Memoirs of a new Techie owner...

[Epicurus]

OK fellas, so I got me a 1210 Mk2 'round Xmas and, a wee bit later, bought the rest of what I needed to make it sing: an Ortofon 2M Red cartridge, a digital stylus force gauge and a Musical Fidelity V-LPS phono preamp.

First of all, let me say that the manual's instructions on setting tracking force and antiskating (bias) are way off. When I did things as the instructions said, the stylus wasn't really in contact with the record and the antiskating tended to send the arm back to its rest, not to mention that the sound coming from the speakers was totally horrid.

So, out came the stylus force gauge and I set the tracking force according to Ortofon's specs (1.8gr) using the gauge as my guide and then I dialed in a 1.8 value on the antiskating knob; Also, having measured the Ortofon's height (which is, very inconveniently, NOT listed in its specs), I played around a bit with the VTA; 1.5 sounded best to me.

After I was satisfied with the settings, I sat back and listened to some records I had laying around:

Dave Brubeck's "Time Out", Norah Jones' "Come Away With Me", James Brown's "The Payback", Foreigner's "Inside Information" ('80s Greek pressing on rather lightweight vinyl), John Campbell's "Howlin Mercy", Miles Davis' "Birth Of The Cool", Alan Parsons' "Eye In The Sky", Tangerine Dream's recent remastered reissue of "Phaedra", David Gilmour's "On An Island", Eric Clapton's "Unplugged", a 160gr reissue of ELP's "Karn Evil 9", Manos Hadjidakis' 220gr remastered reissue of "Gioconda's Smile" and, finally, a 220gr remastered reissue "Mikra Asia" (Asia Minor) with Giorgos Dalaras and Haris Alexiou.

Of these records, I have the following on CD or SACD as well: "Time Out" (SACD), "Howlin Mercy", "On An Island", "Unplugged" and "Karn Evil 9".

The Techie is still stock; no tonearm rewire, no external PSU, no Isonoes, no audiophile mat, no nothing. And some of the records could use some cleaning, as static did rear its ugly head here and there.

But seriously, the comparison between LP and CD was devastating. The CD versions were pwned harder than HBGary Federal. Can anyone tell me again why we went from vinyl to CD?

[chris@panteg]

OK fellas, so I got me a 1210 Mk2 'round Xmas and, a wee bit later, bought the rest of what I needed to make it sing: an Ortofon 2M Red cartridge, a digital stylus force gauge and a Musical Fidelity V-LPS phono preamp.

First of all, let me say that the manual's instructions on setting tracking force and antiskating (bias) are way off. When I did things as the instructions said, the stylus wasn't really in contact with the record and the antiskating tended to send the arm back to its rest, not to mention that the sound coming from the speakers was totally horrid.

So, out came the stylus force gauge and I set the tracking force according to Ortofon's specs (1.8gr) using the gauge as my guide and then I dialed in a 1.8 value on the antiskating knob; Also, having measured the Ortofon's height (which is, very inconveniently, NOT listed in its specs), I played around a bit with the VTA; 1.5 sounded best to me.

After I was satisfied with the settings, I sat back and listened to some records I had laying around:

Dave Brubeck's "Time Out", Norah Jones' "Come Away With Me", James Brown's "The Payback", Foreigner's "Inside Information" ('80s Greek pressing on rather lightweight vinyl), John Campbell's "Howlin Mercy", Miles Davis' "Birth Of The Cool", Alan Parsons' "Eye In The Sky", Tangerine Dream's recent remastered reissue of "Phaedra", David Gilmour's "On An Island", Eric Clapton's "Unplugged", a 160gr reissue of ELP's "Karn Evil 9", Manos Hadjidakis' 220gr remastered reissue of "Gioconda's Smile" and, finally, a 220gr remastered reissue "Mikra Asia" (Asia Minor) with Giorgos Dalaras and Haris Alexiou.

Of these records, I have the following on CD or SACD as well: "Time Out" (SACD), "Howlin Mercy", "On An Island", "Unplugged" and "Karn Evil 9".

The Techie is still stock; no tonearm rewire, no external PSU, no Isonoes, no audiophile mat, no nothing. And some of the records could use some cleaning, as static did rear its ugly head here and there.

But seriously, the comparison between LP and CD was devastating. The CD versions were pwned harder than HBGary Federal. Can anyone tell me again why we went from vinyl to CD?

Market forces had something to do with it ! + most people i know had really cheap nasty TT's :rolleyes: and were always telling me how awful vinyl was and thank god for CD , pure perfect sound forever :eyebrows: you can even spread jam on it ! here look and it still plays:doh:

[bubba45]

I went for CD's because they were convenient - smaller packaging, lighter weight, more robust and they sounded as good if not better than the cheap n cheerful TT I had.
I was moving around from rented place to rented place for many years and must've lived in about 17 different houses or flats or rooms in nursing accomodation from 1998 to 2003.
It was easier to box up and move 200 cd's and a CD mini sytem than have LP's / TT / amp / speakers etc.
since 2003 I've moved once and I'll be staying put for the next few years at least so I now have a couple of TT's and amps and a few hundred LP's. If I was still moving around I probably wouldn't.

[MartinT]

CD is a great convenience format, so I won't knock it. However, it doesn't have an encoding standard that is really good enough, thus all the technologies used to make it sound better. Thank goodness Sony won the argument over Philips otherwise we'd have a 14-bit standard :(

Good records played on a good deck do tend to show CD the way, however. It's good that we can still enjoy this level of reproduction despite the best efforts of the record companies.