice. Digital may be the future, but vinyl, well, it is just music to these ears. 
I’m done with ESS DACs and I’m going to Schiit Multibit for DAC as it sounds more natural to me.
I’m considering going to vinyl for first time in parallel.
Never gave up on vinyl. And yes, vinyl has that extra something I’ve written about before in this forum: a 3rd dimension of body of instruments, chest voice, space. Digital has yet to conquer that extra something. I should add I treasure vinyl because I love the look and feel of a 12" disc, the album art, the liner notes.
I’m on my way back to vinyl.
But it’s clear that it’s going to be a similar experience to installing a wood burning stove in the country cottage: stove, then axe, then wedge, then F150 to carry the wood, then sling to carry the wood, then, then, then
So turntable, then a better tonearm, then cart, phono cable, footers, cover, rack to hold the turntable, concrete pad to the center of the earth to sit the rack on, phono preamp,… what the hell am I doing???
Oh–wait. I forgot: the record cleaning machine, the fluid, the stylus cleaner, the alignment and setup tools, the…
So did the Classic VPI pan out for you? BTW, vinyl is a complex as you wish to make it. Both VPI and Rega offer reasonable vinyl playback systems, with respectable tonearms. Seems to me you were on the right track with a VPI Classic.
Getting back into it has the downside of the cost of quality vinyl acquisition. Fortunately I have the majority of my original vinyl purchases. My taste in music in the '70’s was quircky and leaned to Chicago based avant garde jazz. To my benefit I treated that vinyl well. Today replacing most of them would be rather expen$ive.
Haha, that’s funny. There’s certainly a Trojan Horse element.
I keep getting very close to going into vinyl, but have been consistently detoured. This time to SACD’s instead. I really want to dive into the vinyl swimming pool, but get hung up on the issue of not being able to easily skip songs. 10 years in computer based playback has spoiled me with being able to easily only listen to songs I like. Roon is great for that.
I only have so many albums that I like start to finish. Maybe 50 max? Perhaps less. With Roon I can easily listen to only the cream of the crop. But there’s something about having sooooo much music at one’s finger tips that, for me, diminishes my enjoyment of music. With a CD once I take the effort to put an album in, I just relax and listen to music, and manually skip any offending songs. With Quboz, the sheer number of musical choices is overwhelming. Good. But overwhelming.
The VPI seller bought a Kronos but had to return it for reasons not revealed to me. So I’ll wait a little while longer and then buy something else if the issue doesn’t get resolved sooner than later.
I’ve been eyeing a couple “special deals” at Upscale.
Good luck, with time it will all fall into place. In the mean time, in anticipation you can create a space for your new library and begin the acquisition process.
Mats Gustafsson vinyl library, something we all should aspire to:
oh my I would have a reaaaaally hard time going back to the medium having divested that dramatically. Kudos to you.
That’s basically 10 times the number of records I have at this point. I bought records back in the day, but wasn’t a crazy person. I never sold them, and got back into it a few years back. I love accumulating them today, but the way I pick and choose, I can’t imagine how I might get to 14,000 records.
Do you have pics of your old collection? Trying to get a sense of scale!
Oh, long story - my grandfather had a ton of records (well, 3000-4000) and then I would buy collections when people were ditching them for CD. Got tired of moving them and put my son through college on the proceeds. Pics - I might have some . . .
I’m not interested in getting that many again - I’m a lot more selective, as I have ~2000 CDs. But there’s something about how records make music come alive . . .
Of course, I didn’t need to end up with four turntables, but I’ll keep the one I like the most once all the bits are here and installed. I suspect I’ll end up either keeping the Rega P6/RB303/Ania or a Linn LP12/Kore/Cirkus/Mober PS/RB300/cartridge to be named later. Also have a Revolver with a Grado Gold2 and a second LP12-Cirkus/Valhalla/Moth 303/AT VM95ML (which is playing now and sounding surprisingly good, even if the cartridge is brand new - might have 3-4 hours on it now). And the suspension needs a serious tune - but that’s for tomorrow!
haha, wish I would have had that foresight.
Yeah, John Darko talks about the “tea ceremony” aspect of playing records. I agree completely.
I now have three vintage Thorens turntables. If I wasn’t a crazy person back then, I am now.
I hate to make generalizations but in general my guess is you need to spend more on an analog setup then a digital set up to get the same sound…but it is logical to think it is worth the extra expenditure. My guess is the multiple is 2 to 3 times more for analog vs digital. I have gone down this slippery slope and glad I have done it.
We are lucky, our tiled floor is put on a concrete slab that is put on sand. The foundation supporting the slab is tight to 12 ft concrete pillars that are slammed into the ground till they sit on something more fundamental than sand. The floor is perfect horizontal too. That’s a piece of comfort when spinning the records. I have an old Thorens TD105 subchassis turntable. I love using it.
I never owned 14000 records but never sold any either.
Music is emotion and my buying decision, whether CD, Vinyl, downloads or streaming is purely based on my mood.
I stopped having preferences based on Sound Quality, Recording and master quality are all over the place, even the same album on CD, Vinyl or digital file, locally or streamed. The music I have or stream is what it is.
I like hearing better SQ but the real world fact is that I have to live with a budget. For the budget I have spent, all my music, Vinyl, CDs (often streaming the ripped CDs there off), Apple Music it all sounds fantastic.
The BluOS system (NAD M33, C 658) allows me to even stream vinyl through the house, it’s a cool feature, but rarely used.
The magic of vinyl is taking time, taking the record out of the sleeve sit down and relax. For running around in the house or background music in the home office I stream digital, occasionally CDs in the home office.
I never completely gave up on vinyl but the arrival of the cd format did narrow the range what one could buy on vinyl. Until recently, I also felt that vinyl provided greater listening “ease” and immersion as the OP suggested. However, purchasing a Luxman D-08u disc spinner definitely changed perception for me. The Luxman doesn’t sound the same as vinyl playback but it has its own set of strengths that compensates for what it lacks vs. my vinyl playback. (Acoustic Signature Final Tool with motor upgrade, AudioMods Series IV tonearm, Ortofon Kontrapunt H, RCM Sensor Prelude phono stage.) I could never rely solely on vinyl for music because 75% of the music I listen to will never be available in that format. Unlike many audiophiles, I am not going to restrict my classical and jazz listening to the old warhorse or audiophile reissues that are ubiquitous at audio shows.