I’ve never understood ripping vinyl

Wow…you listen to 13/8 ips? (Cassette Tape speed)…and I’ve never understood ripping vinyl…but that’s just me…but I’m glad your enjoy listening what ever your taste is.

BTW…You do not need to rip in FLAC to get Roon to play it…I use WAV and works great with Roon as any digital format should work.

I ripped my vinyl 24/96. I can now play it all over the house and on my portable players so it is convenient. The programme also had an excellent de clicker for my ‘teenage party’ vinyl.
If I want the full experience I use my turntable.

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An older article, but it makes the point. I have been ripping vinyl for a long time. I even used to rip to a Betamax.

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Vinyl is a lossy medium…every play takes a little out of the pressing so at some point with enough plays you will get to a point of noticeable difference from a new pressing, as does wear on the stylus. The same is true of Tape as the tape wears and so does the head too.

Plus the fact that not all Vinyl is available on Digital streaming - means that ripping ones collection is a desirable thing to do.

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WAV has a much less rich tag system compared with FLAC, FLAC decodes to the original PCM lossless so you don’t gain by using WAV you lose flexibility in tagging and take up more space :relaxed:

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You don’t have to tell me about vinyl as I gave up that tedious religion over two decades ago…and I was fully into vinyl…VPI record cleaning machine, Special Fluid to put in the VPI cleaner, then of course all my Mobile Fidelity albums had to be stored in special Mo-Fi record sleeves Yada Yada …So then when you rip vinyl you get to hear the digital version of Stylus drag???.. To say nothing about feedback…unless your TT is located in another room, then at loud listening levels feedback will get into the microphonic stylus that effects low frequency playback… Then as you play your vinyl, the grooves get sloppier and sloppier …then when your stylus is worn and you replace it, the stylus tip has to have the exact same dimensions as the previous stylus tip or it will not track like the previous stylus that played it…more tracking error…then after all that prep…should I listen to one cut or the whole album…??? The whole vinyl religion, now that digital has made such tremendous advancements in the last 20 years that vinyl simply has no practical use anymore (except novelty to the young kids)… through in that I can listen to Frank Sinatra one second and and the Rolling Stones the very next second …vinyl really has no place in my music listening enjoyment what so ever! Ripping vinyl is a total waste of time…IMHO!

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Ahh but maybe the beauty isn’t flicking from one track to the other, it’s knowing that you are listening to a side of music because you can’t be bothered to get up and change it so you relax more.

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I rip vinyl that I cannot find on stream or CD, so it makes perfect sense. Admittedly there aren’t many but they are out there…

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I recently finished a project to rip my vinyl albums that hadn’t already been replaced by cd rips or downloads. There were 300 or so albums.

My reasons were: a) I still maintain a local library, just in case, even though I have pretty much moved to streaming, b) I salvaged a little of the money spent purchasing those albums and expanded my local library in the process, c) some of the albums aren’t available on streaming services, and d) it was interesting and fun.

Some of the albums weren’t worth ripping because of condition or being not very good music in the first place.

The sound quality of the albums that were ripped is surprisingly pretty good after cleanup with digital tools.

Digital playback sounds almost just like playing the album on a turntable, with all the “warmth” (euphonic distortion?), but moreover it’s nostalgic, especially when played back through my 1970s Advent speakers. You can almost smell the incense and, uh, whatever.

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Yes, it can be very good. Especially since vinyl used to use a different mastering than CD. And, it is ALL about the mastering actually. So, there are very good reasons for ripping vinyl if you have it.

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we all have our crosses to bear but I wasn’t so much directing at you but your comment in general as to why one might want to rip - to save their precious vinyl :slight_smile:

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Ahhh, but it’s only for Mac.

I grew up with vinyl, but when cd’s came out, I couldn’t switch fast enough. Later, when computer audio was new, again I was right there from the beginning. Vinyl rips? Yeah, right! Perhaps for that never to be found again rarity, but otherwise, you can’t beat the quality and convenience of FLAC files with Roon.

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I still enjoy listening to vinyl, fairly regularly. To me, the tedium of ripping and tagging CD’s, and especially fixing tags on my mostly classical collection, is barely tolerable. Thus, my progress with CD ripping over the years has been fairly glacial. Adding the operation of digitizing in real time, with no online database to work with, makes it a non-starter for me. I take very good care of my vinyl and have a large enough collection where any given disk is unlikely to be played more than once a year. For me personally, I find putting a record on the RCM (if it needs it), clamping it down and sealing the edges on the SOTA, and lowering the stylus onto the record, practically guarantees listening to it is going to get my full attention.

BTW I have low tolerance even for fixing the tags on stuff I download from HD Tracks–necessary on many of the classical titles…

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Man another rabbit hole to go down is the amount of time and money I have spent on Turntables. Once I learned how vinyl master were made with the cutter 90 degrees, moving the back of the cutter arm the same speed as the cutter. So then then “Straight Tracking” TT’s where the only ones I was interested in. I gave many a shot…first ST TT was the Harman Kardon, which I really liked for it’s operation. Then I just had to try the B&O straight tracker…beautiful table! Really liked how the arm would “put itself away” after use. My last one was the Yamaha straight tracker…which produced wonderful musical listening…But nothing compares the listening ease of Roon! I’m even getting use to 1.8 :+1:

I have several Linear tracking tt’s. technics SL7 was my first, then I went on to have Beogram 8000 that’s seen better days, a Sony (forget the model) and my DIY TT with a transfi terminator pro airbearing arm, and a bunch of other brands (Lenco, Clear audio) bits. I have 8 TT’s in the house

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Mr. Wizard,

C’mon…you’re joking me …right? 8 turntables??? I gotta give you credit to building your own DIY Straight line tracking table…I just don’t know if I have ever run into someone who’s a 8x masochist and a mechanical marvel! How can you possibly make use of 8 TT’s …and also belong to Roon…You sir are very unique! I’d love to be a fly on your wall and watch how and how often you listen to those 8 tables versus Roon.

Sadly not getting time to spin the black stuff these days but 3 of the tt’s are past the use by date and need some TLC to get with the program again. But it’s fun to go there now and then, even the mrs gets into the vinyl too…so couldn’t be happier about that.

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I think I remember the review of that tonearm. Isn’t it an air blown one? Ingenious if it’s the same as I remember.

Yes that’s probably the one…I did have a go at making my own but I think my wife took pity on me and got Vic’s Terminator Pro arm to get me going.

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