A community discussing turntables, vinyl and the art of listening to high-fidelity music on spinning platters.
You might also want to check out !albumartporn@lemmy.world.
Big fan of using the classifieds (craigslist or what have you) to grab semi-vintage gear cheap.
You don't need a fancy amp, just something powerful enough for your speakers. Your speakers should
I have a 1970s Zenith console, so its powered. I plug in my Pro-ject into the line in. It sounds amazing in my 1912 front room. I have replaced the subwoofers with modern versions. I will probably need to change the mids someday too. The amp inside the console gets pretty warm but theres lots of air space in there for it. I wish it had sound tubes but it was one of the first years that did it without tubes.
I never use the record player that is built into it but the retro power and volume are just so awesome, cool sliders with nice funky color under a glass surface
not a great picture but here is what mysetup looks like https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/473ebc45-0a86-4caa-a38b-8dd3a3a5e395.jpeg
Wow, that setup looks great!
I will always advocate for high-end headphones over speakers myself. Speakers that work and don’t sound absolutely horrible are good enough in my book.
I will say the thrift shop idea is smart. We got our floor speakers and receiver that way and I have no complaints. I’ll spend big bucks on speakers when I hit the lottery I never play.
The room is 50%, maybe more, of a speakers sound.
To me though, you're truly missing an entire dimension (and one of your senses, touch) listening solely on headphones. I'm lucky that everywhere ive lived ive made a dedicated room for listening. They werent always ideal shapes but they worked. My current room is pretty good with some 703 panels to control reflections.
Ive always said, besides the fact there are a million distractions now, a big reason young people are not into music any more (or at least, high quality music) is they've never heard a great system in a great room. Its SO enjoyable when you hear that depth and liveliness you only get from speakers. Ive been into good sound since I was maybe 8 or 9, because my family had decent HiFi growing up that we would listen to. We liked good sound, even though we weren't as technically knowledgeable back then.
And no I'm not an old audiophile kook. Snake oil is bs and dumb. My setup is goodwill finds and total under $800 for my akai TT, magnepan SMG a speakers, hafler power amp, and an onkyo receiver for switching. Oh and a schitt cheap phono preamp. $5 Sony 5 disc changer for CD.
People are regularly blown away by my setup. And its not even that good compared to many other big spender audio folks.
Go for the speakers and get your room situated. Youll enjoy music so much more.
Solid advice but it’s not really applicable to me in all honesty. My headphone listening station consists of an SL-1200mk3, a schiit jotunheim with internal phono card, and XLR balanced out Sennheiser HD800S. I also have a splitter hooked up to a sub if I really want to feel the bass on music that relies on it.
I don’t listen to music with other people generally, and if I do it’s not in a critical listening sense so my PC speakers or the downstairs thrift store technics floor speakers are good enough. I also don’t ever want to upgrade, and given my tastes that means I need to set aside a significant amount of money at the start.
You can get powered speakers without silly stuff like bluetooth, especially if your setup doesn't include a subwoofer. I use Adam A3x speakers (I don't think they even make this model anymore) and an Adam subwoofer, though, because I'm into sub-heavy genres like dubstep.
That said, I wouldn't get new speakers just to be more analog - speakers cost money and you're definitely going to lose money even if you buy used and sell your old speakers.
My experience with powered speakers is they are only useful in very limited situations where for some reason the source just won't output that loud of a sound. That being said its sorta hamfisted and never really gives an improved output overall but you can get things louder when you need to. I have not used an amplifier but I guess that with passive will do a whole lot better. I mean mayber their are some sorta high end powered speakers that do better but I bet if they exist they would have all sorts of controls and likely are something like an amplifier in a speaker.
TLDR: Just get whatever sounds good to you; if you already have working speakers, there's no need to replace them unless they're really old / grody.
I've got JBL powered studio monitors and a powered subwoofer with a low-frequency cutoff passthrough.
The DAC/Amplifier provides the analog signal from an optical input.
I'm kinda "half" an audiophile, I can definitely tell good speakers apart from bad ones and with room speakers/"monitors" it's a lot easier to get good sound than with headphones (cone and magnet sizes).
As for vinyls, I listen to them digitized and they're around ~192 KHz in dynamic range (compared to 48 KHz for CD), and most speakers seem to be capable of high dynamic range (post 2020 production) for pretty cheap.
To help ya out, not being an ass, just educating:
Vinyls isnt a thing. Its "records" or "vinyl" as the plural.
A CD is 44.1 kHz 16 bit. 48kHz is used for DVD and movies, usually.
The kHz is the sampling rate and has little to do with dynamic range. That would be more related to bit depth. 16 bit vs 24 bit. A 24 bit wav is the highest quality you can possibly have (iirc). Now, can anyone tell the difference, almost never.
Second, records do not have higher dynamic range as a medium, because of the noise floor. Just because you digitally Rip at 192kHz doesn't mean squat (and the ADC matters hugely as well. Use an apogee ADC and see how good it sounds compared to a cheapo)
NOW ignore everything I said. The reason SOME records have higher dynamic range than a CD is because digital mastering pushed brickwall limiting on all of us (because of stupid record companies that wanted to sell more so make it fatiguingly loud). You can't brickwall a record.
I can personally attest that any CD (or file) I have, if I also have the record, the record sounds better 8 out of 10 times (IGNORING SURFACE NOISE!!). The record will almost always sound WAY punchier and dynamic and lively. This has nothing to do with the medium. It is the mastering engineer who specifically masters for vinyl that makes that difference.
IF we had better engineers that were brave and didnt have corporate influence, we would have amazing dynamic range digital that doesn't brickwall Clip at +0.2 dbfs. But we dont.
Sorry for the rant friend!
Oh no, I totally enjoyed the rant! There's nothing better than meeting someone on the Internet who is passionate about a subject, or has significant expertise who can clear up misconceptions or misinformation.
And yes I agree on the range levelling / squashing, and I think it's for radio purposes so it sounds good coming out of horrible mall speakers or low-end car stereos / smartphones. Mass market appeal, as you said.
The surface noise is obviously a problem for vinyl, but in the specific few that a friend had shown me (Nine Inch Nails), I thought it was just part of their aesthetic, because a lot of Reznor's stuff is "grainy" on purpose.
On mastering: I'm not even sure what the "new medium" would be for super high end audio, I've resorted to FLAC at Quality=11 because .wav/.raw is ridiculously large for no good reason, and internet connections are so fast nowadays (125 MB/s+) that even buying physical Blu-Ray disks is tenous given you can digitally grab the album in under a minute, versus driving to the record store.
Yep very true!
I work in audio recording and mixing so I only use wav files 24 bit 96 kHz. They're only used because plugins tend to react better with them. Plus, higher sample rate gets you less latency at the expense if CPU if recording overdubs.
It all gets down sampled in the end but I always have the master recordings.
My headphones work both ways. If I physically plug them in, I don't have to turn them on unless I want the noise cancelling and bass boost features.
My actual speaker speakers need an amp. I have a pair of RCA speakers from an old (90s) record player.
Passive magnepan smg-a's and a 2 ohm hafler power amp!
Once you hear Maggie's you dont want anything else. And these aren't even the best ones! Saving up for a new pair of lrs+..
