u/RetroDave79

Vinyl, Streaming, CD, FLAC... Tapes... why? did you ever ask yourself that question?

Dunno why but today I said, time to wake up the Luxman. I went directly for one of my original tapes, still plays ok, sounds.... okish.. then I realized, the only reason I still have a tape deck is because nostalgia, I wanted to play my old mix tapes, my radio recordings.

What are your reasons for coming back to such a format in 2026?

Do you buy new releases? I've tried, but most of them are just a gimmick, bad quality, just for showing, and I had enough, no more.

Phono users beware, I had to return 2 RCA cables from Amazon, both are the nylon braided type.

I've been chasing a ziiiiiinggg electric noise in my vinyl setup for days, finally those cables were the culprits.

I had to do a lot of try and error to finally find the problem, I'm sharing an amp phono stage with two turntables, one of the bad cables was connected to one of the turntables, the other one to the amp, so the noise was present on both players, as you can imagine, replacing only one of the cables was makig no difference, luckily finally I decided to replace all the cables at once.

RIKSOIN with ferrite antimagnetic rings was the worse by far, even using it for Line levels is not possible, when your hand gets close to it the noise begins, and if you touch it gets very loud.

Kabeldirect is not that bad, touching them won't make the noise worse, but noise is there all the time.

Replaced them with a Kabeldirect and a deleyCon, both made of thick rubber , and 0 problems.

I hope this saves some hours of troubleshooting to somebody ;)

Im having fun and learning about this hobby thanks to my SL-7, Im already happy with the sound I get from the original P202C cart with an elliptical stylus, but I would like to see how far can it go :D

After lot of reading, I have 2 routes to go:

. Keep the P202C and install a Jico Super Analog Stylus (SAS).

. Replace the cart with a Technics P205CMK3.

Buying the P205 with a new boron nude stylus, will cost about 2 times the price of the Jico SAS stylus for the original cart, but people think it is a next level upgrade.

What do you think guys? spent 380€ in a SAS stylus, or about 700€ for a P205+stylus :)

Im not and audiophile, I just love tinkering and learning, of course I enjoy a nice sounding setup, but I'm not a "purists", I already have tried an AT85EP cart, but I preffer the sound of the original one.

Im in love with both the SL-V5 and the SL-7, they are sharing the SU-V7 phono because it sounds so good I don't want to add an external preamp :)

Problem is.... why not to add a SU-V9 under the SL-7?

I've been back into the hobby for about 1 year now, what started with an Audiotecnica BT turntable and a 2.1 Edifier speaker system became what you see now....

The system on the floor awaiting for a place to stay, is a Binatone CD 500, a cheap plastic system that I was forced to buy because it has a Linear Tracking "Disc" player :D

Living room:

. Technics SU-V7 amp + Technics SL-V5 and SL-7 (sharing the amp phono)

. Mitsubishi DA-U630 + Mitsubishi LT-10V (Fosi Box 2 tube, Box 5, and amp phono)

Yamaha A-S501 is for digital sources only using a R2R DAC (Wiim Ultra streamer, Onkyo CD player and TV for movies and videogames)

Old games room:

. Compact Sharp system with RP-103 front loading double sided turntable.

Bedroom:

. Pioneer mini 3000 system, the PL-3000 turntable is not working now, so Im using a Technics SL-7 silver.

.......... help