Sound thoughts………..,
Jack Graham my teaching partner and dear friend is a former, killer trumpet player with credits like playing for such luminaries as Frank Sinatra and many others! Jack is a real audiophile, I’m just a music lover! When I’m not shooting or teaching, or writing or doing honey do’s around the house, I retreat to my listening room for some music! Jack recently insisted I get a turntable and get into vinyl, he is really in to vinyl….. around 1,000 albums into vinyl! He has a great youtube channel called Straight Talk With Jack all about music and mostly vinyl! So when I wouldn’t buy a turntable, (I knew where it would lead!) he sent me one, what a friend!? So I’m up to around 40 albums and I wanted to share what I’ve learned! Jack is a classically trained musician. I’m a hack that loves all kinds of music, symphonic to rock, bluegrass to Sinatra and everything in between! My system is a mix of old and new stuff and not hardly “audiophile grade stuff either”. My old speakers are Polk SDA2 giant floor standers from the 80’s, the small ones are newly acquired Elac Reference Debut bookshelf units that sound fantastic but can’t match the Polks!
My amp is a NAD and I have two CD players, an old Sony ES model from the 80’s and a new Rotel Tribute, they both sound equally good, hard to beat CDs! Jack sent me a Audio Technica turntable with a Ortofon Red cartridge the sounds great! Thanks Jack…… really was very nice of you! Speaking of CD’s I have well over a thousand! The shelf unit between the speakers is my complete collection of 50’s-60’s rock n roll. The large cabinet below is all the rest!
This room used to be a projection room where I taught classes and produced slide shows in the film days with old slide projectors, remember those!?
So back to vinyl, I’m enjoying it very much but I think it is more about the experience than anything. They are lot more trouble, cleaning dusting, proper storage, the liner notes and that awesome analog sound are some of the reasons people love them. I don’t love the pops and cracks but I do have to say it is kind of romantic spinning old albums, and listening to the whole side at a sitting! The analog sound is different, not better, but different and it is vey nice to enjoy! I am trying to stop buying albums when my box (which holds 50) is full, pray for me!!!!!!
Thanks Jack for re-introducing me to the joy of relaxing to some great music, I’ll loan you any of my extensive Kenny G collection anytime you would like!! 😉 Inside joke between Jack and I!!!!!
Smiles, giggles and blessings,
the pilgrim
This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 25th, 2022 at 7:39 pm
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Glad to see you got rid of that spam post. Hope your account wasn’t compromised.
Not sure how to stop them, changed my password, but it didn’t help!!!!
I know how much Jack loves Kenny G…lol..I’ve been tempted to do this since watching the Bosch tv series …. I know you are enjoying this…Wonder if anyone has an eight track collection out there..haha. Have fun! If I’m up by there some time, I’ld like to stop in and listen a little…but maybe I should’t…it may end up being expensive.
Please come by…..at your own risk!
I am back into vinyl some now also. I run an old Pioneer direct drive table I got back in the 80’s used at a pawn shop. I decided to upgrade the old cartridge and went with the Ortofon red also, but wished I had gone to the blue…
I’m torn on what I think as I have moved back into it. I think part of the experience before was with full analogue recordings that were pressed to decent vinyl. We didn’t have remote controls or phones or a lot of the other distractions. You sat and could listen. You felt like you were an active part of the listening experience dropping the needle, and maybe perusing the cover art and inserts. There were dynamics and because there was no remote, it allowed you to get the full range on a well engineered recording. Now, many of the new pressings are after the digital mastering. The loudness wars have compressed most dynamics so that when they are streamed, they are all at the same level and you lose the dynamics. That and fiddling with the remote, having the other distractions, etc have kind of killed it. But when you find one that has been allowed to have all the range intended and not compressed, well pressed on clean vinyl, and you can sit and let it wash over you, there is magic still.
Drop the needle on a good pressing of Miles Davis ‘ Kind of Blue’ and that is perfect. A newer pressing of even Dark side of the Moon that comes from digital, is just missing something that the old stuff had. Over all, I’m enjoying the vinyl resurgence, but maybe mostly nostalgia.
Well written, well expressed and fully understood! Happy Listening!
I have well over 100 vinyls – more probably like 200-300. I have a about 50 of the Quartets (Statesmen, Blackwood Brothers, etc) from the 50’s/60’s that have not been played or only once or twice. While I have this collections, I still don’t have a turntable – well, I do but it is 50 years old. But you have a really decent one that Jack has shared – nice Red cartridge.
Turns out vinyls are able to produce vibrations through our speakers above and below our hearing range – digitals do not. In real life test, 95% of the people who are blindfolded and listen to both digitally produced music and music from vinyls – can tell the difference between the two types of inputs with over 90% accuracy. So while one may not be able to “hear” the difference, vinyls can produce “something” that our bodies can detect, absorb, and appreciate that modern day “digital” recording can not do.
Keep spinning, young man, keep spinning!!
Music soothes soul, new gear hurts the wallet, but it’s all good! God bless you my friend
Rather than get wordie…check out Straight Talk With Jack on YouTube… You’ll see the gear and info on jazz vinyl….. What a joy it is. I find it difficult to listen to cd’s much anymore….Analog!,,
Spoken like a true music snob, audiophile, and trained classical musician…..who knows what he’s talking about! love you man, gonna put on some Kenny G and relax!