I’m not sure which ‘nuisance’ of vinyl reproduction is being referred to here. There are so many acknowledged shortcomings that I wouldn’t know where to start. 

Just on a factual point, the Line-In on Amp is no different from any other. The analog still has to be digitised, at 16/44.1. There’s no Analog direct path available. 

You are correct ...there is always a conversation process of a sort even back in the early days when AV components came with a Phono input. However, Sonos speakers with Line-in are designed to reproduce music with near CD quality. That process removes some of the warmth associated with Vinyl. Carrying turntable signals the old fashioned way to wired speakers (as in the pass) preserves the vinyl experience.

I realize that in the age of digital downloads, bluetooth and wifi an appreciation of vinyl has been loss. Those who never experienced vinyl (present company excepted) unfortunately have no reference point as to how vinyl recordings were really meant to sound.

As an example...Those who have never driven a manual shift vehicle (as they are a thing of the past for the most part) will never know the exhilaration of shifting the gears and lisrtening to the rev of the engine to know the exact time to shift and advance the power transfer to the rear wheels. That was driving! 

I sure don’t miss my LPs, they were great fun when there was no choice but the cleaning and lubricating got old quickly but without that the sound degraded after far too few plays. All the adjustments needed with cartridge changes and just to make sure nothing slipped out of line got old too.

I was never one to go after fancy cables, I tried a nice selection from the military post exchange and discovered I couldn’t hear the difference in any of the good quality ones. I did find that going cheap, while not impacting the sound to my ears, would allow in outside interference. Several of the cables that came in my equipment boxes were happy to treat me to whatever the local MARS radio station was broadcasting.

Been too long since I looked at turntables but I’d shop for something similar to my antique Technics SL-1200, lots of cast aluminum for vibration resistance, stable DC direct drive and a precisely adjustable tone-arm.

I tried a variety of cartridges and stylus shapes but since I had a number of CD-4 records I usually left my Audio-Technica cartridge loaded rather than readjusting. The extended HF response and stylus contour didn’t make an audible difference to my ears and it was reasonably flat across the 20-20k band.

The whole audio path, from stylus to the amp’s input seemed to have little impact on the sound I heard once I got to a reasonable quality level. The turntable’s speed stability was a major factor for me, I can’t deal with wow and flutter, they grate on my nerves. Where the higher end turntable really showed an improvement was in resisting audio feedback, at low levels about anything is good enough but when you are playing at maximum (non-ear damage) volume levels it really becomes an issue. Even my 1200 had issues if I left the cover on, without it there was never an issue. Oh. and it had to be on a rock solid base too, the feet would absorb some vibration but were limited.

Where I saw the biggest impact was amplifier power and speaker efficiency. My Klipsch were happy with 60 Watts but  really shown with 600. My Acoustic Research were nice background speakers with 60 Watts but pushed sounded pretty flat as the amp ran out of power, at 600 they were impressive and I think better than the Klipsch at all but the lowest frequencies. Since I could easily exchange cables I tried a variety and found no audible difference that couldn’t be attributed to cable size. My final choice was a generic stranded 10 GA pure soft copper cable at a few cents per foot.

While I wouldn’t go back, other than to visit my old gear at the kid’s house, I wouldn’t advise against it for folks that are serious about it. For folks that aren’t serious, about anything is good enough as without proper care the LPs will soon degrade to the point quality gear doesn’t matter.

Speaking of worn LPs, do you know anyone that is actually looking at the grooves of the used LPs that they are so happy to buy and display? I’ve discreetly peaked at a few and they look pretty worn. It would be interesting to play them into a spectrum analyzer and see just how badly the wear is impacting the sound, I’m not willing to upset friends so I smile and nod a lot.

I replaced a Linn LP12 / Ittok / Ortofon MC with a Meridian 206 Delta-Sigma (with aftermarket clock mod) 30 years ago. The Linn and all the records were subsequently sold as a bundle. I really can’t understand why anyone would go through the hassle of vinyl these days, other than for the tactile and visual experience. The media’s acoustic shortcomings are legion and well documented.

Old records will surely be worn. New records will have been digitally recorded. A turntable connected through Sonos will have its carefully preserved analog signal (courtesy of ‘audiophile’ cables) chopped up into 16bit 44.1kHz samples and passed through a reconstruction filter. If there really are digital ‘nasties’ there’s no evading them.

I don’t miss records. It was a big pain to properly set up everything. If you want the ultimate quality, you need to tinker with cartridge alignment -- for each record and after stylus replacement. Unless you are using a linear tracking arm, pivoted arm alignment is optimal at only two points on the record surface. Distortion is higher at all other points. “Wow” was built into most records because they were not perfectly flat or the spindle hole was not perfectly centered. Warp consequences can be minimized if the arm bearing is in the plane of the record -- impossible with most turntables. In any case warps cyclically destroy the cartridge alignment that you worked so hard to achieve.

I think that some users prefer the relative lack of compression of older records compared to the draconian compression typical of modern commercial distribution. Usually, there was a high frequency peak with LP’s due to cartridge response and tracking distortion. If this is suddenly taken away the music will seem dull and uninteresting for a while. There was one cartridge that had an uncharacteristically flat response. Many people felt that it was dull, but if you plotted it’s frequency response it simply made one line on the chart disappear while other cartridges had all sorts of dips and peaks.

All of this nonsense, except draconian compression goes away with digital distribution.

The irony is that vinyl has a dynamic range equivalent to only about 11-12 bits. Today’s 24 bit streamed content ought to have all the room it needs. 

The one thing vinyl has over any other media is, was, and probably always will be, is the packaging, IMO.  Every album with the front cover album art that was distinct and unique to that album only, and typically became an iconic symbol of the band/artist.  You didn’t quite get the same feeling from 8-track, cassette tapes, or even CDs just because the packaging was significantly smaller.  You certainly don’t get that today with online digital media.

I have fond memories of getting LPs as gifts for birthday or christmas, or saving up my allowance to go to the record store.  Flipping through all the different albums.  Yes, you can do that with other physical media, but the packaging just never had the same wow factor.  The reason I have kept all my old LPs is not because I ever really have a desire to play a record, I don’t even own a turntable, it’s because of the packaging.

I liked this idea when I first read about it, to try to replicate the ‘tactile’ feel of a music collection using Sonos or similar:

https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/articles/sonos-spotify-vinyl-emulator

https://www.reddit.com/r/vinylemulator/

Solid post @AjTrek1!
I still remember the days of flipping through my dad's vinyl collection and putting on some of his classic tunes on our old speaker system. It, of course, had everything from LP to tape players in that massive hunk of plastic.

As @craigski mentions that there are two things I miss about modern streaming. Flipping through albums and listening to them from start to finish was excellent. Some albums have made sure to make it a “journey” through albums, and that is something I feel the resurrection of Vinly might help bring back. I must admit, though, I keep looking at vinyl because of the cool album art and special editions you can buy, like the one from Linkin Park that they released a short while ago. But I think I will stick with digital media for now. Going into the Vinyl/Audiophile hobby is just something I don’t have the money for 

That is correct, so I will be sticking with streaming for now. I know for some services, though, you lose some song details because of the compression. However, that, of course, depends on the service.

Yes, that’s a good point.  I do miss ‘albums’ whether vinyl, cassette, or CD, that pushed me to listen to what the artist created beyond just the tracks that were mass marketed. Today, it seems like you really only hear the stuff that’s highly promoted.  

In some ways, I have to say Sonos radio helps to somewhat recreate that in that I can pick a genre station and am likely to hear a track that I have not heard of before, and probably would not have found on my own.  Pandora is pretty good for that too.  Amazon, on the other hand, feels like it just gives me “top 40” tracks.

Maybe the best of both worlds could be implemented by providing traditional looking (and sized) album sleeves, but with an added barcode or QR code that would link to an album database providing an image for display, lyrics, and trivia. This would be a melding of old and new mindsets. Of course there would need to be a phone/pad sized version to attract the youngest listeners.

So attached is my old B&O TT with tangential arm - I think the last time I used it was well over 10 years ago. My ‘well worn’ 33s/45s are tightly stored in cases/boxes in the loft. It’s just not for me these days as I prefer the ease and sound quality of digital streaming, but maybe the grand-children will get some pleasure from these things when they’re a bit older …or maybe their children.

I have a working B&O Beocenter 9000 that goes with this too, two Beovox wall panel speakers and a Sub. I reckon they’re at least 30 years old, or more. I have boxes of cassette tapes and CD’s too - all just kept for nostalgia (I guess) and gathering dust - maybe one day they will be worth something - at which point I’m guessing the children/grandchildren ‘might’ want to take them off my hands.

Seriously?! Even given the claims about how the Sonos amp line in serves vinyl better than that on a Sonos Five? Or all the largely discredited claims for cables?

Some years ago, there was a BBC survey on the vinyl resurgence that uncovered that the large majority of people buying new LPs do not have or even intend to have a player; most have bought it as wall art or for other ways to display the album art.

About the only thing about vinyl being played now is the scope it gives for tinkering to create the illusion that listening to music is an active and not a passive effort: audio kits are appliances and not instruments such a things like guitars, the playing of which is an active effort the entire time music is to be heard from it. Vinyl is like valve amps, where there is also the same tinkering around, changing the valves in a quest for better sound. That even involves things like hunting down Soviet inventory of valves because the original ones made in the West in the 1930s that the Soviets copied, are not to be had.

After some time, most people get bored with all this tinkering once they realise that it does nothing more for them than letting them tinker. And once there is an option to be had to allow them to quit tinkering.

All good fun, but not to be confused with improving on the SQ what even Spotify/others offer today, streamed to good kit. Kit that now costs a fraction of what vinyl and other legacy type HiFi kit used to cost.

The car analogy is also common, but misplaced. Driving a car is an active effort, interfacing all the time with the external environment. Although most cars are like appliances these days, the ones that are not allow them to be used as more than that in an active way. And even there, my automatic car that has all the manual features that my stick shift has, except the clutch pedal, allows for a full replication of the stick shift - an option that I rarely use. Because if I shift to sports mode in the dual clutch automatic it offers almost all that the fully manual option offers. But none these options would make sense if driving the car was to be a passive thing like even listening to vinyl is, once that needle is lowered to an ever deteriorating groove.

On the car thing here is a fun fact - all cars have their engine note suppressed to comply with noise regulations. But some offer that sound piped in to the speakers inside, to create that illusion of the old engine note just for those inside the car. The BMW Mini is one example.

One lives in hope. I have boxes of CDs in the lofts. I think I will now have to pay for those to be cleared. My children never showed any interest, and I cannot see my now ten year old granddaughter do anything different. If it fits the decor, your kit may get picked up like the old Victrola/HMV kind of things are, for mounting for show in rooms where they fit the aesthetics of the room.

I was thinking more along the lines they ‘might’ take ‘em to sell them on eBay, or similar auction site in a couple of decades time - I’ve seen some ‘run of the mill’ albums I have, like Pink Floyd ‘Relics’, (as an example) fetch £100+ and I have some ‘Yes’ limited-edition albums printed in blue vinyl, which might fetch a little more. I also have quite a rare album from Frank Zappa/Mothers of Invention from the early 70’s in one of the boxes and some singles/45s from the 1960’s. So collectively, they might (one day) help the grandchildren, or their children, to fill their piggy banks.

As you say though Kumar, at the moment very few are interested in such things - these ‘old things’ certainly no longer appeal to me, personally speaking. It’s just so much easier these days to stream higher quality audio.

Admittedly I do miss looking/flipping through records at record shops and the album covers/artwork etc. but I much prefer the convenience and quality of ‘the here and now’. 

You may be better served selling out that stuff now and keeping the money in a piggy bank account devolving on attaining a desired age milestone, because you know the value of what you have.

Physically, the records will outlast tapes and may outlast early CD’s. The initial 1980’s CD’s were estimated to have a 30 year lifespan. I have not bothered to verify this. Perhaps I should investigate this because I have some unplayed 1982 original issue CD’s packed away.

This does trigger a trip down memory lane. Though I still buy 2-3 CD’s a year, I’m not playing my collection much anymore. I however only have one CD that is not playable anymore - Eric Clapton’s Just One Night double CD that lasted not even ten years.

I’ve kept my Marantz CD-player and use a Connect (gen 2) to play my CD’s. I still own a Philips turntable and some records, all bought before I bought my first CD-player, what must have been a Philips CD207:

Yup agreed. I have a lot of tracks I had never heard be that from listening to the currated playlists from artists or the genres.
That is also why I use the “this is” playlists on spotify a lot when I find a new artist I like. A lot of times their mass marketed songs are good but there are some golden nuggets even in their older more niche work.

I did just start to wonder and it got the better of me ? …So rather than using the old Beocenter - I sent off for a 7pin din-to-RCA cable with built in earth to connect the old Beogram TT to a pre-amp that my Son kindly let me borrow and linked all to a Sonos Port - it did actually work first time aswell (I’m impressed) as I was not sure the 7pin din would do the trick.

So not bad for a Beogram 9000 TT that’s got to be in the region of 35 years old (give or take). Sadly I’ve nowhere to put it, so it’s all back to storage, but the ‘proof of concept’ test has brought back a few memories… I’m impressed with how good it sounded too. I was expecting lots of crackle/dust noise as I have no cleaning brush, but it was far from that and that’s just using one of the lads drum & bass records that I found in a basket in the spare bedroom.

Anyhow, fun was had by all - My Son said he wishes he had "hung onto his Technics” - I assume that’s not a euphemism?

Sell it quick. 

I don’t think I could bring myself to ever do that - it belongs here at its Home, where it was brought up with love & care. I can’t abandon it now in its twilight years. I’m actually hoping my Son will take it (perhaps?) now that I’ve demonstrated it still can work, maybe with his Sonos Fives.

It’ll surely need careful maintenance, so as not to ruin a record (and the cartridge) one day when the parallel tracking eventually fails. I’d get rid of it while the going’s good. They seem to go for silly prices on the well-known marketplace.

The kids always get first refusal to take such things (I always just give stuff away to them) and if it’s not for them, they usually sell it and have the money themselves - that’s what usually happens when I’ve done ‘playing with boys-toys’… it almost all goes via them, for their benefit (or more-so the grandchildren’s benefit these days), or I give things to friends or to help with fund raising (cervical cancer mostly - Jo’s Trust) - That’s my normal outlet for TV/Audio/Tools/Furniture and such-like.