'Dons what's left of my dealer hat again...'
With vinyl, SOURCE FIRST - ALWAYS!!!!!!!!! (Digital is a done deal with dacs for a ton or less, but vinyl isn't like that)
A-D encoding in the speakers mentioned, is an audibly invisible and totally straightforward thing to do, although being fairly new here and looking on subjectivist tech-ignorant forums and YouTube sites (remember that the likes of Darko are paid to do these vids and the likes of 'Uncle Paul' need to promote their products and weave his stories around them), will give you erroneous views. We here may be perceived as equally bonkers in the opposite way of thinking, but there is a great bit in the middle, where a carefully chosen low distortion system can make music involving and entertaining too. I come from an objective era in the mid 70s when I started out, went all subjective in the 80s when one would have bass-less speakers fed from a then warm and bloated sounding vinyl source which added a belt driven 'swing' as well (it still retains that - peeps here would call it dynamic wow). 'Digital' came along and all it did was show the bass-less screechy speakers we were using. I started to come out of this by the late 80s, but look back in some horror of those dark UK times and how some pals to this day, worship Linn Kans, Heybrook HB1s and related boxes...
So, a MODERN pro monitor with built-in A-D may be initially too much for you to understand or contemplate right now (I'm NOT patronising here I swear), but it works and is inaudible in operation. Our hearing isn't that good you know and most of the subjectivist tribe don't understand this at all and make up all manner of flowery prose to justify what they often think they hear. With these people, it's ALL multi-sensory and not simply hearing (I still get caught out and did fairly recently with something I was doing here in my ancient rig). They're against double-blind or even level-matched blind A-B tests as they're almost certainly scared they'd fail (all described over many old threads here so I won't labour the point further).
PLEASE ensure the phono stage has a sub 20Hz filter, as there's usually nothing musically cut on a record below 40Hz or so (bass is mono'd anyway) and it'll stop useless and potentially damaging cone-flap. ALL smaller speakers with 6" bass cones or less, will distort badly if pushed to highish levels below 80Hz or so (heavy synth notes and so on) and I have memories of a supposed bass-less track by The Police (from the Message In A Box CD set), where despite the toppy balance, Mr Copeland's kick drum caused my then speakers to 'pop.'
So please, before shelling out loads of dosh on a fancy system, could you read up on some of the speakers reviewed here - the Ascilabs now sold by Keith
@Purité Audio would make for an excellent non-KEF passive start (he has some KEFs too still I believe, so if you could travel, you might have an interesting dem - he used to be into valves and vinyl too I remember so can speak from experience here).
Hope the mini essay above helps a bit
I'm 58 and understand such sentiment, but I don't really share it.
