He must have an excellent imagination! I bet his hi fi dealer was just about to shut.... but he had a glance out of the window and saw him coming:D
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Not imagination, just a load of weird stuff in the interconnects. Get the distortion up, enhance those leading edges, everything you play now sounds 'live'.
This benefits some recordings, kills others. Shit that was what the whole 'flat earth' thing was all about, now they are doing it with cables. All that R&D they do isn't to improve the transparency of their cables. it is to give them their own sound. You won't sell cables at that price if they are just transparent, as no-one would hear the difference between them and some 20 quid efforts.
oh yes there is!:lol:
Back in February this year my wife asked me what do I want for my birthday. A nice Fender Telecaster immediately came to mind, but then I thought "I already have several beautiful guitars, why pollute the household with yet another exorbitantly expensive guitar that probably won't get much playtime anyway?"
So my second thought was "turntable?" But I immediately said "nah!"; turntables are such hassle, plus they are antiquated tech, and sound inferior to good digital hi fi.
But the little worm kept burrowing in my head, so I started slowly eyeing some turntables. Entry level Rega was selling for cheap at my local furniture store, so my first thought was "let's get Rega." But then I started reading some 'opinions' online, and started hearing a lot of praise for a moving coil cartridge Denon DL-103. So I decided to build my analogue front-end starting with DL-103, and work my way backwards. So I ordered the cartridge.
The first thing I learned once I started reading about DL-103 was that entry level turntables, the likes of Rega and Project (their entry level models), just won't cut it for DL-103. I then moved on to considering Technics SL1200; however, those beasts were rare, and if they came on the market for sale, were in a battered shape and the asking price was around $1,000.
One day, at the local record store, I saw the paper ad for Thorens 165. Called the guy and explained that I have DL-103; turned out he was running a turntable shop, and knew a boatload about all things analogue. He told me that this Thorens model is not precise enough for DL-103. He also told me to forget about Technics, as these are not nearly as good for such precise cartridge.
So I asked him to suggest me an appropriate turntable, and he said he had a pretty good match in mind. I went to his store, and he showed me the modded Systemdek IIX, with acrylic platter, fitted with modded Rega RB300 tonearm (rewired, plus some other mods). He fitted my DL-103, and supplied me with his hand made SUT into MM phono stage.
I took the turntable home, and installed it. To tell the truth, I was expecting it to sound way inferior to my digital front end. But lo and behold, it just blew the digital out of the water! Compared to digital, my analogue front end breathes fire!
The next thing I did on my 'born again analogue' journey is get me a nice RCM. After washing my records, vacuuming them, rinsing with distilled water and vacuuming again, the whole new world of shiny music opened for me. Now when I switch back to digital, I'm missing the ferocity, the 'molten lava' sound that my vinyl playback is giving me.
But for me, the most critical part of enjoying the vinyl playback is careful, thorough washing and vacuuming the LPs. Without that step, vinyl can sound pale and lifeless compared to good digital.
Depends. I know my way around Linux, so I can spend days faffing about the thread priorities and many other configuration details of my digital transport. Many of those changes modify the way my digital front end sounds, so there is much more faffing in the digital realm. Think of it as similar to how you can spend days messing with Photoshop effects and applying them to your photos. It's basically going down the rabbit hole.
Much less opportunity for such hard core faffing in the land of turntables.