That was almost exactly a year before I was born...


Just to make you feel old of course

Thorens TD 166 mk V

It was the best I could afford back in 1990 as a poor student, and it is pretty solid. I bought it because CDs were taking over and I figured "now or never".

Preamp is home made, as is nearly all my audio kit. I really want to digitise my vinyl at something more than 16 bit, but to be honest half of it is crappy CBS reprints that just aren't worth the effort

I keep it in the bedroom, and right now it's not even plumbed in. I don't even have half my records on digital, but to be honest I really don't listen to the same kinda stuff I bought when I was a teenager. What I do, I've either bought again or copied off friends' CDs rather than rip from alog. Technically, isn't ripping from vinyl a crime just like using an iPod with CD rips? I don't think we have "fair usage" in this country?

If you want a tape in the car, mp3 on your iPod, CD in your living room and vinyl on the deck then shouldn't you pay 4 times?

Back on topic - I need a new stylus. That could be fun to find :/

Used to have an Linn Sondek LP12 with the Lingo power supply, Ekos arm and Akiva cartridge, but I sold it to a friend because I'm gettling lazy Now I just have my X-A2 amp and CD-63 KI-S CD player.

My revolver redwood cost me £240 20 odd years ago and that was a weeks wages before they took any tax. I aslo replaced the stylus with a Nagoka Boron which cost another £40.

See, I'm a real noob when it comes to this audiophile stuff.

Don't worry - it's all down to personal preference. I used to be in the "vinyl is better" brigade, but I spent quite a bit of time in a recording studio a couple of years ago and one of the engineers there gave me quite an insight into how vinyl was recorded, and it finally dispelled the myth.

Vinyl isn't "better", it's different - the presence of low level background noise means it's closer to real life, where you never encounter perfect silence, there's always something that you can hear. CD, on the other hand, lacks this "background", so to some it sounds "artificial".

I have a lovely Rega P2 and a Cambridge Audio 640P pre-amp. Sounds fantastic - I still buy new music on vinyl if it's available (and isn't in a stupidly overpriced and inconvenient box set with every song on a separate disc).

Have to say that the pre-amp really surprised me. I had to buy it because my new amp didn't have a phone stage, but I was absolutely blown away by the sound quality in comparison to my previous amp - a decent pre-amp that's accurate to the RIAA curve seems to make a massive difference to the sound - the sound is now really rich, with full bass.

I've got a very nice Clearaudio turntable which used to have a wonderful and expensive Cartridge before one of our cats decided to "play" with it (Grrrr!). It now boasts a "cheap" Goldring which still sounds nice.

I fully agree about the "horrors" of digitising Vinyl. It is incredibly time-consuming, and I've not yet found a reasonably quick way of getting tracks accurately assigned to downloaded information. Its often quicker simply manually to add the track and Album information!
I currently use a pretty ancient set-up with a Kolektor front-end feeding LINN Amplification and B&W Nautilus speakers. I use the built-in phono stage in the Kolektor, but if I was a true Audiophile I be using a really spiffy hand-knitted cartridge and phono pre-amp which cost as much as the house!

I now use my PC as my primary "source" (except for Vinyl) with most of my CDs stored in lossless format on me WHS box (a NAS would work as well). I replay through Windows Media Centre (Windows 7) though other media players are available. This is an area where the HiFi Business is missing a good few tricks, as the WMC interface is too "Flash" (and who wants to run the TV just to listen to a disk). The LINN Digital player is good, but very expensive, and with a rather naff interface..... Still the much vaunted "digital home" is well on its way now as I also use my WMC box for watching TV, Iplayer, DVDs, being a PVR and so-on and its VERY convenient to have one handset and only one interface .....

Interesting theory, although failing to mention the entire sampling rate bit. CD's are encoded at 44.1KHz, that's 44.1k samples per second. Where the "cuts" are (beginning & end of a section) you miss info. You are also limited to a frequency range of 0-22KHz, although you cannot technically hear above that, you're used to hearing 30-40KHz sounds in real life which give ambience (think cymbal decay and splashyness).

That's about all I can remember from my degree in Sound Engineering.

That sounds(sic) about right. Some of the really "heavy" audiophile types reckon that any kind of PCM (the technique used for CDs & DVDs, but not, I think, SACDs ) recording will be crap for reasons which I can't remember off the top of me 'ead.... So simply cranking-up the sampling and\or bitrates simply doesn't make it sound much better.

The thing is that what goes onto vinyl is hardly "unadulterated". First off, the signal is fed through a compressor to reduce peaks in the high and low frequencies, then it's fed through a filter which gradually reduces the frequencies above 15kHz. Then it's fed through an RIAA amplifier to ensure the signal has a flat frequency response on playback. Then, when you play it back, your turntable will add it's own subtle noise to the mix, as will the amplifier and the speakers. The only time you ever hear a group "properly" (apart from live) is when you listen to the recording straight off the mixing desk, and now almost all recordings are done digitally, although at higher rates/resolution than CD (192kHz, 24-bit being the best around at the moment).

So, there is no real winner - vinyl isn't exactly "pure", and neither is CD - it's all down to personal preference.

I’m clearly not so obsessed about the quality of my digitised vinyl. A quick clean of the disc (microfibre cloth + water), record to Mac using Bush turntable and Amadeus Pro, removal of any big clicks in the quiet bits (Amadeus Pro does this for me), mark and save out the individual tracks, use an Automator workflow to both import to iTunes and add tags/metadata. It probably takes the length of the record plus 10 minutes or so. Any cracks, hiss or scratches left behind, well that’s vinyl for you. As a great man often said: “life has surface noise”.

Totally agree. Bring back cassette

8-track, surely!

I actually have an 8 track somewhere at home, I've got an in-car version as well.
Would be a bit different to the currect carputer