Is owning a turntable worth it?

[Welder]

I’ve had both. There is just something about a turntable front end that does something that digital doesn’t. I can’t say it’s necessarily better, but it is different.
There are some albums that seemed to lose their magic when I went completely digital, Seventh Wave Sci Fi, for example; others just sounded better on digital format.
It’s that word format that ended up tipping the scales for me. I had a lot of albums and I had been, and generally am, careful with all formats. CDs aren’t indestructible, file based audio can and does suffer from all those computer horror stories; wiped by accident, tracks lost by being accidentally dropped in the wrong folder etc, but scratch a record and it’s fucked, bend a stylus and it’s money; I don’t know anyone who hasn’t done one. The more you play vinyl the worse it gets. You really do need a record cleaning system and even then you won’t get that digital silence.
You can’t easily back up vinyl unless you buy more than one copy and a new copy if you can get one is the only solution. I have three identical 1 TB drives two of which I swap in and out of the system and one kept somewhere else in case of theft or drive fail. I do not want to lose the two thousand and something albums I have so carefully collected over the past 45 years.
I wouldn’t go back to vinyl now.

[George Hincapie]

I’ve had both. There is just something about a turntable front end that does something that digital doesn’t. I can’t say it’s necessarily better, but it is different.
There are some albums that seemed to lose their magic when I went completely digital, Seventh Wave Sci Fi, for example; others just sounded better on digital format.
It’s that word format that ended up tipping the scales for me. I had a lot of albums and I had been, and generally am, careful with all formats. CDs aren’t indestructible, file based audio can and does suffer from all those computer horror stories; wiped by accident, tracks lost by being accidentally dropped in the wrong folder etc, but scratch a record and it’s fucked, bend a stylus and it’s money; I don’t know anyone who hasn’t done one. The more you play vinyl the worse it gets. You really do need a record cleaning system and even then you won’t get that digital silence.
You can’t easily back up vinyl unless you buy more than one copy and a new copy if you can get one is the only solution. I have three identical 1 TB drives two of which I swap in and out of the system and one kept somewhere else in case of theft or drive fail. I do not want to lose the two thousand and something albums I have so carefully collected over the past 45 years.
I wouldn’t go back to vinyl now.

I think you make a very good point about backups. Ripping does take time and one must look after one's data well. If anything, this makes a great argument for high quality streaming services, because that responsibility falls to them.

Last night I was listening to Tidal via my MS Surface tablet to my DAC with the Cambridge USB 2 drivers at 96 khz quality. You really can tell the difference between the masters used for the digital files. Tidal HIFI is excellent though.

[_D_S_J_R_]

Whatever happened to the autochanger ??

Maybe Linn should market one as an upgrade - they'd make a fortune !!

The Doc gave me a wreck only really fit for parting out and subsequently the dump. I love Duals, so brought it back to life - and they are excellent for single records too -

[jammy395]

That looks like fun Dave........

[zebbo]

I only had a handful of records by the time I got "Pinked". I now have about 200 - 250 and growing, slowly, I'm not a prolific buyer.

[Fretless]

Autochangers - my old double LP of Joni Mitchell's 'Don Juan's Reckless Daughter' had odd side numbering. The first LP had sides 1 & 4 and the second platter was sides 2 & 3. I eventually worked out that this was so that when the two LP's were played on a autochanger deck then you would only have to flip them once.

Ripping CD's: the advantage of having a collection of discs is that should your PC, HDD or NAS get broken or corrupted, then you can still re-rip from the originals - and you still have the booklets/artwork to gaze lovingly at. I play from a network disc but also have a backup of the whole collection on a USB HDD for safety's sake.
Also I have now ripped most of my collection at least 3 times: started with lossy Ogg Vorbis (better than MP3), then into Apple Lossless when I had Ipods plugged into docks on various installations and finally into FLAC after I got a network setup running. You do notice a difference in the sound of ALAC and FLAC, even though they are both 'lossless' formats - FLAC sounds clearer and more dynamic; this might be down to Apple's own encoding and decoding processes, the rip-engine in iTunes is not the best either.

[Geoff.R.G]

[
The Doc gave me a wreck only really fit for parting out and subsequently the dump. I love Duals, so brought it back to life - and they are excellent for single records too -

The difference between singles and LPs is that singles have, or had, a ribbed area between centre hole and run out grove to ensure that the disc/s on top were driven properly, also left a space between the recorded surfaces, I have never seen anything similar on an LP.

[zebbo]

Makes a mockery of VTA eh!

[_D_S_J_R_]

That looks like fun Dave........

Too much crap in my life, but yeah, I love Duals, for all my many sins.

[Art Vandelay]