Steveo wrote: .........This hobby is just a rabbit hole with time and money.. But its loads of fun as well!!

It's an obsession, but it's pleasing

True GDHAL!
Thanks Charlie. I am still a relatively young bloke at 33 so I have never really played with vinyl since I was really young and i inherited a lot from my dad and now slowly collecting just for something else to "hunt" so tp speak haha

I am too a digital guy and never thought I would bother with vinyl due to its technical limitations. Its just another feather in the cap so to speak and I will try to reserve my vinyl purchases to recordings that have totallyt been destroyed by cd. I assume a lot of 80s-90s metal will sound good on black. My girlfriend likes vinyl too so its a nice hobby we can do together. Feeling guilty because I am already replacing the player she bought me for my birthday last year.

It does sound different and one of my mates described it perfectly. He said something like.

Digital is like driving a top of the line modern sportscar. Everything is cutting edge tech wise and new and easy. Vinyl is more like driving a vintage classic car. In most ways its technically inferior to the brand new car but you get a much different feeling than you get than driving a modern car and you can go without the modern conveniences for the experience. You might drive a classic vintage on the weekend but you wouldn't want to drive it to work everyday. The example is Very interchangeable with how vinyl vs digital is. Vinyl is inconvenient, not portable and takes up a lot of room and is harder to maintain.

Anyway I have had my system offline for the past two weeks because we have been getting new carpeting and painting. Hoping to get it set up again this weekend. Getting withdrawals

Hah! Good description with the sports car! And I do understand your withdrawal. When I did the flooring in my house, I didn't know what to do with myself!

Very Interesting:

The Wall of Sound, a 28,800 watts of continuous power, built in 1974. On-stage Wall levels once registered around 127 decibels.
At its apex, the Wall of Sound comprised nearly 600 JBL speakers (15-, 12-, and 5-inch) and over 50 ElectroVoice tweeters, all powered by around 50 McIntosh MC3500 (tube) and MC2300 (solid state) amps, one of the most efficient amps of its time.
It took a full day to build the Wall at that peak, including its custom staging, scaffolding, and lighting rig. The system itself, which changed month to month, according to Turner, was transported in a 40-foot semi truck. There were two identical sets of scaffolding, each carted in an 18-wheeler flatbed semi. (Bear claimed there were actually three sets of scaffolding.) The stage lights were hauled in a 24-foot van. Two road crews were assembled to keep the band on schedule while touring, leapfrogging the spectacle from show to show. When Crew A arrived with the Wall in a given city, Crew B would have already assembled one of the two scaffolds. This allowed enough time for all hands to then get everything up and running by showtime.
This contradicts claims that the Dead amassed a second, identical Wall of Sound, although the upkeep wasn't any less grueling. The system, staging, scaffolding, and lighting weighed a combined 75 tons at its peak. It all proved too unwieldy, finicky, and plain expensive for the Dead to support for more than a couple years. The band only brought out versions of the Wall on stateside tours between roughly 1972 and 1974.
From Jorge Raul Eduardo Labbé

Very impressive! I wonder what the power lines looked like going into that thing. And then some lighting. Power requirements must have been enormous.

Regarding the Grateful Dead's wall of sound, the setup was amazing to say the least. All of the gear the Grateful Dead used were top-of-the-line from an acoustics perspective, and at any point throughout their tenure as a touring act/band.

Have a look at the "beam", which made its appearance in the 90's. Other speakers- alone and without subs- besides the Triton Reference cannot do the beam any justice. Trust me.

www.mickeyhart.net/news/all-about-the-beam-baby-5211