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Double Bass Audio Systems. How do we listen to music?
- Thread starter Greg Clinkingbeard
- Start date
I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a Linn turntable but they are getting ridiculously expensive. The design is a bit of a hotrodded AR so many go that route. I do know that an upgraded AR XA can be pretty sweet and I’ll never part with mine. That said, the Pioneer which cost me $200 seems significantly better and there is a guy on one of the audio forums who prefers it to his Linn LP12. Go figure.
If you really want clean vinyl an ultrasonic is the way to go for under $200.
All of my LPs are at least 50 years old, and most of them have been played too many times on crummy turntables, like the 1950s Garrard I had for years. Periodically I digitize a few of them, but other than that they don't get played. CD quality is enough for me. Is that heresy?
When I’m real serious about listening to music I’m using a pioneer SX-3800 receiver, a pioneer PL-518 with a Pickering cartridge, and a pair of Cerwin Vega D-9’s. Sounds incredible and I think I have 320 bucks in the whole setup.
The only con is it takes up a lot of fooor space but the sound makes it worth it.
Sorry for the messy pic, my kid and I share the music room and his guitar stuff is currently strewn everywhere.
The only con is it takes up a lot of fooor space but the sound makes it worth it.
Sorry for the messy pic, my kid and I share the music room and his guitar stuff is currently strewn everywhere.
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I studied electronics and started building Dynaco kits in high school. Then in my 20’s I met a guy that had a small stereo shop above the bike shop I worked in and became fascinated by vacuum tube gear and DIY speakers. It’s been a life-long hobby, with dozens of components going through my system over the years. Current system is a Technics turntable, a Marantz CD67SE (as transport only), a Schiit Modi Multibit DAC, Schiit Saga preamp, and a pair of hand-built 2A3 monoblock amps (putting out a whopping 3.5 watts of glorious sound). All of my listening is with a pair of HiFiMan HE-560 headphones, but I also have a pair of original Klipsch Heresey speakers with upgraded crossovers that I need to set up one of these days. Besides CDs and vinyl, I stream a lot of music from various sources - mostly jazz, but lots other genres for variety.
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Yes, it's heresy, but it's true.
The cork-sniffing vinyl-obsessed tend to ignore the real world of LPs that old farts like me actually lived through.
Yes, when one of the super high quality audiophile LPs that cost three times what the regular ones did was brand new and played on a superior system with a new stylus, it sounded damn good. But when you bought the one that was actually at the record store for $6.99 and you played it on your system from Sears, the one with the turntable on top of the amp, playing it through the 8" high speakers that came with it, using a stylus that you had NOT inspected with a binocular microscope and replaced whenever worn or at 100 hours, and then you played the same record another 50 times, with college roommates and girlfriends who just WOULD NOT refrain from grabbing the thing with thumb and forefinger right over the grooves, in a room with dust, well... I'd rather have a CD.
And no one ever wants to admit to another issue - try buying records in Texas in August. You'd better make sure the record store is the last stop before you go straight home, because you leave that new record in a hot car in the sun for more than a few seconds and it's a potato chip - throw it directly away.
In the real world, LPs were a lot of trouble and degraded slowly, with a continuing accumulation of hiss pop and crackle, cassettes degraded quickly till there was nothing but a bunch of muddy low-end, at which point they broke and turned into long snarls of tape you had to yank out of the tape deck, 8 tracks degraded the instant you put them in the player.
I do not miss my LPs except as nostalgia memento objects. CDs are far superior in every way in the real world.
Not sure yet about commercially produced cds, but cds I burned about 20 years ago that have been in a closet for the last 15 years have information missing that I am pretty sure was there when I burned them. I guess that kinda like the digital version of bad pops and crackles on old vinyl.
Jazzdogg
Less barking, more wagging!
My vinyl has been boxed-up for a few decades. A few years ago, I found myself wanting to listen to one of my old albums, so I bought the CD.
As I was listening to the CD, I found myself getting up and walking toward the CD player without conscious thought; it later occurred to me that, despite having no access to my record albums in years, my subconscious remembered that's where the record skipped, which is why I got up at that point in the song.
As I was listening to the CD, I found myself getting up and walking toward the CD player without conscious thought; it later occurred to me that, despite having no access to my record albums in years, my subconscious remembered that's where the record skipped, which is why I got up at that point in the song.
I tried to embed a link to the you tube documentary about Ken Fritz, and his obsession with creating a sound system in his home, but it did not work. It is a long one, but I think it is worth the time it takes to watch the entire thing. The ending is almost a tragedy.
The documentary is called One Man's Dream-Ken Fritz Documentary about the worlds best stereo system.
Search Google for "ken fritz stereo YouTube" and you should find it.
The documentary is called One Man's Dream-Ken Fritz Documentary about the worlds best stereo system.
Search Google for "ken fritz stereo YouTube" and you should find it.
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While I’m inclined to agree with what you’re saying, by that logic CD is passé, too. Streaming services are the way of the future, for sure. Why bother maintaining your own collection at all? …Because there’s a lot to be said for the routine and ritual inherent in the “less perfect” formats, imho. Japanese tea ceremony isn’t about the tea, per se- it’s about the mindfulness cultivated through routine and ritual. Lots of power for transformative growth there…
Interesting way to think about it that probably holds some truth. All along, when I just thought I was merely listening Muddy Waters doing Champagne and Reefer, I was actually partaking in a spiritual ceremony even before the stylus hit the vinyl. Who knew?
Don't get me wrong. If the whole ritual of playing music with LPs is appealing to you, go for it. I can understand that. (CD liner notes and artwork suck, for example.) But don't try to tell me LPs were sonically superior. Except as noted, the real expensive specially pressed ones (that you weren't going to find the latest Alice Cooper or BTO album on anyway, and that the local record store maybe had 20 titles of that type at any time), played on superior $$$$ equipment and handled with ongoing meticulous care, the general run of LPs played on the general run of stereos that folks who had to work for a living and had other calls for their money - did NOT sound better than a decent run of the mill CD. Yes, the first CD versions of mass market albums sounded lousy, but that was because the engineers didn't know how to remaster and balance for CD.
And I'm not going to go to streaming services and subscription payments in perpetuity and my record collection being held hostage to someone else's choices of what's going to be offered, at least not till there is no other alternative. And since I'm 60 now, that day will probably come after I'm dead and gone anyway.
LPs are superior.
Not all LPs, but not just modern $100 "audiophile pressings". Anything from Contemporary Records engineered by Lester Koenig and played on a good turntable and equivalent system will sound richer, warmer, and more compelling than CD or streaming. I am 100% certain of this. Same goes for SOME Blue Note pressings and a host of other LPs. First and second pressing Prestige Stereo records can be unbelievably good.
New LPs that boast things like 180g! are a mixed bag. Most modern Blue Note "classic reissue" LPs sound pretty good after they are cleaned (seriously), but more than 1/2 are warped. I'm going to say none of my vintage ones are.
You have to have a good system (not necessarily an audiophile system) and you have to know how to shop for and care for vintage vinyl, though.
It's just not as simple is "vinyl is better". Some vinyl is, if you have your system set up right. Is it worth it? Depends on how much time and energy you feel like putting into it. Streaming has an overwhelming advantage of having virtually every record in the world ready for you to call up and it sounds pretty good. "Audiophile streaming" is coming but is pretty rare right now and will have the same "build a system if you really want to hear it" costs and limitations as playing physical media.
And, I have and am searching for some really tasty sides that don't seem to be available on streaming platforms at this point. How important is it to hear those records? To me, it's really important, but I get that it may not be for someone else.
You know how you are what you eat? For musicians, I believe that you are what you listen to...or maybe you are what you hear.
And yeah, I was at a jazz festival once and I heard someone ask a trumpet player I was with "how does Troy know so much about jazz?" Without blinking he said "he reads liner notes." It is the recorded and written history of the great American art form and I'm all in on it.
Troy speaks so much truth in this post. I spent years collecting CDs thinking them superior to my old, small collection of vinyl; but after getting a halfway decent (basically better than average system and turntable) it is easy to hear why vinyl sounds better. It has more depth and you can actually close your eyes and almost feel like you’re in the studio with those musicians recording the music; not to mention the fact that all musicians performing anywhere are basically analog themselves. I guess you could consider a synth player as being digital, but what our ears hear is analog instruments physically played by musicians. There is no digital mastering going on between the sound waves going from the instruments into the speakers and out to our ears. Especially with tube amps.
Now I do consider CDs to have some merit for listening in a vehicle as streaming services are well below what we get out of our turntables and CD players. I recently added an old Pioneer 12 disc changer to my truck’s sound system and I’m thoroughly enjoying that while I travel. It was meant for my wife’s SUV 20 years ago, but we traded that vehicle in before I could install it. The sonic quality in a car with CDs is way better than cassettes or even mini disc (which I still have no idea why that format never caught on). I had a friend with a ‘59 Cadillac that had a factory traveling turntable under the dash, but that damn thing skipped all over the place if you hit a bump.
As for the other benefit of the LP format, I too am a liner notes junkie. I very much appreciate the larger print of an album as compared to CD or cassette liner notes — especially now that I wear progressive lenses. There’s nothing like busting out some obscure musical reference when hanging out with friends and telling them you read that on the liner notes of some random album. Mingus albums in particular always seem to have a nice bit of prose by the man himself written as a kind of letter of feeling on how the album is supposed to hit you when you listen. I love all that kind of stuff.
I'm an audio engineer and while I appreciate listening to music through nice speakers, it's usually the room that's just as important if not more. I see speakers worth $$$$$ that are positioned right by a dry wall in an untreated shoe-box room. You won't hear the $$$$$ spent unless your room sounds good first. Thus, I have a very good set of headphones and an OK. set of speakers.
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I prefer vinyl and have since the 1980s when I naively believed the ‘perfect sound forever’ hype of CDs. At that time, I had a cheap turntable with a cartridge that probably cost less than $20 which wasn’t aligned properly. The system was in a flimsy particleboard rack on wheels. Of course, CDs sounded better. Thankfully, I kept most of my vinyl though.
Once I got into a decent turntable and learned how to properly set it up I began to really enjoy vinyl. My current turntable and cartridge are significantly better but didn’t cost me what a lot of people here spend on some amps or other bass gear; maybe two sets of Spirocores.
Albums I have played hundreds of times over forty plus years still sound great with little surface noise and I enjoy them. Very few are audiophile pressings or anything special. When used vinyl comes into the house, it gets a deep clean and that’s it.
I don’t mind people dismissing vinyl as inferior due to surface noise, ticks and pops, skipping, scratches and whatever else because it just keeps the prices down. I like buying a box of fifty records for less than a buck apiece. Thanks guys.
Once I got into a decent turntable and learned how to properly set it up I began to really enjoy vinyl. My current turntable and cartridge are significantly better but didn’t cost me what a lot of people here spend on some amps or other bass gear; maybe two sets of Spirocores.
Albums I have played hundreds of times over forty plus years still sound great with little surface noise and I enjoy them. Very few are audiophile pressings or anything special. When used vinyl comes into the house, it gets a deep clean and that’s it.
I don’t mind people dismissing vinyl as inferior due to surface noise, ticks and pops, skipping, scratches and whatever else because it just keeps the prices down. I like buying a box of fifty records for less than a buck apiece. Thanks guys.
