gofar99 Messages: 1947 Registered: May 2010 Location: Southern Arizona
Illuminati (5th Degree)
Hi, Yes but not as a mainstream product. I have three and several hundred LPs. There has been a resurgence over the past say 10 years and there are now several manufacturers of turntables and associated equipment. Also several new companies are making the disks. CD plants are closing and vinyl plants opening - wow. A lot of the new disks are by current musicians. There are also a goodly number of high grade re-issues of older stuff. Do not be misled by the Walmart thing. It is a gimmicky fake retro thing and yes it will play records, but not even close to what they really can do. Also the turntables that let you copy your disks to a PC via USB are virtually all junk. It is unfortunate that to get a good new turntable now you have a fairly high entry price. Nothing under about $300 for just the turntable will be worth bringing home. Then you will still need either a preamplifier or amplifier that has one built in to use it. The alternative is to refurbish a vintage one. This is a very common thing now. High end turntables from the heyday of vinyl are readily available and reasonably priced. You can get $500 worth of performance for just over $100. Still you will need the rest of the setup. I personally find that in my system - which is admittedly way above the entry level that a well recorded LP is equal to and in some ways perhaps better than anything available except high definition (24 bit/ 96 K or better) downloads. I find that the LPs, particularly NOS ones from the 60s, 70s and 80s are better mixed and recorded than most CDs of the same music. I have a high end Blue ray player (by OPPO Digital) that made the "A" list for Stereophile recommended components for its audio quality. Even with SACDs and audio DVDs the vinyl of the same material is better.
I agree with the reviewers that probably CDs will continue to diminish and high end digital will be the medium of choice and quality, but there will always be a significant vinyl following.
If you want to really see more about LPs and turntables check out the vinylengine.com site. It has a huge following and extensive resource files.
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