Thank you for visiting City Street, this is the best online store for buying  music  pro audio equipment like guitars new or used guitar gear for electric guitars connected to guitar amps have built in power amplifiers that must be wired with quality speaker cables to send a clean signal to the speakers and loudspeakers. In stock we also have many brands of raw frame speakers components and drums microphones for  bass guitars. Find new drum sets or replicas of vintage instruments like vintage guitars, classic guitars and high power amplifiers. High end power amps with built in  guitar effects, check out the replacement speakers and reorder a reconed speaker for original sound quality of the components. Search  many discontinued Altec Lansing speakers, drivers, horns and crossovers and JBL products integral speaker cabinets and parts. EV electro voice parts for amps, build your own speakers with TAD raw speakers models 1603, 1601, 1602, 1601a, 421a and 2001, 4001 compression drivers with wood horns. Sale priced Crown audio power amplifiers and miscellaneous horns and drivers, electronics that are rare used in good shape musical instruments.  Gibson or Fender, sell, buy, trade. Find new speaker cables cheap and expensive quality audio cables and adapters are cheap. Don’t buy expensive speaker cables or speaker wire until you check our prices for all connectors, interconnects, adapters for the best sound for all users. City street.

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Analog or Digital Music- What’s Better CD’s or Vinyl LP Records

When most people hear the word analog in relation to electronics or music they think of something from the past or old technology. And when they hear the word digital electronics or music they think of better sound quality and high tech electronics. Many people don’t understand the difference between analog or digital music and this could very well be a generational misunderstanding of the 2 types of recording formats. Baby Boomers were brought up listening to analog music on the radio which was broadcasted from studio recorded tapes and vinyl records. At home they listened to analog music from their record players (turntables) that played vinyl LP’s, 8 track tapes or cassette tapes. In fact many of the older vinyl records were recorded directly to vinyl making those LP’s unique.

Many listeners of today’s younger generations may have never experienced listening to analog music due to the fact that most all of music now is recorded on cd’s, hard drives and mp3’s which are digital. I am not knocking younger listeners, but if their ears are accustomed to listening to low quality mp3’s, ipods and headsets they will never know the difference of good quality audio. This could be another reason why most audiophiles are of the baby boomer age group and they enjoy listening to analog music from vinyl LP recordings on traditional turntables as they can hear the difference. Recently more serious music listeners have gone back to playing vinyl records on analog turntables because there is a difference in the quality of sound. The music industry has forced digital products into the market not because it’s better but because it easier to produce cd’s and mp3’s than vinyl records.

Digital vs Analog- Digital music recordings are just that- sound waves converted to digits just like any other information stored on a cd or computer memory.  The input sound waves are converted to binary code and the output is again converted to sound and the quality depends on the conversion rate. The lower the conversion rate, the lower the quality of the audio. This is why digital music sometimes has a noticeable hesitation or fading in and out during the song. Some digital music can sound harsh on playback as it doesn’t duplicate the smooth transition between the natural levels of live music. Digital recording can last indefinitely without breaking down or having loss.

Analog sound is natural- there are no interruptions and sounds flow together and different pitches blend together.  Recording music on tapes or vinyl duplicates the actual sound wave and the result is smooth, continuous and natural with real detail and accents just as they sound live. Today there are still some recording studios that record the music on an analog master tape and convert it to digital but most studios record directly to digital format. Analog recordings on certain media types can break down, for instance master tapes are sensitive to magnetic fields that can cause degradation or loss and although vinyl discs can store music quality indefinitely the surface of the vinyl can be scratched or damaged.

Many music lovers got caught up in this new digital media over the past 15 years and have replaced their analog records with compact discs as it made sense at the time. I am one of those who believed that the cd’s were great and sounded good enough to replace my vinyl LP’s. The audio cd’s are more compact, easier to handle and care for, static & scratch free and more music fits on a compact disc.

I continually upgrade my audio system to better the sound quality and it seems within the last few major upgrades I still was not satisfied with the quality of the compact disc audio. Recently I spent some serious listening time playing a few music cd’s and listened closely to the music. There was something definitely missing from the cd’s, the realism and presence of what I remember hearing on LP’s many years ago. It doesn’t matter that the music producers claim that cd’s are better than vinyl, my ears tell the truth and if audiophile hear a difference you can bet they are right. I concluded that maybe the cd’s aren’t as real sounding to me as vinyl LP records as I thought they were 10 years ago. I needed to prove this to myself and decided to make this my new project to search to see if this is what I have been missing.

I already have an extravagant home theater system with all high end components and an audiophile quality stereo surround sound system which includes a Lexicon MC12B music and cinema processor, Marantz SACD player, Crown Studio Reference power amplifiers and a 5.1 TAD speaker system.  I didn’t own an analog turntable at the time but was now considering getting one. I started reading up on vinyl LP music and the availability of past and current artists’ recordings and was surprised to find that in fact analog recordings on vinyl LP’s are very popular and more audiophiles are going back to listening to vinyl.

I decided to shop for a new analog turntable though I wasn’t looking to purchase a top of the line record transport at this point but I did want one of good quality so I could compare the sound of compact discs to vinyl LP’s. I also wanted a turntable that would give a few years of service should I decide to increase my vinyl music collection. I researched several mid priced turntables from Rega, Thorens, Audio- Technica, Music Hall, Marantz, Oracle, Sota, Clearaudio, VPI, Scout, Pro-ject and Denon. I have narrowed the choice between the Denon DP-500M direct drive turntable which is about $700 without a cartridge and the Marantz TT15S1 belt drive turntable about $1700 which includes a Clearaudio Virtuoso Ebony wood moving magnet cartridge with many extras including a three year warranty. 

Most audiophiles would disagree with the Denon because it has a direct drive motor instead of a belt drive, but it does have a decent dampening and isolation between the tone arm and the turntable base and a good set of leveling feet. The Marantz TT15S1 turntable has a high tech 1” thick translucent solid acrylic base and better tone arm, it is an upgraded Clearaudio Emotion. Because this package has an excellent Virtuoso cartridge included, I think my mind is made up already and my final choice will probably be the TT15S1. I should be done with my research in the next week and then I will buy the new turntable and cartridge. Whichever one I end up with I will make a separate isolated base to put the turntable on.

In the meantime I took out my old vinyl LP albums, about fifty of them that had been stored in the basement in a plastic milk crate for over 30 years. The albums covers were in poor shape and about half of them were damaged beyond saving. I ordered some new sleeves to put the LP albums in after I cleaned them. I also ordered some vinyl record cleaning solution and a micro fiber record cloth that could be used wet or dry.

This may not be the proper way to clean vinyl records but this is how I cleaned the LP’s. I first rinsed off the records with distilled water on each side of the LP’s to get off the heaviest dirt and dust. I then used the vinyl disc cleaning solution on the micro cloth to clean deep into the grooves of the vinyl. Then, towel dried the LP’s and let them air dry before I put them into the new sleeves. There are different ways to manually clean vinyl discs wet or dry and there are also record cleaning machines which use a wet solution and vacuum dry. I choose to manually clean the LP’s as my vinyl record collection was not in that great of shape to begin with. I was just experimenting with the cleaning so I could listen to a few LP’s to hear how analog sounded compared to my digital cd’s and if there was a big difference I would buy some new vinyl LP records.

The more I thought about the quality of sound that I remembered from playing my vinyl LP’s years ago,  the more it made sense to me to give it a try again on a much better audio system that I have now. The type of music I listen to has also changed in the past twenty years and that could be another reason for my search for better quality music media. Instead of classic rock that I listened to 25 years ago, I listen mostly to live jazz now and attend many live concerts. The compact discs just don’t satisfy the quality I am looking for when listening to music. Maybe like other audiophiles, I was realizing that there really is a distinctive difference between analog and digital music recordings. This could also be the reason that with all of the improvements I have made to my system in the past couple of years it was not making a significant difference in what I was hearing if I was still playing digital compact discs.

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