Matt Witmer

Recently I stumbled upon my dad’s collection of vinyl albums and turntable, both of which had been collecting dust for quite some time. I figured why not hook the turntable up and give the vinyl a listen.

So I took our old home theater receiver, which had just recently replaced, lugged it up into my room and hooked it up with my speakers but came to find out that the turntable needed a pre-amp as the receiver was not made for use with record players. As with most of my purchases, I headed over to Amazon and found a pre-amp (this one) in my price range with good reviews and I hit buy.

A few days later the pre-amp arrived and my rig was complete. I am using a Technics SL-D20 turntable which is amplified by an Audio-Technica AT-PEQ3 pre-amp which feeds into a Mitsubishi MVR-1000 Receiver and the chain ends with a pair of Polk Audio M30 speakers or Sennheiser HD555 headphones. If you are a true audiophile you are probably jumping up and down right now, as this is not the greatest setup in the world but it works.

My dad’s vinyl collection is heavy on the Led Zeppelin, which is great, but was missing perhaps the greatest album of all time, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. I had to add it to the collection, so I dropped $25 on the album, which just so happened to be on a noticeably heavier piece of vinyl.

Listening to the album through my speakers, I can hear it a bit more clearly and it sounds a tad warmer than normal but nothing incredibly different from the digital copy but when I put on my HD555 headphones the difference is much clearer. The little nuances become much more audible and the album as a whole just becomes more enjoyable. This is probably due to the fact that the headphone were more expensive than the pair of speakers, I’m hoping to rectify this situation by summer’s end.

Aside from the audible qualities of vinyl, I just love having a piece of physical media in my hand. Something about putting the needle on the record is just so much more satisfying than hitting play in iTunes. Not to mention the fact that you get to see the album covers in their full printed glory.

As a student of graphic design, album cover design is really intriguing.  iTunes takes care of this to an extent but looking at album covers like Led Zeppelin III, you never get the full experience from the static photo that iTunes carries. Instead with a physical copy, you get to look at its intricacies and simply play around with it, just as its author/designer intended you to. Another Led Zeppelin cover is a good example of this. In Through The Out Door, technically, features two album covers: the first being the brown paper cover which is stamped with the text, “Led Zeppelin   In Through The Out Door”, but you take that paper cover off and it features some pretty stunning sepia photography. No matter how hard Apple or Microsoft tried, they would never be able to replicate the removal of that first cover and the unveiling of the second.

My audio setup needs work but working full-time during the summer does have it’s financial benefits, so I hope to see the setup and my vinyl collection get bigger and better.

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