Giving up Vinyl for Better Digital - to do or not to do

As I contemplate selling-off my mid-band turntable rig and modest vinyl collection of about 120 lp’s to raise some £4k to put towards the best DAC I can afford - 99.9% of my listening is through the Melco/DAC TBA front end - I wonder how others, who have done similar, have faired after doing so. Any regrets or none at all?

We’re all different and your experiences may not, ultimately, be wholly relevant to what mine might be, but, nonetheless, perhaps someone will come up with something I’d not considered - something increasingly apparent as age creeps upon me…

I haven’t been in that situation myself (and vinyl is my primary source), but if you only have about 120 LPs and if vinyl is not very important to you then it sounds like a sensible move and the right time to make it.

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Sell the hardware, but not the media. Else one day u may come to regret it.

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Thanks for that. The importance lies only in sentimentality. I’m 59 and many of my albums go back to my student days, 40yrs ago. They’re in 2 floor-level shelf units that form part of the furniture in my lounge, where the t/t sits atop my rack. But I spin only for about 4hrs per year. Currently more because my dac expired and the t/t is filling in for now. It’s sort of a trade-off - sentimental comfort factor against a greater listening experience. As Baz, says, ‘the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young’. I guess my lp’s are like old friends. P’raps I’ll keep them and flog the gear…

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Just ruminated that same conclusion - thank you!

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4k into a dac is not really going to get close to what a half decent vinyl set up will do, sorry but its true.

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Yes that’s true in principle - but my circumstances warrant a different view: the £4k would be ‘going towards’, not the total budget and my digital system with deceased dac rather wiped the floor with my vinyl rig…

Good point! I kept my best 200 LPs or so back in the day when (sadly) switching to CDs and very happy I did when I got back into vinyl again about 7 years ago.

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I also favour keeping your vinyl for possible future use if the recordings are well made and difficult to maintain. I simplified my pre-amp/amp/cd player to a Naim Nova and Core when I decided to stream and rip my 1500 or so cd’s for ease of playing and storage. I had a defunct Linn Lp-12 and no longer player my collection of 800 + LP’s.

When we downsized to apartment (flat), I reviewed my vinyl collection and kept the recordings that I would actually play, mostly jazz, choral and chamber music with some blues and fold favourites. That reduced the collection to 200 LP’s which were easier to store.

Lo and behold, I now have a vinyl setup that I really enjoy, although I primarily stream Tidal or my ripped collection. Vinyl records and now very expensive and my original Bluenote, Verve and European pressings would be difficult for me to replace.

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Not all of your LPs may be available as CDs, or probably to stream, so if you really want to ditch vinyl, perhaps digitise the ones you want most to keep?
And I sometimes find that when I find CD versions of some records, tracks I like aren’t there.

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DAC’s don’t make that much of a difference in SQ
Don’t sell those 120 lp’s
Sell the expensive TT
Buy a cheap but fun sounding turntable (Rega P1) with cheap phonoamp (Rega mini fono/NAD pp1) for playing youre’re records ones in a while.

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Heresy I know, but I have found a Bluesound node and a good dac about the equivalent of myP8 set up. Go further up the quality and associated cost scale on streamers and dacs, then sound continues to improve. I have kept most of my lp’s, even bought some new ones, but the streamer is in constant use, not the TT.

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Well, I might not agree with you entirely re: DAC’s, but that’s a very useful thought re: cheaper t/t rig for the annual moment of sentimentality, thank you. That hadn’t really occurred to me. I’ll re-visit that idea further on :slight_smile:

I put my LP12 (Akurate+ spec) in part exchange for a Linn Klimax DS3 / Katalyst streamer. I also sold my Naim CD5 XS CDP as well.

The records (circa 1000) and CDs (circa 750) were sold in bulk to a specialist company.

No regrets in doing so and very happy with my set up, not that had any problems with the old set up.

The SQ is very good, being very detailed, good depth of bass and soundstage.

Do have some plans for future upgrades, including;

  • Splitting the single column rack into a double rack of brains and brawn.
  • Upgrading the streamer’s DAC to Organik.

The rack will be done in the next couple of weeks once the new base shelf has been received from Cymbiosis. The Organik will be done later in the year.

I’ll post updates as the work progresses.

DG…

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Bold stuff. Congratulations!

I did the same some time back, my digital sources easily bettered my RP8 so I sold it. Sold all my vinyl a few weeks ago and used the money on other things, including a lot more cds and am happy having done do. That said my only interest is sound quality, I’m not someone who enjoyed the ritual of playing vinyl

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How much has your steaming set up cost to date. :grinning:

I sure have little fondness of the ritual of getting off my lazy bum every 20 minutes to change sides/albums…! The gear has now all gone up for sale. I’ll sit on the albums for a while; it’s not as though I’d get a seriously useful lump of cash for them anyway.

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That doesn’t tell us much, if we don’t know what equipment is in each system.

I didn’t think that was particularly relevant - but it’s in my profile and I’ve made a useful amend to the opening para’. Thanks for the prompt :+1:

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