Finding the Rhythm

Someone recently posted a link to my blog entry about epic albums on another web site, which resulted in a bunch of hits and a couple of comments (click here to read them). I also added a couple of additional thoughts in response.

One of the things Santa brought this past December was a Stanton T.90 turntable. It’s designed for DJ’s, I suppose, but what makes it of interest to many consumers as well is that it’s one of a generation of new USB turntables. Connect it to your PC, and it shows-up as an audio device. Use the bundled software, or your own audio recording software, and you can easily digitize your old record collection.

The T.90 can also be used conventionally, and has a range of output types on it. So far, I’ve not even connected the USB cable, and given my other audio gear, I probably won’t.

In any case, I’ve not digitized any vinyl at all since getting it. Instead, I’ve been using it to take an interesting walk down memory lane, and along the way, I noticed a few things.

• As I mentioned in my epic albums post, dropping the needle at the start of an LP, and listening through to the end of the side, is something most of us just don’t do with CDs, or with our iPods (by choosing an album from the menu vs. tracks or shuffling). There’s something emotional on some level to be derived from that, and while not many of the vinyl albums I’ve been listening to are epic albums, it really does bring a different character to the music listening experience that went away somewhat with CD, and definitely vanished with iPod.
• For all that people have said about audio quality, there’s a reason for the resurgence of vinyl (I’ve been reading articles about this, and if I can find some links, I’ll add them to this posting later)… The sound is better than you remember. I believe, now anyway, that CD sounded so great because we (well, I anyway) were using crap gear. My turntables and cartridges were never very high quality. But the Stanton T.90, with its good quality cartridge included in the bundle, hooked-up to decent gear (most notably playing through my studio monitors)? Well, let’s just say vinyl never, ever sounded so good. It’s incredible.
• Finally, I forgot how good some of the music in my collection was. (Yeah, some of it’s crap, too.) I probably will end-up digitizing some of it for my iPod, but I don’t think it’s going to be the same experience listening to it that way.

If you’re of the generation like I am where vinyl was king at some point in your memory, and if you still have vinyl taking-up valuable storage space in your back closet like I did, let me make a suggestion: Consider spending a few hundred bucks on a turntable, and revisiting your collection. The experience has been, and continues to be, amazing.

NOTE: Since you won’t find any of it at your local Best Buy, know that Guitar Center is a great source of turntables, and seemingly oddball items like record cleaning supplies. Thankfully DJs have managed to help keep the vinyl-supporting hardware market alive a bit, and Guitar Center is one of the only places offering this stuff readily at retail.