Anime soundtracks on Vinyl/CD and sound systems/equipment

[Girls with Guns]

I'm in the process of setting up some of my vintage stereo equipment upstairs in the living room, after it's been in storage for the past 7 years or more. I found that both my turntable and CD player need new belts and internal cleaning and lubricating, which is no surprise with them now being 45 years old. Fortunately, there is a Vintage stereo store right in my town, just 3 blocks from my house, and I made a visit there on Saturday.

I decided to buy a second turntable to have on hand as a backup, and to use until I get a chance to service my primary turntable, a Technics SL-7 I bought back in 1981. I picked up a classic Pioneer PL-512 turntable the store had in stock; it was still in very good condition.

I spent all day Saturday and much of Sunday getting the equipment setup and working. I'm using my Oppo BDP-93 Blu-ray player as my CD player for now, since it has analog outs will also play SACD discs, of which I do have a few. I'm still arranging things and need to figure out where I'll be placing my speakers. Here are a few pics of my "new" turntable and vintage stereo setup as I have it now. The first LPs I played on it were the Noir Soundtrack and the Apothecary Diaries OST albums I just recently picked up at Crunchyroll, and the turntable and speakers both sound so freakin' awesome - I'm ecstatic that I was able to finally dig my equipment out of storage and start using it again!

My Vintage Stereo System:

Onkyo Integra TX-85 Receiver (1984)
Onkyo Integra EQ-35 Audio Equalizer (1985)
Pioneer PL-512 Manual Turntable (1979)
Infinity Quantum 5 (Q5) Speakers with 12" Dual-Coil Woofers and Emit Tweeters (1979)
Oppo BDP-93 Blu-ray Player (2010)

I also just bought some reproduction turntable stands for my Technics SL-7 from a seller on Etsy and they arrived a few days ago. The SL7 is able to be mounted in any position, even vertical on a wall, so the main draw for me having the stands is to be able to view colored vinyl spinning hypnotically on the turntable while sitting down across the room. I always wanted a set of the original stands from Technics, but they were going for $350 even back when I purchased the SL-7 in college in 1981. The original Technics stands I see selling for $700-$800 a pair! The set I got from Etsy are 3D-printed reproductions and only cost me $79. I did notice the seller raised the price on his listing to $130 right after I bought the pair from him, so he probably hadn't sold any for a while, lol! I think I am going to paint these stands black so as to match the base of the turntable:

 

[Otomo]

I zoomed in. Very nice but in the second picture. They just go up to 10.

 

[Girls with Guns]

I zoomed in. Very nice but in the second picture. They just go up to 10.

Not sure what you mean - that my volume is only set at 10? That is because the Infinity Q5 Speakers are only 4 ohms, so even having the volume set at less than the 10 o'clock position, the music is almost uncomfortably loud, and pulling a good bit of power from the receiver, which can put out up to 130 watts per channel @ 4 ohms. I had the volume up to 20 (12 o'clock) briefly and my ears were splitting!

I'm actually listening to the Josee: The Tiger and the Fish Soundtrack LP as I'm typing this. Sounds so good!

I also ordered 5 more Anime Soundtrack LPs from All the Anime last night, gonna pay a fortune for them with tariff fees, though...

Elfen Lied Vinyl Soundtrack - AllTheAnime.com exclusive "Neon" variant £29.16
COWBOY BEBOP: Songs for the Cosmic Sofa - 12" pink and dark blue marbled vinyl LP £24.99
Neon Genesis Evangelion Original Series Soundtrack - 2 x 12" blue & black marbled vinyl LP £33.33
My Happy Marriage Original Soundtrack vinyl £33.33
Little Witch Academia Vinyl Deluxe Edition - Black vinyl variant £49.99

 

[cfx]

Not sure what you mean - that my volume is only set at 10?

I believe that he's joking, referring to the scene in This is Spinal Tap where they go on about how their guitar amplifiers are superior because they go up to 11 (the knobs are actually labeled this way) and when asked why that is important, the answer is something like "It's one louder, innit?"--I probably misremember the exact words.

I don't think I was ever aware Technics made stands for those turntables, or at the very least I completely forgot it.

That OPPO display on the TV for playing CDs is about as boring and amateurish looking as the one on my Sony BDP-S1700 blu-ray player. You'd think they could come up with something a little more elegant. At least you get a track and time display on the player, most newer things including mine don't have any kind of player display anymore.

Those Infinity speakers are fascinating, with both a regular dome tweeter plus the EMIT tweeter. I don't recall that setup in general though I know their big tower ones that came in four pieces for the pair were like that, but maybe I've also just forgotten. With yours being from 1979 they're a bit older than the ones I am more familiar with which would have been during the 80s. Your EMIT tweeters look a bit different than what I mostly remember too. I'm a little surprised they weren't mirrored where one speaker would have the EMIT offset to the opposite side. What are your woofer cones made from? I remember Infinity got into polypropylene that was translucent, almost clear but yours look like they're not that.

 

[Girls with Guns]

Ha, I never saw spinal tap, so I was totally in the dark on that joke, lol...

Yes, the Technics stands fit all or most of the SL versions of their linear tracking turntables, but they were too salty to buy new... I believe they actually cost more than the dang turntables themselves.

I only had the Television hooked up to the Oppo because in order to setup the Analog-out RCA jacks for line-level stereo you had to go into the on-screen setup and change about 4 different settings - set Output to analog stereo, set Volume from Variable to Fixed, turn off HDMI audio, and turn off Dynamic Range Control. I'm not normally going to have the TV on when playing music.

I really love the sound of those infinity Q5 speakers, I'm so glad the Emit tweeters are both still working after all these years. The 12" Watkins woofer cones are just standard paper cones with foam surrounds and the dome "tweeter" is actually a midrange speaker. I do have a pair of Infinity SM-152 large floor standing speakers from the early 1990's I'm using as the rears in my home theater room in the basement. Those have the black poly cones on the 15" subwoofers. Wow, I just looked up the SM-152 and they are selling for anywhere between $1200 and $1800 for a pair now! I think I only paid $250 for the pair about 15 years ago! I also have a pair of massive Cerwin Vega 380 SE speakers with 15" woofers as the front mains in my theater, I see those are going for just as much as the infinity rears - $1200 a pair! Pics below from eBay, but mine are the same, with grills included:

 

[cfx]

Haha, yeah if you haven't seen it then it goes over your head, if you have that's maybe one of the most memorable scenes so I was pretty sure I knew exactly what was being referred to.

As expected, I got the wording wrong. I was so sure at least that he had used the very British "innit" but nope on that too.

In my defense, I'm old and I haven't seen it in probably 30 years or something.

I wondered if maybe the domes were for midrange, but at least in current design, when that is done it's usually a larger dome than the more typical tweeter sizes which yours look to be. Of course there's 1001 ways to design a speaker.

Yeah you only need the display for setup. On these newer players like I have you pretty much need it for anything since the player has no display. I don't really intend to use the blu-ray player for CD, but it's sitting here attached to the HDMI input on my computer monitor just so I can test discs sometimes to make sure they play when I get scratched discs, and because it's convenient at the moment and my other stuff is also not set up, I've used it for a few CDs.

 

[zrdb]

I have a pretty interesting setup myself as I upgraded my system a few years ago during the height of the covid pandemic. I have a Denon AVR-S950H receiver which is probably more than I need but I got it because it has 8 hdmi inputs and I have a lot of stuff plugged into it. I have a pair of Cerwin Vega SL12's for my fronts, a pair of Yamaha NS6490's for my surrounds, a BIC F12 subwoofer and a nice sounding center channel 3 way speaker. For play back of various media I have 3 Sony bluray players including one that's hardware region modded, a BD-C5500 bluray player, an Oppo DV983H and a Samjunk DVDHD960 for my dvd playback. For cds I use an old Panasonic DVD-F87 5 disc carousel which just happens to be an excellent cd player but a piss poor dvd player. For playback of stuff off my numerous 2.5" portable hdds I use an sbc running Coreelec. It might not be the most sophisticated or expensive setup but it works really well for my needs. The thing I like about my SL12's is the fact that they're good all around speakers for almost anything that I'd play plus they have 12" woofers. . For video I use an older 42" Panasonic plasma that has better pq than 95% of the junk out there today.

 

[Girls with Guns]

I bought a bunch more stuff for my vintage stereo system, and got it all assembled over the weekend - and I listened to quite a bit of anime vinyl and CD after getting it all setup, including the soundtrack LPs for Violet Evergarden and Frieren, and soundtrack CDs for Witch Hunter Robin and Lunar Legend Tsukihime...

I picked up two 3-cube shelf units for vinyl and accessory storage from Amazon, to place on either side of my oak stereo cabinet, which I had also hauled upstairs out of basement storage. The shelf units didn't have any backs on them, so I cut out some back panels with a circular saw from thin pieces of lauan I had laying around, stained them to match the dark oak shelves, and drilled and screwed them onto the rear of the shelves. I bought a couple of 15' RCA audio cables to connect my turntable preamp and my TV to the receiver, since they are both off to the left of the cabinet. I also purchased a small spring latch I mounted on the CD drawer in the stereo cabinet, because it kept wanting to roll out on it's rails whenever I moved the cabinet around to access the rear connections. It wouldn't stay closed with the weight of all the CDs in it, so the latch permanently resolved that problem!

So I can now play ALL of my anime - vinyl LPs, audio CDs, Blu-rays to the television, MP3 music files from a USB slot on the front of the Oppo Blu-ray player, and even my Television audio, all through my receiver and stereo speakers. Here is a photo of my setup now, just before moving the turntable back onto the buffet at left under the TV where it will stay, and before putting the glass doors back on the stereo cabinet:

 

[cfx]

I bought a bunch more stuff for my vintage stereo system, and got it all assembled over the weekend - and I listened to quite a bit of anime vinyl and CD after getting it all setup, including the soundtrack LPs for Violet Evergarden and Frieren, and soundtrack CDs for Witch Hunter Robin and Lunar Legend Tsukihime...

I picked up two 3-cube shelf units for vinyl and accessory storage from Amazon, to place on either side of my oak stereo cabinet, which I had also hauled upstairs out of basement storage. The shelf units didn't have any backs on them, so I cut out some back panels with a circular saw from thin pieces of lauan I had laying around, stained them to match the dark oak shelves, and drilled and screwed them onto the rear of the shelves. I bought a couple of 15' RCA audio cables to connect my turntable preamp and my TV to the receiver, since they are both off to the left of the cabinet. I also purchased a small spring latch I mounted on the CD drawer in the stereo cabinet, because it kept wanting to roll out on it's rails whenever I moved the cabinet around to access the rear connections. It wouldn't stay closed with the weight of all the CDs in it, so the latch permanently resolved that problem!

So I can now play ALL of my anime - vinyl LPs, audio CDs, Blu-rays to the television, MP3 music files from a USB slot on the front of the Oppo Blu-ray player, and even my Television audio, all through my receiver and stereo speakers. Here is a photo of my setup now, just before moving the turntable back onto the buffet at left under the TV where it will stay, and before putting the glass doors back on the stereo cabinet:

Hah, I recognize that cabinet; it's a CWD (Custom Woodworking and Design) cabinet; a company that I assume no longer exists.

I had two of those same cabinets, though I didn't have the drawer, along with a lowboy cabinet that held a CRT monitor, and a base that all the pieces fit onto so it looked more like stationary furniture, though it wasn't as convenient since it wasn't on wheels. I also had a kit that put two wooden side rails in the front of one of the cabinets, along with angled metal pieces with threaded inserts--this was made to hold stereo rack mount components, which I owned at the time. I'm not sure what happened to the base, those rack rails, or the cabinet doors, but I gave the cabinets to my brother long ago. He passed away late last year and the cabinets are among what he left behind. I have no place to put them or really use for them now so I don't know what I'm going to do with them.

I remember the backs on mine not being made out of very good material, some kind of wood that was very splintery. I "painted" them with multiple coats of wood glue to seal the surface, sanded that down a bit to get rid of any roughness, then spray pained them flat black so they didn't really show. The cabinets came in several different wood finishes but I had the same finish you have. The finishes are Watco Danish Oil, and if you get a scratch or something you can repair it yourself and the Watco products are still made though it's possible the current version might not match one from so long ago.. I bought the cabinets in....probably the 1980s.

---

How have you found the quality of the vinyl LPs with the patterned vinyl to be? Given vinyl's current niche and cost, I assume they're better now, but back in the days when vinyl was all there was, pre-CD, patterned vinyl was primarily a collector gimmick and not known for good sound quality, much more likely to have surface noise and pops and ticks. Single color vinyl, especially if it was transparent or translucent, was the exception and also often some of the best quality, since they couldn't use regrind (recycled ground up old records, derogatorily referred to as hamburger helper) in those.

 

[Girls with Guns]

I have actually been shocked by how little surface noise, pops, and clicks I'm hearing on these new vinyl LPs - including the patterned vinyl, which seems to make no difference - compared to what I was used to hearing on basic black vinyl back in my college years around 1980-83. Brand new LPs today have almost no noise at all on them playing on my JVC Turntable. But then, I also tried a couple albums I played heavily back in the olden days, and they still sound pretty clean on my current setup as well. I'm not sure if a $700 vintage turntable with a $330 Ortofon moving-coil cartridge at today's prices makes any difference, compared to a $300 Technics SL-7 linear tracking turntable with an $125 Ortofon 20 moving-magnet cartridge at back-then prices, but I do remember being irritated by the amount of pops and clicks I had to put up with when I listened to my albums during my college days - and how extremely overjoyed I was to purchase my first CD player in 1985, a Hitachi DA-5000 I also still have, and hear complete dead silence in the background! I'll be anxious to try out my SL-7 turntable when I get it back from being serviced in November, and test it side by side with my JVC turntable.

I see the Ortofon 20 stylus like I have on my SL-7 Turntable is still available to purchase, it is a nude elliptical stylus that now lists for $225 just for the stylus itself, no cartridge, so I could still replace mine when it gets worn, or upgrade it to the 30 stylus for only $370, or the 40 Stylus for just $678... ouch!

 

[cfx]

Whenever possible back then, I used to buy Japanese vinyl, even for western artists as the quality was consistently better with much quieter backgrounds, flat records that weren't warped, and so on.

When playing older records that have been played enough to have wear, on something newer or more expensive, you may find it sounds better because a more advanced stylus design may ride lower or higher in the groove and hence not be playing the previously worn area but a fresh area instead. I think a longer and narrower contact area like a Shibata or probably various other things developed since had a tendency to reduce the intensity of pops and clicks, but my memory might be off on that.

 

[danieru27]

Even with CDs I've found Japanese ones to be better, not the support itself, but packaging and overall attention to detail

 

[cfx]

Indeed that is true as well. Even with the jewel cases it seems like the plastic is more clear without imperfections.

 

[Girls with Guns]

Not to be pedantic, butt: you posted that 4.35AM UK time. And ain't you and ceefax combined in the 130yo age bracket? I'm a young whipper snapper in comparison. I'd argue we're only as as old/young as we feel tho...lol

Didn't mean to be mean, like: just ya'll likely do better in yall own thread; dedicated to the topic. Gotta be mindful of others, going off topic 'n all. Plus, us young 'uns can't add to your discussion.

Hey, I actually wouldn't be opposed at all to separate thread with a title something like "Anime Soundtracks on Vinyl or CD and What You Use to Listen to Them" or something to that effect, and move all the Anime LP and stereo system posts I made in this thread and the What did You Receive today threads, and all the direct replies from other users to that thread. Perhaps a mod can get with me on that? Something like that should appeal to the masses on here. Or, we can just leave it as is...

 

[cfx]

Or, he could just put us on the ignore list if he's bothered so much, like I did with him many months ago, instead of this continued backseat moderation. I don't complain about his posts; I just don't read them.

Vinyl is a big part of anime collecting these days, and it isn't much use without something to play it on.

Besides that, this area is Off topic > Random Chit-Chat > ...so...

 

[zrdb]

Cds and LPs are fine I guess but my favorite way to play anime osts is off a usb flash drive plugged into the usb port on the front of my receiver-no fuss, no muss. You'd be surprised how much music you can fit in a 128 gb flash drive.

 

[Aion (Retired)]

Or, he could just put us on the ignore list if he's bothered so much, like I did with him many months ago, instead of this continued backseat moderation. I don't complain about his posts; I just don't read them.

Vinyl is a big part of anime collecting these days, and it isn't much use without something to play it on.

Besides that, this area is Off topic > Random Chit-Chat > ...so...

'Tis against my way of the ninja to ignore anyone, for that would be most rude! And ignorant. As an example of this, Girly-dono was quoting a post I made awhile back (he finally no doubt realised only you/him type about vinyls). And had you not opted to ignore meeee, you'd have likely discovered that interacting directly with me is a far more effective method of ceasing contact. Adding me to a list just makes me investigate/poke.

Backseat moderating is apt: given Roy is only motivated to do their civic duties when I'm involved (often unjustly, fyi), I offered to be a moderator; for community cohesion/the greater good (only requesting permission to re-name members). I was refused. And yet, I feel compelled to keep threads on topic when NOTHING is more infuriating than people that ramble/type too much in random threads. Who would do such a thing!?...

...Now, as for 'random chit-chat'/'off topic', I must once again play my role as both fool and moderator for you, ceefax: those are categories and you are being a tad... literal. This, dead though it is, is a forum. A forum consists of threads. Each thread consist of one topic - or a theme, if you will - that is discussed at length. If you were to unravel a about buying things, turning it into a vinyl discussion only 2-3 60yos have any interest in discussing... well, surely it makes more sense have your own place to do so, lest eyes glaze over skipping over. What is poor Lucky-Deity to do if left as is? Please think of him.

So, @Rui, I second Girly's motion for a dedicated vinyl thread, moving the posts from here to there. I'm even willing for my post that was quoted to be the OP, given no sexism allegations are attached.

 

[Rui]

Hopefully I've found all of the posts which belong in here; I've popped it in Media Discussion for now but if anyone has particularly strong feelings about having this thread somewhere else, please go ahead and let me know. The audiophile talk is now very much welcome to continue!

R

 

[zrdb]

The thing is if somebody wants to talk about audio, video etc. there are far better sites to post in such as AVS Forum which I have been a member of since 2002.

 

[RadFemHedonist]

The thing is if somebody wants to talk about audio, video etc. there are far better sites to post in such as AVS Forum which I have been a member of since 2002.

You have a point, but it's not doing any harm for there to be a self contained thread on this topic here and there clearly are people here who want to discuss it with each other shrug.