Yes, I know, not another one of these threads, but I am really stuck. I currently have an all digital setup, streaming and stored digital files and ripped CD’s on my Innuos Zen mkIII via Chord Qutest to a PrimaLuna EVO 400i. I have been contemplating adding analog to my system, like a Clearaudio concept table and Hana cartridge. I am NOT hear to debate which one is better. Is it because of sonic qualities or just the nostalgic reasons of spinning vinyl. I just don’t know if I want a turntable because it would be new gear to play with or if I think it has sonic qualities that I am missing with digital. I would have to buy new vinyl as I really only have a few of my albums from when I was teenager in the 80’s, and that was my last experience with vinyl. Maybe I should just put the money towards upgrading digital components. Am I missing something truly special in the audio world if I’m all digital? Thanks for your thoughts
Wow, thanks you guys helped me figure out this is way too complex. I’ll stick with digital
I'm not you but based on reading the first half of the thread (the part that is on topic) you're probably making the right decision. Though, you can get past the setup complexity by paying someone to do set-up for you. Vinyl is not about convenience. In some ways it's a constant fret.
A different path to the same place is to ask yourself how do you use a remote control? Do you listen to individual songs or an entire album at a time? If you like to mix things up using the remote, you can do something like that with vinyl but it's not really 'fun' - get up stop the tt, take the record off, put it away, take out another record, mount it on the table, cue the tonearm to the song you want, then sit and listen for the length of the song - rinse and repeat.
Something no one remembers to mention is one of the main reasons people left vinyl and started using CDs, namely scratchy, noisey records. That translates to the relative necessity of cleaning your records. You can do that for a while with new records using a brush, but if so they'll eventually become scratchy and noisey. At some point you'll need to wash your records and unless you want to spend a lot of time on that, you'll need to acquire a vinyl cleaning machine. Actually not eventually - it should be part of your initial budget.
Vinyl can sound better than digital although it takes a fair amount of money to get analog sound beyond really good digital. A question for someone considering adding another source: do you want two fairly decent source systems or would you prefer one really good one?