Considerations before going down the vinyl rabbit hole

Sweet! yeah i've got a few pi boards around and in no hurry.

 

New goodies arrived yesterday.
Jelco HS25 headshells w/ Turntable Lab logos
TUrntable lab protractor



Got the new AT540Ml cartridge mounted and aligned after a couple of tries. Trying to align it with the removable stylus guard on was impossible. Only later did i realize i should remove the guard to align the stylus

 

I would also point out to a newcomer that records are expensive and getting more so by the day. Buying records is also addictive. I mean like crack is wack level addictive. Just stream your music, it's much cheaper and way easier. Unless of course you just HAVE TO be able to hold that record in your hands and observe the ceremony of choosing & playing it, in which case welcome to the club.

 

I've been into records my whole life, and happily scooped up many from garage sales when CDs were new and people were clearing out their record collections for $.25 to $1.00 each. I've collected new and used for maybe 30 years.

Don't get into vinyl now unless you have deep pockets and a deep, deep level of boredom. It's just not worth it.

With as good as digital front ends can be these days, go digital and put good money there. I have to put a very special vinyl pressing on the table for it to equal my digital chain.

Don't do drugs, kids. Vinyl is a drug. Be cool, stay in school, stay off of vinyl unless you already have shitloads of records in the house.

 

On the other hand, qualities like convenience, accessibility, and affordability can be cock blocks in ways that are hard to anticipate.

 

Convenience, accessibility and affordability all sound like amazing reasons to stay away from vinyl.
This ghost-like supposed ability for vinyl to be superior is something you'll chase, tweak out hard on, spend $4k on a tubed vinyl pre, another $2k on a SUT, $500-1500 on a cartridge (if you don't go further), and who knows what on the turntable itself.
It's easy to get lost in if you're new or easily prone to Upgradeitis.

 

@Erroneous All valid. It's like any meaningful relationship--you put a lot into it and you might get really hurt in the end.

 

Bonus fun: obsessing over which pressing you need for an album you love. I was dumb enough to get into vinyl last year and I now have a small collection to show for spending too much money.

To be fair, some things do sound really good, especially when I did manage to obtain a magical pressing. Others have distortion, I have no idea why and I'm out of patience to figure it out. I am glad I decided to start small with a Drop/Audio Technical collab for the turntable, that saved me a bundle. I still spent too much on cartridges and records.

Even more fun: you need to wash your records, even when they're new! Definitely obsess over the cleaning formula to use too.

 

Also don't get into records if jazz doesn't figure at least somewhat prominently in your collection. If you know what you're doing, that stuff appreciates reliably, too. And major labels are making a concerted effort to get quality pressings into the hands of middle class human beings. The Blue Note/Impulse!/Verve reissue series of late are evidence.

 

@loadexfa, I feel your pain. Believe me, I'm only thinking of your interests when I say please PM me to sell all your gear

Despite the media pushing a 'vinyl resurgence' and manufacturers flooding the market with low-cost turntables in response, vinyl these days really belongs to the ORFAS. The correlation is perfect: money to spend chasing perfection, time to spend chasing something other than money, and an appreciation of jazz.

The quality of jazz recordings lends itself to the turntable even on lesser pressings. and the reissues you mention are better & cheaper than the 'best' used pressings you can track down these days. Other music, not so much with the exception of a few legendary albums that may or may not be to your taste. ("Abraxas", anyone?)

I do question your comments about resale value though. How much longer will that market be there? Where will demand be when people may know what a TT is but have no nostalgia for them?

 

I think the classical vinyl world is even nuttier.

 

I agree, the vinyl market bubble is going to burst at some point. Whether it’s tomorrow or in five years, this resurgence will not sustain.

Other than the jazz reissues mentioned, other reissues, like on CD/digital, are a total mixed bag. I have some Yes reissues that sound probably better than most of the original releases, and then cool reissues that look awesome and sound like garbage. You really have to do your homework to know which is which.

 

I am in the good enough is enough camp. Not much nervosa. For me the reason getting back into vinyl was not necessarily better sound quality or the availability of better masters but the fact that I find very few time to listen attentively to music. The facility which streaming digital music offers did not help either. The ritual of choosing a physical media putting the disc on the turntable, reading the information provided on the album sleeve gets me in the right mood in no time. Moreover I prefer to listen to albums anyway, the idea to switch from one album to the next is mich less tempting once the needle hit the vinyl and I am comfortable in my listening armchair. I always thought CDs to be an abomination. Fiddly thingies, cover artwork the size of a stamp and I blame my bad eyesight partly on the fact that I tried to read the tiny text on the CD cover the size of a sheet of bog paper.

 

Yes, it is very much about the ritual - or even "ceremony" - of choosing a record, taking it out of its sleeve, putting it on the platter, cleaning it, moving the tonearm, and finally dropping the needle on the record. Something about that ritual just makes it all matter a little more. Also, owning a 12"x12" piece physical media is a sort of statement of commitment to your favorite albums, where it's all too easy for digital favorites to get lost over time.

Wait, we were supposed to be talking about reasons NOT to get into vinyl, right? Well, the ritual of vinyl is somewhat inconvenient, so there's that.

 

I keep forgetting that this is a thread for vinyl newbies. If you understand the variables, you'll be fine. If you don't, probably not so much.

 

On another forum a few years ago I warned newbies not to get into vinyl unless - you inherit a load of well cared for vinyl and a good vinyl system or like myself, I got off my arse every Saturday and Sunday very early to arrive at car boots and watch the cars coming in and followed them and stood close by to get first pop at the vinyl they had. I also had to contend with pro buyers who had to be 'told their fortune' if they didn't wait their turn.

But listen this was 30 years ago and sometimes I was glad that I had brought a set of shopping wheels to cart home maybe more than 30 LPs. In the 90s a lot of audiophile vinyl was available, I just wish I had bought more, EMI did a hand checked set of all Ravels' orchestral works, Andre Cluytens the conductor, I can't remember now what I paid for this boxed set probably about £40 - NM and box in perfect condition approx. €300. Santana - Supernatural approx. £350.

When I was buying this vinyl I had no idea that vinyl would sky rocket in price. It's not true that all good s/hand vinyl is expensive. Check out a lot of really good Jazz funk from the likes of CTI/Kudo, excellently produces and not expensive, same goes for a lot of country freak and superlative singer songwriters - their music and words timeless - Jackson Browne/Joni Mitchell/Don Maclean/Janis Ian/Sarah Maclaughlen/Natalie Merchent etc. etc.

I repeat if your lucky enough to inherit loads of god vinyl and a good vinyl playback system you will love it otherwise go digital BUT there are also many who went down the digital road but didn't like the digital sound and returned to vinyl - you pays your money and make your choice.

 

Vinyl doesn't have to be an addiction. You don't have to go all-in. You can do both vinyl and digital. Sometimes I listen to the digital version while looking at the vinyl sleeve because I don't feel like doing the extra work of listening to the vinyl, but I love the way old vinyl smells and feels and looks. The hunt for a gem is also fun. I go to the record store maybe 4 times a year and pick up 4-5 records depending on what they have.

I've noticed many audio forum posters have an addictive personality, they can't help but go all-in. I'm telling you that the middle ground is the sweet spot for just about everything.

 

I got into vinyl a few years ago and recently lost all sense of proportion and allowed FOMO to take over to the point I no longer considered spending money on vinyl to be 'really' spending because "I could always sell them if I needed to for at least what I paid". I've mostly purchased the reissues from Acoustic Productions, Blue Note, Intervention, MoFi, VMP etc. but I'm probably never going to sell any of it individually and as such have been lying to myself to feed unrestrained acquisition.

The value of my collection is also wildly variable as items go into and out of print. I purchased a complete subscription set of the Analog Productions Prestige label (Stereo) which had been out of print for years with many of the individual records selling for hundreds. I figured I could sell a few of the expensive ones to finance the overall purchase. Turns out that my completionism fetish made it practically impossible for me to sell any and breakup the 'set'. Then a few weeks ago they announced that all of the Prestige issues in both Stereo and Mono were going back into print as Analog Productions had signed a new agreement with the label. The value of my purchase immediately dropped by half.

I've found I don't have enough time to sit and listen to anything I've purchased more than once before new stuff rolls in which is a total waste as one listen is not enough to appreciate the works themselves. Another lie I've told myself is that I'll double back and re-listen once the 'acquisition' phase is done but will that ever be the case? Only if I stop buying new stuff.

One last consideration - for the amount of money spent in just the last year on a used high-end turntable, new cart/phono and all the records I could have acquired an endgame digital front-end; high-end DIY streaming solution and standalone DIY Roon server, DAC, re-clocker and effectively lifetime subscriptions to Qobuz and TIdal. I'm not convinced I wouldn't be just as happy overall with that even if I would have been deprived of the unique pleasures of record acquisition, ownership and playback, quality all-analog sonic quality included.

 

@Polemarkos, true dat on resale value. I consider the 'rarity' re-sell value of pressings to be almost nothing since it now makes economic sense for publishers to monitor the value of their assets on the used market, re-press the money makers & collect that value for themselves. That leaves us with piles of vinyl that would maybe net break-even if you wrote off the effort to sell them all. And that effort would be a big write-off. As the ORFAS dies off Im sure they'll be tons of complete collections going directly to re-sellers, plunging values further.