Whether you want to believe that will make a difference is up to you
And this is my problem. 5k - very real : whether there's enough improvement - belief.
The fact that one might need 5k to get to a 500$ CD-player level reproduction, as you said, might be seen as a good counterargument for vinyl.
I read all the posts in this thread and it seems to me that it comes down to owning a TT because some recordings haven't yet or never will be (if the master is lost) properly transferred to CD. This might be a good reason, but for me it wouldn't justify 5k for TT.
There's a thread on how to choose a good TT
here at Audioholics. It was very nice and a surprise to see Floyd Toole putting in his two bits (and this is an understatement of the year
). That gentleman has so much merit, and BTW he got that merit for trying to stay true to the sound itself and not the style or appeal of audio gear and certainly not those "if you believe it, it will be there" approaches to the subject, that, with full respect of your life choices, I'd take his advice.
I'll paraphrase his words: building it expensive is just another way of building it good (as in: it doesn't have to be expensive).
And: a lot of CD's sound bad because they were burned from masters that were prepared for vinyl (as in distorted for vinyl to mitigate the shortcomings of the technology itself).
So, through a bitter irony, a lot of these "vinyl is true to the sound/nature/original etc. music lovers might face the fact that, although they see themselves as true to the word, a lot of original masters were lost because of that exact same technology they hold close to their hearts.
At one point you agreed with someone saying it's about mastering only to say Getz is for vinyl a post or two later. These two claims go against each other unless you used the name Getz as a metonymy.
Personally, I don't have a favourite medium, but I do like records and I grew up with records (I'm left with no TT at the moment, I'll get one). I think a huge deal about records lies with the romantic appeal of the ritual of playing them. I respect this romantic appeal, only I don't respect it more than accuracy. (this is where worldviews start so I'm not getting into that).
I think it's fundamentally wrong to ascribe emotional involvement to a piece of gear. Emotional involvement is inside of you.
This is the damage done by marketing IMHO.
People who speak for all those "not accurate or worse measurements can sound better to me" type of stances like to call "emotional" into the debate and I've noticed that through this they imagine themselves as being more life-like, human, of flash and blood. I think this is false, although I might be just as wrong. I think everything emotional lies with the artist (together with the producer or the sound master) and the listener. Emotional is in people. I think that accuracy is the least we can strive for to honor the artist. This is why I think that it is the "flat frequency response gear" and "accurate gear" lot are actually on the right track.
This is too long. Sorry for that. I see the time is ripe to post an "audio worldview" type of comment in some less serious thread.
