Trout

iTrader: (1)

Well we are only trying to convince you!!!

As the owner of a reference CD player (indeed in its day, THE reference CD player) I am still pretty sure that my vinyl source at a fraction of its cost is more enjoyable - although only just - and it is now source material dependent.

CD is far more convenient which is what gets the use, especially with small kids in the house!

Dingdongler

Yes but if the all in one made the high end speakers sound good just imagine how they would sing with £8000 worth of source/amps!

My point is (and sort of backed up by what you just said) that once you spend a few £k on the source you don't tend to get garbage in and therefore you won't get garbage out. Keep doubling the cost of your sources from this point and you'll get incremental improvements. Keep doubling the outlay on speakers from say £1k to £10k and you'll hear huge day and night improvements.

All IMHO of course

Dingdongler

You don't seem to actually want to discuss anything, you seem convinced on Planet Alcazar that you have reached audio nirvana with your Sevenoaks hifi system.

No point wasting time on somebody who doesn't want to discuss a subject and just wants to make throw away comments

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Well ONE of us isn't interested in debate, just insults.

Let's see your ACTUAL defence of a system that is lower in separation, lower in dynamic range, has more rumble, wow and flutter and has ADDED hisses, pops and crackles.....and how you get that to be better than an award winning CD system?

Preferably WITHOUT the throwaway abuse, please

BTW: HAVE you ever listened to, not heard, but LISTENED to a decently setup, run in Cyrus system with PSX-R's on?

And lastly, the company that brought us out of the dark ages as far as turntables were concerned, and who first came up with the "Garbage in, Garbage out" advertising slogan, Linn, no longer bother so much with either turntables or cartridges. But they do make a decent CD player. Are THEY wrong too?

Just a thought

pacenote

'Sounds' to me as if your Linn has never been set up properly if thats your opinion on vinyl - played through your Cyrus stuff I assume

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

They still make, sell and promote the LP12 in Sondek and Majik formats, two tone arms and two cartridges. The LP12 has been in production for nearly 40 years now btw

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Totally agree with everything you say here - and wanted to underline a principle that if you are spending a lot less - say a grand in total - spending more on speakers may not give you the best system.

If you have already spent several grand on source then spend what you like on speakers - just make sure you have good enough amps to drive them - some high end speakers can be notoriously hard to drive.

Dingdongler

That's about right Trouty.

daviee

The old rule of thumb was 5:3:2 ratio ie £500 source £300 amp £200 speakers but if its a big room you would benifit from say £400 floorstanders just to fill the room with sound rather than £200 book shelves speakers that would need £100 worth of stands anyway Hi Fi is a minefeild but at the end of the day its what is plaeasing on your ears.

When I had my old set up it was a RP2 with goldring 1022 cartrage £425 ish at the tim the CD was Arcam Alpha 5 £450, the mate had £3k of transport dac and power supplys the interconect was almost the price of my RP2 and it made my Arcam sound wanting but even he prefered the sound of the RP2 when pluged into the same system.

As for snap crackle n pop, I any day of the week prefer live gigs whistles shouts claps etc but once you are in to the song you dont hear it. If you have never heard a proper set up turntable its hard to judge like for like, but you get some of the magic of analog sound like a gig, well thas my tuppence anyway.

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Was set up by the dealer, on a custom wall-mounted vibrartion free plinth.

First used through Sony stuff, (Yes, it was one of the first Linn turntables), then Technics pre-power combo, also used with my mates Boothroyd Stuart (sp?) Meridian stuff and his speakers. Plus some Naim stuff he had as backup.

NEVER reached the heights of my PRESENT CD player and associated stuff.

There is a lot to be said for matching, too, which no-one else has really mentioned. One pair of WELL rated speakers can sound TOTALLY different via two different amps. Ditto a CD player and two different amps. Mine are perfectly matched

I am happy I have the system I want, and I like the sound.

But PLEASE, NO-ONE try to convince me that vinyl, with all it's inherent problems, is better.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

But it is

What Linn turntable did you have/have you got?

The Pink Ninja

iTrader: (23)

I'm not trying to convince anyone, I know it's better and anyway there is no point trying to preach to the converted, Although it is not as convenient as a CD.

It all depends on the quality of the vinyl your playing, If you getting nasty noises on a properly set up system the vinyl you using must be garbage, Just for info you can't compare a 70's pressed record to sound the same as a 60's pressed record due to the lesser quality vinyl they were using and also the later the record was pressed the lighter it became which also plays a big part in the audio quality, The same goes for certain labels too Columbia, Parlophone, Decca, Fontana compare these to the other less desirable labels such as MFP, Starline, and most budget reissues, They are a world away from each other in audio quality.

A new 200g re-issue will sound better than a 120g Lp from the 70's or 80's for example, It's not all about the electrical equipment you know

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

No, believe me, I understand that........I would hazard a guess that I've had Hi-Fi of my own longer than most, if not all, on here. Some 46 YEARS this year.

I was one of the first in the UK to try out different platter-mats, SME headhsells, SME arms with human hair used to string the bias control weight blu-tack between cartridge and headshell, gold connectors, PROPER speaker cables, etc etc, in fact most of the mods and snake oil-that abounded in the late 60's/early 70's.
Some work, others less so, some are just daft: anyone else, for example, tried putting GREEN permanent felt-tip pen along the inner and outer EDGES of a CD to get better sound? LOL.

I actually built up my earliest Hi-Fi aged 14, it had components from Garrard, Shure, Sinclair, (yes, THAT Sinclair!) and Wharfedale. The speakers were in home-made cabinets from a design by GA Briggs, an ex-Wharfedale engineer, found in a book my dad got me called "More about loudspeakers". They took us an age to make and even longer to veneer, plus source the new-fangled "Acoustic wadding", "Accoustically transparent foam" and "Tygan" mesh. All those bought from tiny classified in the back of a magazine called, iirc, Wireless World.

Once the system was up and running it blew away most so-called Hi-Fis most people had. Around 1966/7, MOST people had a radiogram if they were lucky

I also had one of the first 16 bit CD players in the country, a Marantz CD65se. and that, my friends, was the beginning of the end for vinyl.

OK, vinyl still has it's place..........much the same as classic cars have. Nice to have, nice to use occasionally, but not suitable for serious use

The Pink Ninja

iTrader: (23)

Considering that I'm only 38 you've had you Hi-fi for longer than I've been here for, I've been collecting serious vinyl for 20 odd years, I agree CD's have their place but if you listen to music from a certain era there is only way do do it which is in the original format it was intended to be listened in,

Gaz.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Anything else we need to know about your expertise?

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Stop being naive.

You know as well as I do that in the late 60's there was Wharfedale, Goodmans and Celestion. End of.

Briggs was an engineer with Wharfedale, he designed cabinets Wharfedale couldn';t afford to build for the market.......so people at home DID build them.

The drive units, well, we had little choice.

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Hmmmmmmmmm, intended to be listened to in? That would be tape, then?

The Pink Ninja

iTrader: (23)

Now now lets not get belligerant, LOL, I should have worded it different, What i should have said was the format they were released on sale in, Master tapes are a different matter as once the final mix had been done they were then transferred on the the mother stamper/acetate Etc.. and therefore not put on genral sale in tape format, Yes some were available on reel-to-reel but i believe this thread is about the use of vinyl & CD`s

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

OK, I can go with that one.

Most of the early CDs came off tape too.

Dunno if CDs are still so marked, but they USED to be marked with three letters, each an A or a D, for analogue, or digital, each letter for recording, mixing/mastering and final recording onto CD, so most of the first bunch were AAD:
Analogue recording, Analogue mixing/mastering, Digital final recording.

Later ones were ADD, now, I BELIEVE most are DDD.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Yep more's the pity. The more analogue in the equation the better I reckon

Now on the subject of reel to reel I used to have a Revox B77 .... that was quality kit

The Pink Ninja

iTrader: (23)

Same with the vinyl, Matrix numbers stamped in the run off relate to the mix/catalouge number plus the also have a mother number and stamper number so if your really **** about it you can find out from which batch it was pressed to get the earliest and rarest pressing

The Pink Ninja

iTrader: (23)

Sounds like an 80`s Photo copier

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

I had a Ferrograph and matching F208 amp, well ahead of it's time. It had THD levles at FULL rated output (40Wpc) of only 0.008% when other so-called HiFi amps were 0.1% at 20W.

RobJenks

Chaps its all bollocks.
This is from someone who has pursued the enlightenment of true sound.
It really is total crap.
Do you really care?
I too was in the Linn LP12 etc etc Naim bollocks - hey it is good but there is no denying that at the end of the day its about Mega volume 2 o'clock in the morning AC/DC giving Highway to hell and eating the worm !

stormyuklondon1

linn do not make cd players anymore, just streaming/network products and the LP12.

as for the format argument, its swings and roundabouts for me. each format has its cons, depends if you're willing to accept the negatives.
problem for me with cd is bass. it just doesn't seem to be able to reproduce it as well as vinyl.

I've currently got a Bryston cd player on loan, and although (to my ears) far and away the best cd player i've heard in my system,it's good, but no cigar. I get much more enjoyment out of the turntable, who's compromises(its fragile, a pita to store, clean, keep in tip top condition and its getting more and more expensive.. ) i'm much happier to live with.

so, in my humble opinion, yes, vinyl is better than cd. but then cd is much better than vinyl

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

And there is the final argument: it comes down to opinion, and anyone who has ever seen ANY of my posts in the ICE question, will know that whenever anyone asks for advice about wnat speakers, I tell them to go out and audition some.

The reason: because sounds are personal. What is beautiful to one person may sound like rubbbish to another.

Stormylondon: what speakers/amp/speaker cabling do you use, just out of interest?

stormyuklondon1

speakers are PMC AML1's, pre-amp is a Bryston BP-26MC and cabling is Van Damme classic microphone cable throughout, no speaker cable as the speakers are active.
Not the prettiest system, but sounds cracking to my ears

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Some very nice components there - I love the PMCs and the Bryston is excellent too.