Home audio & video forum: Poll: Do you still own and use a record player?

At least once a week. I have two, one a 50 year old Garrard Synco-lab 80. The other was a former DJ scratch machine, a Technics SL-82. The Garrard is the primary and is hooked to the input of a PC built just for audio studio work and mixed to the amps for listening. I find LPs at flea markets and garage sales, garage sales are the best as they most often are the relics finally meeting the end. A dime each, maybe a quarter. Total over 1,000 only about a quarter have been transposed to digital and put on CDs and an hour a week yields two more. Some were transposed a couple decades ago to reel to reel but have been redone to CD from the vinyl, not the tape. Old turntables are very rare and most are part of a entertainment center with equalizer and tuner, mostly junk. The audio quality is far and above any other media but most users neglect the most important part, the cartridge and the needle. Poor care with the vinyl surface will destroy a good needle. Worn needles will yield a mushy sound with few highs. Comparing the pure analog content impressed upon that surface to any digital media is unfair as it cannot be compared. Any digital media has had limits placed upon the spectrum to be converted from analog to digital, regardless of the uncompressed file format. Any compression squeezes out valuable content, again caused by spectrum limits and once removed, cannot be replicated. Try a little experiment, many a bit hard core but a great example. Listen to any vinyl selection you have that you also have an another media CD, tape etc. Tape will sound the best, CDs (.WAV) next and then any compressed media or rip a copy yourself to compare. The difference is glaring, the middle content, subharmonics of bass and medium notes mixed are not there. Even reducing the highs and lows to allow boosting the midrange won't work as the content just isn't there.

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I proud claim to have kept a record player working with my large stereo setup including the radio, dual tape deck, 5-Disk CD player and an equalizer with 7 levels to set on each hand, not to mention the amplifier to run them all. Having said that, I only really wanted to mention that it usually seems to not be whether or not yyou use the record player but how much or how often. I to as I saw it mentioned somewhere really only use it in case of emergency or when I can't find a digital copy of what I like listening to so much on the vinyl. The same also goes for all the many cassette tapes I have. Some are irreplaceable while others are next to unplayable. I wish like many people that I could have all my olden media converted into digital format and place on the best and safest playable source possible. These old formats possible to change are 8mm films (I tried disappointedly having them not turn out quite like I expected they should....), Vinyls of all speeds, Cassettes, VHS, small SD cards to larger ones, computer Floppies both sizes that are still functional and not too outdated, DVDs single & dual layer also double-sided, Blu-Ray (Yes I believe these new ones can be better too put on Flash Cards of greater digital volume taking up less physical space while equally if not better protected - give it time to come about), zip drives, Lightscribe discs, and anything else I might have missed. I laugh looking at the SD disc that came with my camera that is only 16Mg in size. I can put discs up to 2Gb in size in my camera, that is all it is capable of and waas when I bought it about 5 years ago. Now iphones, ipads, and etc come with that amount built in them as RAM and room for more if not already built in too. The Commodore 64 pc I grew up with in Junior High had 64K of Ram and only allowed the Floppies we see no more of as extra 1.2Mg and 1.44Mb in size. Just thought I would share the last note for fun. Appreciate what we have now, you never know just what is going to happen or how soon. Thanks, Tom.

Yes I still own a record player (two of them) and have lost count of how many vinyls I own. I have 78's, 38's (LP's) and 45's for the old 200 watt juke box...it's been a mountainous project for me to transfer the songs to CD's for me to hear in my van. There IS a difference in sound between tubes (called valves in England) and solid state to digital. With Tube amplifiers, you get that warm sound which rounds off the sound square waves a bit. Now when we went into the transistor age at first the sound was harsh, low bottom end of the sound wave was lost, until we came up with passive tone controls to bring back the low end. Now with the digital I can remove the static that has built up in the old record grooves, bring back that old clear sound like the horrible 60's sound or warm it up a bit like from the old tube sound through filters on the computer and then burn them to CD's. The problem is 'TIME'. It takes a lot of time to reformat the music to the sound I want...My music intrest is vast, from Roaring 20's swing to some now music. My record collection ranges from 1910 (78 rpm) to the 80's.