record vs cd!!! help!

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i keep hearing from various sources that a good record player will trounce a an equalled priced cd player in terms of timeing and warmth, is this true? are those big black discs of yester year the holy grail of sound? or as many would argue is it just a matter of taste? At the moment im useing a musical fidelity x-ray cdp with the mathching xa1 amp through a pair of b&w cm2's, im very happy with the sound from the mf gear wich is why im thinking of adding the new PROJECT GENIE TURTABLE, CAMBERIDIGE AZUR 640P PHONO STAGE, and rather alot of smelly old records. Will i need two inter connects to hook it all up? There is something quite apealling about hunting round old record shops on rainy saturday afternoons. Does anyone own the genie? how do you think it will sound from my system?
 

fatboyslimfast

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Hi Jimm,

As a vinyl fan myself, I don't think you can beat it for true listening pleasure. You are basically getting what was on the master tape, without it being chopped into 65 thousand bits 44 thousand times a second. No matter how good the CD player is, there is will always be information missing from that digital disc that will be there on the LP.

However, the Genie is in a different price league from your x-ray so you may be a little underwhelmed and wonder what all the fuss is about.

I would try to take your xray along to a dealer that can let you compare the genie with your xray...and see if you like the sound. There is also the NAD C555 and the Rega P1 to consider (the NAD is based on the P2 and comes with a Goldring cartridge). I owned a P2 for 15 years and it did the job wonderfully.

Normally the turntable will have it's own phono lead, so you will just need one more from the 640p (a great stage - but I would say that wouldn't I!) to your XA1.

But the best thing about vinyl, for me anyway, is the massive variation of discs around. My favourite pastime is to go to carboot sales, and search through the boxes of vinyl. I've found some great bargains all for 50p-£2. You occasionally get the dealer purporting to be a carbooter, but you can spot them a mile off, and they usually price discs individually rather than "LPs - £1 each" that you get from the normal 'booter! It's a great way to build up your collection, as long as you can stand flicking past that 100th copy of Chris Rea's Road To Hell whilst browsing!!! Just make sure you look at the vinyl disc before buying it, cos a 50p bargain that is scratched to hell isn't that much of a bargain...

I would also avoid ebay unless you are desperate for a specific album you can't get anywhere else. I've bought a few "EX/EX" albums - basically meaning that both the vinyl and sleeve should be in excellent condition - only to find it's been played with a knackered stylus and sounds buzzy and awful!

But don't let that put you off getting into the wonderful world of vinyl! Enjoy...
 

nads

Well-known member
[quote user="fatboyslimfast"]Nads - what do you use? I tend to just let the stylus do the work, but have always wondered whether cleaning machines and the like really make a difference...[/quote] Nothing as yet;) but my local HiFi shop hires out something, just looked and it is an Okki Nokki
okki_big.jpg
 

nads

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[quote user="fatboyslimfast"]Nice Nads. (that sounds sooo wrong...).
[/quote]

You have got to laugh though dont you! will be some time till i get round to it but will report back.

back on topic you may be better looking at Debut or an Exprsion as they include an important thing. a dust cover.
 

fatboyslimfast

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Too true...My Radius didn't come with one, and Roksan wanted £140 for an acrylic one. Luckily I work for a furniture company and called in a favour, so my rok now has a lovely solid maple cover :)
 

John Duncan

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I'll answer the hardware questions after I've read all the others (I may not have anything to add) but as for cleaning, this is a must, whatever Linn and Rega say - you should get a Disco Anti-Stat, without question. Despite its K-Tel looks, and the fact that it adds 45-50 quid to your budget, it will do more for your enjoyment of vinyl than anything else on your list. IMO.

You can get them at simplyvinyl.com I think, or google it.
 

John Duncan

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OK, I'll try to add my tuppence worth, trying to be objective.

I just got a Project RPM5.2, and had an X-Ray v3 for a long time, so probably know the character of your proposed setup fairly well.

I think that without doubt vinyl replay does sound good, but from a technical point of view it's an enormously difficult thing to do, just because of the physics involved, and therefore good replay costs money. I think, therfore, that with a Genie you *will* wonder a bit what all the fuss was about, not because of an intrinsic inferiority of vinyl but because in your system it's not going to make you want to throw your CD collection away. The problems with vinyl (surface noise, getting the setup right, tracking distortion towards the end, inter alia) will be apparent in the Genie (these are the things that get better the more money you throw at it) and you won't be 'blown away' in the way that I was by the X-Ray.

The biggest advantage you will have is that with minimal investment you'll be able to listen to music that you wouldn't otherwise be able to listen to (in my case, 500+ LPs that I don't have on CD), and that alone is worth the entrance price, since that's what it's all supposed to be about after all. Add to that the 'event' or 'experience' of listening to a record (which can't be understimated) and strewing dozens of them round the living room as you find more and more stuff you haven't heard in years, and you can't go wrong. Just don't expect to throw away your CDs just yet.

Oh, and my previous post about a record cleaner is a given - without it I think you'll just take the genie back to the shop.

Am I rambling?
 

nads

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John i think you have mentioned a very valid point that has not really been covered. IE: how much to invest per record! using prices from Super fi you spent 380 on 500 records i spent 650 on circa 350 records (and have just ordered 10 more just waiting for one to be released and then shipped). So one has to ask how much vinyl do you have now? and will you be getting more? mentioned before do some comparisons you may decide that a few more £ need to be spent.
 

John Duncan

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Yes, good point. I always had in mind £1 for every record or CD was a reasonable amount of money to spend on a source. Never works out like that but it's worth bearing in mind. Though give me a Genie and a Disco Anti-Stat over a Gyrodec without one any day. No, really.
 
A

Anonymous

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Here's a little story for you. My first turntable was a Bush MTT1, which to put briefly, is the cheapest turntable money can buy. It was made out of nasty plastic, had a nasty cartridge and had a lumpy platter. It used to play faster than it should and transmitted all of this over cables which wouldn't look out of place in a cheese wire factory. I used to think - "what a load of rubbish: You have to turn the amp to 10 o'clock to get a squeek and the top end has been lost somewhere in transit. But one night, I decided to put Pink Floyd Dark Side Of The Moon on - and that was the moment that changed my attitude to hi-fi. It was the most involved with the music I have ever been. The clocks at the start of Time? I could see them on my wall (even though it was pitch black LOL). The woman singing in Great Gig In The Sky prompted me to turn the light back on to check if she hadn't just snuck through the window. You could, three-dimensionly, see the instruments! It was utterly mindblowing! I was used to using an Arcam Cd player worth over ten times the price and I wanted more of this. I switched records - same again. I could tell that this was pure un-adulterated music at its finest.

I'm not a die-hard or even past twenty and yet this was the greatest thing I had ever heard. I knew this was what music should sound like and I've never looked back.
 
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Anonymous

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WOW! what a response, the genie is a starting point of my new format, i will look to get a better player around the 500 pound mark in the future, thanks for all the replies, ill post again when ive got it, cheers!!!
 
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Anonymous

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One other advantage of vinyl is you don't get the appalling tinny brittle sound that you get on a lot of cd's prior to about 1995. A lot of my cd's rarely get played as they sound awful. I am slowly but surely replacing them with remasters ( where available). I am not talking about ancient stuff either.Cd's from the early 90's by pearl jam, faith no more and the pixies, to name but 3, can sound pretty duff. You don't get that on vinyl as even ropey priduced albums on vinyl sound pretty good.
 
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Anonymous

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[quote user="Fraziel"]One other advantage of vinyl is you don't get the appalling tinny brittle sound that you get on a lot of cd's prior to about 1995. A lot of my cd's rarely get played as they sound awful. I am slowly but surely replacing them with remasters ( where available). I am not talking about ancient stuff either.Cd's from the early 90's by pearl jam, faith no more and the pixies, to name but 3, can sound pretty duff. You don't get that on vinyl as even ropey priduced albums on vinyl sound pretty good.[/quote]

Yeah I get that aswell. Things like Technotronics Pump Up The Jam were exceptions. I wonder if our CD player smooths this out a bit - I'm sure more livley ones over-pronounce this problem.
 
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Anonymous

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[quote user="Hughes123"]Yeah I get that aswell. Things like Technotronics Pump Up The Jam were
exceptions. I wonder if our CD player smooths this out a bit - I'm sure more
livley ones over-pronounce this problem[/quote]

I think the cd player helps a bit with the slightly warm midrange but my amp and speakers dont help at all.The speakers really show up production for what it is.Its about time that the pearl jam,nirvana ,pixiesand faith no more back catalogues were remastered. Some of my favourite bands but the production quality can be pretty poor. Faith no more "the real thing " is one of the worst quality cd's i have heard and annoyingly its also one of my favourite albums.
 

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