Completely in love with Vinyl (again!)

[CN211276]

I too was getting to the point where I was seriously considering selling off all of my remaining (300 or so) LP's and now I am so glad I didn't.

Digitising them is a slow process, very similar to taping albums on cassettes when I was young, but these 24bit/96KHz copies are something else when played through any digital rig. Even the little Fiio pocket player I use in the car sounds amazing when I blast a vinyl rip through it. This also allows me to directly compare the vinyl with CD versions - the standard CD's, on the whole, come out as flat and lifeless. The vinyl rips, luckily, maintain much of the fullness and character of the turntable source and are almost indistinguishable when played back through the same system via Allo DigiOne Signature streamer and Metrum Musette DAC.

I have 'tweaked' Audacity by doubling the buffer size to 200ms and reducing its (unnecessary) processing requirements. The copies it makes are now more stable, beep-free and more detailed.

Via Discogs I am slowly rebuilding my LP collection to an approximation of how it was in the mid/late 80's. Concentrating on old favourites and a few I missed out on back then. It's great to hear albums like The Alan Parsons Project 'Pyramid', David Sylvian 'Gone to Earth', Tangerine Dream 'Force Majeure' and Michael Rother 'Katzenmusik' in their full glory after decades of being content with 16bit/44.1KHz CD quality - the difference is so noticeable that it is as if you are discovering the music all over again. Hell, even Vangelis' weird contract-filler 'Beaubourg' sounds astonishing!

Which leaves me with a problem as I am now not very happy with the sound of CD's - but the main bulk of my collection is in that format and I have never heard the music in any other way. Just have to get used to it I suppose.

Wonder when my Logic TT will be back from the menders ... ?

[CN211276]

I have not played vinyl for some time but will not be selling the collection as I did with my CDs. The vinyl collection takes up little space in comparison to all the CDs I had. It took me years to rip all my CDs. I digitised a few albums with Audacity and then could nor be arsed as nearly all of them can be streamed in high resolution. A few which were not I could buy cheaply as CDs to rip. Concur about the limitations of 44kHz 16 Bit.