My dad's old vinyl setup made me realize how bad streaming sounds

Last weekend I dug out my dad's old Technics turntable from the 80s and hooked it up to some cheap speakers he had in the garage. I put on a copy of Dark Side of the Moon that he bought back in 73 and it sounded huge, like warm and full in a way I never hear on Spotify. Then I switched to the same album on my phone through the same speakers and it felt flat, like all the life got squeezed out. I'm not gonna pretend vinyl is perfect, pops and crackles are real, but something about the old analog sound just hits different. My buddy says I'm crazy and it's all placebo, but I hear a clear difference. Has anyone else here done a direct side-by-side with old gear and realized modern streaming is missing something?

3 comments

3 Comments

laura_chen417d ago

Hate to disagree but I gotta push back on this one lol. I did the same thing with my uncle's old Marantz receiver and a clean pressing of Rumours, and yeah it sounded good but not night and day better than my Tidal lossless stream through the same amp. Those pops and crackles are more distracting to me than any "lifeless" digital sound, and I think people forget vinyl has its own EQ curve baked in. Dark Side especially was mastered with modern digital in mind, the 2016 remaster on CD actually sounds closer to what they heard in the studio than a worn out 73 pressing ever could. I just think we romanticize the ritual of flipping a record over the actual audio quality.

gray_morgan7d ago

I swapped the cartridge on my Technics SL-1200 and that actually made a bigger difference than the vinyl itself.

the_wendy7d ago

...and you're not crazy at all. I did the exact same thing with my uncle's old Pioneer setup a few years back and it seriously changed how I listen to music. The first time I heard The Wall on vinyl through those big wooden speakers it was like hearing it for the first time, every little detail just sat different in the room. I don't care what the measurements say, there's something about the way old analog gear handles the low end and the midrange that streaming hasn't figured out yet. Been chasing that feeling ever since and honestly my wallet wishes I never found out.