Impulse purchase - now I need guidance

[Mr Peabody]

take a listen to Lyn Stanley | International Recording Artist her recordings are audiophile recordings for audiophiles.

Patricia Barber albums are all stunning. My favorite as a whole is Modern Cool.

The Clearaudio LP of Ozone Percussion Group is outstanding.

Japanese recordings generally are very high quality, they seem to keep recording an art opposed to in the U.S. most is mass market show me the money accept for specialty for audiophile type labels.

[sjtm]

take a listen to Lyn Stanley | International Recording Artist her recordings are audiophile recordings for audiophiles.

Patricia Barber albums are all stunning. My favorite as a whole is Modern Cool.

The Clearaudio LP of Ozone Percussion Group is outstanding.

Japanese recordings generally are very high quality, they seem to keep recording an art opposed to in the U.S. most is mass market show me the money accept for specialty for audiophile type labels.

Thanks - I went all in on Patricia Barber - Modern Cool, Companion, Distortion of Love - all great. Perhaps Verse, Smash or Nightclub on vinyl. I will hunt down Ozone Percussion Group.

[blackraven]

Congrats on a very good TT. You will eventually want to upgrade the cartridge and phono preamp to get the best sound.

Vinyl just sounds different compared to digital. It is smoother and generally much more satisfying. But bad vinyl just like bad digital recordings sound bad.

I have an audiophile friend who is in his early 30's and he is heavily into computer digital music. He had never heard vinyl until he came over to my house and he fell in love with vinyl and how it sounds. He is now wanting a TT.

I have to say that good digital is very satisfying especially since I discovered that computer based music with an excellent player like "Bug Head" (which makes JRiver sound low fi and HQ Player sound mid fi in comparison) and a great DAC blows SACD out of the water and it can give Vinyl a run for the money.

[sjtm]

Congrats on a very good TT. You will eventually want to upgrade the cartridge and phono preamp to get the best sound.

Vinyl just sounds different compared to digital. It is smoother and generally much more satisfying. But bad vinyl just like bad digital recordings sound bad.

I have an audiophile friend who is in his early 30's and he is heavily into computer digital music. He had never heard vinyl until he came over to my house and he fell in love with vinyl and how it sounds. He is now wanting a TT.

I have to say that good digital is very satisfying especially since I discovered that computer based music with an excellent player like "Bug Head" (which makes JRiver sound low fi and HQ Player sound mid fi in comparison) and a great DAC blows SACD out of the water and it can give Vinyl a run for the money.

Damn - now I have to learn about DAC's and Bug Heads. This can get costly.

[blackraven]

Bug Head is a free program that processes music and brings out the best in it. It was developed by a Japanese genius. There are other programs such as JRiver, HQ Player and several others. Most you have to pay for. JR has the best music library for cataloging your music. It does other things like burning and ripping your music. These programs allow you to up convert your music to hi rez. I have not used all of the programs but from my experience and to the experience of others, Bug Head is way above the rest.

Bug Head requires a computer with a little horse power. You can run it with a good I-3 processor and 4 gigs of ram. It is a ram intensive program and it sounds its best with 8 gigs or higher (note it still sounds great with 4gigs, I just upgraded to 16 from 8 and it does improve the sound). BH also recommends a quad core I-7. I was using a computer with an I-3 that runs at 2.5gHz and 4 gb ram and it ran well. I now have a computer with a 5th gen mobile I-7 which is only a dual core and I have not noticed any difference in sound. You probably can run it with an older high end dual or quad core cpu.

Bug head


Infinity Blade HQ (Bug Head Emperor) worth trying - Computer Audio - JPLAY - hi-end audio player for Windows

[sjtm]

Bug Head is a free program that processes music and brings out the best in it. It was developed by a Japanese genius. There are other programs such as JRiver, HQ Player and several others. Most you have to pay for. JR has the best music library for cataloging your music. It does other things like burning and ripping your music. These programs allow you to up convert your music to hi rez. I have not used all of the programs but from my experience and to the experience of others, Bug Head is way above the rest.

Bug Head requires a computer with a little horse power. You can run it with a good I-3 processor and 4 gigs of ram. It is a ram intensive program and it sounds its best with 8 gigs or higher (note it still sounds great with 4gigs, I just upgraded to 16 from 8 and it does improve the sound). BH also recommends a quad core I-7. I was using a computer with an I-3 that runs at 2.5gHz and 4 gb ram and it ran well. I now have a computer with a 5th gen mobile I-7 which is only a dual core and I have not noticed any difference in sound. You probably can run it with an older high end dual or quad core cpu.

Bug head


Infinity Blade HQ (Bug Head Emperor) worth trying - Computer Audio - JPLAY - hi-end audio player for Windows

I am now bleeding from my ears. Luddites are more technically sophisticated than I am. I do have a four year old nephew that might be able to help me navigate this. Gaming for me generally involved quarters, flippers and not going tilt. But I will start reading up on this.

[blackraven]

If you need help with computer programs, let me know. Also, if you are interested in a DAC (which you will need if you want to get into computer music) or if you want to rip your non SACD Cd's to your computer and run them through a program like Bug Head which will markedly improve the sound I would be glad to help.

[Feanor]

Congrats on a very good TT. You will eventually want to upgrade the cartridge and phono preamp to get the best sound.

Vinyl just sounds different compared to digital. It is smoother and generally much more satisfying. But bad vinyl just like bad digital recordings sound bad.

I have an audiophile friend who is in his early 30's and he is heavily into computer digital music. He had never heard vinyl until he came over to my house and he fell in love with vinyl and how it sounds. He is now wanting a TT.

I have to say that good digital is very satisfying especially since I discovered that computer based music with an excellent player like "Bug Head" (which makes JRiver sound low fi and HQ Player sound mid fi in comparison) and a great DAC blows SACD out of the water and it can give Vinyl a run for the money.

I haven't listened to vinyl for 3-4 years even though my hi-fi experience dates back to the time vinyl and tape were the only options. The TT is somewhere in the basement gathering dust.

Yes, vinyl may sound different from the same recording in digital form. One reason is that the vinyl version is likely mastered differently than the digital. Notoriously, the digital versions are often more compress so that they are more playable on, e.g., portable players.

Personally I listen almost entirely classical music. New classical recordings on vinyl are very rare, i.e. your selection will be very limited if you want to have only vinyl. Anyway, compression is less often used for classical music or used to a lessor extent. High-resolution media make compression technically obsolete.

[blackraven]

Feanor, when I play good vinyl and compare it to the same digital recording of good quality, vinyl wins out even with my humble analog system. Using a 1970's Thorens TD-145, Nagaoka MP-200 cartridge and a Bellari VP-129 phono preamp with a fairly rare Vintage Raytheon 1950's black plate tube.

Vinyl sound more real and it is detailed and smooth at the same time. My analog system has no edge to the music. Even my friends that do not have vinyl are very impressed.

[Jack in Wilmington]

Feanor, when I play good vinyl and compare it to the same digital recording of good quality, vinyl wins out even with my humble analog system. Using a 1970's Thorens TD-145, Nagaoka MP-200 cartridge and a Bellari VP-129 phono preamp with a fairly rare Vintage Raytheon 1950's black plate tube.

Vinyl sound more real and it is detailed and smooth at the same time. My analog system has no edge to the music. Even my friends that do not have vinyl are very impressed.

Some of that I'd attribute to the other first rate equipment that you have. That maybe makes the vinyl sound better than the guy with a VPI Classic TT hooked to a Pioneer receiver running Polk speakers just as an example.

[blackraven]

Some of that I'd attribute to the other first rate equipment that you have. That maybe makes the vinyl sound better than the guy with a VPI Classic TT hooked to a Pioneer receiver running Polk speakers just as an example.

Agreed. I am currently listening to Dire Straits Brothers in Arms on vinyl and the is much punchier and the drums sound more real. Bass seems more dynamic and hits harder than any DAC that I have had in my system and I have had several that cost $3K to $6K in my system.

I would love to have a $2K TT and a $1K phono pre along with a Nagaoka MP-500, Ortofon Black, or Clear Audio Maestro to hear how much better it could be.

[Feanor]

Perhaps you vinylheads ought to try ripping you LPs to hi-rez digital. I've heard many people report over the years that the rips sound capture the essential quality of vinyl virtually perfectly ... Which tends to demonstrate that the digital / CD difference is largely in the mastering.

And I've always maintained that the sound of individual recordings, as a result of their recording & mastering, make far more difference than the distribution medium. (You are aware that many late LPs were recorded digitally, no?)

Some people feel completely differently than me: they actually enjoy the rituals of handling LPs, viz. pulling the large album sleeves and removing the disc being ever so careful to keep one's fingers of the playing surface, meticulously cleaning the disc before use, destaticing, placing on the TT, perhaps placing the disc weight and/or the dust catching device, lowering ever so carefully the tonearm & cartridge, listening to clicks & pops, ever so carefully raising the tonearm after 20 minutes of listening, destaticing again and/or blowing playtime dust from the disc, replacing the disc in the sleeve being ever so careful to keep fingers off. AND of course the problems of setting up the TT, attaching & adjusting the cartridge and setting tracking force, choosing the right impedance for the phono preamp, and blah yada.

All these things are of ill memory for me, albeit they were and are a joy for others.

I have about 100 LPs lying around still. I've offered to sell them for a buck a piece plus shipping; nobody has taken up the offer.

[sjtm]

Perhaps you vinylheads ought to try ripping you LPs to hi-rez digital. I've heard many people report over the years that the rips sound capture the essential quality of vinyl virtually perfectly ... Which tends to demonstrate that the digital / CD difference is largely in the mastering.

And I've always maintained that the sound of individual recordings, as a result of their recording & mastering, make far more difference than the distribution medium. (You are aware that many late LPs were recorded digitally, no?)

Some people feel completely differently than me: they actually enjoy the rituals of handling LPs, viz. pulling the large album sleeves and removing the disc being ever so careful to keep one's fingers of the playing surface, meticulously cleaning the disc before use, destaticing, placing on the TT, perhaps placing the disc weight and/or the dust catching device, lowering ever so carefully the tonearm & cartridge, listening to clicks & pops, ever so carefully raising the tonearm after 20 minutes of listening, destaticing again and/or blowing playtime dust from the disc, replacing the disc in the sleeve being ever so careful to keep fingers off. AND of course the problems of setting up the TT, attaching & adjusting the cartridge and setting tracking force, choosing the right impedance for the phono preamp, and blah yada.

All these things are of ill memory for me, albeit they were and are a joy for others.

I have about 100 LPs lying around still. I've offered to sell them for a buck a piece plus shipping; nobody has taken up the offer.

I tend to agree that the mastering is a distinguishing factor in SQ vs media. To that end, as a newbie vinyl guy, I have limited my purchases of vinyl to pressings where I can read up on the mastering process befre I buy. I limit myself to new (ie unopened) albums and I doubt my collection will be much more than 100 albums due to this constraint. Essentially if it is digitally mastered, I will seek out the best digital version. I know a couple of digital / analogue albums are in my collection - most of these were gifts and I still enjoy listening to them.

As for the ritual of listening, my wife says it has improved my patience and all the tender care has made me a better lover...