I sold all of my hifi gear over the last year and am starting over from scratch.  The only thing that I kept was my Rega turntable.  I'm not trying to replicate or replace my digital library with vinyl, but I do like digging through the bins at the record store.  Sometimes I'll buy a stack of used albums that looks interesting or sometimes one or two "audiophile" pressings of music I already know and love.

As far as the digital side of things go, I still have to buy a high-quality DAC, but I need to figure out whether mixing in "audiophile downloads" is worth the investment or whether I'll stick with "CD quality" discs and downloads (and vinyl of course).

Yes, MP3s do suck.

CD sales may be way down because of downloads, but they are not going away. The music companies can make them for almost nothing and sell them cheaply and still make money.

New vinyl records are expensive, and the selection is very limited. I have good record playback gear, but I already have 700 records (and 1200 CDs), including some I have had for up to 50 years,

I would get a good USB DAC for playback purposes, such as the Cambridge Audio DAC Magic and store all of your music on a PC. You can use thumb drives for backup or transportability. If you buy a CD, you can transfer it to the computer also if you wish. You can also burn CDs from the computer for vehicle use. Quality downloads and CDs are available from Amazon and many other online stores cheap.

If you want to go with Vinyl, Audio-Technica has a crazy good deal; its Audio-Technica LP-60 turntable. It has a built-in USB output to connect to your computer, AND a built-in phono preamp to connect to an amplifier! Needle Doctor is selling it for $149, complete with cartridge.

nirojobey wrote:

Hi Guys, This is first time ive posted in thee forums. so Im sorry if ive done it in the wrong area. my current system is cyrus 8 cd 8 (not se) cyrus amp 8 a series (old version) and monitor audio rs 6 series not rx. I buy a fair few cds and hate mp3 ( do listen when im working out running etc) but use mog probably to explore new music. im overwhelmed in which wya to go with my music collection. i love quality and hate poor quality mp3 options 1. keep going with cds seems there are dying 2. get a streaming device and go for high quality downloads ie 24/192? any difference to cds read about it and seems not much 3. go vinyl or have all3 options? with so many options just wondering what i should do. maybe my system not great for any of these anyway also i wnated to buy some good headphones. akg 702 sound great but i listened with the sennheiser hd 800 what a great sound heaps of money.. though is the headphones way out of keeping with my system?? cheers i know thats a few qs but love to get some info advise ..

So my family likes to stream and avoids playing records. To get the music to my family, I rip and stream. And I enjoy the ease of use as well! If I did not have all my records, I am not sure I would still have a turntable. I love listening to it, but it has its own share of difficulties. Good high res downloads and my own high res rips sound great over the computer. Not quite as good as vinyl, but they kick cds out of the running in the first few seconds. Again, if the downloads are good sounding.

Trey