Getting old...?

[Haselsh1]

I may be at 51 getting old but it's having a profound effect on me at the moment. I am at this very time, reducing my collection of vinyl to an absolute minimum and replacing all of the really important stuff with compact disc. Given that most of my listening pleasure is older and therefore not deafeningly loud and compressed to death, I feel that it suits CD quite well and therefore does not really need to be on vinyl. I find that the older recordings of say Brand X and the like are well suited to CD playback so that is where I am aiming.

My Croft pre/power imparts a distinct warmth to the sound that also suits my older music and takes any edge off the inherent sound of CD so as I am sure you are aware, I am tailoring things accordingly. I use a Caiman DAC which I find is very laid back compared to my Original CD player and at the moment, I'm very satisfied overall with what I have. I fear that I am letting down the 'old school' but I know that I am moving on and that this is important in life. All I have to do now is replace all of my Quantic albums with CD and the process will have well and truly started.

At some point in the future I may sort out my life financially at which point I shall obtain a decent CDP but for now, things are doing just fine and I am really looking forward to getting fully into CD. RIP black vinyl. I shall miss you.

[Ali Tait]

I'd say it would be more cost effective to go down the streaming route with something like the Squeezebox Touch. Much cheaper than a good cd player, and with the addition of a good dac, will sound as good as anything out there.

[John]

Agree

[MartinT]

Interesting, Shaun. I too am 51 and I find myself playing more vinyl now than in my previous two decades. I do agreee that this is the kind of age where life affirming things can happen and perhaps this only goes to prove that we each have different ways of embracing it. I very much live for and enjoy every day now and consider each one a bonus due to recent events that have made me re-evaluate everything.

For me, vinyl still very much does it.

[Rare Bird]

I decided to dump vinyl sometime back for many reasons, i could no longer be dealing with getting off my arse every 20 mins or so to turn over, the hastle vinyl more often that not gave me, surface noise on quiet passages etc etc drove me nutz..I do miss the overall sound as i miss the hands on, the record sleeves, the smell of vinyl etc, but mostly the sheer space the records took up was getting out of control..To overcome the sleeve fettish i now buy card sleeve CD editions (mini LP CD's) that make me excited in a way i was back when i first ever bought the vinyl, jewel case editions to me are just cheap junk, have no real value to me. As pointed out by Shaun, you can manipulate the CD sound to give you a near vinyl listerning experience..I could never go back to vinyl now as my then rare Prog/Psych record collection would be worth in the region of £50,000 not that i then got anything near that for em then!

[StanleyB]

I was mentioning to my wife only this morning that it was a good thing that I was made redundant in 2006. Since then I have been ill fewer times, my hayfever hardly affects me, and my finances have improved. At 52 I have lost some outstanding and irreplaceable friends in the last 15 years, who I had hoped to grow old with. Having survived civil wars, gangland execution attempts etc. in my youth, I am grateful for getting this old at least. My vinyl is however going nowhere.

[Ali Tait]

Was good for us too Stan, your dacs would be very hard to beat for the money!

[StanleyB]

Was good for us too Stan, your dacs would be very hard to beat for the money!
And so are the mods I have been told;).

[Ali Tait]

Yes indeed,the passive mod is a big step up in performance IMHO.

[Haselsh1]

I sit in the hot seat, it's dark and slightly warm and cosy and there are the strains of beautiful music starting to play on the Hi-Fi. Twenty minutes of listening to this music in a gloriously semi-conscious state and I have to get up and turn the bloody vinyl over...! I have had enough...!!

From now on it is going to be CD played via my Caiman through my Crofts and out of my Dali's although I am toying with the idea of changing my speakers for a smaller, stand mount pair. The Dali's really are a bit too big for my lounge.

The decision is made and I'm sticking with it.

[Grez]

I suppose I'm comparatively young at almost 44 but I can't see me ever getting rid of my vinyl. I don't see anyone releasing some of the stuff I've got on any other format (eg Martin Jenkins' Carry Your Smile) and so I really don't mind sticking with it.

[goraman]

I am doing the same thing,The thing that suprised me most is how good Apple lossless and wave sounds(no diffrent than Redbook) so I'm useing a Apple TV (modifid) as a music server into a stand alone DAC.

I beats out my Music Hall 25.2 CDP that has been modded!
So why not put all your CD's in one large hard drive and box up all the media and simplify your life.

I will soon be selling my LP's and the whole rig.

[Haselsh1]

The average life of a hard drive is five years. I don't want to have to start again from scratch every five years. I'd rather use a CDT into a DAC and keep my CD collection.

[Ali Tait]

Just buy a couple and keep your stuff backed up. Something like the Drobo is good,it has 4 drives which can be swapped anytime with no loss of data.

[Covenant]

Although I have been 'digital' for a few years I have not been able to part with my record collection which is stored away in a cupboard. How could I get rid of Relayer or Nursery Cryme? To open the cover is to go back 30 years.

[DSJR]

The average life of a hard drive is five years. I don't want to have to start again from scratch every five years. I'd rather use a CDT into a DAC and keep my CD collection.

You know it's going to pack up now, but I have a backed up IBM drive which has been thrashed for ten years or so and it's still running quietly with no major errors. I do a full disc-check regularly though. mind you, I have one of a pair of Maxtor drives from 2004 and one of these is a bit naughty, needing regular TLC.

[hifinutt]

I'd say it would be more cost effective to go down the streaming route with something like the Squeezebox Touch. Much cheaper than a good cd player, and with the addition of a good dac, will sound as good as anything out there.


i just got a sonos and a fed it into my dac but its not a patch on my cd2 fed into the dac [weiss dac2]
huge difference in quality of sound and sense of presence

[Haselsh1]

It's absolutely amazing what a difference the quality of the one's and nought's makes. I shall stick with my collection of CD's and my CD player into the Caiman as it gives amazing quality that I am happy with at the moment.

[Rare Bird]

I'll stick with my wonderful 1985 CD player through my DAC aswell.

[Haselsh1]

Nice one Andre.