Vinyl records, original or remastered? Advice required

[Grant Fondo]

I used to record John Peel on this and it sounded pretty good....

 

[Grant Fondo]

Sorry for the temporary hijacking but ....

as I have a decent-ish collection, I was considering getting 'back into it' but neither want to do really budget crappy stuff or high end.

Is a dedicated phono amp absolutely necessary or just an amp with phono stage ?

& what is a good MOR budget example, i.e not £100 & not £2k ?

Superfi were doing Denon streamer for £150, add phono stage £60, project deck £180, loads of great spkrs £100+ ok its quite a lot but will sound great and internet radio is awesome.

 

[ayceejay]

I used to be a hi fi buff with a huge collection of what was called LP's back then there was a lot of research and money invested in my illness. I married a woman with van Gogh's ear for the finer nuances of gold tipped speaker cable and she banned the whole lot. I now listen on my iPod with headphone while on the turbo = sometimes she doesn't notice that I am not pedalling

 

[Oxo]

At the moment I am listening to Van Morrison. Can anyone tell me, with absolute certainty whether I am listening to vinyl or a CD. Give a full explanation for your answer.

 

[MontyVeda]

I used to record John Peel on this and it sounded pretty good....

Metal tapes do stand up to the test of time. Wish I'd known that when i was spending all my pocket money on D90s.

 

[MontyVeda]

At the moment I am listening to Van Morrison. Can anyone tell me, with absolute certainty whether I am listening to vinyl or a CD. Give a full explanation for your answer.

CD.

It's almost half past one, you're clearly drunk* and there's no chance of getting the needle on the plastic in that state. (or the plastic on the spindle)

*No one listens to Van Morrison whilst sober.

 

[Chromatic]

At the moment I am listening to Van Morrison. Can anyone tell me, with absolute certainty whether I am listening to vinyl or a CD. Give a full explanation for your answer.

Doesn't matter, that will be crap on either.

 

[Drago]

Yes we like it but not to labour the point isnt cd compressed like mp3 etc...it also sounds a bit that way to me even when i had a 700 quid Naim cd player? Vinyl sounds more natural and less clinical.

Yeah, there's a degree of compression, but compared to MP3 it's minimal indeed, and its data compression, not audio compression, and is lossless when reproduced. Audio compression depends very much on how the producer records the album, and a badly produced one is more apparent on CD because of the greater dynamic range, and a bad one can sound dreadful. The same, badly produced album can sound less bad because vinyl is very poor anyway at reproducing the frequencies most affected, so the effect to the listener is less pronounced.

Dynamic losses from the manufacturing and the playback reproduction processes on vinyl are huge, but also significant noise and very significant degradation with repeated use, not to mention inaccuracies with relying an an analogue motor to rotate the assembly at a precise speed. In terms of accurately reproducing an audio signal at any point in the spectrum vinyl doesn't compare, although I absolutely, completely, understand the appeal to enthusiasts.

MP3s, now I've mentioned them, are hideous things. I'm no audiophile, but I love music sufficiently that I can't listen to it bastardised in that way.

 

[raleighnut]

Yeah, there's a degree of compression, but compared to MP3 it's minimal indeed, and its data compression, not audio compression, and is lossless when reproduced. Audio compression depends very much on how the producer records the album, and a badly produced one is more apparent on CD because of the greater dynamic range, and a bad one can sound dreadful. The same, badly produced album can sound less bad because vinyl is very poor anyway at reproducing the frequencies most affected, so the effect to the listener is less pronounced.

Dynamic losses from the manufacturing and the playback reproduction processes on vinyl are huge, but also significant noise and very significant degradation with repeated use, not to mention inaccuracies with relying an an analogue motor to rotate the assembly at a precise speed. In terms of accurately reproducing an audio signal at any point in the spectrum vinyl doesn't compare, although I absolutely, completely, understand the appeal to enthusiasts.

MP3s, now I've mentioned them, are hideous things. I'm no audiophile, but I love music sufficiently that I can't listen to it bastardised in that way.

Just a couple of points,

• A lot of turntables (belt driven) use a synchronous pole motor where the speed is governed by the AC frequency not by voltage so the motor can only rotate at a certain speed and generally use a heavy 'platter' so that any irregularities are cancelled out by the flywheel effect of that and the damping effect of the drive belt.
• CD as a format is 'bandwidth limited' to what is the hearing range of humans however it does not take into account the harmonics of sound waves which are audible. That is what gives analogue recordings that 'fuller sound'.
• As for 'dynamic losses' they are compensated for by the RIAA equalisation applied at the mastering stage and corrected at replay by the cartridge and the pre-amp.

A CD player will 'knock spots off' a cheap turntable but a quality turntable leaves CD for dead.

 

[swee'pea99]

A CD player will 'knock spots off' a cheap turntable but a quality turntable leaves CD for dead.

That's certainly been my experience. I don't know anything about the technology, and when I run into 'low noise shunt regulators' and 'RIAA equalisation' my mind just goes into suspended animation till the complicated words go away, but as a subjective experience, two aspects of the vinyl difference really stand out, to me at least.

I was surprised earlier in the thread when people were enthusing about vinyl's 'brightness'. If there's one thing CDs don't lack, in my experience, it's brightness. They're tin-tack sharp. If fidelity was the be all and end all, CD's would have it licked. What they lack, by comparison with vinyl, is a richness, a fullness, a roundedness of sound - a timbre, for want of a better word. A good trumpet solo on CD can sound just like a trumpet; a trumpet on vinyl not only sounds like a trumpet, it 'feels' like a trumpet. And that's nothing to do with volume; the 'fullness' of that vinyl sound is there even at low volumes.

The other big edge vinyl has over CD, it seems to me, is what I call sound stage, tho' I'm doubtless using the word sloppily and, for want of a better word, wrong. But what I mean by it is the way vinyl locates sources in space in a way CD just doesn't seem to. CD - indeed any digital format - has that fidelity, for sure; but only on vinyl do you get the fullest experience of the tenor being right there (and not anywhere else) and the piano being there - 'there' being a specific point in space. CD does the left/right balance just fine; but it doesn't convey the sense that the players are on a raised stage about 20 feet away from you, but the saxophone is playing at the front left of the stage, about ten feet above your ear level, with the drummer being somewhere between left and centre, but a couple of feet lower and perhaps 15 feet further back. The separation, the positioning, the experience of specific instruments doing their particular thing in their own, clearly demarcated space (so you can if you want to concentrate on the flute while letting the other instruments just get on with doing their thing) - that's the other big thing I get from vinyl that I just don't get to anything like the same extent with anything digital.

One of the things I've found interesting, getting back into vinyl and with a system rather better than the one I had in the old days, is just how varied the quality of records is. I don't think this is an old/new, original/remastered thing. I don't know what it is - probably a combination of factors, from the original sound recorder's skills to the quality of the recording equipment, the manufacturing process, the vinyl used - all doubtless massively compounded by the quality of the equipment used to play the record over the years, and simply how many times it's been played. The upshot, though, is that some of my Pablo or Chess recordings from the 60s/70s/80s have a jaw-dropping quality about them (many dub records are also astonishingly good, for some reason) while others - many of them more recent and by no means worn out are fine, but just somehow a bit flat and lifeless by comparison.

But that's all part of the enjoyment! You get a batch of new records, clean them, stick one on the turntable and prepare for - who knows! And sometimes the answer is delightfully, jaw-droppingly, take your breath awayily sweet. In a way that no CD has ever been, at least in my experience.

 

[Profpointy]

• CD as a format is 'bandwidth limited' to what is the hearing range of humans however it does not take into account the harmonics of sound waves which are audible. That is what gives analogue recordings that 'fuller sound'
• 
  
• .

The rest of your post is reasonable or at least arguable but the harmonics thing is plain wrong. You simply can't hear any higher harmonics which are above the range of hearing. A musical note has harmonics at various multiples of the underlying tone''s frequency -any of the higher harmonics above 15 or 20kHz are simply inaudable and matter not a jot. In any case your speakers won't reproduce then, many (sensibly designed) amps will deliberately filter them out, and they won't even be on the original studio tapes in the first place.

 

[further]

I really enjoy my vinyl,but this is funny

 

[Profpointy]

I really enjoy my vinyl,but this is funny
View attachment 156806

Brilliant ! There's more than a little truth in that. And the cartoonist himself is clearly aflicted with the hi-fi disease as shown by the care and realism of the kit portrayed.

Must get my Linn back out of its box, fettle it, and fire it up again. Hopefully it won't be too much better than my digital sources as i've now invested so much in thousands of CDs and most content is simply unavailable on proper records

 

[MontyVeda]

...

MP3s, now I've mentioned them, are hideous things. I'm no audiophile, but I love music sufficiently that I can't listen to it bastardised in that way.

Not all MP3s are created equal. Some are terrible, some are fine, and many, given a 'blind' test, one probably wouldn't be able to tell what format it's on.

 

[slowwww]

Just a couple of points,

• A lot of turntables (belt driven) use a synchronous pole motor where the speed is governed by the AC frequency not by voltage so the motor can only rotate at a certain speed and generally use a heavy 'platter' so that any irregularities are cancelled out by the flywheel effect of that and the damping effect of the drive belt.
• CD as a format is 'bandwidth limited' to what is the hearing range of humans however it does not take into account the harmonics of sound waves which are audible. That is what gives analogue recordings that 'fuller sound'.
• As for 'dynamic losses' they are compensated for by the RIAA equalisation applied at the mastering stage and corrected at replay by the cartridge and the pre-amp.

A CD player will 'knock spots off' a cheap turntable but a quality turntable leaves CD for dead.

OK, I say this with a large amount of trepidation, but what is a 'quality' turntable and how much should I be looking to spend?

I certainly can't run to a £15k+ Linn LP12, and I guess my budget for this part of the set-up would be in the £3-500 range. The friend at the start of the post has bought a Audio Technica LP5 which is a direct drive turntable which seems to get great reviews for the £330 purchase price; is there anything else in this price range that I should be considering or comparing this with instead? One of the Project Series or and Elipson, or should i keep my powder dry and save for a more expensive option?