In appreciation of convenience

I went one stage further, and flogged my LP12 to make space (and a bit of cash) to upgrade the rest of my system. There's no going back now. I was vinyl only for a very long time, but unlike some, I don't miss the ritual of vinyl. The ability to explore music in a multitude of ways gives streaming an advantage that, for me, goes way beyond the mere 'convenience' of keeping my arse glued to the sofa. 

I tried it the other way    I mothballed my vinyl intended to trade my then CDX2 for a streamer but went back the other way    I honestly don't believe it's anything to do with the vinyl ritual - I just prefer it sonically. A little bit more effort -that's okay. 

Mir is true that with a streamer that I'd discover more music but frankly I don't get round to playing most of my collection   

Regards,

Lindsay

I'm with you on the convenience thing David. In comparison from before I got digital streaming I probably listen to at least twice the amount of music nowadays. Being recently saddled with arthritis and needing a couple of joint replacements, if I only had CD & vinyl I probably wouldn't listen to the hi-fi at all for long periods. I do enjoy a good vinyl session every now & then (got rid of CD replay when my streaming setup bettered it) but the great pleasure I get from being able to sit here and scroll through my music collection so easily, playing what takes my fancy, really cannot be beaten.

 Being right in the middle of an excruciating Sciatica attack Tony I empathise but having to get up every 25 minutes is a good thing for me.

Regards,

Lindsay 

The Strat (Fender) posted:

 Being right in the middle of an excruciating Sciatica attack Tony I empathise but having to get up every 25 minutes is a good thing for me.

Regards,

Lindsay 

I feel your pain Lindsay, had physio this evening for a back problem that sometimes gives my Sciatica, the physio hurt but it's not a patch on when I had full on sciatica.  Like toothache in my leg and nothing helped apart from the physio and acupuncture.  

Totally in synch with posts 1,2 & 4 on this. Long before streaming, I started out as a Vinyl disciple, but even in the early days of CD when the quality of players was pretty basic, there were aspects of Digital playback that I really appreciated over Vinyl - lack of rumble, hiss, pops and scratches probably the most important of them, but it was also more than that. CD didn't sound entirely right in the early days, but there was enough there for me that was additional to what Vinyl offered that meant I would always keep it as at least one of my source options.

I'm fully aware of what Vinyl does so well, but I just found that once I got a decent CD player and ran Vinyl and CD in parallel, the amount of time I spent with Vinyl dropped steadily as the quality of my CD replay improved ( Marantz CD63SE -> Arcam170/Deltec1 -> RoksanAtessa/PinkTriangle DaCapo -> CDS2 -> CDS3) . I preferred the sound, as well as the convenience and I also think the drift was exacerbated by the fact that Classical was steadily making up more of my listening and the difference between CD and Vinyl background noise REALLY comes to the fore with Classical...

..and then came streaming and the NDS. Convenience exponentionally improved and sound quality that to my ears adds a bit of what Vinyl offers to what CD offers. My system now moves me more than ever. 

I have a confession to make here...I have never owned a CD player. When they first came out, I was so horrified by what I heard that I just retreated happily into my Vinyl shell and stayed there. OK, so CD players did improve, but I could never be bothered with multiple sources anyway. I was quite happy to be 'that weird bloke with a record player' and it was fun to surprise non-audiophile friends for whom CD was the norm, by showing them what an LP12 was capable of. 

The Strat (Fender) posted:

 Being right in the middle of an excruciating Sciatica attack Tony I empathise but having to get up every 25 minutes is a good thing for me.

Regards,

Lindsay 

You must be talking CDs here Lindsay! Some of these pesky 45rpm LPs don't even give you time to sit down before you've got to change sides. I do agree though, it isn't healthy to just sit around for long periods. Hope the sciatica gets better, it really is a most miserable condition.

Convenience is all very well but the change can be hugely expensive, with no improvement in sound quality. I am completely satisfied with my current system but I can see an all-digital source would be convenient. To match the quality of my CDS3 though I'd probably have to go for and NDS (plus NAS, switch and lots of ethernet cabling) - a ridiculous of money just for a bit added convenience. I will be interested in how the Core + nDAC sounds as a possible cheaper alternative.  

It is not really an either/or though is it?. It is good to have both.

I'm in a similar situation. It occurred to me recently that I hadn't played any vinyl for over a year. I tend not use it in the summer and have been trying to finalise my digital system.I have already shifted the CDSII on and now I am looking at getting rid of the LP12, not the vinyl though, (maybe a RP1 or something).

It's not about the absolute sound quality, I seem to enjoy a 320Kbs radio stream just as much as a ripped CD or even a HD album. It's all about the music and not having to do exercise half or a quarter way through an album helps to.

I've gone through it all & have settled for convenience.    As much as I've loved my vinyl,  I did find the care required & the inevitable click/pops & other noise irritating & for me it spoiled whatever level the SQ was at.  CD fixed that problem & even though the SQ was arguably not so much better,  maybe,  the more robust medium, ease of handling & longer playing time sold it,  but I kept the vinyl & turntable.      Now having had a NDX for over 2 years I have finally gone for convenience & so much so that I've bitten the bullet on my rose tinted memories of the past (mis-spent yoof) & the TT & its about to find a new home.    Streaming means so much more than simple convenience,  I have no more ugly CD & vinyl storage racks taking up living space & whilst (IMO) CD did not move SQ forward over vinyl as such,  streaming has done that especially so with the HD formats.  Plus on the touch of a screen I can listen to a "radio" station in California, flick to get the rugby news in Cape Town, listen to a new release on Tidal to see if its worth buying  & then settle down to listen to my own music with some albums from my past, some just released & many in superb 24/192 or DSD,   -  oh did I mention leaving my chair.  

I suppose my eventual solution to replace my CDS3 is a Uniti Core and 572......

''Tis a shame that almost all older vinyl users have never had the pleasure of using two of them with a rotary stage to sequence a listening session. Not to play for the agitation of others but for own pleasure. Whilst imagining that they are some super star dj.  With the odd bit of scratching in time.

For me it isn't so much the convenience as the lack of clutter of CD cases all-over (and trying to re-box CDs that my family may have left laying around because they couldn't be bothered finding the case).

Lack of clutter, changing CDs or LPs, and sampling music seem to me more to do with life-style choices than real convenience, but that depends on your definition of convenience. I have hundreds of CDs and LPs and absolutely no clutter in my listening room. Family members rip CDs; they know exactly where to find them (on shelves in alphabetical order) and where to replace them when they are done. I like the notion of having to get up and out of my chair every 20 or 40 minutes to change music, keeps the blood flowing. I can sample any new music I choose on my notebook and if it doesn't hold interest for me there I assume playing it on my Naim gear won't change anything. While I have a music collection, I don't consider myself a music collector. I only buy music I find worthy of playing over and over, and I'm content to wait several days until the disc arrives by post. For someone with physical impairments I can see where streaming can be a necessary life-style choice and hence becomes a true convenience.

I gave away my whole vinyl collection to a friend a year ago and I don't regret it.  What I really didn't ever like about vinyl was that however careful I was with the discs, and believe me I was totally anal about not letting anyone other than me near them, they would inevitably collect new clicks and pops, so that I would be anxiously listening for new clicks and springing up to see whether I could see what had caused it before the stylus moved to far from the place where the click was.  

So CDs and streaming are preferable to me for that reason alone.  So as to get some substitute exercise, I make sure that we drink plenty of good wine, which means getting up from the sofa to reach the bottle for glass replenishment!

I hope the sciatica gets better soon Lindsay...

best

David

David, I'd add cartridge anxiety to your well put account of the foibles of listening to Vinyl. Having endured the horror and pain of having my Linn Karma completely totalled by a friend's toddler a while ago, I was never quite the same again!

I know that one all too well Kevin having written off a Rega Apheta 2 whilst dusting a couple of months ago

TOBYJUG posted:

''Tis a shame that almost all older vinyl users have never had the pleasure of using two of them with a rotary stage to sequence a listening session. Not to play for the agitation of others but for own pleasure. Whilst imagining that they are some super star dj.  With the odd bit of scratching in time.

Scratching of vinyl? In time with the music? Interesting way to add exaggerated  percussive effects to promote foot-tapping on future playing perhaps....!

David Hendon posted:

I gave away my whole vinyl collection to a friend a year ago and I don't regret it.  What I really didn't ever like about vinyl was that however careful I was with the discs, and believe me I was totally anal about not letting anyone other than me near them, they would inevitably collect new clicks and pops, so that I would be anxiously listening for new clicks and springing up to see whether I could see what had caused it before the stylus moved to far from the place where the click was.  

So CDs and streaming are preferable to me for that reason alone.  So as to get some substitute exercise, I make sure that we drink plenty of good wine, which means getting up from the sofa to reach the bottle for glass replenishment!

I hope the sciatica gets better soon Lindsay...

best

David

When I first acquired my CDX2/XPS so convinced was I that digital replay had at least caught up with vinyl I mothballed all my records and it was only my wife who persuaded me from taking them to the charity shop.  

But everytime I visited anyone who had a half decent TT the desire to resurrect it returned.  So after a lot of auditioning we ended up with the Xerxes.  Vinyl probably now makes up 70% of my listening although the CDS3 is a superb player. 

But David indeed filling up the wine glass is indeed great exercise. 

Regards,

Lindsay

David, I know you posted this in the Padded Cell, and at first I felt I would leave it there to see where it went, but now it looks like the Hifi Corner would be the most appropriate room, so that's where I moved it.

As for my take on convenience, there's nothing quite like threading up a reel of tape to get you in the mood for listening to the music contained therein...

Richard,

in 1972 I was part of a amateur musical group and we all composed and recorded our own material. One of us, who later became a good producer, had thought of this system consisting of two reel-to-reel tape machines with a mixer between them and a few microphones and cables. So each of us had a reel-to-reel recorder, I had an AKAI 4000D, one had a Revox A77, there were TEACs.. Reels of tape were common in our rooms, we met and recorded and stored tapes, and the word 'tape' itself was so common it seemed to reassume all our word, all our activities, our hopes and projects...

I still have some reels with our music, songs, instrumentals.. And although I now see magnetic tape as a delicate but obsolete medium, I can understand your feelings well.

M

Richard Dane posted:

David, I know you posted this in the Padded Cell, and at first I felt I would leave it there to see where it went, but now it looks like the Hifi Corner would be the most appropriate room, so that's where I moved it.

As for my take on convenience, there's nothing quite like threading up a reel of tape to get you in the mood for listening to the music contained therein...

I used to have a 15 ips Ferrograph 632 and watching those big metal reels go round was almost hypnotic. But paying for the tape out of pocket money was a killer. And I hated the tape hiss, so once I could afford it, the Ferrograph gave way to a very nice Nakamichi cassette deck with Dolby B (which currently still languishes in my loft underneath my Thorens turntable.)

best

David

Richard Dane posted:

David, I know you posted this in the Padded Cell, and at first I felt I would leave it there to see where it went, but now it looks like the Hifi Corner would be the most appropriate room, so that's where I moved it.

As for my take on convenience, there's nothing quite like threading up a reel of tape to get you in the mood for listening to the music contained therein...

Richard,

I have to agree.

I have a Revox B77 (in need of repair) and a refurbished Pioneer RT-909 that I love playing, even although I have no decent pre-recorded tapes that can be played on it.

Are you lucky enough to have a deck that is capable of playing masters from 'The Tape Project', and lucky enough to have a deep enough wallet to buy some tapes? When I decided to get my RT-909, I did so on the basis that because it would not be compatible, I couldn't be tempted into the madness that is the world of master tape replay, much as I would love to participate.