Turntables worth it?

[DJeffries]

Originally Posted by Beta Man

Vinyl is still the prefered media by the vast majority of audiophiles for a reason.....

Vinyl/Turntables add a bit of even order harmonic distortion. It just so happens that even order harmonics happen at musical octives. As an example the A just below middle C is 220Hz with typical tuning. The 2nd harmonic of this note is 440Hz which just happens to also be the frequency of A just above middle C. Basically harmonies are being enhanced beyond what they would normally be. People tend to refer to this as "Musical".

It is a very pleasing effect and I tend to prefer it myself. I just don't consider it to be as accurate as a digital source unless excessive processing was done to the digital source.

As an aside tubes usually exhibit the same type of even harmonic distortion when soft clipping.