Was wondering how many Roon users still listen to analogue sources regularly alongside Roon such as vinyl. I have a modest collection of vinyl of around 400 and still try to use to get some of this into my listening during the week. Not as much as Roon or Spotify but its my igoto source for a lot of my collection when I want that warm feeling with a nice drink it too, not too much as that can be dangerous. It’s also indispensable for those recordings out of print and not found anywhere else.
I abandoned them once for a pure digital future, but after a few years yearned for the sound, ritual and ownership so returned to the fold.amd they happily share the love with digital.
I now have a ClearAudio Concept MC, with Nano V2 Phono Stage and very happy with them.
So how do you go, what do you still have to play them? Does it still fit in with your listening habits or is it just the only way for you to hear them now?
I left all my records to friends and family when in moved continents ~20 years ago. Since that time, I was pure digital.
A few months ago, I started to buy some records again (no big plans, only for fun) and just bought a Pro-ject Debut Carbon yesterday!
So far, I’m not impressed… I have some distortion on the left channel which makes listening to it quite annoying
I’ll check with the dealer today to figure out what can be wrong… hopefully it’s just some alignment issue.
I stopped playing vinyl 33 years ago. Never been motivated to return. I do still have a wind-up gramophone and a small collection of 78s, though. They get hauled out of the attic every couple of years for fun, and to remind myself how far we’ve come.
I have a ClearAudio Performance DC TT and enjoy using it, streaming is great but I also enjoy the process of listening to vinyl, both coexist quite happily. I believe the act of selecting an album taking it out of the sleeve and placing it on the TT somehow adds to the pleasure, sure streaming is convenient but I tend to listen to playlists or shuffles of artists or genres, Dark Side of the Moon or Wish You Were Here are better for me on Vinyl.
Out of Roon, Vinyl and Tidal I feel Tidal is of the least value to me personally.
YMMV
I do have a pretty decent turntable and I believe more than half of the records I buy are on vinyl.
Streaming has replaced CDs and works really well when you’re lazy or want just some background music, but I do like to listen to vinyl. Roon has made digital more appealing, but it hasn’t replaced analog. Nor do I see it has to.
I’ve had a turntable for as long as I’ve had hi-fi equipment and I assume I always will.
I still have 400 odd albums and 12 " singles but never really listen to them. I sold my Linn Sondek to go digital. I have a Technics SL-7 for the odd occasion, but the occasions are far between.
I was always a compilation tape sort of listener so playlists are my go to method of listening.
I go to events where they play vinyl on mega systems but I still go back and play my digital rather than analogue version.
I use both analog and digital sources but probably 70:30 for digital due to the convenience, functionality (e.g.,playlists), streaming (to discover new music), and variety (I have many more albums on my NAS than in my record rack). I have upgraded my turntable several times and am now quite happy with the sound. I don’t find there is much, if any, difference between good quality vinyl and digital (except for the pops), unlike some reviewers who swear they can walk in a room and immediately tell if there is vinyl playing. My old vinyl is in horrible shape due to abuse and playing on subpar equipment in high school and college. So most of the vinyl I listen to now is either new music or remasters of the old stuff. I listen to a lot of jazz and classical and a lot of the really good stuff from the 50’s and 60’s has never been digitized. So I buy the albums, rip them to my NAS, and then I have the option to listen either way. Unlike some vinyl listeners, I don’t get a lot of pleasure from the process of unsheathing a record, cleaning it, putting it on the platter along with hold down clamp and ring clamp, running an electrostatic cleaner over it, and then waiting for the turntable to come up to speed before I can manually drop the tonearm. Then repeating the whole process in 20-30 minutes to hear the other side. I must say that some of the best sound I have heard at audio shows has actually been sourced by R2R tape machines, so I’ve been investigating that mode of analog too. It appears to be even more work than records, if that is possible, plus the joy of trying to find, repair, calibrate, and maintain equipment that was made 20-40 years ago.
I ditched (well, skipped) all my vinyl about 10 years ago, and don’t regret it 1 bit (ouch-sorry for that couldn’t resist ;-)).
I couldn’t get past all the distortions and wear and tear aspect of vinyl, wow and flutter, end of side distortions, stylus and record cleaning constantly, static, feedback, the list goes on. Happy times! Not!
99.56% digital. I have about 400 LPs and every now and again I take out one that has been atrociously brickwalled to play on my Rega P3.
In a strange generational shift my son bought a record last year but seemed somewhat wary of playing it on my main system (those early years of warnings obviously still hold sway!) so I got him a Rega P1 for Christmas and he’s 22 today and supplied a list of vinyl for his parents and sisters to buy him.
He also takes a steady stream (see what I did there!) of LPs from my collection to play, which is nice.
Listening is about 99.9% digital.
Analog sources are:
Pioneer RT-701 reel to reel tape player. Favourite tapes include “Hot August Night” and “Axis:Bold as Love”. Also have a bunch of Classical with Dolby C and a Nakamichi Dolby decoder. A lovely novelty item to amuse guests. Hendrix sounds very hefty through this;
Rega Planar TT with a modified Rega arm and Koetsu Black MC cartridge into a step up transformer. I mounted this on a shelf, thinking it would be better isolated, but the wall vibrates more than the floor ! Rather than fiddle about with it further, I went digital.
Was able to fix it for $4, which I plan to recover
I put 2 loonies (1 dollar coins) under each of the front legs and the distortion is gone. I was doing some research and read from several forums that the Debut is really picky about the setup. That seems to be the case… I can’t remember if I ever paid attention to that in the old days.
Anyway, I think my 30 yrs old B&W speakers must have some nostalgic feelings about it as well because the sound is now amazing. They were made for this
Not planning to go plastic all the way but I will for sure keep buying a record now and then!
I love digital + Roon as well.
I inherited a circa 1970 stereo console, complete with tuner, turntable, and 8 track tape player. You know the kind that is more furniture than audio equipment. The thing is full of various tubes, must weigh at least 100 pounds. I listen to FM on it. Great warm, syrupy sound.
Only digital for me although I try to ‘recreate’ the analogue sound as much as possible.
Having said that, I love the vinyl sound and whenever I visit my dad’s place I enjoy his 1980’s Rotel vinyl setup. The convenience of digital is important for me on a day to day basis
I have a fantastic table from Grand Prix Audio and several thousand LPs. What I lack is a preamp (I run the dCS DACs direct to the amps). Ended up sourcing an old dCS 904 A/D converter and am feeding the output of the phono stage through it to the Vivaldi (using DSD). This setup ended up really blowing my mind in terms of sonic quality and overall musicality.
So, yeah, I still listen to analog, but I had to throw some digital in there just for good measure
That’s great, Andrew. I use a preamp and crossover for my Vivaldi stack, so for vinyl I have a pure analog signal in my listening room but I have a set up similar to yours in my lab where I rip LPs. Consists of a Technics SL1200GAE into a Lehmann Decade phono stage and then into a Benchmark ADC which feeds a W4S DAC-2v2SE 10Ann edition that drives a pair of Focal Solo6Be powered speakers for listening. The ADC also feeds a Mac Mini via USB where I use Vinyl Studio or Pure Vinyl for ripping. I’m also beta testing a SweetVinyl SCD-2 LP ripper but have not moved that into production mode yet.
Nowadays 95% is digital, but I do listen to vinyl. Sold almost all my records in the 90’s, but now and again I buy new ones, mostly at gigs to support the artist. I plan to make a ‘vinyl wall’ in the livingroom with all those beautiful album covers.
I still have my vinyl, but I have sold my high-end players. First the Technics SL-1000, then the Kenwood (Trio) L07D. I really miss the Kenwood! Have not played much vinyl since I got into streaming many years ago. Main reason is that I started using room correction very early and never found a good way of routing LP playback through RC. I did a few ‘needle drops’ some years ago and the sound was very good, but the ripping process - even with the brilliant Vinyl Studio - was too time consuming.
In 2012 I bought a Devialet D-Premier (partly) on the promise that Devialet would include convolution in the DSP of the amp. That turned out to be one of the promises broken by Devialet. Devialet owners will know…
Now I am waiting for Roon to create ‘the input device’. I’ll then simply play vinyl via an AD converter through Roon with convolution for RC.
