Adding a turntable to a fairly high end HiFi system: Help me

Adding a turntable to a fairly high end HiFi system: Help me

Author
Discussion

TorqueDirty

Original Poster:

1,500 posts

218 months

Monday 4th May 2015
quotequote all
Hi Folks,

Lately I have been wondering about the value of adding a turntable to my Hi-Fi system.

I'm intrigued about the relative merits of Vinly vs CDs and having never owned a turntable I am rather tempted to get one. Of course I have no LPs either so this will be an expensive foray in to an older but I gather potentially more rewarding music format.

I'm a bit pissed off with CDs at the moment to be honest. My current HiFi set up is pretty good (IMHO), and more often than not it simply shows up how badly mastered most CDs are.

To really explore the pros and cons of vinyl I suspect I might need to buy something other than a budget deck but I really don’t want to spend silly money on what is essentially an experiment.

I regularly lust after such things as the Michell Orb and SE decks, along with the iconic Linn Sondek LP12s etc but I really can’t justify the expenditure.

Current main Hi Fi set up:

Musical Fidelity A308 Pre and Power Amp (with the full component upgrade recently done on the power amp)
Musical Fidelity A308 CD
Monitor Audio Studio Gold SE speakers
Good quality interconnects and speaker cable (£500 for the speaker cables sent a few shudders through the bank balance I can tell you)

So, is it worth adding a turntable to my system and if so what second hand deck do you folks recommend? I’d love to think I can spend under £300 and still get something that will tell me if Vinyl is worth exploring further.

Cheers
TD

deeen

6,079 posts

244 months

Monday 4th May 2015
quotequote all
Vinyl will give you a different sound, not sure about "better"! As usual, all in the ears of the beholder...

Could you "cheat" and borrow a mid range turntable for a week, from somewhere?

Sorry I don't know anything about the secondhand market, but in the true sprirt of PH...

Going back 20 years (ahem) to when I was buying these things new, I went straight from a Rega Planar 3 to a Pink Triangle, couldnt see any worthwhile steps inbetween...

So I would say look for a secondhand Rega with a reasonable arm and cartridge. Very sensitive to positioning though!

Brian Trizers

66 posts

108 months

Monday 4th May 2015
quotequote all
MF amps tend to have decent phono inputs (my A5 integrated does, anyway) so you're off to a good start there. I have an old (1988) LP12 that I bought when it was three years old because it simply blew away the more affordable new turntables (both Linns) I'd auditioned. It's had a couple of services but I've not gone down the upgrade path and I still enjoy listening to my LPs on it. I'm thrilled that new vinyl is available again, even though it's expensive at £20 or more. A new album is an event again.

I think used might be a good way to go for you too; I can't see a £300 turntable living up to your MF CD player. I suspect the current fashion for vinyl among those who've never previously had it may perversely work in your favour: yes, it may drive up used prices, but there'll also be those who bought turntables because they felt they ought to, then found they barely used them and sold them on, so there ought to be a reasonable choice. Similar perhaps to home exercise equipment; always plenty of that available secondhand.

Edited by Brian Trizers on Monday 4th May 14:56

Ginetta G15 Girl

3,220 posts

183 months

Monday 4th May 2015
quotequote all
Last year I put together an Ariston RD80SL with a Linn Basik LVX Plus arm and Audio Technica AT95E cartridge for my neice. I started with very much the same set up in the early '80s (albeit with an LVX and a Linn Basik cartridge. The AT95E is quintessentially similar to the old Linn K9).

I serviced the deck and added Linn springs, grommets, belt and felt mat; inspected and re-oiled the bearing.

Cost all in was around £400-450, so a wee bit above your budget, however IMHO (and as a Sondek user) the RD80 was (and is) superior to the Rega Planar 3 and very Sondek like in its presentation.

Having said that, RD80s come up fairly regularly on Ebay already fitted with the LVX (as opposed to the LVX Plus) so you could probably build one up for £300-350 if you were lucky.

Something like this (although I would change the stylus - which for the Ortophon is expensive at around £125):

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ariston-Transcription-RD...



Edited by Ginetta G15 Girl on Monday 4th May 13:49

legzr1

3,843 posts

138 months

Monday 4th May 2015
quotequote all
The 308 series come with rather good MM transformers as standard but, be warned - the variance in CD mastering is equally apparent in vinyl mastering too!

Take your £300 budget and sell your wky wires on eBay and add to the budget - replace cables with sensible alternatives and go for something like the Ariston mentioned above wink

TorqueDirty

Original Poster:

1,500 posts

218 months

Monday 4th May 2015
quotequote all
Thanks for the useful info guys.

Sounds like an ebay punt on one of the above mentioned turntables might be in order.

Thanks also for adding to my audiophile vocabulary - wky wires was not one I had come across before (excuse the pun). I'm actually very attached to my wires - they are very very good - but I will concede that they have yet to be the cause of any wking so perhaps I overpaid!








Edited by TorqueDirty on Tuesday 5th May 09:15

P700DEE

1,107 posts

229 months

Tuesday 5th May 2015
quotequote all
Another vote for a Rega 3 as a good starter deck second hand. Last year we compared a Project, Rega and an Axis and IMO the best was the Rega. Is it worth it? Probably not , building a collection of records and the potential upgrade costs to get a better turntable etc. can seriously affect your ability to spend on cars winkMe, I was brought up on Vinyl (no CD available) , have over 1000 albums and chose a Pink over the Linn and added a Zeta and Kiseki PHS, I still end up listening mainly to CDs for convenience.

kingston12

5,473 posts

156 months

Tuesday 5th May 2015
quotequote all
I think that second hand is the best way to go. There will be little to lose if you decide it is not for you.

I love vinyl and have several thousand LPs and a system based around a Michell Gyro SE. It makes up nearly 100% of my home listening and I have no intention of changing that.

Vinyl can sound better than CD, but equally the opposite can be true and you are always working against the hassles of vinyl in terms of storage, cleaning etc.

As much as I love it, I am not sure I'd actually go with vinyl if I was starting now, purely because it would cost too much to get my collection in place. I definitely think it is worth building up a small collection as a secondary source (primarily the ones albums where the mastering is better than the equivalent CD)

Brian Trizers

66 posts

108 months

Tuesday 5th May 2015
quotequote all
kingston12 said:
...I am not sure I'd actually go with vinyl if I was starting now...
No, not sure I would either. Yes, there's a lot of old vinyl out there in the shops but most (in my experience) is in binnably awful condition. I've had some decent stuff from the specialist record shop in my town, and a few more from the Oxfam Books & Music shop that gets mostly the unsorted collections of those who've gone to the great listening room in the sky, but I have to look hard for anything that shows it's been even moderately well cared for. Many of my LPs are getting on for 30 years old and have been regularly played, and even the worst are in better shape than 80% of what's in the shops.

So that leaves new vinyl, which can be wonderful stuff. Its new-found fashionability means there's more budget for decent raw material, sleeves and presentation, and a new album is a delight. My latest is Lucinda Williams's Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone, which is simply gorgeous on three heavy LPs. £20 for that seems fair value for money, but I've paid as much for single LPs in new pressings. AC/DC's new Rock or Bust was priced at £23 on release, and I'm afraid I went for the CD.

But I increasingly don't bother even with the CD. A lot of my listening comes through my various bits of Sonos kit, and mostly streamed from Deezer Elite. Access to FLAC versions of almost anything (but neither of the albums I've mentioned here) is a game changer. I can call up stuff I've read or heard about just to try out, and even old favourites I have on CD are easier to call up over the net, so I have to be very sure I want the full experience of Salonen conducting Mahler 3 to root out the CDs and listen the way I would have even a year ago.

So, funnily, I'm already seeing the CD player fall out of use while the LPs keep on spinning. But if I had no music collection or hardware at all, I'd probably be starting out now with a streamer and one or more online services. I'm amazed at how suddenly this has happened to me; must have reached one of those tipping point things I keep reading about.

Edited by Brian Trizers on Tuesday 5th May 12:07

fulgurex

85 posts

113 months

Tuesday 5th May 2015
quotequote all
T-Mobile
Brian Trizers said:
No, not sure I would either. Yes, there's a lot of old vinyl out there in the shops but most (in my experience) is in binnably awful condition. I've had some decent stuff from the specialist record shop in my town, and a few more from the Oxfam Books & Music shop that gets mostly the unsorted collections of those who've gone to the great listening room in the sky, but I have to look hard for anything that shows it's been even moderately well cared for. Many of my LPs are getting on for 30 years old and have been regularly played, and even the worst are in better shape than 80% of what's in the shops.

So that leaves new vinyl, which can be wonderful stuff. Its new-found fashionability means there's more budget for decent raw material, sleeves and presentation, and a new album is a delight. My latest is Lucinda Williams's Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone, which is simply gorgeous on three heavy LPs. £20 for that seems fair value for money, but I've paid as much for single LPs in new pressings. AC/DC's new Rock or Bust was priced at £23 on release, and I'm afraid I went for the CD.

But I increasingly don't bother even with the CD. A lot of my listening comes through my various bits of Sonos kit, and mostly streamed from Deezer Elite. Access to FLAC versions of almost anything (but neither of the albums I've mentioned here) is a game changer. I can call up stuff I've read or heard about just to try out, and even old favourites I have on CD are easier to call up over the net, so I have to be very sure I want the full experience of Salonen conducting Mahler 3 to root out the CDs and listen the way I would have even a year ago.

So, funnily, I'm already seeing the CD player fall out of use while the LPs keep on spinning. But if I had no music collection or hardware at all, I'd probably be starting out now with a streamer and one or more online services. I'm amazed at how suddenly this has happened to me; must have reached one of those tipping point things I keep reading about.

Edited by Brian Trizers on Tuesday 5th May 12:07
I agree that a better, more flexible, digital source is a good way to go. Sonos is definitely NOT a good choice for sound quality. It is acceptable but unlikely, even with FLAC files, to sound as good as a good cd spinner. It has a low accuracy clock and resultant high jitter. However there are many very good digital streamers. If you can connect to a dac using asynchronous USB, you get round some of the clocking issues. Also if you go to HD tracks and similar sites, you can download high resolution music which can sound way ahead of cd.

Brian Trizers

66 posts

108 months

Tuesday 5th May 2015
quotequote all
fulgurex said:
Sonos is definitely NOT a good choice for sound quality. It is acceptable...
Not sure if that's written from first-hand (first-ear?) experience, but I've been very pleasantly surprised by my Connect, considering it cost me (pre-owned) £200. I bought it mainly because I already had Sonos players elsewhere on the house and this was the easiest way to add the living room to the network, but it certainly doesn't disgrace itself, whatever the paper specs might suggest. A stronger DAC is on the radar but I'm not feeling it's essential at this point, and I love the freedom to explore that I get from the Sonos-Deezer combination.

As noted, though, the turntable and CD player are still there, so it's one option among three - and one that's good enough not to put me off using it; quite the opposite.

Anyway, back to black vinyl. wink

sparkyhx

4,143 posts

203 months

Tuesday 5th May 2015
quotequote all
Brian Trizers said:
MF amps tend to have decent phono inputs (my A5 integrated does, anyway) so you're off to a good start there. I have an old (1988) LP12 that I bought when it was three years old because it simply blew away the more affordable new turntables (both Linns) I'd auditioned. It's had a couple of services but I've not gone down the upgrade path and I still enjoy listening to my LPs on it. I'm thrilled that new vinyl is available again, even though it's expensive at £20 or more. A new album is an event again.

I think used might be a good way to go for you too; I can't see a £300 turntable living up to your MF CD player. I suspect the current fashion for vinyl among those who've never previously had it may perversely work in your favour: yes, it may drive up used prices, but there'll also be those who bought turntables because they felt they ought to, then found they barely used them and sold them on, so there ought to be a reasonable choice. Similar perhaps to home exercise equipment; always plenty of that available secondhand.

Edited by Brian Trizers on Monday 4th May 14:56
totally agree with all this £300 new is unlikely to match your current kit, buy second hand.

Brian Trizers

66 posts

108 months

Tuesday 5th May 2015
quotequote all
...and then if you decide vinyl's not for you, you should be able to sell it for as much as you paid for it - or as near as makes no difference. Not so with new kit.

fulgurex

85 posts

113 months

Tuesday 5th May 2015
quotequote all
Ŷ
Brian Trizers said:
Not sure if that's written from first-hand (first-ear?) experience, but I've been very pleasantly surprised by my Connect, considering it cost me (pre-owned) £200. I bought it mainly because I already had Sonos players elsewhere on the house and this was the easiest way to add the living room to the network, but it certainly doesn't disgrace itself, whatever the paper specs might suggest. A stronger DAC is on the radar but I'm not feeling it's essential at this point, and I love the freedom to explore that I get from the Sonos-Deezer combination.

As noted, though, the turntable and CD player are still there, so it's one option among three - and one that's good enough not to put me off using it; quite the opposite.

Anyway, back to black vinyl. wink
Yes, definitely first hand. I use Sonos too. It's a very convenient multi room music player. I also use a Squeezebox Transporter locked to a DCS master clock. Much much better sound. I also use an Aurender to store downloaded music; better again. I'm not knocking Sonos which is great for what it does but the OP is looking for an alternative to cd because of sound quality concerns.

Brian Trizers

66 posts

108 months

Tuesday 5th May 2015
quotequote all
fulgurex said:
...but the OP is looking for an alternative to cd because of sound quality concerns.
Not quite; the OP is curious about vinyl, rather than in a rush to chuck out digital.

But my Sonos comments were more to do with the would-I-start-with-vinyl-now? subplot. The Connect is my first 'proper' streamer, in that it plays FLAC files through my proper amp and speakers, rather than MP3s from my iTunes library through the kitchen portable, and I'm surprised that I (apparently) value convenience and flexibility over ultimate sound quality. If a comparatively basic - but convenient - unit can be so pleasing, a higher-spec Naim or Cyrus streamer - with the right service to feed it - ought to mean there's no need for anyone who doesn't already have a CD player to buy one now. Mine is 20 years old and I doubt I'd replace it if it went phut; I'd spend the money on ripping, storing and streaming hardware instead.

kingston12

5,473 posts

156 months

Wednesday 6th May 2015
quotequote all
I was an early Sonos adopter, and it was one of the things that drove me back to vinyl!

I love the idea of it, but the reality is that I spend more time trouble-shooting why it isn't working than enjoying the music. I have been through several routers and wireless set-ups and I still get drop-outs.

I think it is due to the fact that I live in a built up area. The support is very good, but I think I will scream if I hear the words 'Unplug all of your network devices, reboot your router and connect everything up in this order' again. Sorry, too much hassle just to listen to music.

Sonos still provides my music in kitchen/bedrooms etc, but the Connect is unplugged from my main system now and have been replaced by a Mac Mini running Audirvana. I actually don't use it that much, but it sounds good, is easy to control and at £500 is a hell of a lot cheaper than setting up my vinyl rig and collection again. That's what I'd do if starting again, but then if the OP has the vinyl itch.....

TorqueDirty

Original Poster:

1,500 posts

218 months

Wednesday 6th May 2015
quotequote all
Thanks for the excellent responses folks!

Very useful to know that the mastering on LPs is often equally poor, in addition to vinyl clearly being harder to get hold of.

I do love the idea of having a beautiful looking turntable to complement the rest of the system, but I'm pretty sure that it would not get a great deal of use - hence the relatively sensible budget.

However, you lot have definitely piqued my interest in the whole streaming thing as well. I had always discounted it on the assumption that the sound quality would be crap but I suspect things have moved on a lot recently.

Are there really systems out the now that would offer me the same quality as a really well mastered and recorded CD? If so then this is certainly something I'd like to explore, particularly since I'd like to expand on the variety of stuff I listen to. What sort of money are we talking about for the kit and a subscription?

TD

Brian Trizers

66 posts

108 months

Wednesday 6th May 2015
quotequote all
TorqueDirty said:
Are there really systems out there now that would offer me the same quality as a really well mastered and recorded CD!
In principle, streaming ought to be able to outperform CD. The recording and mastering (ignoring 24/192 and the like for now) are the same, and the data arrives 'ready read', in the form that a CD player has to work hard to pull off the disc. A lot of the engineering in a CD player goes into making a transport that generates minimal read errors and doesn't transmit electrical or mechanical noise to the other links in the chain. In a streamer, none of this is necessary, so your budget can go into the DAC and analogue stages - and their power supplies - instead.

For me, the weakness of the high-end streamers is they are mostly designed to work with music stored in the house. Some have clients for the more popular online services but none gives the range I can access through Sonos. That's not to say I wouldn't like a Naim streamer, of course, if anyone's offering.

fulgurex

85 posts

113 months

Wednesday 6th May 2015
quotequote all
aurender gives you both locally stored music played from ssd plus Tidal streaming at cd resolution.

It is not a cheap solution though, but it is the best that I've used.

Hoover.

5,988 posts

241 months

Wednesday 6th May 2015
quotequote all
I bought a Rega Planet second hand about 10 years ago, and had it serviced and set-up can't knock it ... ran it with a Musical Fidelity integrated amp with Nad PP1 phono amp, the a Denon amp, then a Roksan Caspian amp, now with Roksan Kandy... still going strong.