I finally got myself into the vinyl game. I bought a turntable and a few records to start. I began with low expectations but it still managed to disappoint. Am I missing something?
- No matter how careful I tried to clean the record, there were still pops and crackles throughout the playback
- I could hear the noise floor on the speakers
- The sound felt heavily colored
- The dynamic range felt highly compressed
It was a $500 turntable with >65db SNR and <0.1% wow and flutter. I suppose a high-end turntable could beat these specs but I doubt any can manage >90db SINAD. I also doubt any turntable can eliminate all the pops and crackles.
How can anyone take vinyl seriously in this day and age? I doubt even the best equipment can beat the $7 Apple dongle.
In the meantime, I am going to keep the vinyl hobby for therapeutic purposes. It forces me to tolerate imperfections and be present. I cannot fall asleep or it will just go on and on. Nor can I skip tracks I dislike.
I wonder why R2R tapes are not more popular than vinyl for retro-coolness. I have heard DSD files transferred from analog tapes and they sounded awesome. I am sure tapes (e.g. 15 ips) can be damn good. Alas, I have no space for more equipment. I will stick with digital for serious listening and vinyl for meditation.
No, you're not missing something. There's clicks and pops during playback, even with cleaned LPs. The noise floor of the LPs themselves is variable, usually not as good as it should be. The sound is usually colored. The dynamic range is compressed.
I was involved with LPs for 50 years, collecting and getting many different turntables, cartridges, phono preamps [usually built into receivers but also including preamps of various sorts]. LPs are variable in sound quality. Depending on what you're focusing on, they can be pleasant or really annoying.
The most annoying aspect for me is the off-center LP. People have suggested re-drilling the spindle hole, that never worked for me. There's low-level speed variation you might not notice unless you've got the recording in its digital equivalent or are a musician who is more familiar with the real thing than recordings. This applies to any kind of sound that is supposed to be absolutely steady, like a piano or digital keyboard. That speed variation might be due to an off-center record, or a warped record, or surfaces that are less than perfectly flat.
LPs have certain dynamic and frequency response limitations that are not necessarily present with digital formats. While brickwalled CDs are an issue, CDs don't have to be brickwalled---severely compressed, top to bottom---that's a marketing decision that only audiophiles are concerned about, and there's not enough audiophiles to move the needle for most popular titles. There are LP masterings that are better than CD re-masterings, but they are few and far between. Bass often has to be reduced in level for LPs and almost always is summed to mono. The treble has to be limited to reduce sibilance.
The biggest problem is that spiral, analog discs, have less energy as the stylus gets closer to the deadwax. The groove [one per side] starts out much faster [relative to the stylus] at the start of the record, slowing down by 60% by the time it reaches the end of the side. This means, among other things, that the inner groove is more susceptible to groove wear than the outer section of the groove. A lot of advice with turntable set-up has to do with getting the tracking angle right, and about advanced stylus tips that trace the finest groove. These things get you closer, but it's Xeno's paradox in action, you never actually get there compared to the source tape [nearly always digital these days, by the way].
There's people on this forum who have first rate turntables who have made first rate LP to digital transfers and shared them at this forum. They get very close in sound quality to digital formats, but never quite as good, at least to my ears. Appreciating LPs and turntables means accepting those things that make LPs different from digital formats. If you throw a lot of money and expertise at your LP habit, you can get something that sounds nice enough. If you are looking for that last little bit of detail, or of bass, or of dynamics, LPs will never get you there. You've already invested $500. If you put more money into your turntable, things can get better, but if you're bothered by what you're hearing right now, I doubt you'll be able to improve your LP experience to the degree that you're satisfied. A better cartridge and a fine adjustment of your turntable will doubtless improve things, but that could cost at least $500. Your money, your choice.
By the way, the reason R to R tapes never became a big thing [and never will] is that they have to be copied in real time in order to be worth the expense and effort. And the format itself has plenty of self-noise to start with. A Redbook [CD quality] digital transfer of an analog tape will have less noise and distortion than a R to R tape anyway.