Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion HiFi & HT Chat Does Vinyl still have its place?

I was sitting wondering why on earth I still bother playing vinyl LP's, with all the hassle of finding the correct record, cleaning it and placing the stylus into the groove, all for 15-20 minutes of music before you have to get up and repeat the process. I can't honestly pretend that the sound is better, in fact, if I'm honest, my music from my MDMS is generally better, certainly in terms of noise floor and dynamic range.

Yet I still enjoy the occasional "serious" listening session where vinyl just seems right. The conclusion I reached is that playing vinyl is comparable to photographing with film as compared with digital. With both cases the medium makes you think a bit more about what you want and take a lot more care in capturing and reproducing it rather than the "instant" approach of digital, music and photography.

Yes, it's great to just sit back and let MDMS 'Swim' around my music and be able to skip tracks or repeat them, without stirring from my seat, but I still find some kind of perverse satisfaction from playing an LP and knowing that I have to choose the next piece and repeat the process for as long as the music inspires me.

Any one else as wierd as me?

I'm not a vinyl player, but I aspire to be! My RPM6 SB turntable needs re-setting up following much disuse.

There is something to be said for the careful selection of material.

There is also something to be said for mastering before the loudness wars. You may possess material where no comparable mix exists on CD or hi-res. It's all about the catalogue, right?

As you say though, you'll get nothing near the potential digital quality of contemporary Meridian systems when the digital source is good.

I use LP a lot because of repertoire and performances. I still buy them, for the same reason.

I am however 100% convinced that there is no sonic benefit, and try to resist the undeniable tactile pleasure because it's really a red herring. The performance, and its accurate reproduction, is what I'm really interested in.

Something often said when CD came out is that it dramatically reduced the cost of reasonably good sound reproduction. This is even more the case now. I suspect that getting a turntable with serious pitch stability (essential for piano...) is even more expensive now than then.

Categorically "YES" vinyl still has a place here. A labour of love and a high degree of nostalgia involved, but still well worth the effort to hear music on my system today at a much higher SQ than when originally purchased. Vindication for content of previous 1960's and early 1970's purchases.
Vinyl night is once a month when no one else is around.
Hector

Yes, yes and yes

Even ignoring the tactile and anachronistic delight in format, just for sound I think it definitely has a place.

Digital is good - I'm amazed really how close CD got to being good enough when invented, but it's never really just quite been there for me.

Since I messed up my analogue setup (slowly being rectified with a 502) I've been playing about with formats trying to work out really where my sensitivity is.

On my iPhone/walkman rubbish it's about 190kbs before I can't hear or care about the distance. At home on the Meridian even at 320kbs constant bitrate it's un-listenable for me. CD quality especially with the 568.2mm upsampling is good but still not quite there.

I've been spending quite a lot of time digging out things available in formats (DVD-A, HD Tracks, some of the others) up to 96/24 and trying to do back to backs.

This is really hard as much of this high resolution stuff I also have in other formats has got remastered. I'ts very hard to tell whether you are listening to the difference in the remaster or in the format/quality. It's also extremely hard to be sure you're actually getting something that is 96/24 track start to finish.

So what did I learn. Well basically something in 24/96 sounds pretty blinking amazing, and somewhere up there I really can't see the advantage (sonically) in vinyl. I can't really trace it back to where it drops back to irking me some of the 20-24bit/48 tracks are really very good as well. But somewhere as you get back to 16/44.1 CD you definitely start to lose something.

Lose what - well for me tone, but that's very subjective and I'm sure I can tune the CD from where it is to be better for my ears. Even beyond that something in the positioning, stereo imaging, way the format treats the room ambiance that was recorded especially is much kinder. Especially in anything with high female voices, acoustic instruments - often guitars with a lot of fret/body noise, and especially the combination of these with high hats or similar.

I'd also say that I think there is a huge difference between listening to a film, or something mastered for a multi-speaker environment, than to something from (for me 1970s), but from a previous age, where the target was a record date and two speakers. There is a certain something in hearing things in the format it was recorded for. Take pet sounds. Very sensitive remastering, high bitrates, mono version, stereo version, multi channel version. All very nice. Please give me a decent pre-remastering pressing in mono on vinyl. Every single time.

So long and short of it. Yes there is very definitely a place still for vinyl. But I'd also thoroughly encourage some investment in some good high sample and bitdepth digital - especially for things being released now.

Related to adding the option of vinyl into an all-digital Meridian system, I saw over on their forums that PS Audio are about to release an interesting product - the NuWave Phono Converter. They say it will be a high quality phono preamp with 192/24 output to PCM, or USB or DSD via I2S. Sounds like it could be interesting if they manage to pull it off.

Does sound interesting. The 568.2mm does a pretty good job but it's not quit right. The 502 sounds completely different but much getting to go. Be interested to hear if someone takes the plunge

Dither or jitter?

I bought some videogame music on vinyl just for kicks. It's probably like playing Atari games. The graphics are crap, but I do it for nostalgia.