Give Up Vinyl?

Fortunately my wife shares my enthusiasm for music and our tastes overlap. The investment has never been questioned.

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A great position to be in. Opposite from me. My spouse doesn’t get it, but tolerates it.
I think if my system’s true cost were calculated and revealed, a seismic shift in our relationship
could occur. Silent running. :zipper_mouth_face:

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Exactly!!!

We have an understanding regarding hobbies. A three pocket scheme more or less, our money, your money, and my money. The latter two address discretionary spending.

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Just got a brand new plexiglass hood delivered for my 40 years old Thorens TD105. Other than that, all still original parts and even still have an exchange tonearm. The tonearms are ultralight and make the choice of cartridges a bit limited.

Enjoy my BluOS and Apple AirPlay streaming services and sometimes still get a kick out of putting a CD into the drawer.

I enjoy it all.

And if I‘d ever be able to dedicate budget to an upgrade, it will be the magnificent Thorens TD1601 turntable. And yes, the TD105 will stay as well (message to my CFO).

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One of the reasons I was looking forward to Qobuz play was the Qobuz radio function. I even have a playlist made from suggestions it’s made.

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Same for me. It’s nice like this. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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We have it good, don’t we!

She even digs avant-garde music.

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I had an awful nightmare last night. I dreamed that my turntable and records were gone.
When I woke up my bedroom was a shambles. Ooof.

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I use the Qobuz radio function to listen to my favorite jazz FM radio stations, KCSM and WKCR! I listened Sonny Buxton every Saturday afternoon, but he retired two months ago!

Seventeen years ago, I retired and moved from Ohio to Colorado. I decided to get rid of my vinyl and all of the associated gear and go all in for digital. I have never looked back on all three decisions. I don’t miss the vinyl at all (or working or Ohio). In 2009, I started ripping my CDs into iTunes and currently have about 21,000 tracks. I have enjoyed music more over the last seventeen years than I ever have. I do a little streaming (Spotify), but I especially love having my own music at my fingertips. There was an interesting editorial in Stereophile, in August 2024, regarding having your own music. Jim Austin made some good points for holding onto your own media, be it digital or vinyl. I’m very happy with my digital collection.

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I need to say more about this. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy listening to digital immensely also, especially wth the new Playback Designs Dac. I really can’t say enough about how this Dac change how I feel about digital. Now I don’t even think about what format I’m listening to, I just get involved with the music. This Dac is that good. This is the first Dac I’ve heard that gives me the fullness, substance, and ease that good analog gives. Ultimately in a side by side comparison, vinyl gives me a bit more, but I would not give up on digital if I have the choice. There are a lot of music I have on digital that blows me away and don’t have on vinyl and vice versa. It’s great to be able to have both formats.

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You had better like digital, as you influenced me to purchase music downloads in DSD256 :rofl:

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Do you have this recording? I’m listening to it right now and it is blowing me away!

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Don’t fret it?

Set budgetary limits as you see fit and invest in both systems from time to time. You have breached the barriers to entry to both types of playback systems already, so enjoy tinkering with and improving the systems from time to time and focus more resources on acquiring well recorded music that you enjoy in either format as you come across recordings and artists of interest. You can maximize your bang for the buck by divesting of one or more of your turntables, but if you enjoy using all three ‘tables just keep ‘em.

FWIW.

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I notice you didn’t mention sound quality.

I have not. Will listen

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After initial doubt I decided to give up on both vinyl and cd’s to focus 100% on optimising sound reproduction by streaming. The proceeds from selling my significant cd- and vinyl collection with related equipment made it possible to upgrade to a Directstream, Melco n1zs10, ARC ref 6se and ARC ref 75se.

Thereafter a fortunate circumstance arised for auditioning at home of a pre-demo dCS Vivaldi Apex dac in combination with a briefly used ARC ref 160s. Once heard there was no way back, I exchanged the Directstream and ARC ref 75se for the Vivaldi and ARC ref 160s.

Having just only digital streaming source in use, I started experimenting with direct connection between Vivaldi and ARC ref 160s, with great results. When I then came across an Aurender W20SE at reasonable price I decided to trade in the Melco and ARC ref 6se for this. A big step forward, especially since the Aurender provides dual aes/ebu output, integer upsamling and wordclock input to sync the Aurender by use of Vivaldi’s wordclock output.

Last but not least I recently stumbled upon a pair TAD e1tx speakers, a particularly attractive offer as again being formerly in use as demo by the dealer/importer. Couldn’t resist and exchanged my Martin Logans.

I feel blessed being able to reach my end game in the audiophile journey, thanks in part to the decision of saying goodbye to vinyl and shiny discs…

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I like how you focused your resources and glad to hear that you arrived at a fulfilling destination. Do you rely solely on streaming services or do you have locally stored files?

To be honest I ripped my cd’s before selling :shushing_face: and use both Tidal and Qobuz sublime, only Incidentally buying downloads now because the difference SQ-wise is negligible.

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