I'm being wow'd again by my vinyl set up.
In some ways I'm too lazy to be a turntable/vinyl guy - I truly dislike the fuss of setting up cartridges especially. I'm amazed that other people can often swap between cartridges just for fun. For me it's such a hassle. But then I've also made it hard on myself because, although I'm lazy I'm also a bit obsessive about the sound quality, so I now do my cartridge alignment using this custom-made protractor:
You send the turntable/arm specs and the guy does a custom protractor for your set up.
The selling point is that this system, while ridiculously finicky, is supposed to ultimately be more accurate than the average patterns/protractors many use.
It is simply diabolically tricky to set up a cartridge, particularly my cartridge, with this thing. The lines you have to hit are border-in-on-microscopic fine. First you have to adjust the overhang of the cartridge so it hits all the points along the super fine radius line. Then tighten the mounting screw. THAT in of itself usually takes me an hour or three! THEN you have to adjust the angle of the cartridge (Left to right) using the null points, using the parallax to first align your eye to get the lines straight, and then try to get the stylus/cantilever straightened between the parallel null lines. That of course necessitates loosening the cartridge mount screw which inevitably throws off the work you've done in the previous hours nailing the over-hang. And it involves what feel like microscopic adjustments of the cartridge - on the level only brain surgeons are familiar with - WHILE desperately trying to see the null lines through a USB microscope or a high power loop. Worse: my cartridge is very low slung, so I can barely see the cantilever to begin with.
My first try as I remember took me about 8 hours (on and off through the day, taking breaks! The next I think more like 5.
I'm willing to go through this agony both because I want my record collection to sound as good as possible and because, normally, I'd only have to do this when putting on a new cartridge, which for me would be about once every 3 years. BUT...a while back when taking off a record I somehow clumsily swiped the lifting lever of my cartridge, knocking the whole damned thing loose and askew! My blood ran cold given how much work I knew I'd just trounced, and how much it would take to do it again. So I just eyeballed it back on, listening that way for the last few weeks, thinking "still sounds pretty good" though not as good as I'm used to.
Anyway, finally got around to going through the Mint Protractor adjustment process again yesterday. This time got it down to 2 hours.
The thing with stupid analog adjustments like this is, as my turntable pal puts it, "
it never sounds the same way twice. Sneeze, wear a different shirt, and it sounds different." Each time I've done the adjustment it's never sounded exactly the same - damned close, but not perfect.
I mean, we are asking to get a teeny rock to perfectly trace between two ultra small sides of a valley with micro information on each side.
This time, by as much as dumb luck as anything else, I seem to have really nailed the alignment or something because the sound is AMAZING!
It sounds so incredibly pure, so clean, so detailed...like I'm hearing down in to the molecules of a recording studio!
Ever since I got this turntable/arm/cartridge (Transrotor Fat Bob S turntable/Acoustic Solid arm/Benz Micro Ebony L cartridge) I've been impressed by the sound, but nailing the alignment seems to have pushed it further. My digital source is full res streaming through my Benchmark DAC 2L in to a Benchmark LA4 preamp. About as good as it gets. And yet when go from listening to my digital source to the LPs, generally speaking, I'm still gobsmacked by the sound of LPs! I'm not of course saying they are identical in how they sound. But I do get all that "my god that's clear, detailed, rich, spacious, realistic" etc - all those audiophile thrills - from the LP set up just like I do from the digital source.
When I combine that level of sonic satisfaction with the other elements of record listening that for me distinguish it from digital (my enjoyment of owning physical records, the aesthetics of a nice record, the aesthetics and conceptual design pleasure of the turntable, the way records aid my focusing on music etc), this is why I find myself listening to more records than my digital source. For me, the combined experience makes listening to a record feel like "a rich feast, dining out" vs digital feeling more like "fast food" (ubiquitous, easy, ever present at the flick of a finger digital music streaming).