My Weird Relationship With Records

prime minister

prime minister

Site Owner
Staff member
I've noticed this before and It's come back again. Records and I have a weird relationship. Pretty well all of my greatest audio memories are built around records being played. Almost every great recording I have heard has been on a record. My best memories sharing music with friends is almost always on record. Yes, I do believe that records are the best sounding mass market medium.

However.....

Every time I build up a truly great vinyl front end, I end up not using it very much. I've got nice used car money into my analog front end, and while it isn't an Avid Acutus or something, it's damn fine sounding. Really, it's about as good as working folks money will buy (and I get, that my vinyl from end itself is worth more then the average yearly income of of folks in about 150 countries). At least well to do working folks. However, (again that word), I spend probably 95% of my music listening time, listening to digital. Since the Audirvana/Raspberry pi upgrade, its gone to about 99%. Adding in some truly great high res recordings that were unavailable to me through the Node, and I'm up to about 99.5%.

Am I getting the best out of my vinyl front end? Well..... I do have a brand new Ortofon Cadenza Bronze sitting in a sealed box, that would likely beat my Grado. But mine is the best cartridge Joe Grado built, and with the fresh, modern stylus, it works very nicely. Yes, I'm guessing the Ortofon would notch it up a step, but it won't be night and day.

My middle class upbringing does make me look at the amount of money invested into my analog front end, and wonder what the heck I am doing. I could probably sell of the Rega and the Ortofon for $6000, buy a nice $1000 table, upgrade my DAC to the Supremo, have a system that would be equally usable and sound better 99% of the time, and drop $3K into some nice improvements for the house. I'm guessing my phono preamp is unsellable, being the oddball that it is.

So why do I do it? I think I like the building of it. Matching tables and cartridges and tonearms together and making the magic happen. I do seem to have a pretty good ear for the differences in pieces and what works together well.

So what does this all mean? Don't know. Just some mid day musings.
 
I say this as somebody who has teetered on the same edge before... I just don't think you've heard the sound you want to hear from it yet. It happened with me and the Ortofon Cadenza mated to the same Redboy Microtrans SUT you have. I thought my vinyl rig sounded great before. But now I wouldn't go back to any of my collection of old carts after this. It's just so much more enjoyable and all of my records sounds better, not just the fancy ones. Even the crappy Indie/Punk/Postpunk stuff sounds so much better, so much like I want it to.

It's made digital just seem like what I listen to when I'm not really listening. And my digital setup(s) are pretty nice.

Or maybe you just need to take a break from it. I know you've not seemed to be all that happy with it, in the way that you want to rush to talk about it, even if you can't point out anything particularly 'wrong' with it. That's where I was right before the Ortofon/Merrill TT thing really blew me away and changed all my expectations about what my own rig could sound like.
 
To me, it's similar to my approach to coffee. I have an early 70's espresso machine that I meticulously maintain, a grinder that can control down to the size of the grind particulates, bespoked portafilters and tampers.... But, every morning, I hit a couple of buttons and get my cup of joe from a modern coffee maker and I am out of the house. When occasions permit, I fire up the old espresso machine and go through the whole ritual to get the crema just right. Two very different animals/experiences.
 
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As someone who went through and documented the agonizing process, ( Pro-Cess in High Canadian?) I will admit that it is super frustrating when one medium is inferior to the others. Having parity across the board is essential if you do not want the balance to tilt too far in one source direction. I listen to Digital mostly because it is convenient. But, For some genres, Vinyl just sounds better. Going through the motions for a quality Blue Note or Prestige pressing makes the whole endeavor worth it and reminds me why I have a small fortune wrapped up in the medium to begin with.
 
JohnVF said:
I say this as somebody who has teetered on the same edge before... I just don't think you've heard the sound you want to hear from it yet. It happened with me and the Ortofon Cadenza mated to the same Redboy Microtrans SUT you have. I thought my vinyl rig sounded great before. But now I wouldn't go back to any of my collection of old carts after this. It's just so much more enjoyable and all of my records sounds better, not just the fancy ones. Even the crappy Indie/Punk/Postpunk stuff sounds so much better, so much like I want it to.

It's made digital just seem like what I listen to when I'm not really listening. And my digital setup(s) are pretty nice.

Or maybe you just need to take a break from it. I know you've not seemed to be all that happy with it, in the way that you want to rush to talk about it, even if you can't point out anything particularly 'wrong' with it. That's where I was right before the Ortofon/Merrill TT thing really blew me away and changed all my expectations about what my own rig could sound like.
Click to expand...
This one I'll get back to. Absorbing and considering a bit first.
 
S0und Dragon said:
As someone who went through and documented the agonizing process, ( Pro-Cess in High Canadian?) I will admit that it is super frustrating when one medium is inferior to the others. Having parity across the board is essential if you do not want the balance to tilt too far in one source direction. I listen to Digital mostly because it is convenient. But, For some genres, Vinyl just sounds better. Going through the motions for a quality Blue Note or Prestige pressing makes the whole endeavor worth it and reminds me why I have a small fortune wrapped up in the medium to begin with.
Click to expand...
Maybe parity is the problem. My digital had gotten so damn good that it's hard to justify going over to vinyl. If I didn't have my ikea shelf unit thing full of records, I'd happily go digital only.
 
Tsingtao_1903 said:
To me, it's similar to my approach to coffee. I have an early 70's espresso machine that I meticulously maintain, a grinder that can control down to the size of the grind particulates, bespoked portafilters and tampers.... But, every morning, I hit a couple of buttons and get my cup of joe from a modern coffee maker and I am out of the house. When occasions permit, I fire up the old espresso machine and go through the whole ritual to get the crema just right. Two very different animals/experiences.
Click to expand...
But if 99% of the time you couldn't reliably taste the difference between the two, and the modern machine made crema was Just Right, what would the choice be?

To clarify one thing, the experience of vinyl doesn't mean that much to me. I'd switched from records to CDs as the medium of choice by the late 80s, but only started buying records in the early to mid 90s because they were so cheap. I was picking up mint records at $2-3 each, when cds were close to $20. Then I got a killer turntable (my first Oracle Alexandria. First of four!) on the cheap because the owner was getting away from records. But if money hadn't been the motivator, I likely would have stayed with CDs. And cassettes.
 
Prime Minister said:
Every time I build up a truly great vinyl front end, I end up not using it very much. I've got nice used car money into my analog front end, and while it isn't an Avid Acutus or something, it's damn fine sounding.
Click to expand...
Sadly I'm there myself. Pretty good vinyl rig, a phono stage that matches the rest of my equipment, even a couple of carts I've moved on from that could probably feed us for a month or two if I sold them. Yet when I'm working, I often have to concentrate at length, so a long queue in Roon feeds me throughout the day. If I've worked a lot outdoors or on other projects, or I'm just mentally wiped out at the end of the day, I'm more likely to grab the tablet and fire up Roon and play digital since I don't have the energy to do much else, unless it's something I don't own on digital. (And even there, I'll delay playing it if I'm really wipe.)

I only take comfort in knowing that when I do play vinyl, or have to make a needle drop, my rig is up to the task. It's not a total waste but I can't help but feel it's under-utilized.
 
Prime Minister said:
But if 99% of the time you couldn't reliably taste the difference between the two, and the modern machine made crema was Just Right, what would the choice be?
Click to expand...
Fair point. For me, the choice would remain the same. I am reminded of the saying: "It's the journey, not the destination." There is satisfaction to spending time and efforts to get everything just right to balance and coax the most out of everything along the way. The end result is magic.
 
Prime Minister said:
But if 99% of the time you couldn't reliably taste the difference between the two, and the modern machine made crema was Just Right, what would the choice be?

To clarify one thing, the experience of vinyl doesn't mean that much to me. I'd switched from records to CDs as the medium of choice by the late 80s, but only started buying records in the early to mid 90s because they were so cheap. I was picking up mint records at $2-3 each, when cds were close to $20. Then I got a killer turntable (my first Oracle Alexandria. First of four!) on the cheap because the owner was getting away from records. But if money hadn't been the motivator, I likely would have stayed with CDs. And cassettes.
Click to expand...
I mirror a bit of this. My record collection began because records were all I could really afford in the '90s. They were DIRT CHEAP.

$1, $2 even 25 cents.

And to be frank, I thought records sounded pretty crappy for about the first 15 years of playing them. Heck, I still think most turntable setups I hear sound pretty crappy. This whole idea of people thinking there's some magic warmth to 'analog' on even the most basic setup is, in my opinion, something the Brits have a good word for. Bullocks. I would even say that about 90% of the turntable setups I've heard in my entire life...which admittedly includes a lot of non audiophiles but also some that were from audiophiles... would have been bested for sound quality by a decent CD player.

That said, I still think its possible to get an LP to sound better than almost any digital setup. The problem is.... it took me, personally, about 20 years to figure that out in my own system. That's absurd. Maybe I'm not the smartest but I listened to a lot of advice and tried what I could and invested a lot of $$ in various paths, many of them dead-end. Its stupidly difficult to get the most out of records and there is ZERO percent chance of doing it without spending a lot more $$ than most people realize it takes going in. Again, just my opinion, and its relating sound quality to a very high bar.

I"m not sure what my point is except that whenever I hear that somebody is considering walking away from vinyl, I get it. It's a pain in the ass. But I LOVE IT, partly because it is a pain in the ass, and partly because I'm really happy to have figured it out, at least towards what I wanted out of it.
 
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When I think back to the 70's when the TT was in everyone's system, in those days I was never 100% vinyl at all. Spin some records, and the balance of the time was spent listening via the tuner. And I did eventually abandon vinyl playback, driven by interest in the new technology and contempt for the poor quality vinyl that seemed to be in every other LP I bought at the time.

In recent times, the last year or so actually, I went thru the "not listening to it much" phase as well. I'd sold the Gyro/Audiomods rig and downgraded to the Gold Note, both rigs feeding a Phonomena II. Tried a couple of carts, setup as well as I could, but I just wasn't reaching for LP's very much.

When I finally got my Luxman deck going again, things changed. I started having lots of fun spinning albums. The Luxman was easier to setup, and easier to use. Sure it still sounded like a 70's table - but I was having fun with it. So much so that the GN table was out of rotation for a bit.

I knew the Luxman didn't have the fidelity I was accustomed to, and to change things up with the GN table I retired the AT OC9/ML2. That was my primary cart for four years ? Five ? I'd set it up as well as I could on a few occasions, plus had it set up at the shop I deal with using the full blown Acoustical Systems rig before, so I'd thought I had a handle on how it should sound.

I've posted here at the Haven this summer about the changes I made. Replacing the AT was a Grado Sonata3 low, and replacing the Phonomena was the Tavish Design Classic. The Grado hit its full stride I think after about 25 LPs. The Tavish took a bit of time too, including finding the right balance with old stock tubes.

Guess what - I look forward to spinning LP's again. I'm thinking the Grado presentation works for me. Before I used to admire how clear things like percussion (cymbals, etc) sounded with the MC cart. Now with the Grado I don't feel I have any lack of top end, but I don't do the "gee listen to that" response. I am getting more into the music as a whole.

The Tavish was a bit of a gamble. A sideways move in some respects, it had a quality that I found hard to describe at first. Nimble on its feet. Engaging, and finally the dreaded word came to mind - PRaT ! Plus now I get to tube roll again.

Both changes to the system have worked, and that was a relief. I think most of us know, nothing is a guaranteed improvement. And like 40+ years ago, I am still not 100% vinyl. The tuner has given way to digital.

So @Prime Minister, my advice to you would be to try that Cadenza. Ya never know, it might be something to spice up that relationship* with your vinyl rig again.


* "Light bulb" moment. The love/hate relationship is what I have with this playback medium. When its good its really good.
 
I still like my records the same way, in one small sense, that I appreciate the art in a museum or an original photograph over viewing those on a computer screen. The act of getting in the car, driving to the gallery, parking and seeing the art as the creator intended adds to the value for me. The fact that I don't have an unlimited collection and that it takes some small amount of work to enjoy adds to the taste and experience of music. That is where I'm dwelling for the moment. My collection consists of a few thousand records - mostly Jazz with some blues and rock sprinkled in for seasoning.
 
Erik,

As of late I have been enjoying simplifying my system, and some of that simplification comes along with minor sacrifices. I understand your dilemma, and I share similar thoughts about my digital front end. As for my TT I'd like a better cart than what I have but it's not budget stopping me, it's just me. I always joke to myself about how much I have spent to play a 3 dollar LP.

I was an early adopter of network streaming with the squeezebox and it really changed how I listened to music. Unfortunately I haven't found the stride again quite yet that I had with that setup. Endless choices for music is something I find overwhelming, my brain just locks up. I do the same thing walking into a record store to look around.

I like the finite nature of my Vinyl. I have to choose from what's there.

I know it's a bit of a strange perspective.

Why not just box your TT up and put it away? See if you end up missing it.
 
Now what I would love to do but have no motivation for is sell off all my non Jazz, soundtracks and standards. I could probably not listen to most of my Classic Rock on Vinyl. If I could sell it all off, I would. And use that to buy more Jazz Vinyl! Stuff I would actually listen too.
 
When I downsized from a house and apartment to just an apartment, it meant putting about 75% of my possessions in storage, including most of my records. Instead of trying to cram our small place with my whole collection, I'm just buying a few new ones here and there and picking a few choice ones from my collection, and really concentrating on listening to them. I know everybody's personality is different but I'm learning that I enjoy most things in life more, including records, when I'm not overwhelmed by options.
 
During the Covid lockdown, I had to work from home. I set up the work computer on the desk in my music room. I started playing some background music through the Sonos. It was nice. On a whim, I decided to put on a jazz record. Same low volume, just in the background. It was so...much...better. I think its more than just a better sound. Records just have a magical quality. Now, don't get me wrong, I have a decent digital front end and I do enjoy it. That being said, my records just go deeper and hit a spot that digital just misses.
 
S0und Dragon said:
Now what I would love to do but have no motivation for is sell off all my non Jazz, soundtracks and standards. I could probably not listen to most of my Classic Rock on Vinyl. If I could sell it all off, I would. And use that to buy more Jazz Vinyl! Stuff I would actually listen too.
Click to expand...

I have had some luck selling things like that in "lots". I sold a crate of singles once that way, cheap admittedly but they're gone.
 
airdronian said:
When I think back to the 70's when the TT was in everyone's system, in those days I was never 100% vinyl at all. Spin some records, and the balance of the time was spent listening via the tuner. And I did eventually abandon vinyl playback, driven by interest in the new technology and contempt for the poor quality vinyl that seemed to be in every other LP I bought at the time.

In recent times, the last year or so actually, I went thru the "not listening to it much" phase as well. I'd sold the Gyro/Audiomods rig and downgraded to the Gold Note, both rigs feeding a Phonomena II. Tried a couple of carts, setup as well as I could, but I just wasn't reaching for LP's very much.

When I finally got my Luxman deck going again, things changed. I started having lots of fun spinning albums. The Luxman was easier to setup, and easier to use. Sure it still sounded like a 70's table - but I was having fun with it. So much so that the GN table was out of rotation for a bit.

I knew the Luxman didn't have the fidelity I was accustomed to, and to change things up with the GN table I retired the AT OC9/ML2. That was my primary cart for four years ? Five ? I'd set it up as well as I could on a few occasions, plus had it set up at the shop I deal with using the full blown Acoustical Systems rig before, so I'd thought I had a handle on how it should sound.

I've posted here at the Haven this summer about the changes I made. Replacing the AT was a Grado Sonata3 low, and replacing the Phonomena was the Tavish Design Classic. The Grado hit its full stride I think after about 25 LPs. The Tavish took a bit of time too, including finding the right balance with old stock tubes.

Guess what - I look forward to spinning LP's again. I'm thinking the Grado presentation works for me. Before I used to admire how clear things like percussion (cymbals, etc) sounded with the MC cart. Now with the Grado I don't feel I have any lack of top end, but I don't do the "gee listen to that" response. I am getting more into the music as a whole.

The Tavish was a bit of a gamble. A sideways move in some respects, it had a quality that I found hard to describe at first. Nimble on its feet. Engaging, and finally the dreaded word came to mind - PRaT ! Plus now I get to tube roll again.

Both changes to the system have worked, and that was a relief. I think most of us know, nothing is a guaranteed improvement. And like 40+ years ago, I am still not 100% vinyl. The tuner has given way to digital.

So @Prime Minister, my advice to you would be to try that Cadenza. Ya never know, it might be something to spice up that relationship* with your vinyl rig again.


* "Light bulb" moment. The love/hate relationship is what I have with this playback medium. When its good its really good.
Click to expand...

Hmmmm.
You said something that pushed a mental button with me. Maybe it's an innate cheapness (can we refer to it as Hardyness, @mhardy6647? :)), but you hit the nail on the head with the fun factor. At some point, the turntable thing stops being fun and just becomes expensive. It's now a scary expensive, delicate tool. If I hang the Ortofon on the arm, I'm at a record playing device with an MSRP of $10,000! Holy crap. Thats a lot of money. And no, I'm not so lacking in self awareness to understand that I've been fortunate enough/wealthy enough to make it happen. Nor do I have the silly upper class guilt that some seem to have. But these have also been big stretches for me. And it seems, at some financial point, that it stops being a fun audio toy, and becomes an expensive luxury.

Then likely my immigrant parents ingrained enough sense into me to feel weird/bad about something so expensive, sitting unused and unenjoyed.
 
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