Quote Originally Posted by RGA
I am relatively new to the turntable game and there is certainly an upgrade in my future as my dealer is a HUGE turntable supporter - a lot of other dealers carry one line of table usually Rega because they have a name at a lower price.

My dealer has a lot of excellent turntable companies all over the price map from Pro-ject, NAD and Rega to Linn and Audio Note. The latter two will be the ones I'll be looking into. The store owner has AN TT3 (A Void Reference) which is my favorite of the tables I've heard - but for the money way out of my league. ~2kcdn price range will place me in the Linn and TT2 range and of course depending what pops up used.

For really cheap I liked the Pro-Ject better than my table stock - and the Pro-Ject (a new pick-up for this dealer) is IMO better - lean but crisp and cleaner sounding. Not sure I agree with the Turntable being better than CD - the Audio Note CD player with its no times oversampling was astonishingly 3dimensional full bodied clearer open etc.

I'm hooked on the all analog set-up these guys believe in - and when they do go digital they want it as pure digital as possible.

I'm always hoping some fool leaves a Linn at my used record shop - always have the eye out - the Linn was made me take notice of what good LP can do.
It's been at least a decade since I've heard a Linn turntable. There are no Linn dealers in my area. I use the same SOTA I've had for awhile but have upgraded it to SOTA's new standards. It's as good or better than any I've heard. I haven't shopped around because my vinyl playback system was never a soft spot in my overall rig. Now the digital front end... that was another matter!

I just scored an Audio Note Dac 3.1X on the secondary market and for the first time in my life, I'm beginning to question which format sounds better. Digital could never do before what it does with the AN. Man, nothing for me to ***** about now! I'd say that on some recordings, vinyl sounds better and on some, I prefer the CD. For years I thought it CD was just a lousy format and it still does some things I don't care for but the AN made it clear that a good CD player will bring out the virtues of the medium.