Finally hearing music again

[marc61]

Last weekend, I made a first visit to a local music shop in White Plains(Toys From the Attic) that sells used guitars, some vintage stuff etc. I asked a question about turning my LPs into mp3s, and was then brought into a back room where it was explained to me I was making a big mistake. He took my son and myself into a listening area where we AB'd some integrated amps, speakers, and turntables. I was like "This is where it's at".

I found an inexpensive tube integrated amp(that was actually being sold as an expensive Ipod docking station with speakers). Hooked my cheap turntable into it, and started listening to vinyl again. Eventually I will replace each component with higher end pieces. For now though, I feel like I am hearing music again, rather than just listening to compressed mp3s and/or CDs.

[jps]

It's been a very long time since I have had my turntable hooked up to my stereo. At some point I may do so.

[jingle_jangle]

Another man comes around! Attaboy!

I listened to the remastered Beatles CDs all last weekend. Marvelous.

Sunday morning, though, I put on a few of my favorite LPs, and listened to them on my "straight-wire" tube system. (Onix Tube amp and Yaoin preamp, '77 Transcriptors "Skeleton" ("What the hell's that thing?") turntable with Clearaudio Beta cartridge, premium Mapleshade interconnects, and Gallo Reference speakers. No tone controls, no subwoofer. A breath of fresh air. You can feel the texture of the individual instruments. "Chester and Lester" is a revelation, and my 99¢ Blossom Dearie/Bob Dorough 1985 album puts me in the club with them.

It is getting to the point where music servers are getting indistinguishable from good LPs, but I'll stick with my vinyl. And CDs are going to be the shortest-lived music replication format, ever. In less than 30 years they're waning, driven out by digital downloads (most of which are awful, currently, but will get better).

I understand the remasters will be out on 180 gm vinyl on November 14...

http://myvinylreview.blogspot.com/2009/ ... olver.html

[marc61]

Paul, it's all very exciting to me. Jeff...hook it up yo!

I had no idea what was going on with hi fidelity. Turntables that cost more than cars(saw an ad for one at $55k)! The warmth of a tube amp (where's my old Kenwood I had as a kid that my friends used to laugh at). Amazing sounding speakers...even the wiring they are using. I have SO much learning to do.

It's good that I at least have this minimal set up to enjoy so I can research before laying out bucks. I do remember my father having a Bang & Olufson turntable that he bought even after CD's came out. I laughed then, but who's laughing now? He's not sure if he has it but, I begged for him to look for it. Hopefully he finds it and it works somewhat.

For those who don't know, most every release today has a vinyl pressing to compliment the CD and download offerings. When our band's record is done, I'm sure we will probably make a few on vinyl. Far from a lost art.

[jps]

MArc, be prepared to spend a lot of $$$$$$. The hi-fi hobby can be extremely expensive, but it doesn't have to be to find a good sounding system. For speakers I highly recommend you look into Magnepan MG 1.6R planar magnetic/ribbon speakers. Reasonable cost and high end sound. I have an older pair of Maggies, the MG-1c that I have mildly modified the crossovers on; those along with my Definitive Technologies Super Cube II sound very natural with an incredible soundstage, lots of depth and width that spreads way] beyond the edges of the speakers, very surround-like from only two main speakers. The SC II goes down to 14Hz so pipe organ and film soundtracks are amazing. I drive them with some older Aragon electronics, the 24K preamp and 2004 power amp. High end on a budget!

[marc61]

hmmmm what a coincidence...here's a pair for sale :http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl? ... anar-Speak

First I'm going to get a turntable. Speakers will come last

[johnallg]

Marc, welcome aboard the vinyl train. The journey down the high quality audio reproduction road can be very expensive with little or no forgiveness for wrong turns or detours. Not like reselling a Rick!

Keep your ears open and you'll be surprised that you can find reasonable priced equipment that gives you the pleasure you seek.

[longhouse]

"Chester and Lester" is a revelation, and my 99¢ Blossom Dearie/Bob Dorough 1985 album puts me in the club with them.

Amen Paul. Chet, Les, AND Blossom all in one sitting? That's bliss.

[collin]

Yeah---there are way more factors in why vinyl is forever cooler than CD/MP3/Cassette etc.......it even just smells good. You know the smell I'm talking....crack open a brand new record, it's amazing. It's the essence of exclusivity!

Years back my old R&B band recorded an EP (the only thing we ever released). We ONLY sold it in vinyl.

It was really funny listening to people complain that they couldn't "listen to vinyl" because they didn't have a turntable. We didn't care one bit---in fact, I know at least two people that bought old turntables simply to play the record we sold them. Winning em over, one at a time....
(MP3's were free for download anyways....always a backup!).

[jingle_jangle]

Paul, it's all very exciting to me. Jeff...hook it up yo!

I had no idea what was going on with hi fidelity. Turntables that cost more than cars(saw an ad for one at $55k)! The warmth of a tube amp (where's my old Kenwood I had as a kid that my friends used to laugh at). Amazing sounding speakers...even the wiring they are using. I have SO much learning to do.

It's good that I at least have this minimal set up to enjoy so I can research before laying out bucks. I do remember my father having a Bang & Olufson turntable that he bought even after CD's came out. I laughed then, but who's laughing now? He's not sure if he has it but, I begged for him to look for it. Hopefully he finds it and it works somewhat.

For those who don't know, most every release today has a vinyl pressing to compliment the CD and download offerings. When our band's record is done, I'm sure we will probably make a few on vinyl. Far from a lost art.

This is exciting stuff for me, so please bear with my drooling...The $55K turntable is about 1/3 the cost of the mot expensive series-built one on the market. Old tube amps: I purchased a '64 Scott amp from George Boccanfuso, along with a pair of Klipsch speakers and a Thorens turntable. I use these in my shop. The Scott has something like 19 tubes and was recently rebuilt. Sound is very warm and forgiving, especially of noisy old records, which I can't play on my home rig (the one mentioned above) due to its too-open nature and pricey cartridge. I've bought a matching Scott tuner, but have not had a chance to get a cabinet for it yet. The guy who runs Mapleshade Studios, uses these oldies and prefers them over much pricier tube stuff. Check out Mapleshade's website. They sell a lot of odd philosophy, and you couldn't get me to try one of their power cords if you held a gun to my head, but their speaker wires and digital interconnects are the bee's knees at nice prices.

I have a linear-tracking B&O turntable at my place in Brasil, along with some other '80s vintage gear to match, including some Rogersound Labs speakers (anybody remember those?). Although everyone I met during my time in Brasil loves music and plays a lot of it, nobody had any analog stuff set up. Wealthier people I knew had--literally--WALLS of CDs, but would play them on those awful plastic boom box systems that you see in the discount stores in NYC. Friends thought it was quirky and very old-fashioned to play vinyl and none had ever seen a linear turntable.

A bit OT: Brasilians love hardware, although nobody but the richest (musicians, politicians, movie stars) who travel a lot to Europe, are early adopters. But, for some odd reason, when they buy electronic goods, they leave all those tacky labels on! So all of these boom boxes that are styled like something out of Doctor Who meets Jules Verne, and painted silver, gray or black, carry huge, multicolored spam stickers that say stuff like "800 WATTS MUSIC POWER!!!" and "STEREO SEPARATION PROCESSOR!!! and "18 CD CHANGER VERTICAL STACKING!!!".

My mama-in-law purchased 5 new laptops on her last visit Stateside, to bring back for aunts and uncles, because laptops are very pricey there. She gets a new one every 12 months for herself; the hard drives get loaded with spyware and she just dumps 'em and starts over every year. Anyway, I was helping her set up her most recent purchase and began peeling a span sticker off the keyboard...she nearly had a coronary, poor thing, at 82 and counting. "Don't do that!" she said, emphatically, "It will void the warranty!".

I had to explain that it had nothing to do with the warranty, and, besides, the warranty would be voided by taking it to Brasil anyway. But I left her stickers on.

[longhouse]

Takes me back to my childhood when Dad was burgeoning audiophile -with the earliest set of Bose 901s, tube receiver/amp, some sort of reel-to-reel...

Am I mistaken when I state: the very BEST sort of audio reproduction is from a vinyl record (albeit only the first time it is played)

[rickenbrother]

I miss going to Toys From The Attic in White Plains, NY. They used to host the most awesome guitar show anywhere at the Westchester County Center in October. I don't think they have done so for the past couple of years due to the economy.

[kiramdear]

Did someone say Bose 901s? I found a working pair of Continentals from 1974 in a free box a few years back (with the active equalizer, of course) and I'm planning to build my audiophile system backward from those, a piece at a time. Their sound is truly awesome, even with the modern Sony amp and digital media that I'm pumping through them. I'd love to hear what they would do with a proper old tube amp and turntable. Not that I still own any vinyl, but like I said, I'm working backward from the Boses. It's just a matter of money.

[longhouse]

Excellent Kira! They were 'digital-ready' even in the early seventies ...whatever that means.

[jingle_jangle]

Did someone say Bose 901s? I found a working pair of Continentals from 1974 in a free box a few years back (with the active equalizer, of course) and I'm planning to build my audiophile system backward from those, a piece at a time. Their sound is truly awesome, even with the modern Sony amp and digital media that I'm pumping through them. I'd love to hear what they would do with a proper old tube amp and turntable. Not that I still own any vinyl, but like I said, I'm working backward from the Boses. It's just a matter of money.

Sell the Boses and get something else...

Please don't take this as personal criticism, you 901 folks, but Bose 901s are anti-audiophile--the most demonic, processed-sounding loudspeakers from a not-too-great audio hardware decade (the 1980s). When I hung around the stereo stores in the OC back then, kids with $$$ loved them, because they were well-known, kid-expensive ($1500.00 was a lot of speaker money back then, although my dream was a pair of Vandersteens; I was not a kid.) and well-suited to a new kind of music called "hip hop" because of the overemphasis on bass and treble (mostly BASS), and the huge apparent soundstage, which was accomplished with some electronic trickery. I auditioned them several times, trying to figure out what the attraction was. Even took a pair home for a week. Outside of their capacity for LOUD (with a SS amp over about 100W--most were rated more than that), they did not perform, and fidelity to the music was an issue. The salesman at the store in Westminster, biting the hand that fed him, used to call them "Viet Cong" speakers, because every Vietnamese gang member within five miles had bought a set from his store. And, just as nowadays Facebook and Myspace have demographics, back then 901s were "Asian gang kid" speakers.

These speakers, almost more than any other component, helped to create the gigantic philosophical gulf between the "objective" (measured) and "subjective" (perceived) camps of musical equipment reviews, as Julian Hirsch (Stereo Review) loved them, 'cause they really measured well, and J. Gordon Holt (Stereophile--who recently passed away and will be sorely missed) wrote a very good piece analyzing, not the specs and numbers, but the apparent sound qualities from a listener's perspective. Holt was relatively measured in his dislike for the 901s, at least in print. In real life, he detested the speakers and the philosophy behind their expansive soundstage--which required lots of electronic processing. Read his review from '79 here: http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/425/

Also mentioned in this tribute to JGH: http://www.avguide.com/blog/harry-pears ... ordon-holt

Yeah, I'm in Gordon's camp, but through the influence of my own ears. And, of course, YMMV, but I still say, "flip those 901s before they kill your perceptions of what a good speaker sounds like." Jeff's Maggies or my own Gallos are both relatively inexpensive ways to speaker nirvana., but there are literally hundreds of speakers that sound better than Boses.