USA Today: Music lovers pursue technologies to return to high fidelity Options

[jamesbaud]

http://m.usatoday.com/article/tech/52963362

I thought this was interesting.

[kraut]

So I suppose that makes me irrationally biased against vinyl?

Why irrationally? Biased is just fine on its own.

I usually warn every one off who as a newbie wants to get into vinyl. That is why I rarely participate anymore in threads when someone asks advice.
In my experience there is no, absolutely no vinyl out there that is without surface noise, and I have to rely on almost fifty years of vinyl playback.
Even in the golden age of vinyl, often enough I put on a new LP that started with a barrage of surface noise on the lead in track, to continue like that throughout the record in between songs.
No amount of cleaning would do.
I have one among two thousands records I own at present one (there maybe one or two more at max)that is really quiet, and could be mistaken for a CD - a first Canadian pressing of the first Stones album. But even there - Some noise can be still heard on some breaks between tracks, but it is pleasantly unobtrusive.

I buy all my vinyl used, some is still from my original collection from the sixties and seventies. I ran wet, and still do on the Thorenses today. On the Technics that is not possible, with the result that even on clean records (I clean before every playback with 50/50 Isoprop/aqua dest.) after playback I have dust bunnies collected on the stylus because of the static attraction.

I love vinyl still because I grew up with it, my first TT was a Braun (1966) with considerable rumble, and it was then I started to tweak to get the noise down. The Transcriptors in the picture above I own since 1971, when I picked it up from a dealer in Oxford Street, London.
Yes, there is tacky artwork out there, but that applies to CD's as well. And if it is tacky (like the Hendrix EL with the nudes) - I want to see it in the full revealed glory of at least 12" x 12".

I embraced CD fully when it came out, and after a relapse triggered in part by Fremer's tirades I set up my vinyl again in 1995, only to conclude after AB comparisons that the CD sound is in no way inferior, and superior to the LP being free of surface noise.
I still have the players as I like the "tangibility" of vinyl and the accompanying rigging (I clean and maintain and tweak all players myself), and the nostalgia of my own life with HIFI.

This post has been edited by kraut: Feb 7 2012, 16:47