You’re right as buying second hand is lot less expensive than new but probably still more cost than second hand CD’s or a subscription.
@n-lot I suppose music choice is always going to be personal. For classical, the silent backgrounds help but I still prefer Joni Mitchell on vinyl even with the pops.
At the Naim level we are lucky we can demo set ups so many decisions come down to our own choices which is as it should be. UK anyway.
There is no doubt starting from scratch is not a small matter. I am not sure I would, but let me give another perspective from a lifetime vinyl collector. Over the years I have gathered around 8000 LP’s, my LP12 bought new in 1983 has been upgraded to current top specs. I am 100% Naim for electronics and speakers (active) including an NDX2/XPS for streaming, and I have a NAS store of around 18,000 CD’s, many replicate the vinyl.
So to my point. The sound quality of streamed music from the NAS is better than streamed music externaly such as Tidal, but there is not much in it, I am spoilt for choice of source and material but recently I have found myself going back to vinyl more often.
Why? Sound is different but 'better 'is hard to say, parhaps it is fairer to say that all sources sound fabulous through £40k of hardware!
So why vinyl? For me it is tactile, I love the ritual of selecting, cleaning and playing, I am very much an album man, meaning 22 minutes each side, get up and flip the album or find something else to play when the B side is weak. I find this apeal drives me to long listening sessions and late nights.
As I age I do not always recall the name of an artist or album, and with such a large collecetion of my own and almost unlimited choice online it is easier to revert to what I know. My vinyl is well organised, it is in my listening room/study and I can put my hand on pretty much anything I want by memory, colour or location in the shelves. Often the choice is random and impulsive and I read the cover notes as I have not done for 50 years!
But that is after 58 years of collecting and listening, each album has a story of where and when I bought it, who I was with and what we got up to which is not something that you can buy.
On balance I would advise you to concentrate your investment on the best of current sources, but find a way to catalogue what you love now, as in 20, 30, or 40 years time you will want to listen to a modern day Trees, or Terance Martin album and you will not be able to find it!
I personallyreturned to records two years ago with only a handfull of old LP’s and a few 12" singles so I dipped my toe in and bought a Marrantz TT15-S1 (actually a Clearaudio) for £1200 only because it had a decent cartridge, a Clear Audio Virtuoso wood which retails at around £750 on it’s own, I aslo had a half decent phono stage in my Yamaha AS2100 amp that wasn’t being used so it was more out of curiosity to try vinyl again. Two years later I have about 250 Lp’s many of which I bought second hand for around £8-10 each and I’ve not looked back! I still use Qubuz Sublime and CD’s every day for my main source and in other rooms but when I go into my music room to play records it’s a real escape and to me the sound of records, even on this inexpensive set up is fantastic so my advice is absolutely start from scratch you won’t (or I didn’t) regret it!
@Airdavid - have you come to a decision yet? Curious.
Would be interesting to read how you are getting along - tumbling headlong into the delights of Discogs perhaps, or the lure of High Res downloads I wonder…
Similar story to me but I bought a P10 and about 250 new records. It stops there for me with vinyl as it’s a strong link with nostalgia (the records of my formative years). Yes I could have put the money towards a better streaming source but I love the whole vinyl experience and highly rate the Nova as it comes close to the P10 in terms of SQ. I also relish the choice and use both sources to satisfy different needs. Both better my old CD based system so I’m happy…
The thing about vinyl I found is that the SQ can be very varied based upon the quality of the pressing, half speed, etc. Streamed music seems to me to be much more of a leveller (Ie CDs that sounded crap with the CDS3 at least sound reasonable ripped and streamed). The best recorded vinyl easily outperforms streamed ripped CDs to me (ie much more organic). This tends to push me to pick the best recordings from my meagre collection above the style of music I might prefer in any one listening session…
Not certain if the OP is even interested anymore at this point, but I wholeheartedly agree with all you’ve said here. However, I think this is true no matter what medium one chooses. I’ve always thought it important to temper expectations with regard to SQ from digital or vinyl. What I mean by that is everything is so dependent upon the true original source, which is the recording itself, and all the upgrades in boxes, PSUs, cartridges, arms, cables, conditioning and so forth isn’t going to miraculously alter anything for the better. If the recording is bad, it’s bad. It’ll just sound exponentially worse with a more resolving system, IMO. What you state about SQ being varied upon X, Y and Z holds true across the board, no doubt.
In general and as an aside, though, I cannot help but fall in line with what @Clive brings up with the ND555 link. Now, I’ve never had the pleasure of having that kind of Naim set up in my room, but some of the high-quality vinyl combos I’ve had nearly always trounced the highest-end CD/DAC I’ve had in my space(s). It would stand to reason, to some degree, that this would be true if I had the means at the time to put it up against truly high-end streaming—in general. At the end of the day, to me cost considerations make this kind of shootout favor vinyl, all things being equal or on the same SQ playing field. I somewhat agree with the statement that digital can be a bit hollow and cold, whereas the same recordings on vinyl just have more ‘weight’ and ‘presence’ overall. The gap is closing or about equal (to me) with better DACs, scalers, LPSs, isolation techniques and a myriad of other tweaks, but again all of that takes some serious adding up of components and even trial-and-error. I’m really generalizing here, as there are way too many factors and configurations that could negate my personal findings and feelings on the matter, but my original contribution to the thread still stands that it is entirely worth it to start fresh with vinyl.
This reply sums up exactly why I ditched vinyl in the late ‘80’s as an early convert to CD. While the latter took a while to improve, streaming 192khz tracks for me makes cd and vinyl obsolete. Why put yourself through the mill of worrying whether your new acquisition is scratched or warped or whether you will scratch it. And you can’t take it anywhere. Sorry, think it’s a nice idea as I did enjoy my Dual 505 (never quite getting to a Rega Planar 3) but these days I’m happy with my NDX2.
If you never got any further than a Dual 505 then you were never a vinyl fan from the start! I went from Dual 505 (1978) to Rega 2 (1985), Rega 3 (1988) to Linn Sondek / Ekos (1992). In that time I was probably buying an LP or two a month, amassing around 300. I bought the original Arcam Alpha CD player around the time I bought the Linn - having not been impressed with CD before that point. I carried on buying LPs usually in store sales as they gradually disappeared from the shelves ending up with about 500 or so before being forced to buy CDs, which I have never liked as an object even though to my ears the sound quality was better than the Linn. In 1999 I got married and had kids. I stopped buying music altogether for about 10 years before ripping my CDs to NAS, buying a Squeezebox and getting on Spotify as a very early adopter. I am getting back into LPs now because I do miss the ritual of “playing a record”. A bit like the Japanese Tea Ceremony!
My thoughts regarding some of the comments above are that if you find digital preferable to vinyl, you may not have an optimal front end. I buy new and second hand vinyl. I have virtually no issues with extraneous noise, despite many used records being up to 50 years old.
If available I will buy a vinyl copy of my favourite albums, including new discoveries from Tidal/Qobuz, in all but one case I have found the vinyl to be superior sounding.
I am a person who burns bridges as I did when I first got into CD’s in the early nineties, whereupon I disposed of my vinyl hardware and software. I would be more than willing to dispose of my vinyl set up if digital proved superior, indeed I would welcome it, as I prefer vinyl because of it’s SQ and not because of nostalgia. When/if digital betters or equals vinyl I will move on.
Vinyl has more inherent limitations to sound quality than digital. Preference of course is not necessarily related to sound quality.
And, importantly, the mastering can make a huge difference, with digital and analogue versions often mastered differently, while the so-called “loudness wars” did no favours to digital, destroying one of the medium’s benefits.
Hi-Fi is ultimately a hobby, so if you are curious then scratch that itch… dip your toe in… if you get hooked then build up. I would limit what you buy as you start out and then learn about the new format as you build up.
I found vinyl/phono quite interesting, but in the end it was for me too finicky for optimum SQ, and it felt like I was spending more time maintaining and preparing my records and system rather than listening… and I sold up… but kept my albums… however at least I scratched the itch and I might even return at some point.
From a SQ perspective and sheer immersive feel, vinyl replay is in my opinion ultimately inferior to a modern high performance DAC and digital chain, after all with modern vinyl, the TT system is part of the electro-mechanical digital to analogue reconstruction filter anyway, but it does have a charm as you say and a kind of aesthetic appeal to the sound (audio transfer function), no doubt helped by the groove modulation optimisation and RIAA eq. Some of the Uber loaded Linn Sondek setups can sound rather impressive.
So I would suggest you give it a try, you never know you might become an ardent fan.
Playback via my ND555 is indeed enjoyable and many albums can sound impressive, however, when comparing like for like I invariably prefer the vinyl source. For me digital sounds processed rather than the more natural sounding vinyl.
I agree Gerry. There is something undefinable that gives vinyl the edge imo. It just sounds more natural. Whatever side of the fence we sit there are great choices of kit available these days.
For me it was worth doing. A few years back I decided to buy a Rega Planar 1 plus. Clearly my NDX/XPS was going to sound alot better but that wasn’t really the point. I noticed that my local HMV had started stocking alot more vinyl and I quite liked the idea of spending a bit of time browsing and buying the odd vinyl album from time to time, probably for nostalgic reasons. I guess I might upgrade the turntable to higher end Rega if I build up a large collection but certainly have no intention of going down the Linn upgrade route again or buying a cleaning machine.