Thanks to all for your post and sharing your passion with me. My budget was only 3500 for table, cartridge, pre. I really hadn’t figured enough for all the extras, vinyl, cleaning, storage etc. I was planning on buying from Upscale as I know they have an extensive analog setup department and I purchased my Primaluna from them.
I feel at this point using some of those funds and moving up in the Innuos line. I am using Qobuz for streaming, but I do purchase a lot of the albums I really like from places like HD tracks. Being the victim of burglary a few years ago I like having a backup copy in the safe.
@Ron Resnick i appreciate your analogy but Ice cream is a lot cheaper to try
I’d say don’t think too much, Vinyl is no that complicated but extremely enjoyable in the long run. Yes it’s costly but if you are in this hobby you‘ve probably known that already: everything in our hobby can be costly. Maybe I can share my vinyl story:
I started buying vinyl before acquiring a turntable, my first set up was a Dr. F Blackbrid, thales simplicity arm, Ikeda Kai cartridge and I was not even listening to speakers, instead I listened to vinyl in a headphone system which is not that ideal, that’s why I gave up quickly and sold off the turntable. Fortunately I didn’t sell any of the records.
Several years later, I finally set up a good speaker system listening to digital happily but I always had the itch to set up a vinyl front-end to to able to appreciate those records(300+) I‘ve acquired over the years. This time I wanted to do it right and went for the best Turntable I could afford which was an AMG Viella Forte, AMG 12JT turbo arm and a Benz Gullwing cartridge; Phono was a modest Luxman EQ500. When dealer helped me set all up and the first needle dropped, I know I‘ve probably made the best decision in my whole audio journey. It just sounded incredible! More density, more air, more flow, better stage, better image… and this is compared to my digital which is a killer digital front-end.
It’s been more than two years since then and I seldom listen to digital anymore, even though AMG Viella Forte is a great table it didn’t last for 1 year before I upgraded it lol, and now I’m seriously considering adding another table and maybe two more arms to play around with. Yes, Vinyl is addictive, lots and lots of fun!
P.S. If you have to buy albums, please buy vinyl, in addition to vintage there are so many great reissues out there at reasonable price. I regret every penny that I spent on downloading hirez file, you just never feel you ”OWN” any of them. Vinyl albums are much better in that sense.
Michael