People of Vinyl, lend me your advice!

[randombs]

A few weeks ago I decided to get into vinyl because I'll be 30 next month and decided I need to start settling down and stop with this MP5 nonsense.

Also because we used to have a record player when I was young and I love the feeling of placing the needle, etc. Unfortunately for me, my parents were led to believe that music is a Muslim sin and got rid of their bloody fantastical collection of goodies, and the hifi separates ended up in a dump somewhere via our garage for about ten years.

I'm going about this in a silly way but here goes:

Bought a dodgy Steepletone ST918 ?35 record player from eBay. Frankly, it's crap but I've got it set up properly now and it works. It doesn't have a preamp thingy and/or RIAA EQ fixing thingy so the output is bassless.

I had it hooked up to the aux in on my Phil Collins hifi but the hifi only has EQ presets(rock, pop, etc) and they're not enough. I managed to get lovely sound by running it through my Macbook, using Apple's AU toolkit to EQ and then outputting to the hifi. The problem with this setup is it's laggy so the sound from the needle is ahead of the speaker sound. Not always obvious but during quiet bits it's really annoying. Plus, I need to hook it up via the Macbook each time which is ridiculous.

I bought a Panasonic hifi that has manual EQ but it doesn't add enough bass. I'm not after super bass but I did just buy Daft Punk's first two albums so I'm expecting something at least close to the CDs. The hifi doesn't have line in, only mic in, and that bypasses its extra bass system thing which would probably do what I need(it's not really necessary for CDs, tapes, or my iPod when I tried that).

My dilemma:

I'm wondering whether to just sell these hifis and record player and buy a hifi with a record player built in.

Alternatively, this Behringer preamp is only ?22 and I think it'll do what I need but I can't find mention of whether it does that RIAA curve thing or not. I expect it does but last thing I want to do is buy it and find it simply amplifies the signal without adjusting it, which is what I expect I need.

Should I just sell up and get an old hifi? I don't want to get one and then have mechanical issues with it later on because it's old. At least that dodgy record player I got is brand new and has three years' warranty.

I'm in super-low-money mode right now, though, and not looking to spend much, despite how that sounds. I'm not after super sound quality right now, I just want them to sound more... listenable. I might pay my local cash converters a visit and see what they have but the buggers close too early

Cheers!

[Brad]

You just need a phono pre amp. No idea what this RIAA thing is but I'm 99.99999999% sure you don't need to concern yourself with it.

That phono pre amp you listed should do the trick. Obviously there are better ones but there's no need for that right now. If you really get into it then you could buy an amp with a phono stage built in.

Beware, going down this route is perilous. Some vinyl is pressed really badly and I find myself looking up specific vinyl reviews of albums before I'll buy them.

Also lol @ Phil Collins hifi

EDIT: Any phono stage is going to follow the RIAA system by the look of it.

[randombs]

Yeah the RIAA thing is, from what I've gathered, an EQ curve that bumps up the lower freqs and tones down the higher ones as the vinyls are mastered with very little bass due to the way the pits are laid or something like that.

I was just worried that amp may simply amplify the signal coming in without adjusting it which is what I need(in terms of loudness, everything is just peachy but it sounds naff) but I found the manual for that amp and it does what I need so thinking of ordering it.

Cheers for the warning - my Herb Alpert Rise vinyl I bought a few weeks back is warped. Going to take it back tomorrow and see if they'll replace it. They should do because it's faulty. My vinyls are mostly for nostalgic reasons and because I'm getting into jazz and stuff, and because I have the room for the player and vinyls now. Not planning on having thousands or anything, and DP's Discovery is probably the newest thing I plan on owning on vinyl.

Right now I'm wondering whether to spend the ?20 on that amp or just find an old hifi with the record player built in. If I buy this amp, then the ghetto blaster becomes pointless as it only has mic input anyway and I wouldn't need such fine control over bass and could just use Phil again, which is smaller, although the Panny one looks much cooler

Decisions, decisions...

[Brad]

I was gutted that I had to take Scott Walker's The Shift back because the clipping and sibilance was just too much to handle. Only the one track had the problem which actually made it all the more disappointing. Some of these vinyl pressing places have engineers who clearly have no idea what they're doing. Sounds like a small operation. I think getting the phono stage is a good idea. If you bought a separate amp later on you could save a few quid by buying one without a phono stage so you'd effectively get your money back.

[randombs]

Yeah I think I'll just go with it and see what happens. Seeing as it's basically doing what I need and I won't have to worry about the record player going tits-up randomly...

[Adrock]

A phono preamp is what basically does the job of making the RIAA EQ on a stereo, essentially its exactly what you're setting up via your mac, so the sound should be something approximating that.

A cheap phono preamp is perfect for what you need because it means you can change record players, hifis and anything else you want until you settle on something that you really like.

By way of old vintage amps, its prolly a bit too much for you, but a Pioneer SA-7800 is what I have and they are beautiful. But they are expensive because they are regarded so highly.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Pioneer-Stereo-Amplifier-SA-708-SA-7800-220-240V-/150921763048?pt=AU_Electronics_Audio_Amplifiers&hash=item2323a358e8

I have an old Technics SL 1700 direct drive turntable which is basically related to the famous DJ 1210 but older and cheaper. The Pioneer amp I showed up in the eBay link (which isn't mine btw) has a phono pre amp built in and older amps will have them built in too.

[randombs]

Cheers, Adrock, that makes me feel better! I bought it yesterday so hopefully it'll arrive before the end of the week. We're doing a little birthday party for my flat mate on Saturday so if it arrives before then I'll be able to spin the lovely stuff I've bought so far:









That's all for now, not going to buy any more, even though the ?1 classical stuff keeps beckoning me 'come hither' every time I walk past the record shop, which is around 2-3 times a day

[randombs]

So I got the Behringer thingy and gave it a quick spin last night.

This foray into vinyl is getting ridiculous. The preamp works as it should, but the output is too, well, amplified for the mic in on the Panasonic hifi so I got Phil Collins out and tried that. That's aux in which is designed for mp3 players, etc, so I had to turn the volume on the record player right down to remove the clipping but it was marginally better than the Panny.

Had a constant, bassy hum throughout but it was aroudn 11pm so maybe in the day time it'll be less noticeable. Seriously considering just flogging this lot and getting an old hifi with the record player built in because that'll be so much less hassle. I'll do some more experimenting over the weekend.

[speedlolita]

I'm confused, what seperates do you have?

[Brad]

Me too. This setup sounds bizarre. Turn down the volume of the record player? What!?

Aux input expects "line level" input. That means what you would get from a CD player, a tuner, any hifi separate EXCEPT a turntable. You phono pre-amp is designed to both 'shape' the audio from the vinyl and also convert the volume to "line level". MP3 players output variable levels for driving headphones. We may need photos Billy!

[randombs]

The bizareness comes from the fact that I bought a hifi before deciding to try vinyl, and then decided on the silliest way possible to introduce vinyl into the setup.

Ok here goes:

1) Record player:



It has crappy built-in speakers and three outputs: headphone, line out and sub woofer. From what I can tell, line out and sub woofer are 100% identical. Both are affected by the volume control(wtf) but, worse, neither mutes the internal speakers - you have to use the headphone out to mute those. I seriously regret buying it and not doing my homework but I was going through a quick-fire buying phase.

2) Behringer PP400 Preamp

I have the headphone out from the record player going to this little guy's input, with the output going to the hifi.

3) Philips(Phil Collins) hifi:

Just a mini system with CD player, DAB radio, USB support and 3.5mm aux in for mp3 players, etc. I bought this about 3-4 months ago before I considered getting vinyls. It's good enough for telly and music, plus it was cheap because the CD player doesn't work properly, and was small enough to fit on the shelf in my old room.

4) Panasonic hifi:

Bought this without doing my research - turns out the phono sockets at the back are CD out, not line in like I assumed. The only input is mic in which is obviously not ideal and probably worse-sounding than Phil's aux in. I bought this because it has a manual EQ(the Phillips one just has rock, pop, etc) and I thought that'd be all I need to make the records sound nice. I was wrong.



There's an Aiwa midi system in my parents' garage that I opened up one day, got bored with and didn't put back properly. I'll check if that has a line in. If it does then that'll be better, I think.

Considering just selling all the stuff and buying a proper used hifi with built-in record player, which'll solve the problem. Until its record player decides to conk out, I guess.

[speedlolita]

You could always open up the turntable and desolder/cut the speaker lines.

Also if it has line out (actual line out) then you don't need a preamp do you? The preamp is supposed to level the turntable's output to line level after all.

So if I'm thinking right, you'd just have to plug the turntable via line out into a hifi phono in.

[Brad]

You didn't need that pre-amp.

However, if you plug the lineout of the record deck into the aux-in of the Phil Collins the sound quality should approach that of the built in CD player on the Phil. If it sounds significantly worse then it's because there's something very wrong in the record player.

I'm gonna sound like an elitist dick here but I'll say it anyway. Every time you play a bit of vinyl you are gradually destroying it. Even the world's most expensive turntable will have this effect. That... THING.. in your photo looks like it's going to get the job done really quickly!

EDIT: Apologies for not understanding what you were trying to do earlier on and encouraging you to buy that phono stage :-(

[randombs]

The preamp also equalises the output. Without it there's barely any bass at all. Volume-wise everything is perfectly fine without the preamp, it's the tone that's the problem. To get an idea, fire up a music player and turn most of the lower frequencies down to the bottom. That's what it sounds like without the preamp. Preamp restores the proper frequencies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization

I was thinking of modding the record player like you said. I'm sure somewhere in there is a clean signal before it gets to the volume control. The other plan was to see if I could tap a pair of phono sockets to the cassette player output of the Panny hifi(or its amp's cassette input) and send the record player's output to that. So I could just set the hifi to cassette mode and it'd play whatever's coming through the phonos.

Problem is, doing any of this stuff would probably make reselling difficult if it doesn't work out. Pretty sure if I could hack together proper line out from the Steepletone I could probably sell it for a bit more than I would leaving it bog-standard. It was only ?30 so prepared to write it off as a lesson learned and have some fun. The Panny was only ?20 as well.

[speedlolita]

Well, at least he has the option when he gets a propa turntable.

I recall when I accidentally plugged my PS3 into my phono stage on my old Rotel RA-921 - did exactly what you described earlier.

Wasn't aware what phono stage was when I did so.