i hate CD's!

[Fool]

Cool, I'd be interested in seeing how it all works out. What about the compression lession, where's that from? It looks like a message board discussion.

[UxKa]

b-diddy: for starters, since that turntable has a changable needle cartridge (good choice) it's really easy to change the needle. unless the seller said that the needle is new, go buy a new one. personally i use Shure brand, they arent too expensive and sound nice. $20 or so, up to $35. if the record store youre talking about doesnt have them go to a dj shop. you will need a receiver or preamp of some sort... turntables have a VERY low output level, something like 1/10 or 1/20 of cd players, tape players, etc. make sure that whatever receiver you get has a phono input, because hooking into a cd input will be so quiet you will be cranking your stereo just to hear it. i think that covers the basics.

matt: yes good vinyl is better. an easy way to tell if a record is made well is A weight, and B groove width. older records have very thin grooves which is how they fit a whole album on one record. newer records, particularly techno and hip hop, have about 2-4 songs per record. the grooves are really wide which is pretty much required for bass, and good sound. just as a reference, old albums = one record, my copy of wu-tang forever is a quadruple vinyl set.

[b-diddy]

the record player is new, so the needle better be new, too.

i just arranged for the purchase of a used reciever for $30. if i really shopped around, i probably could have got a better deal.

unfortunatly, i didnt do my homework. last night i ordered a pre-amp (15 + 10 S&H), which will probably be superfluous since the reciever probably already has one.

so right now, i've spent about 145 (turntable was 90 after S&H--whats worst about the preamp is that had i ordered it with the table i would have saved 10 bucks, and if i had not ordered it at all i would have saved 25. in essence, i made the worst move possible. call me matt millen-- 25 on the pre-amp, and 30 on the reciever). for now, i'll keep my stereo's speakers, but i'll eventually upgrade.

kind of more than i anticipated, but i also just went to the record store and bought 30 records for 40 bucks (!!). some real gems too. you really do have different choices when your shopping for vinyl.

so i think you could put together a pretty good record player for ~100 if you were less sloppy than me. theres the added plus that its pretty cool to go to an old school record shop and pick up some LP's. way better than going to borders and buying cd's.

[UxKa]

well im sure youll be happy with the setup. record shopping is the shit. my setup = about $2100 and another $5,000 or so on records lol. i wouldnt worry much about what you pay for your setup because in the end the records will cost you waaaay more.

[Vinny]

Most record players aren't self amplified, at least ones made in the last twenty years. As Herm said, you can probably find an old amp for dirt cheap, maybe even as little as 20 bucks if you don't care too much about the power.

[JS]

It's funny B-diddy posted this because the other day I was thinking about researching a similar idea.

I think the quality of Cd's is absolute shit and the way that most new albums are produced is only getting worse. The digital recording process has really hurt music, nothing sounds the same from album to stage. If you don't have the best sound system or know how to set up your sound system the exact way vocals are drowned out by overly produced arrangments overlays, and edits . Nothing beats an old fashion record and player set up. I just can't believe how frail Cd's have become, Yet the Music industry just can't figure out why sales are down overall.

[Vinny]

What we're going to have to worry about is that most masters are kept on hard drives now as opposed to tapes. The hard drives go bad much faster than master tapes do and I can guarantee that some cost cutting record company is going to screw it up and we're going to lose the masters to some modern classic.

[Uncle Mxy]

I'd imagine there's safety in backups for larger production houses.

[Vinny]

That's fine for the big names but I guarantee they won't back up everything forever. It's not as simple as just making a backup and then you're good, you'd have to keep backing it up on to new hard drives every 8-10 years or so to be safe. Alot of stuff is going to get lost in the shuffle.

[UxKa]

any decent studio i know of still records on DAT because they know that recording straight digital onto a hard disk doesnt preserve the original sound quality.