Do You Still Own A Turntable?

Although I'm up to date with FLAC's & DAC's I still love my record turntable
It's a mid nineties Marantz and coupled up with a little NAD Phono Preamp still produces a glorious sound. There is something immensely gratifying in the whole ritual of removing from sleeve/innersleeve/cleaning/placing/cueing up. I'm convinced it actually makes you listen more intently because of the effort you put in.
I listen to other forms CD's/PC-USB-DAC-Hi-Fi/iPod etc. but nothing is quite as engaging as a record turntable.

Those people who just quote "the pops, hissing and space involved" ad neaseum don't have a soul or were incredibly unlucky enough not to have grown up with one.

I hate "the pops, hissing and space involved" ad neaseum .

And I have a soul that hates to hear surface noise at -30 db intrude upon music that is coming in at -50 db.
What you are in love with is the ritual,
and not the music!

GET OVER IT!

Never, it's music at it's finest, warm, sweet and analogue .........just like my ears! In actual fact, I rarely get pops or hissing but I can live with the odd one or two now and then for such an aural treat. I mainly listen to Cd's but am always highly delighted when I put in the effort. If you don't get get on with it fine, but I feel sorry for those never given the chance.

Hi
I agree with M.C. there is something magical about the old records and turntables...each old album has memories imprinted into them, each scratch, like a photograph can take you back to a certain place and time. Listen to the same album on a different system and it sounds totally different...listen to a different copy of the same album on your system and it sounds different too....
I love the speed and quality of the new digital era but when I want to fully enjoy to music I still crank up the old turntable.
To each their own I guess.

Dude, I own five turntables and all of them kick the crap out of your lifeless digital trash! You are hearing what a computer interprets as what its lifeless circuitry thinks that you should hear.

If you are prepared to put up with that...it kind of begs the question, why bother listening to original music when you could just ask a mate to hum his interpretation of it to you!?

It depends what you like listening to.
If you are in to listening to music with no more than a 10 or 20 dB dynamic range you might not hear the surface noise.

But it's always there, along with cross-talk and the rest of it. COLOURING THE SOUND and making it INACCURATE.

No contest.
I want to listen to music with a silent background and I am prepared to accept the sampling process (CD level and no less) as a very small price to pay for elimination of vast amounts of harmonic distortion and extraneous noise.

And (Not) your aunt fanny really has to find a better analogy than 'a mate humming an interpretation' or I'll remind him that when I want to hear crackles fizzes and pops I'll invite the LSO to perform The Song of the Earth in my kitchen when I'm putting the fish and chips in the frier! Meanwhile you are still priming the bait and preparing to toss out a fishing line in the hope of catching some music rushing round.

MC I don't know about feeling sorry for those who never had to set up and cue a vinyl record... I feel sorry for those who never had a chance to enjoy a coal fire, with a hod/bucket in the corner, and bits of coal spitting out to burn a hole in the carpet, chilblains from direct heat while your back is stone cold, and ashes to clear up in the morning, and the atmospheric pollution......
Poor bu88ers.

I'm surprised you lot are actually using the internet and not beating out a jungle drum or using smoke signals to communicate with.
It's so, SOOO much more soulful!

That trod the fine line between barbed humour and outright antipathy quite nicely I thought JJD.

Cheers, Brasso, I have a turntable, and use a modest Shure M75EDII with it but ONLY to try and copy onto CDs/.WAV files my old collection that have not been issued on CD. Not prepared to spend extra to get more accurate reproduction of surface noise!
Sometimes, I do agree, I've thought of a CD - Hey this doesn't sound as good as the old vinyl used to....
Then I do a proper comparison and there is no contest. It was purely my recollection, imagination, and memories of the good old days ...
The only time the vinyl wins temporarily on an A-B-A is if the CD has been issued from a lousy fourth generation master tape or if somebody tweaks the volume to oomph it more with the vinyl!

Every vinyl I have copied has to be analysed digitally with software like Audacity so that crackles and pops can be eliminated one by one digitally. It takes frigging hours...So even to get anything out of my old vinyls I have to use digital technology.

There is no contest.
People saying I should get a mate to hum the music I want to hear because that is more accurate than digital, really ought to get back down the coal mines for a living to see whether there has been progress over the years!

Incidentally, m8, I also get on to the flat-earthers and those who say there is no climate change, and those who ponce up their Peugeot 206s and drive about like Hammond.

The Earth's not flat? Whaddya mean climate change? Pimped 206s are da bomb! Now where's my back-to-front burberry baseball cap??

Nice one!

Yes I do.

no but ive often thougth i wish i had got one and kept records..i guess one day ill inherit my dads turntable..i really miss the actual record them selves - the size and all the info

** i thought this was a good question and that jayjaydee your rude comments were uncalled me and rude.

Well, the dinosaurs have to be told!

In my exceptionally humble opinion, it is impossible, by the current laws of physics to achieve anything like the same level of accuracy using a digital file as a well produced analogue recording. It simply cannot be done. Those who claim otherwise might need to read a physics text book or two.
Yours ever so 'umbly
Jimbat

"I hate "the pops, hissing and space involved" ad neaseum "???

Can't say I have any of those save from my very oldest 70s bought LPs. I do love my Cyrus CD6S, but it coexists very happily with my Rega Planar 2, both on my hifi rack and in my heart, Just salivating at the thought of upgrading the stylus and cartridge, and delighting in the rebirth of my beloved LP collection, not to mention some wonderful geriatric 45s.

Do you know Sheldon Cooper by any chance?

Mr Meager, that is not a humble opinion of course! And I presume you are referring to the sampling issue.
No debate. It's true. Sampling is not inaccurate but it is not the whole truth.
The argument here is about turntables.
While digital reproduction can create a good proximity towards the truth if not rolled off early (when sampled) but then fails by not operating between samples, the turntable/arm/cartridge/stylus palaver is a chronically outdated way of reproducing analogue recordings because it adds so much that is frankly Not the Truth that many of us will accept sampling as an imperfect alternative.
I hope no-one is saying here that perfection has been achieved through either means of reproduction - I am certainly not suggesting that.

But there's moving-forwards and there's holding-backwards!

The idea of raising this topic on the .mp3 forum is bizarre since that medium/process operates with absurdly low bitrates and must be a retrograde step in the march towards Higher Fidelity.

The reason I 'mentioned' vinyl/turntables on this particular forum, is because...I have been contributing for a few years now here and on pop & music (mp3 or FLAC etc.) I actually wanted to gauge just how many digital users also use a turntable. The slightly provocative wording is purely because, after a while, you realise how to elicit an interesting response. Let's face it, your inaugural post would have us believe that to own a platter would render us an extinct species and yet we gleam that you do indeed own one.
BTW, I quite often try different aural experiments shoving various transports through sundry mediums with very different results and I would be completely uninterested in sticking to one format just because it was deemed Higher Fidelity.........different genres, recording styles & eras suit contrasting equipment to my ears. What you choose to do with your ears is entirely your own business ;o)

As is what you choose to do with your anagram of ears! ;¬)

Agreed, the same as digital photos can't compete with the best analogue ones.

JJD, you want a better analogy...OK, get your pet robot to hum it! Does that work for you?

Dude, you seriously need to get laid or something!? Music is meant to be something you enjoy...not have a 'my willey is bigger than yours' contest about!?

Its all subjective anyway but you seem to feel a need to outdo others all of the time with your 'my method is better than yours' attitude. Its pointless as no two pairs of ears are the same so you can NEVER be right about this subject and you will NEVER have the best method of listening to music.

Sorry to burst your bubble!?

Sorry to cut in on this rather entertaining conversation but I own 2 SL1210mk2's with a vestax mixer. I also own an new Mac Book Pro with an Xponent midi controller. I love the sound of my records and I also love what you can do with software but find it amazing that a ton of significant music from the last 50 years is not available on mp3. I'm trying to find the right software to digitise my 3000+ records without it taking the rest of my life. Any suggestions?

What I feel the move to digital has done is to push everything towards mainstream and leave very little for experimental, ground breaking music. It's the same as teaching the National Curriculum, it contributes to a lessening of the total knowledge in the country.

Couldn't agree more about the mainstream element of most downloads. Classical and Jazz seem to have a much more comprehensive menu especially when it comes to high quality downloads. Talking of which Slimey, why are you even thinking in terms of mp3?
you have invested in decent equipment and have a sizeable collection, don't ruin it all by going for inferior quality recordings, if you mp3 your collection, I guarantee you'll be re-recording it in FLAC (or high bitrate) in the near future. I don't know the type of music you play or the size of the venues you play in but I have found that mp3 recordings get found out when put through DJ equipment. I use Pioneer CDJ400's + DJM400 mixer thru W. Audio 500w actives.
Storage space shouldn't be an issue either these days.

Good points M. C. Williams; shouldn't that be "Storage space SHOULDN'T be an issue either these days."? Sorry if I'm wrong :-)

DJ Slimey - that's a hard one. My friend has 4000+ LP's and doesn't know what to do with them, digitisation-wise. Mind you his vinyl ALWAYS sounds better than the digital equivalents in an A/B test on his gear, so I tell him to keep hold of the records...

I'm keeping my much more modest viny;]l collection too as well as getting more into slightly more unusual formats, such as stereo and/or multichannel SACD and even DVD-A which can't (easily) be copied and anyway need dedicated equipment to allow their playback.

Thanks BW of course it should have read 'shouldn't' (now corrected). I believe DJ Slimey's situation is slightly different from yours as I believe, although I might be wrong, he doesn't just want to replace his collection but make a digital copy that he can use DJing with his laptop. This involves not just copying to itunes (for example) but selecting a compatible software for his midi-controller.

Own one, don't use it, can't name it. It's in the shed.

When I moved in with my other half, something had to give, as it's only a 1 bedroom flat.

As for quality, the only way to get the best reproduction is to create/buy a sound studio and then pay the band to play live for you. Not cheap.
If, like me, you love music but can't afford the space and/or money to throw at an expensive system, or you listen to music in an inconvenient place, there's nothing wrong with MP3s just as long as the bitrate is high enough. Being a long-distance van driver, where I do most of my music listening, it's rather inconvenient to pull over and turn the record over.