Was it ever really gone?

Spinning and buying records, while remaining a niche, has enjoyed a renaissance recently as vinyl playback equipment enters its golden age.

Why, however, would anyone consider adding a record player to their audio or multimedia system for the first time, or the first time in a long time?

Because records can sound much better – more like music, less like a facsimile.

When I mentioned the idea to my wife, she exclaimed “Are you crazy? We don’t even have any records!” In this day and age, her question has merit. If an iPod is the epitome of convenience, then surely playing vinyl is its antithesis. Then why?

To capture the essence of a particular performance – whether on stage or in studio – is the recording engineer’s goal. In a perfect world, everyone would have access to the engineer’s master tapes (which affix, and establish the limits for reproducing any particular musical event).

If 192KHz – 24 bit digital copies of the masters were widely available, then perhaps they would be all anyone would need. Unfortunately, such copies are not and, in today’s age of digital rights management and the music industry’s fear of piracy, will not likely become widely available.

What about the CD’s “perfect sound forever?” Despite the high-end’s valiant efforts to extract everything the format can offer, the ubiquitous CD is too heavily burdened by its bandwidth limitations.

With a sample rate of only 44KHz and a word length of just 16 bits, there is simply not enough information available in a CD’s bitstream to satisfactorily resolve the complexity, delicacy and emotion alive “in and between” the notes.

While newer digital formats of SACD and DVD-Audio provide a high definition solution to many of CD’s deficiencies, such 21st Century updates to the CD are largely irrelevant due to an inopportune format war, a lack of titles, and the failure to gain widespread implementation.

Surprisingly, that leaves the unassuming, seemingly low-tech (and definitely old-tech) vinyl record as the only widely available, truly high definition format available to re-create in the home what the sound engineer captured on master tape.

With hundreds of thousands of titles available (new and used), and with grooves physically capturing detail in increments a tenth of a micron wide, records uniquely allow the listener an emotional, three-dimensional connection to a wealth of performances captured over the better part of the past century.

One of my audio buddies often equates a connection to music to the bond formed with a neighborhood – an afternoon’s stroll down a local sidewalk is like playing a record, while a brusque drive down its streets is like CD (with highly compressed downloads equating to a freeway drive-by).

Only while walking can the myriad details (e.g. the smell of fresh cut grass, the sounds of a family squabble, or the gleam of morning dew on flower petals) engulf and permeate our senses. Via records, the essence of a performance is laid bare when brought into the home, fully engaging the listener with the nuances of the players, performance and venue.

Although analog sources are generally acknowledged sonically and emotionally superior, it’s hard to beat the convenience and portability of CDs. However, with much greater frequency, I have been listening to music as a primary activity (as opposed to relegating music to life’s soundtrack while driving, exercising, or playing with my son).

It’s a much more focused type of listening – one which allows me to take my time and complete a few extra steps to reap the benefits of analog. A visit to the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show convinced me it is time to get off the sidelines and jump into the analog fray. Of all the high performance audio rooms I visited, the ones drawing me to sit down and actually listen were overwhelmingly those spinning 12” vinyl discs.

Turntables, cartridges, and more.

So what do you need to get started? A record player and some records would seem the simple answer, although the truth is a bit more complicated. The record player actually consists of three separate components – turntable, tonearm and cartridge – all of which need to work as a system. Additionally, since very few preamplifiers (or receivers) include the necessary phono-stage, a stand-alone phono-preamplifier is needed. But what do these elements do?

It is the job of the turntable, itself consisting of motor, chassis and platter, to hold the record and spin it at exactly 33 1/3, 45 or 78 revolutions per minute – all while allowing no spurious energy or vibration to reach the record.

This surprisingly difficult task has yet to be achieved to perfection, although a few reference turntables now approach that goal. It is the task of the tonearm to couple the cartridge to the table to allow it to precisely track the groove, again without imparting any energy of its own.

Then the cartridge itself, a transducer, reads the information stored in the record, converting the mechanical energy unleashed through the relative motion of the spinning groove (via a cantilevered needle) into a diminutive electrical signal.

The phono-preamplifier next takes that minuscule signal (fractions of a milivolt from low output cartridges – up to 8 milivolts from high output cartridges), modifies it pursuant to RIAA standards, and applies 30 to 70 decibels of gain, thereby making the signal usable by the rest of the audio system.

Buying turntables and records...