Two Turntables

I think the first pieces of vinyl - if you can even call it that - was a set of ALF Burger King promotional records. The combination of ALF and Burger King was something that no nine-year old Ryebone could resist. They probably got some spin time on my sister's record player, which could have been a Fisher Price; regardless, it was big, beige and very plastic. Now, I don't remember my parents having a turntable, but I do remember my father's vinyl collection. He had it stored at the bottom of the stairs, just off the living room in an ottoman type device that we would sit on while putting on our boots. It was this light green colour, and the inside housed a few dozen records; not once did I go in to admire the big artwork or become curious what they were. They simply existed.

Back in those days I had a couple of cassettes, and my dad was just getting a CD player (perhaps 1989 or 1990); my dad and sister would be visiting music stores and buying music, but I just wasn't into it. Give me some video games to look at, great, but music, not so much. I think if the album wasn't a movie soundtrack to something I enjoyed, like Ninja Turtles or Batman, I would have none of that. Over time my musical interest matured, but I would always have a consistent focus: quality. I can recall recording Mega Man 2 with my parents' boombox from the television speaker, to upgrading to line inputs, getting the NuReality 3D (sorry, no link - I couldn't find the exact device online...although it was an early product featuring SRS technology) and experimenting with different speaker setups. I would embrace the digital world, downloading MP3s when they first came around (and weren't blatantly illegal). I would encode my entire CD collection not once, but twice with different quality settings, and experiment with lossless audio a few times.

But during this time, I would occasionally see vinyl records in stores: typically very old, beat up and featuring artists that I had zero interest in. But then I would see some new bands releasing records, and I became curious. Do they still make turntables? They must. The only one I would ever see is the lonely Sony model in what else: the Sony Store. The price of records seemed reasonable, but what about the quality? I don't even want to get started on this, as it's practically a subjective thing: people hear differently, some better than others. I'll say it now, I can't really tell the difference between CD and vinyl, or even a well-encoded MP3. When I listen to my CDs, I feel like they have more depth and presence but put me into a blind listening test and I'm sure I would never hear the difference.

So, over the years I've toyed with getting myself a player, and a few records. It's not a big investment, and I feel good buying a record for an artist I truly enjoy: I get more physical product than the CD counterpart, and these days, all records come with codes to download the digital version for free. So it's win-win. I would go ahead and buy a few records: The National's Boxer, Wolf Parade's Apologies to the Queen Mary and the latest Interpol.

Our local Sony Store was going out of business, so I bought the display model of their standard record player at a nice little discount. I brought it home, got it connected and the sound was just horrendous. Scratching, noisy and messy. I couldn't make out the music at all. Over the next hour I would learn a lot about how these things work, and it was exciting. So mechanical, so simple and fun. I can see what parts you can replace, and how to do it. But this record player was finished; I returned it.

For quite some time, I subsided with nothing, until my recent birthday when my parents purchased me a Denon DP-29F. Looks like a fairly well built, standard player that will do the trick and what do you know, it does. I broke it in with Boxer; placed myself in the sweet spot and just listened. All the little cracks, pops and hisses were there, just like they said it would be. Did it sound better? Like I said before, I don't think so. But I took contentment in what was happening: the disc spinning steadily, the needle traversing the surface and magically transforming this disc into full, rich music. I love the large format; the big album artwork and the full size inserts. They are all pieces I would have no problem hanging on my wall, and putting on display. Finally, my system is complete with the addition of this turntable and I'm excited to get into this niche market.