Impulse purchase - now I need guidance

[James Frace]

If you pick up yourself a digital gram scale as well as a protractor and follow directions on them, you'll do just fine. Watch a few videos on youtube, vinylengine also has good stuff as well as lpgear. I learned how to do a really good install in about 3-4 days of watching and doing. Get a good pair of tweezers,and a good small screwdriver (glasses repair kit is a good starter) and you'll be most of the way there for making tweeks with set ups. Use the tweezers to pull off the contacts and put them on.

[hifitommy]

" I have hundreds of CD's and quite a few SACd's and XRCD's, most of which have cost between $3 and $10 each, so unless the vinyl sounds "better", I buy the CD."

i find that most SACDs sound very close to the standard of LP, and in some cases a safe way of getting the old recordings that, on the available used vinyl, are in rough shape or exorbitantly priced.

XRCD is just carefully remastered CDs (whether sourced from analog tape or digital original) and are not worth the $30 price to me. they should have given that kind of quality in the first place as they didn't have to make the original recording and pay all the musicians and for the venue and equipment.

given a decent vinyl playback system ($500-1000), and i don't mean very high priced ($5-10k) , the vinyl will nearly ALWAYS be the superior sound, more like the real thing, than RBCD. vinyl or sacd will have more of a relaxed, satisfying presentation that one gets from the live performance.

equivalently priced rbcd playback just cannot compete. and don't get me wrong, it's the music first and many recordings just aren't available on vinyl (and vice versa) so cd it will be. just try and find a vinyl copy of Giacomo Gates recording.