Which Way to Go???

[BNAL]

So I pose this question to the form. If given the choice about what direction to take with regards to musical source at a budget of approximately $800, what would be your direction, DAC or turntable? I don

[galyons]

Tough without some clarification...

$800 = turntable?, TT with arm?, TT w/arm + w/cartridge? Supporting phono stage...MM and/or MC?
$800 = DAC?, DAC plus transport?  PC/server based files? Redbook, HiRez?

Although you stated "without other supporting equipment",  the supporting equipment is critical to any recommendations.  With out clarification, to me, your question equals "How long is a piece of string?"

Cheers,
Geary

[BNAL]

Ok that is a fair.
 
Turntable with arm and cartridge (MM).

Computer base that supports hirez (24/192).

I don't know if taking the walk down the vinyl path is worth it, or investing in the digital side is better.

[rockdrummer]

I agree with galyons. For me, i dont us vinyl right now and would go with a dac. Your future plans should come into consideration. Investing in records or ram space?
Have fun, the search is one of my favorite aspects of this hobby!
Ben

[Paul Joppa]

My two cents - but remember, I'm an old fart!

Digital will get better and cheaper for some time to come. But analog is disappearing, and is not going to get cheaper, nor will it get much better. Analog still has virtues that digital cannot yet achieve. So I'd pick vinyl for now, and get all the enjoyment and ear-learning I can from it before it fades out.

No question, eventually we'll all have digital. But based on what I see and hear, there are a few generations of gear to go before you can think of getting a final, definitive system - whatever you get, you'll replace it in a few years with something clearly better. Notice how long it took for solid state to replace tubes ... oh wait, I can't say that's actually happened yet!

If I had a much larger budget, I'd do tape too, for the same reasoning - but it's getting pretty expensive already in terms of gear and time. And the variety of quality tape was never large and is now both small and costly. Vinyl on the other hand is widely available and cheap still, though already you must be prepared to curate and restore it (i.e. select good recordings, in good condition, and clean them carefully).

[galyons]

I agree with Paul, right down to the Old Fart part!!!  I listen to mostly analog, vinyl and tape.  I have the media library to support my listening tastes.  For background music it is digital, flac off of the PC => a Touch or stream internet radio. 

For your budget in vinyl, maybe a VPI HW19 with decent arm is doable and a good value. But you STILL need media and a comparable phono stage to make things play.  There is also some decent vintage stuff out there, Thorens, Empire, etc to consider.  I would focus on good used TT/Arm then match a MM cart to your electronics.

Digital, I'm pretty low tech, a modified NOS DAC and an older Cal Audio Labs tubed DAC.  There are much more knowledgeable digi guys on the forum that will do a much better job than I in this realm.

Also you need to consider what genres of music. Classical, blues, jazz, folk, rock, pop, etc are well represented in analog media.  If your tastes run to more modern music than digital is probably a better choice.

Not easy to recommend. Too much depends on you, your tastes and what you already have!

Cheers,
Geary

[earwaxxer]

Hey Brad - its an interesting choice to consider...  Being a recent 'convert' to computer USB based 'transport' I would have to say, now, that digital is definitely the way to go.

USB has come a LONG way in 5 short years. Many of us 'digital audiophiles' were network junkies ie. squeezbox, sonos etc. Now we are being moved to the new paradigm (see John Darko). The software is there (ex. JRiver), the hardware is there (ex. XMOS), the bandwidth is there (24/192 and up) and the filters are there (dither, apodizing, min phase etc.).

There has been a collective realization about what makes digital sound like... well.. vinyl. The prices are also there. More competitive than ever. With miniaturization an entire DAC can fit on a thumb drive.   

[Doc B.]

I completely disagree with all this nostalgia. If you decide to artifically restrict yourself to one source it should be digital. It won't sound as good, but EVERYTHING is being transferred to a digital format, to the point that major labels don't even flinch when entire tape vaults are consumed in fire, since all those masters were transferred to digital already. Perfect sound forever babay.

And if you compress the shit out of it you could hold all the music in the world on your iPod, so you can concentrate on your Starbucks triple mocha half decaf and groove to the tunes as North Korea systematically nukes all of the cities in the US that don't have basketball teams that Dennis Rodman played for, and know that you will still have all the music you could ever want during the nuclear winter.

Or you could just buy a CD player and a turntable.

[Alonzo]

How about a "frugal" sample of it all until you decide to sink in more funds (and I do mean its a money sinkhole). 
Refurb Dell tablet with Win8 ~$300
Thoren TD-160, -XXX ~200
Shure M97XE cartridge  ~80
Dragonfly USB DAC  ~200
and if you don't have a pre, there's some Seductions still left (I think!)
Tablet lets you stream from the cloud or from your server, Thoren is a good starter table that you can tweak, if you want CD capability, change out the Tablet for a touchscreen computer with the software (JRiver plug) of your choice, with CD transport or add a USB CD player.

Sticking with your premise of not counting supporting equipment I would do a Thorens table with a Denon cartridge and a tablet with USB DAC, best of both worlds...

[Chris]

Like Paul said, Vinyl is very important to me and I will always keep mine for sure, however, If only 1? For you, I would say a Mac Mini and a Bottlehead Dac, if you dont have all the money yet, a cheap cd player while you are saving ....... and IF you have any money left over, a club to use on Rodman....... just kidding...

[chard]

  I would go analogue and buy a turntable. Live music is analogue or mechanical vibrations that produce sound, a bow rubbed across a violin string, air blown through a trumpet, a wooden stick hit on a drum or cymbal etc.. A vinyl record and turntable are desiged to produce the actual mechanical vibrations inheritant in live music. Of coarse the vibrations are so weak they can't be heard, so a turntable also serves like a very sensitive microphone. This anologue music is then amplified. This system is designed to sound like live music.                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Digital music is just too processed through lots of solid state devises. Anologue live music processed to recorded digital music, processed back to anologue/digital music and then amplified. 

[Jim R.]

Hi Brad,

If it were me and the budget was $800, I'd go digital with something like the Teac u501 -- this is a hi-res dac with a variety of inputs, and DSD 64 and 128 capable -- currently the lowest cost dac offering DSD, which is most likely where things will be going, so at least it buys you some modicum of future-proofness -- maybe.  In any case, it is supposed to sound pretty decent though I've not heard one myself.

Why, especially when I'm spending a lot and made a very conscious decision to put together a fairly nice analog setup?  Because I will tend to listen to digital more as for me it is far more convenient than flipping through albums looking for the one I want to play, doing the cleaning ritual, etc. (which I do find fun and part of the whole charm, but that's maybe my 54 year old nostalgia talking), but I also know there are plenty of times, probably the great majority, when I just want to listen, and for that, a computer based server/dac combo is the best choice.  Total flexibility, and even with today's technologies, sounds pretty good to me -- with an otherwise all tube system, that is.  The DSD stuff I've listened to is even noticeably better than even 24/192 -- and I certainly am one who can tell a difference between 24/96 and 24/192 though I don't consider it night and day for the most part.

For me there are other factors, such as being blind, and often being ill that make vinyl as a sole source often too tedious to feel like listening, and if I have to give up a bit of that analog sound (though still get quite satisfying sound) in a more convenient form that I can work with whatever the situation brings on a particular day, then I'm simply going to be listening to more music, what I want, when I want, and all totally and easily accessible for me.

The convenience factor of streaming, computer based digital was ahuge revolution for me, even over CDs, and as digital has improved, so has the total listening experience.  I have one turntable and5 dacs, and several computers and other servers to feed the dacs, so that's where I'm coning from -- others may be exactly the opposite -- multiple tables, arms, carts, preamps, and maybe one dac.  Chacun a son gout.

HTH,

Jim

[BNAL]

This is really food for thought. My current setup includes a Squeezebox Touch with a John Swenson power supply using a SuperTeddyReg and soundcheck's Touch Toolbox 3.0 mods and EDO. This feeds a GF TubeDAC-11 via SPDIF into my 2A3 Paramounts and finally into my modded S.E.X.y speakers.

The reason for looking at vinyl is that my grandfather passed away recently and I was given his stereo, a Harman Kardon Citation IV and V kit that he built. The Citation IV pre has a phono and line level section, and from some research on the net appear to be decent. I placed it in my system and I liked the difference it made, though that was just the line level. It was dead quiet and did not appear to add any unwanted influence

[xcortes]

I don't think I qualify as an old fart yet. I tried digital at its best (and some here agree a pacific Microsonics Model 2 with a Mykerinos Pyramix server is "best"). It didn't cut it for me. My walkman (hot rodded) playing cassettes recorded from my lps is far more enjoyable. Of course high end reel to reel and high end vinyl will give you more but for music enjoyment lps and a Seduction (if you can still get one) are hard to beat.

Saludos

[xcortes]

BTW, I know what the BH crew likes and I can tell you from experience that musicality is high so maybe the upcoming BH dac will be awesome. But I've been so dissappointed with digital in the past that not even The BH signature will push me to buy it right away.