I'm a member of a couple of reddit audiophile threads where people post pictures of their rigs and most of the time they include turntables and every time I see one my mind is blown because I outgrew vinyl only a few years after buying my first CD player in the '80's. Back then I had a tape deck, a turntable and a CD player but once I heard digital I knew they was no going back yet people en mass are and I find it baffling given all the benefits of youtube. The first and most obvious benefit is, it's free. Secondly, youtube has an almost endless catalog of music, with the original music video, the karaoke versions of songs, live versions and videos that include the lyrics. Thirdly, the convenience of simply clicking my mouse a few times and opening up a world of music is pretty alluring. I always wondered about the sound quality though so I bought a CD a few years ago to compare youtube to CD and couldn't hear any difference. LP's on the other hand can only be played one at a time, require time, money and effort to obtain and play and also require money and effort to maintain and as your collection of LP's grows it obviously becomes more expensive and takes up space-something youtube doesn't yet most reddit audiophiles are flocking to them
Does the vinyl renaissance make sense to you because it sure doesn't to me
It is hard to make sense of this other than the fact that to really enjoy vinyl you must spend quite a bit of money to do it properly. To me to approach high quality IMHO you need a $1k table, a nearly $500 to $1k phono stage, and at least a $750 cart. Of course you can spend less, but are you going to even approach hearing close to all of what is in the groves? This all goes back to buy right, buy once. The upgrade path is costly. The other issue is the price of vinyl, good pressings, are not cheap. THE MIAN THING I LIKE IS THAT I CAN READ THE LINER NOTES!
I wanted to see what $200 could buy in a table today so I bought an Audio Technica LP30 TK for $208 off Amazon. It has a built in phono stage and comes with a AT-VM95C cartridge, a good $50 value for free and pre-mounted starting out and you can up-grade the stylus at will. The table runs slow at 994 for a $1000hz tone. The tonearm is easily balanced and has no horizontal float with no anti-skate, so a decent arm. It is 2 speed 33 and 45. There are other models other than this Teak plinth for more money and you can get one with a carbon Fiber Arm for $499, but basically the same table. I consider that this table will not damage your lps, a good thing. The platter speed is consistent, but slow, and I would let it run for 48-72 hours to break in the motor.
I am now using it as a 2nd table with a change out of the cartridge for a old Shure M97HE I had as a spare from years ago. I could have bought the upgrade EN stylus for $99 with is a nude mounted elliptical stylus on the same cantilever. Elliptical styli track high frequencies better. I am also using it with a $400 2 box Vincent Phono stage and would say that this combo I have enjoyed very much. So upgrading is possible. I did not try the internal phono stage. I was surprised at what $200 bought.
On my digital side I am using Project digital DAC boxes, the Stereophile A rated S2's that sound remarkable with my CD spinners. The sound is excellent and superbly convenient. The quality of sound is dependent upon the engineering of the CD, the same can be said for the LP.
I am 76 and have an extensive collection from years past and have given away many of my good tables to my older kids now. My main table is an old Dual 502 with a high torque AC motor that I paid $25 for. I replaced the bad arm with a Rega RB250 arm which I bought then for $250 and use an Ortofon OM 30 and a AT VM95E which I have tied on a lark and is sounds fine. The Ortofon OM line was very popular back in the day as it had 5 stylus choices from the 5.10.20,30 and 40 styli. that table has a nice external phono stage as well.
The weak links are always the cartridge/styli and the phono stage, which is the = of a microphone preamp for recording. You can buy one for $100, but no recording engineer would use it on anything but spoken word work. You can buy very good for $500 to $1k as well. A good recording engineer will do that.
If you don't mind the extra attention to play them, vinyl can be fun and hunting down old releases called "bin-diving", can be fun, but you must be careful as much used vinyl has been played on poor turntables and not treated well, so caveat emptor.
