Vinyl is a pretty durable medium, IMO. I have some records printed in the 1960s I picked up the other day that sound great… especially after rinsing it under the sink. Lol
I’m sure… but I don’t mind being blissfully ignorant for the time being. Very happy with my current setup. lol. I will definitely be making small upgrades overtime, though.
That’s really the way to do it.
The first good vinyl system I ever heard was $5000+ For just the turntable/arm and cartridge in 1980’s money. Then I walked out of the shop with a Rega Planar 2, which I traded in a few weeks later for a Rega Planar 3 + RB300.
I used that for most of the time I seriously collected vinyl, and I really loved it, my change in income accompanied relocating to a new country and my at the time I decided I was done with vinyl.
My less than ideal listening situation, makes it easier to talk myself out of not getting back into it.
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Even as someone who tends to prefer digital, if I was infinitely rich I’d go full analogue with the best turntable+cartridge, amp, and headphones out there probably.
My real reasons for preferring digital are far more lodged in the realm of affordability and availability (yarr, mateys). But I’d drop that attitude if I was better off.
There’s something romantic about your music aging with you anyway.
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IDK, I feel like I am pretty high up now and the convenience of digital is just well convenient lol, if you get a really good dac it can sound super natural. I don’t think I can see myself getting a vinyl setup in the future tbh
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For me the value doesn’t out weigh the inconvenience factor, and starting over collecting, finding good quality vinyl of the stuff I want to listen to is getting challenging as well.
Plus I’m pretty much done with physical media at this point, it’s a pain to manage and store.
I can’t get as much music as I have now if I went to vinyl lol
well for right now I’ve been listening to music almost exclusively on vinyl, but I’m sure that will shift over time. We’ll see how things change once I finally get the Ares DAC.
Pro audio really starts to feel like a snakeoil cult sometimes, doesn’t it?
I just looked into preamps for a second. Schiit’s cheapest is the Saga, but JDS has the “OL Switcher”. Wonder if that’d be adequate.
You would need a phono preamp, not a stereo preamp
You can get a passable phono pre-amp for ~$100, this is Schiit’s https://www.schiit.com/products/mani
I’m sure giova can give yo more or better options.
A lot of people hype the mani to all hell… I have no tried it personally… I’m sure it’s plenty fine. Though. I’m using the Rega Phono MM Mk3, which I’m happy with. I don’t have a ton of experience, TBH… as I said I just started out into this hobby myself. I was using the Pluto before… and it’s a little weak, IMO.
I just realized that the red color isn’t really just a color, it’s actually a different headphone:
- Focal Clear: https://www.focal.com/headphones/clear/
- Focal Clear Pro: https://www.focal.com/headphones/clear-professional/
Apparently they’re the same sound but accessories are different. Comes with a coiled cable rather than straight and 1/4" jacks for connectors on the headphone rather than XLR because that’s studio standard or something. And includes an extra pair of earpads, which is nice.
There was some rumors about them being more neutral apparently, but other comments rebuked it and eventually linked to comments directly from a community manager of Focal France clarifying that they’re the same. So they’re sonically the same.
So I actually got a Focal Clear Professional for $950 when it’s $1699 MSRP. Searching on eBay shows me that the professional version appears to hold their value better than the standard does.
Far as I’m concerned it’s just a Clear that looks cooler and retains it’s value better.
Damn nice. I really scored here.
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Yeah it just comes with different pads and accessories, I also found the pro for cheaper than the regular one too, you got a pretty good deal 
Yeah. Unfortunately due to some sort of freak-out my bank had about the financing with AMS, I lost the RNHP as someone bought it while I was sorting things out.
But that’s okay, honestly I think I can wait until I buy the D90 to buy the RNHP alongside it, and for now just keep using my Schiit stack. Maybe RNHP will appear on Drop sometime between now and March, or AMS will have more open-box ones.
Btw I’ll pair them with Mogami AES cables.
unlikely, but finding another open box might be possible
Yeah. Kinda mad that it happened really – they sent three charges in rapid succession and Visa freaked about that I guess. Didn’t find out till the next day and it was gone by then. Guess I’ll just have to watch the store page, no need for it till I get the DAC anyway I guess.
That’s happened to me before as well (not with this site tho)
Well my Clears arrived. For now I’m just plugging them into my Magi/Modi3 stack.
It’s definitely different. I find myself messing around with EQ when it comes to anime though, that or just upping the volume beyond what I normally would. Somehow it feels really airy/tinny.
Perhaps seeing my EQ might show you how my hearing appears to work, or rather what frequencies are focused on in my hearing:
I just looked up “PC Equalizer” and got the first thing that showed-up by the way. If there’s better programs for this kinda thing then let me know, I’ve also considered perhaps getting a physical EQ like Loki.
I just messed with it until I got more or less what sounded right to me. You have to note that I’m on a Schiit Stack though… not sure if it’ll sound a lot better once I upgrade my hardware.
There’s quite a difference between watching shows and actual music though. I find that the flat response is quite nice when listening to music – perhaps that’s what they mean by a “Musical” headphone, I dunno. But I do have to crank-up the power to get it to sound the way I want, moreso than my HD6XX, regardless of the lower impedence. I guess at the end of the day impedence matters little in how hard to drive a headphone actually is.
I was between the Focal Clears and the Sennheiser HD800S when I was deciding by the way. If you think I might like the Sennys more then by all means say so. But I think I’ll withhold on any judgements until I get the RNHP+D90 to use with it.
Anywho, I do like them quite a bit, and do think they’re better than my HD6XX. I just think they’re also more picky and I’m trying to figure out how to deal with that I suppose.
But I’m writing this after just 30 minutes of messing around, so give me some time and I’ll let ya know more of what I think so far. That EQ was when watching Made in Abyss, which I find to be kinda treble-emphasizing. When I switched to YouTube I went back to flat.
Maybe that EQ might tell you what kinda sound I seem to like though. The weird thing about my hearing is it’s neither V shaped nor inverse-V shaped. More of a “Inverse VVV” shaped or something. But I only switch to that kinda EQ for certain things (usually detailed recordings), and prefer flat for others (more general content). It’s kinda like in better recordings the different frequencies are “better separated” while in more general recordings they’re all smushed together or maybe more like “averaged” so trying to get certain parts to stand-out over others just makes it sound weird. I dunno, just talkin’ out my butt here, I’ll keep playing with them.
Yeah so I really think the schiit stack is messing with things a fair bit, will be curious to see what you think of them on the rnhp + dac. The clear is pretty dang picky (same with the 800s actually) and the modi and mangi suffer from the schiit compression, and their rather unrefined house sound imo
Also check out equalizer apo with the peace interface, really really good software eq imo