dazed_and_confused

I’ve spent most of the last 35 years with at least one foot in the audiophile camp. People on the outside all think I’m crazy so I’ve long since given up on trying to explain the ‘logic’ of what I do to people who rarely seem to want to understand. I always think of system building in terms of macro and micro. Putting together a well matched set of speakers, power amp, pre-amp and source components is the macro stage and should (if carefully done) take you 95% of the way to where you want to be. Then there’s the micro phase which is moving speakers around, fiddling with spikes/cones and other isolation components, adding power conditioning, tweaking cables, dinkering with TT setup etc etc. You can do as much or as little of the micro stuff as you want. Some people do nothing, and are content with being 95% of the way to where they want to be. (often oblivious to the possibility that there’s another 5% of performance lurking in their system). Others obsess constantly, trying to wring out that last few percent - often expending a lot of time/energy and money. It doesn’t matter which camp you fall in and you shouldn’t have to explain or justify your actions to outsiders (assuming you’re not selling your children to pay for things). Personally, I spent a lot of time messing with the 5% and I KNOW I could hear changes in my system when I moved things, added cones, changed cables or whatever. They weren’t always positive changes and it was that fact which largely convinced me that I wasn’t dealing with some imaginary psycho-acoustic phenomenon where tweaking my system was resulting in changes which took place only in my head. Of course the more resolving your equipment, the more audible the effects of tweaking become. I always catch a lot of flack when I say this, but sometimes it doesn’t surprise me that people can’t hear the difference between a $5 interconnect and something more exotic, when they’re using the cable in a poorly matched system or with midfi electronics. There, I said it.

I always enjoy Tracy Chapman's debut recording on vinyl - sounds very good. Friday Night in San Francisco is another good one.

I'm curious to learn what you are trying to accomplish with driving all three pairs together. Will this be a surround config for HT or some type of array?

I wouldn't push anyone towards owning vinyl, there are plenty of good sounding formats around which might not match what vinyl can do, but come awfully close and are far more convenient. Some of the best sounding music I listen to comes from digital based formats that are not even supposed to sound good. That aside, I just sold my TT a couple weeks ago and regretted it immediately. I listed it on Audiocircle just to put my toe in the water and see if there was any interest. It sold in a couple days. Someone got a great deal on a $7500 vinyl rig and now I'm left wondering how I'm gonna replace it, and with what. Damn dirty hobby feeds my OCCD and other mental issues I have. One minute I think I'm free then I get drawn right back in...

wowzee...congrats on 2000....

Awesome looking system(s) and HT room. And congrats on the vinyl....it makes me all giddy whenever I come across someone I haven't met before that has a turntable (or two!) What kind of music are you in to? Welcome along..

I went through a similar project a while back with a haul from Craigslist. I bought a bunch of the plastic sleeves and got the vinyl into the new sleeves and out of the covers. Then baked the covers in the sun until they were fully dried out. Then I just placed them loose against the wall and give them a good douse with Lysol spray and let them sit for a week. You'll need to mark the plastic sleeves with the title so you're not fussing too much when you come to insert the sleeves/vinyl back into the covers. It's a pain in the sphincter but we must learn to suffer for our cause....

Yes.....vinyl....but give yourself a fair chance. Instead of trusting entirely to the used bin at the SA, pick up a couple of new LP's whose sound you're familiar with from other formats. Then get yourself a decent deck....if you're going to do it, commit to it fully. A decent deck, arm and cartridge will minimize the ticks and pops you hear and should sound better than any other format you have if you have the skills to set it up properly. Which is the next hurdle, obviously I don't know what history you have with vinyl, but there's a certain amount of skill needed to setup and level a deck, install the cartridge, set the VTA/VTF etc...again, make sure you give yourself a proper chance to enjoy the format as it should be enjoyed....get someone to help you set it up if need be. I took a 15 year sabbatical from vinyl and got back into it about 18 mths ago. I jumped in with both feet and bought a good TT, and I'm glad I did I just upgraded my preamp and the new one has a nicer MC, so things are just getting better as I upgrade in small steps. Once you're up and running you can have a blast hitting places like you mentioned, along with yard sales and Craigslist. I scored a 700LP collection on Craigslist for less than $150....it's been a pig cleaning those mofos but well worth the effort!! Good luck..

I'm too dense to understand the chart posted by Rich so I found my own The source is here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_revival#UK_Official_Record_Store_Chart The 'resurgence' is less impressive in the UK, it seems. But the above looks like a veritable boom in sales, if the numbers can be trusted...

I had a bunch of CD's, most of which had spent time in the car, all of them had surface marks and skipped. I also had a few DVD's which had been mistreated over the years, and skipped. I bought a CD/DVD repair kit from Amazon. I've since seen similar kits in Target and Best Buy, Memorex makes the ones in Target, I think. They look like a portable CD player. They come with different (abrasive) disks, one pair for cleaning and a more abrasive pair for removing scratches. There's a cleaning fluid and a scratch fluid. The whole kit was around $25 or less. It works, but not 100%. Some discs with deeper scratches require multiple 'cleanings'. The danger is that you can go too far and render the disc unplayable. But in most cases it was unplayable anyway, so there's little to lose.... I'd guess at maybe a 70% success rate, based on my having some pretty banged-up CD's / DVD's. Your mileage may vary. Good luck!

I don't think using a 'blues based riff' would be grounds for plagiarism, but stealing someone else's composition certainly is. I'm sure it will be settled out of court, as with most of the other claims...