One night, while trouble shooting an annoying ground loop hum, everything suddenly worked fine and we thought, “Vinyl is Voodoo.” But, over time, we realized it really was.
When you think about the physics of the thing: A tiny rock pulled through microscopically engraved grooves in a plastic circle, at a specific, constant speed, producing sound output in the realm of millivolts, amplified on a specific curve, and then amplified further so that we can hear it through our speakers, the fact that it even works at all is some kind of magic.
Listening to records is more magical in a digital world; digging through record store crates, cuing an album up on a turntable and setting down to listen to the full 22 minutes, getting up, flipping it over and listening to the rest, is the perfect antidote to our playlist-on-demand world. Listening to records is intentional, it’s not background noise, it’s more human. It’s a kind of Voodoo.
We’re here for the records and the music. We have wide, eclectic tastes, but do have some blind spots. You probably won’t find: Metal or its subgenres, Classical, or much in the way of electronic music here. We don’t think it’s bad; it’s just not our thing. If you think there’s an album we should check out, or a special record store to profile, let us know.
We’re not anti-digital. We still have a CD player, we love Apple Music, and you’ll find Spotify and Apple Music linked here. We’re not going to tell you that Vinyl sounds better; we will tell you that we enjoy it more.
We’re not here to talk about gear; there are a whole lot of places out there to do that.
We do think this guide is a good start for the turntable curious, and we currently use a Project Debut Evo 2 turntable into a Schiit Mani 2 phono stage. We like them both a lot.