Who still prefers vinyl?

Have the Oppo 205 too but for the sheer total experience including looking at those sleeves and sleeve notes nothing come close to vinyl. Even my 15 year old daughter agrees - when she decouples from her iPhone and EarPods! I went to my parents place the other day and rescued a whole load of my early 1980s stuff for her - one spin through the record cleaning machine and Billy Joel, Eric Clapton, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Gordon, Genesis Goltrap and yes, even Supertramp and Sky have never sounded so good. Quite dewy-eyed I was!

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ā€œWho still prefers vinyl?ā€

Canā€™t stand this new-fangled craze for carpeting the kitchen floor.

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Until recently I would have agreed that vinyl has the more engaging sound. But I have never been able to get over the clicks and pops. The ND555, however, is a game changer. CDs streamed through that machine really can sound just as musical and, of course, are quiet.

That said, I still believe the NAT01 to be Naim Audioā€™s best ever source component.

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OK - I hereby call them linoleums!

No clicks anĀ£ pops here - I have 30 year old discs as smooth as a ā€¦
Nat 01 yes - love mine but you canā€™t fondle the artworkā€¦

Me neither. References to ā€œclicks and popsā€ gets tiresome after a while.
:confused:

i have around 400 lps, most original pressings, with perhaps 5 lps with some clicks and pops. All my lps are in mint condition, i have bought them mint or near mint. No clicks and pops at all, no hiss, no noise i can hear, just the 2 seconds of beginning the lp.

Yeah vinyl is still the best. Iā€™ve got some CDs but meh, as for streaming donā€™t even start!

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Fangfossflyer posted:
ā€œThe music from my generation and era just sounds and feels better on vinyl to me!

After saying this, I would advise new comers to go for a streaming system.ā€

These last 2 comments get a big amen for me. Iā€™m not in the camp that thinks digital stinks. I love my NDS and it does many things much better than vinyl, but I recently bought back into a record player because I found that music from ā€˜my eraā€™ (as FFS eloquently put it) which was recorded and engineered specifically to sound at its best within the capabilities of vinyl just didnā€™t work for me in digital. I was hesitant about reentering record player ownership and thought I was just being nostalgic and had a rose tinted view of how my music used to sound. happily, I was right and those old pre-digital recordings really do sound far more natural, involving and oddly, more detailed than digital recreations. There are quite a few examples of digital recordings that also sound better on vinyl too. However, as TonyM says, there are plenty more that donā€™t and especially in the field of classical and with digital recordings thereā€™s really nothing to be gained from vinyl over digital and much to potentially be lost, so for me Iā€™m very happy to own both for different reasons and different genres and era of recording.
We occasionally see posters on here asking if they should be buying into vinyl. I would unhesitatingly say that unless their musical interests are predominantly as archaic as mine (pre 1981) then absolutely not. Stick with streaming and spend your pennies there.

Personally I think streaming from oneā€™s own music store has so much more to offer in terms of sound quality than vinyl - and I have convinced a die-hard LP12 toting vinyl lover of the same - but it does require the system to be good enough, and it was my switch to The Hugo DAC that first brought that more natural/ā€œanalogue-likeā€ sound, finished off now with Dave.

I have never heard vinyl sound as good as the best of digital. In saying that, I admit I have never heard a top-of-the-game TT/arm/cart/phono stage in comparison, but the limitations of vinyl such as dynamic range and noise floor will always be there, while absent with digital. However, it is nigh on impossible to do a fair comparison as mastering is rarely the same, and there are certainly some crap digital releases out there where the advantages of digital have been destroyed, e.g with dynamic range compression.

But where vinyl certainly wins is in its tactile aspect, and in particular in terms of record sleeves and the pleasure they can give.

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:small_blue_diamond: Five years ago I could not listen to CD or Streaming,ā€¦It was so much inferior to vinyl.

Okayā€¦As background-music when you cooked food etc,then it went well.
But would you have quality time and listen to music,ā€¦Well then it was vinyl.
Itā€™s still vinyl that applies,but streaming has become so much better,ā€¦so today I can listen to it without ā€œvomitingā€ :wink:.

BUTā€¦PLEASE NOTE,weā€™re talking about a really well set-up and installed/optimized turntableā€¦IMPORTANT.!
Isnā€™t it done,ā€¦Yes then streaming works just as well.
CD Iā€™ve been counting off for many,many years ago,ā€¦it wasnā€™t an interesting music-format.

/Peder :slightly_smiling_face:

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In that case you are very fortunate. I clean my LPs on an RCM, storing the cleaned discs in new anti-static inner sleeves. Additionally, I am very careful in handling the discs and if I see any specks of dust on the surface prior to playing, I use an Exstatic brush. Yet still I will hear the occasional click in quiet passages, which I find distracting. I have invested in several turntable upgrades over recent years too, but of course that doesnā€™t mask the issue. The only thing I havenā€™t done is to improve the cartridge (I still use a Linn Krystal), but Iā€™m reluctant to spend Ā£3k or so on what is essentially a consumable item.

Since recently being made aware of an easy way to rip SACDs Iā€™ve now done so with my small collection, most on dual-layer discs. Playing the resultant DSD files through the DAVE has been a bit of a revelation, producing a most, dare I say, vinyl-like, relaxed yet detailed and dynamic sound quality. The few 24/192 files Iā€™ve got also exhibit this, something I confess I hadnā€™t picked up on previously, being very much in the rather rigid ā€œ16/44 files are just as goodā€ camp.

Oppos are certainly wonderful machines (I need an old one to do the ripping), and will not only play every type of disc medium very well indeed, but can also cope with dodgy discs that other machines turn their noses up at.

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I listen to music no mather what, as long as it isnā€™t compressed.

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Bought my LP12 c1985 with Ittok and quickly upgraded to Ekos. Had various upgrades during servicing through the years. Still prefer it to CD5XS(ext psu)/DACV1 but only just. Is vinyl better or just different? Might get Core sometime as listened to a home built PC server recently and itā€™s really good, but not heard on my system, yet. I just like listening to music whatever the format. I agree with previous comment about compression and with RichardD about ā€˜on the moveā€™ and FM still rules.

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Where do you find uncompressed music? Most vinyl is, and whilst digital doesnā€™t need to be, much apparently isā€¦

But I assume uou mean over-compressed.

Interesting Tony. If youā€™d care to share how to rip SACDā€™s Iā€™m all ears. I have a lot of Dual layer CD/SACD discs, Iā€™ve so far been unable to access the latter. In particular, most of my Chandos classical CDā€™s seem to have an untapped SACD layer.
Kevin

I think you need to nip over to the ā€˜hi-fi havenā€™ site.

Iā€™d love to be able to rip my SACDs though Iā€™d be surprised if I have more than a dozen.

Many years ago I got a Pioneer DVD player which also handled SACD and DVD-A but the titles available at the time were not really to my taste. Neither really took off properly especially DVD-A, but at least SACDs are still released especially from specialist labels.

Last night I noticed a few CDs Iā€™d ordered in 2007 had SACD layers which made me wonder how many I might actually have.

[quote=ā€œKJC, post:58, topic:1210ā€]
Interesting Tony. If youā€™d care to share how to rip SACDā€™s Iā€™m all ears. I have a lot of Dual layer CD/SACD discs, Iā€™ve so far been unable to access the latter. In particular, most of my Chandos classical CDā€™s seem to have an untapped SACD layer.
[/quote] Hi Kevin, a noted, pop over to the Hi-Fi Haven site, digital section. You do need a particular type of DVD/BluRay player (I use an old Oppo 103D) but there are lists giving the necessary information.

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mp3 are not compressed ?