Heaven Help Me - I Own a Turntable Again

While digging out Christmas decorations three boxes of my vinyl LPs magically reappeared after 20+ years tucked away in a storage closet. They are all from the late 60s to early 80s and very well loved; nothing pristine about any of them. They got tucked away when I got my first CD player and I resisted, on more than one occasion, donating them to the Salvation Army. I'm glad I kept them!

So, I broke down and bought a $200 Sony belt drive turntable with a stobe feature to set the pitch and I haven't played a CD or music from my computer all weekend. Part of it is nostalgia; I listened to those records countless times when I was growing up and it was really fun to listen to them again. Part of it is listening for myself to determine if vinyl is something I want to pursue.

As far as how they sound, some are good, some are pretty poor and I have no idea why I bought some of them in the first place! I've tried Upsample Stereo on my 990 but switched to Bypass and so far it is my favorite. Does Bypass use the bass management feature's crossover to split the signal between the Left, Right and Sub? Or is it sending all frequencies to my small Left and Right?

I have CD versions of a number of the albums so in the near future I'll compare the two to see I can discern that "warm" analog sound.

I'm dating myself but here a few of the LPs that where played this weekend:

Doobie Brothers - What Where Once Vices Are Now Habits
Doors - LA Woman
Elton John - 11-17-70
America - Homecoming
ELP - Brain Salad Surgery
Lighthouse - One Fine Morning

Led Zepplin, Jethro Tull, Santana and Yes are waiting for their turn to be spun again!

my Tube Dac sounds warm and analog!

Sounds like fun - let us know how your analysis turns out!
Bypass is the best choice, I'd expect - it lets those analog recordings stay that way all the way through. It does not use the bass management, so the fronts are getting the full range. If the fronts are small, the sub is also getting a summed copy of the left/right channels. (See this handy chart for analog source bass management.)

Thanks for the reference Gonk. I'd noticed the increased bass so the summed bass from the L and R going to the sub explains that. The chart reminded me of the discussions regarding bass management prior to 990's firmware update. I didn't pay too close attention at the time because my configuration (small speakers with a sub and digital sources) didn't change.

My M&Ks are designed to cross over at 80 Hz; do you think there is an issue sending them a full range signal? Or for that matter, sending a full range signal to the sub?

I don't think there's any problem sending full range to the M&K's - they'll roll off naturally. The same is true of the sub, although you could enable its internal crossover and set it to its highest setting (probably 150Hz or 200Hz) so that it didn't waste its time trying to reproduce higher frequencies.

Let me chime in with a heartfelt "woo-hoo!," AvFan. Bet L.A. Woman sounds amazing on vinyl. The collection of LPs I have on hand hasn't grown in a little bit (space issues, the wife), but I must confess that the holidays (and this great documentary on Al Green I just watched) are making me itchy. (Shhhh!)

Gonk - I'll check the sub crossover but I think it is maxed out to stay out of the way of the 80Hz crossover setting in the 990. I may lower the sub crossover a bit to avoid too much overlap with the speakers and the sub. I can't recall exactly, but I think bass becomes localized around 200Hz so I want to avoid anything higher or too near that frequency.

Tru - Yeh, L.A.Woman is pretty sweet. My collection is pretty modest, maybe 100 pop/rock LPs, but they are fun to listen to. The next LP on the list is Santana's Caravansari (sp?). Funny thing is my college-age son, who is biomechanically linked to his iPod and MacBook, sat down and listened to the Doobie Brothers WWOVANH LP with me and was blown away. I find it amazing he likes the music of the late 60s and 70s. He plays trumpet in his college marching band and they play a number of songs from that era but he'd never heard some of the originals before. For example, he got all excited when I played Smokin' from the original Boston album. Maybe things really do come full circle!

If the crossover is still on but cranked to its highest setting, that will work nicely - although you could play with the adjustment to see what impact it has on the LP's.

Speaking of L.A. Woman, I just saw a show up in Phoenix called "Alice Cooper's Christmas Pudding". It's an annual affair for a charity he started which these annual concerts fund. One of the acts this year was Robbie Krieger from The Doors backed by Alice Cooper and his band. They did "Riders On The Storm" from L.A. Woman and "Roadhouse Blues". It put a whole new fresh face on those tunes while reminding me how fantastic L.A. Woman was.