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My experience with that older stuff is positive, time after time. I like to give people stereos to hook them into our hi-fi world. I find the $20-$75 vintage, all metal stuff Marantz, Rotel, Pioneer, Sansui, Harmon Kardon etc, and just clean out the switches with contact cleaner. If the caps look good I don't do anything with them. None of them have failed and all of them do their magic on the minds of my friends. Many have bass, mid, and treble controls that help dial the cheaper speakers I give away with them. On the other hand, I have chucked many newer mid-fi, chip amp, plasticky crap in the garbage can. Here is a great formula. 1: lower power vintage receiver (20-80 watts). 2: older turntable. 3: single disc CD player. 4: Small bookshelf speaker with rubber surrounds. 5: decent sub (10" or 12" only) with high level connections to take the low end load off the bookshelfs. Use your experience to dial it all in, including placement of the speakers and adjust all the controls for the recipient. The sound will surprise the heck out of people. And if you spend just a few minutes telling them what they are hearing they will be hooked. If you can, hook their I-pod station (plastic crap) next to the other system and play each. Wowser!
Tubes are great if you can find 'em, but I am talking about early-mid '70's silver-faced solid state gear, like Marantz, Pioneer, Sansui, Technics, etc.They are robust, and usually all you have to do is open 'em up and get contact spray cleaner into the controls, or replace a few bulbs. Kinda hard to screw up. I've even gotten lucky touching up cold solder joints (fairly easy to see on the bottom) or finding something obviously burned and replacing it.
You mentioned you have a sound card....but, unless that sound card has RIAA phono equalization, it is only for 'line' sources (like CD, DVD (audio), AM/FM tuner, etc). You need a phono stage of some kind to both boost AND equalize the signal before sending on to your amp/speakers/headphone, etc. ----------------------------------------You need not HAVE TO HAVE tubes in there. Tho many vinylheads loves tubes, it was largely dying a slow death before the advent of CD in the early 80's....personally, I think, to cover up it's shortcoming with euphonic richness. I use tube (amps, not preamp) myself for that little extra richness on all sources...but it's largely not needed on vinyl (my opinion only, feel free to differ )What does add a lot of richness to vinyl is a Dual Mono architecture. Dual Mono architecture is just very helpful for vinyl - it preserves the low-ish nature of stereo separation with vinyl (inherent in both cartridges and the technology itself). There is no stereo separation issues when you hear live music (unamplified) so preserving what is there gets you a bit closer to 'being there' in your room. The old Harman-Kardon Twin Powered receivers were dual mono right back to their dual power supplies and would be a cheap ticket in on dual mono. If you don't need/want a amplifier as you'd listen thru headphones, I have some serious thumbs-up on the Mitsubishi DA-C20 Preamp/Tuner....which has a fantastic phono stage and great AM/FM to boot(and headphone). It does not have an amp...so you'd have to add that (remember, dual mono if you want the best results) later if you unhooked from your 'phones.I currently listen to a Pioneer Elite SX-A9 (receiver).....but I use my mono tube amps for amplification (bypassing the internal amp of te Pioneer). It's dual mono with dual transformers...and vinyl playback is rich and decadent. It has everything needed for 2 channel listening...including a remote. Total cost was $700 or so. It's the best preamp I've owned yet and I'm totally happy with it (and probably would be fine using it's internal amps if I only listened to vinyl...but the other 50% is FM and CD, so tubes are appreciated)http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=62043.0Regards, JohnCo-Facilitator/The Vinyl Circle @ Audio Circle
I don't have any specific equipment recommendations for you but herehttp://www.head-fi.org/ is another good site you'll want to check out. Friendly people there also.
Hello! Thanks for your answer. Some of this went a little over my head just because I don't understand model numbers, and some concepts like Dual Mono. What is Dual Mono?
I do have a small tube preamp (a presonus $100 tiny tube preamp) and a DJ Mixer which all have preamps specifically built for turntables, but I do understand that many of these new digital sound cards are made for line inputs and XLR only.... I will actually consider not having tubes now that you have said this. I just know from guitar experience Solid State always sounds worse in my opinion and many guitar players I know. So I thought maybe it would be the same with stereo equipment.
So the Mitsubishi preamp you recommend does this need an amp if I just use headphones? Could I add an amp later when I have more space to have a stereo? So my setup would be Turntable --> Preamp --> Headphones? Or is the amp necessary?
Thanks a lot for the info!!!!!!
Dual mono is two, rather than one, signal trace inside your preamp/receiver/amp, etc. Meaning, each stereo channel are independently routed from one another...so they never co-mingle. Co-mingling is not optimal for stereo separation and imaging...having it maximizes it. The best dual mono units even have independent power supplies. It is like have entirely separate preamp/amps devoted to only one channel/speaker/headphone side. It's quite delicious for vinyl
Playback may be treated differently from the 'original' event....in respect to your guitarist experience comment. You're listening for tone at the event/recording...but, often looking to just capture the original event on the playback side. So, I've found tubes mostly unneeded for vinyl playback, but I like it's euphonic/coloring affects so I use them. But, it's not a necessity as I find with CD.
If you ONLY listen to headphones, you will NOT need an amp (or your powered speakers). But, as you have powered speakers already, you're all set and ready to go if you ever want to listen to speakers instead of headphones (which, by the way, is a great way to listen to vinyl )I have seen the Mitsu preamp/tuner sold for as little as $75 on ebay from time to time. I think I paid $120 for mine. It's a great preamp built at a time when phono sections had to be good
USB is great if you want to go through the effort to digitize your LP's. LP's on an iPod still sound remarkably like an LP, although logically that doesn't make a lot of sense. I have a lot of LP's that I'll never replace on CD, so digitizing them and being able to play them in the car or while exercising is a great thing. The Projects are nice entry level TT'sThe Projects with USB also include a phono pre-amp, but no headphone amp, there is also a version of the Belari with USB.Jim C
This is what I thought. Especially with the powered speakers. I don't really want to add speakers especially if I have some I am used too, and I am glad I am not committing audiophile treason by listening to headphones... Wooh! I can definably afford $120 as well.... I might do this very soon....So I would do Turntable --> Mitsu Preamp --> Headphones/Powered Speakers? That seems pretty simple and it really only one thing added to my audio chain.....Hmmmmmm...... This could be much easier then I thought..... I also want to get a different turntable.... Are those Pro-Ject ones good? The USB ones I think? Or is USB not recommended? I don't necessarily need USB at all, and did not know if some of these additions on turntables took away from the turntable. I also heard for the Pro-Jects you have to take the platter off to change the speed.... that seems like a pretty big downfall...THANKS SO MUCH! You have helped me by leaps and bounds just now.
I find simple to really pay off with vinyl. I'm not fond of the concept of separate phono stages running into line stage preamp, on into an amp, then routed to speakers. The signal from any 5mv cartridge is approximately 400x less than line level sources (somewhat standard 2 volts). It's so feeble to begin with, that when you ask it to go down long lengths of IC's and into extra layers of rca jacks, etc, you screw up the original signal; the portrayal of the original event which you are after. Turntable --> Mitsu Preamp --> Headphones/Powered Speakers is so simple and direct, and inherently dual mono (separate amps in each speaker if you use it this way) that you are apt to get really high quality playback this way for 'starving musician' outlay There are lotsa' opinions out there contrary to what I am saying...but disarmingly simple is generally a best practice for any facet of audio, or even life itself in my (ordinary, but unencumbered) opinion. John
