Analog/Vinyl Systems

I think I have a half decent chance of predicting what Z would say about the short comings of vinyl. Yet I have never heard him actually say it, have I missed it? I was expecting Z to do a video about his thoughts after playing with the u-turn.

I would also like to hear if Z walked into any of the rooms at RMAF pushing analog that blew his mind?

I admit most of my listening is from streaming but I’m a fan of analog and I’m surprised it is not discussed much on this site. I always prefer my vinyl for an actual listening session. Maybe I’m just old.

I would say that this forum typically doesn’t discuss vinyl that often because of cost, convince, and the anti audiophile garbage attitude that people seem to have here

I would say cost is probably a more prohibiting factor for most people (this is a forum founded on price to performance and maximum enjoyment for the average person), because people building budget setups would care more about getting the best headphones possible, and after that a solid quality dac and amp. Turntables and physical albums can get up there in price when you start getting into vinyl, where you could get something like spotify, tidal, and now amazon lossless, etc. Or just listen to youtube videos. I think you get the idea at this point

Convenience is also pretty simple, it takes time to choose an album to listen. You can’t just throw something on shuffle. And you can’t realistically bring a vinyl setup everywhere you go. And you might not be able too get a hold of certain albums you enjoy. This isn’t trying to bash vinyl, but for a decent amount of people this would not make sense compared to digital.

And typically the whole “all analogue is better” or “vinyl is the superior format” trope tends to remind people of asshole audiophile elitists (and that sometimes kinda carries on to vinyl as a whole in this particular situation unfortunately), and that’s not what this forum is about. Is that how vinyl is? Of course not. But it still can carry that stigma for some people.

Overall I think vinyl can be great and can be super enjoyable if you are in to that kinda thing, but I feel that it’s not super popular on this form because of the aforementioned reasons making it hard to justify for someone just getting into this hobby. I myself have a crap ton of records in milk crates in my basement, but have no turntable. I just ripped the vinyl to digital at a friends house who had a killer turntable setup. I would actually like to get a nice reel to reel machine to have fun with, but that’s also not a priority for me atm.

3 Likes

i know this is a bit old but im surprised this forum isn’t too fond of vinyl or even tapes. i purchased my jds labs atom amp mainly because of its amazing reviews / specs but also because it has an additional input which i use to play my tapes! analog is a ton of fun and comparing them (fidelity wise) may seem a bit unfair but sometimes vinyl and tape has a little extra something :muscle:

1 Like