Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo I have rediscovered vinyl, what a pain in the butt

So here is the story.

Last week my wife, who is a nursery school teacher, and is also very technologically inept, comes to me and asks me if there is any way I can put educational cassettes from the 70’s or possibly before, onto CD. I start thinking to myself, probably, first thing I need is a device to play these ancient things called cassettes. I sold my Nakamichi cassette deck on Ebay about 5 years ago and hadn’t really missed it until now.

The next thing I need is a computer with a CD burner, check; I got one of those, the computer must also have a sound card with a “line In” option, again, check; and some software to record the analogue data to a wav, MP3, wma, etc. OK, well 2 out of 4 ain’t bad. So I tell her to give me a few weeks to figure something out.

Now I wake up a few days ago and remember that my dad gave me a unit for Christmas from a company called ADS Tech and the product is called, Instant Music. Still in the package, I take a 2nd look, and yup, it has the required software, Nero. Cool, now I just need a dinosaur thingy called a cassette deck. So I call up my dad and of coarse, he has one in his basement that still works. I am ready to rock and roll!

Now here is where the story gets interesting. At the top of my audio stand sits a Thorens MKII turntable with a Stanton EEE cartridge. I bought this unit back in 1988, because even if you could afford a CD player in 1988, the costs of CD’s were more than double that of vinyl. It got al lot of use for about 5 years, until about the mid 90’s when CD’s pretty much took over. Since that time to about 2002 I did on occasion throw a record on until I bought my Rotel processor which doesn’t have a phono stage. No biggie, the world is moving to MP3, and SACD, and DVDAudio, etc. So I pack up my records and put them in long term storage. On occasion I hear the odd rumbling how vinyl sounds so much better than today’s technology, but really don’t pay much attention to it.

Now I have this Christmas present from last year, I hooked up my Thorens and started playing some records. I have had my M80’s for a few years now, but have never heard vinyl through them. I was quite pleased. I can’t say the sound was better than CD, just different. It didn’t have the same dynamic range and “punch” as my digital sources; however, it did have a warmth, and mellowness that was most apparent and might be missing from some of my CD’s.

Having said this, there are the obvious issues with records. The size is one thing, they are just too big, next; the constant care required for these dinner plates is just annoying, look at them the wrong way and they snap crackle and pop, cleaning is a must, not to mention the logistical issues of playing them in your car, or taking them to the beach.

I like my CD’s, I think many of them sound awesome trough the M80’s, I love that fact that I don’t have to clean them every time I use them, I sure don’t miss the added noise (hiss) that vinyl brings (especially during quiet passages). I don’t mind lending them to friends and worry about how they are being taken care of. My Thorens TT was over $500 in 1988. It’s probably worth a fraction of that on Ebay today.

So now I am going to copy all my favorite vinyl songs to CD and use the software to eliminate as many of pops as I can using the Nero software, without degrading the sound quality.

BTW, my wife found in the craft store; Micheals, nice elegant wood frames for your record albums. So you can hang them on the wall. Let’s face it, whether you are a big fan of today’s music or not, the album art work of today’s CD’s leaves much to be desired compared to that of the days of the 33 LP.

Did I forget to mention that the frames cost more than records of yester year did?