Do You Own A Turntable?

[Mr. H.]

I've got an old low-end Technics and also one of those newer analog to digital turntables which I have YET TO GET TO WORK PROPERLY. Fuck.

I hear you. I bought a Music Hall USB turntable a few years ago so I could rip my LP collection onto hard drives. It's hit and miss at best.

I gave up. What breaks my heart is, this was a gift from my kids. I've got a fair amount of vinyl dating back to 1968 (originally owned).

 

[Mr. H.]

I've got an old low-end Technics and also one of those newer analog to digital turntables which I have YET TO GET TO WORK PROPERLY. Fuck.

I hear you. I bought a Music Hall USB turntable a few years ago so I could rip my LP collection onto hard drives. It's hit and miss at best.

I gave up. What breaks my heart is, this was a gift from my kids. I've got a fair amount of vinyl dating back to 1968 (originally owned).

Nice quote edit BTW.

 

[idb]

I still regularly buy new vinyl.

 

[Mr. H.]

I still regularly buy new vinyl.

I wish I had some of the vinyl from my parents' collection. We used to heat up nails and push them through the vinyl and marvel at the art we had created, unaware of the art we had destroyed.

 

[Pogo]

Except the scratchy noises by the stylist and ze record...

There are many very good programs for Windows and Mac that will ingest scratchy audio off vinyl (you'll need an amp and preamp to get it into the computer) and spit out nearly scratch-free results. Decent quality, too. One or two of them even allow you to do bit-by-bit manual repair for instances where the automated fix is not up to your expectations. But manual repair is tedious as hell.

I've seen those USB turntables, never tried 'em. I've recorded my vinyl either off the amp into a portable digital player which I then load into the computer, or else run it through my interface that I use for live recording into the laptop. From there I process it through my audio software, which does great work sampling surface noise to subtract. Most of what I've digitized you'd have no clue it came from vinyl if I didn't tell you.

It can indeed be tedious with the errant pop here and there.on a less-than-pristine disc. You have to love what you're doing. I find I can excise up to about .003-.004 second without the ear catching on, which eliminates most of those pops when it's necessary.

 

[HenryBHough]

Op amp work ok?

Not familiar with "Op amp" other than an term for single-chip "operational amplifiers". There several products I've come across that use op amps to do A to D and D to A conversions but that's just conversions, not scratch/click repair.

For short scratchy selections I have used Audacity (Click Removal - Audacity Wiki

For years I used SAW (Software Audio Workstation) on an old PC (version had would work with Windows 98 but nothing newer). That one was very good for manual repair but I recall one 2:40 piece that took me about 15 HOURS to fix. It was worth it, though. I haven't found any updated versions so this one probable should just be scratched off the list.

For extensive repairs Adobe Audition does very well but it's definitely not free!. I don't own a copy - just don't have enough use for it and have access to it with a little inconvenience on the rare occasion I have a need.

 

[Pogo]

Op amp work ok?

Not familiar with "Op amp" other than an term for single-chip "operational amplifiers". There several products I've come across that use op amps to do A to D and D to A conversions but that's just conversions, not scratch/click repair.

For short scratchy selections I have used Audacity (Click Removal - Audacity Wiki

For years I used SAW (Software Audio Workstation) on an old PC (version had would work with Windows 98 but nothing newer). That one was very good for manual repair but I recall one 2:40 piece that took me about 15 HOURS to fix. It was worth it, though. I haven't found any updated versions so this one probable should just be scratched off the list.

For extensive repairs Adobe Audition does very well but it's definitely not free!. I don't own a copy - just don't have enough use for it and have access to it with a little inconvenience on the rare occasion I have a need.

I'm usually using SoundForge with some excellent plug-ins... also not free but way cheaper than Audition... SF has a "vinyl restoration" feature that one-click removes a lot of pops, working presumably on the analysis of the short, sharp spike, to paraphrase Pink Floyd. I usually still have to comb through and manually excise a few stragglers.

Anyone remember the Garrard "Music Recovery Module"? Worked on the same principle.

 

[Tom Sweetnam]

Yes, I still own a turntable. The one radio station I still do some volunteer work for maintains two. One of them is in a production room for copying the occasional track onto the automation system's hard drives. The other is in the air studio, surprisingly well used by part-time "specialist" folks who bring in their own (sometimes very rare) vinyl.

Problem with most tuner/amplifier combinations sold today is that they do not include a phono preamp but those can be bought reasonably from any of several broadcast supply online distributors. There's a mini-rage for tube type amplifiers (again) and I will concede that they are richer in harmonics than anything solid state but whether or not that's a good thing is up to individual tastes. If you're shopping trust ears over the price tags and claims. What good is extremely high frequency range if you can't hear it?

As to the vinyl vs. CD issue....

A new (played very few times) vinyl recording will sound much better than a CD. But, after a dozen or so playings, the CD will sound better. It won't have improved but the vinyl will have degraded. How much depends on the tone arm pressure. The same music copied onto a hard drive (whether mechanical or solid state) opens a slew of quality questions involving the sampling rate and compression algorithm used.

There are very few people with good enough hearing that the difference between any of the media amounts to much at all.

I agree with some of what you say. Audiophiles often talk about the day of their epiphany, that "Oh my God" day when they discovered what high end musicality is really all about. Mine came at a new friend's house when he parked me in the listening chair in front of his all-tube, high end Scott components (made in the USA), an ungodly expensive esoteric German turntable whose manufacturer I forget now, and a cheap set of Wilson Audio loudspeakers (meaning they were less than $20,000 a pair). He put The Who's Quadrophenia: Live in London on the turntable, then cranked up the 11 button. I was just absolutely blown away. I've been seeking the grail ever since...at least at those times in my life when I could afford it.

You're right though, about trusting your ears and your gut. Music is no different than any other art. It's very personal. You'll get 26 different opinions from 25 different people on how something affected them personally, whether it be a recording, a painting, a movie, or a novel.

 

[Tom Sweetnam]

Yes, it's right next to me, near my heart...Although I am going deaf. It breaks my heart, like putting a pet to sleep. Sound sort of...........slips away, like life. Enjoy it whilst you can! Life slips away so fast.

Well...that was certainly upbeat. Now before you go slitting your wrists in the bathtub, Mary dear, go to ebay and look up some of the less-than-$300 Sony cordless headphones available these days. Headphones are the answer for people losing their hearing, and good cordless headphones have a range of at least 180 feet, so you can go about your chores with nary a worry about that damn cord getting caught up on everything.

 

[Indofred]

This month's edition of The Absolute Sound reports that more than one million turntables were sold in the US last year. Not bad for a technology that was supposed to have died back in the late 80's. Seven hundred thousand were consumer level turntables (say $500 or less), and three hundred thousand were audiophile grade turntables that go from $1000 to the sky is the limit.

My setup is pretty basic but it sounds sweet as can be. I have a Riga turntable with an Ortophon cartridge connected to a 26 year old Adcom GFP 565 preamp (with the best phono stage ever put in a solid state preamp), a 1980's vintage solid state 200 watt Parasound amp, and a very nice set of Klipsch studio monitors. Records sound sweet and musical with a surprising level of warmth for a solid state setup.

I'd like to go tube, but the stuff I want has price tags that're crazy.

Interest in the vinyl art is getting so keen, that many companies are now manufacturing very high quality record pressings these days. They're expensive, but then quality always is.

I use my Samsung S5 with small headphones.
I also have a small portable radio.

 

[Darlene]

No but these guys do:

 

[8atman]

I've recently gotten back into vinyl. I used to own a Bang & Olufsen Beogram 8000 back in the day, but after it broke (and was eventually stolen) and the CD revolution came along, I didn't spin vinyl for 20+ years.

Today is a very different story. I own a Clearaudio Concept table with matching Concept MC cart. The Lehmann Audio Black Cube does my preamplification. I'm a very happy camper.

As for headphones, I use a pair of Denon AH-D2000's. Very smooth and very detailed sound.

 

[Skull Pilot]

I don't even own a CD player. i am 100% digital.

 

[HenryBHough]

Funny.....this past week I visited a radio station that is building all-new digital studios. Two of the five studios (including the primary "air studio") are being equipped with turntables. Only one has a cassette player and only one has a reel-to-reel tape deck for retrieving archived stuff.

 

[Toro]

Yes. We own a Bang & Olufsen.

Want to buy it?

 

[Pogo]

Yes. We own a Bang & Olufsen.

Want to buy it?

How much for just the Bang?

 

[Toro]

$1000

Great bargain for you!

 

[Pogo]

Eh- too many bucks for the Bang