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How many of us listen to VINYL as primary source?


Allan Songer

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Well, it sounds to me like you should forget about your typos for the moment and go market your linear tracking, air bearing arm!

There have been a number of DIY attempts at the various air bearing arms with Poul Ladegaard's Air Bearing Tangential Tonearm being a inspiration as well as a guide to many. Here is a rudimentary picture below of one of his first prototypes

arm.jpg

Many following the Teres turntable project ( http://www.teresaudio.com/ ) have attempted this arm as documented by a few of the participants.

I assume Soeren's arm description does not match up well with this example. The commercial arms that have attempted versions of air bearing design include Air Tangent, Rockport, Maplenoll, and the aforementioned ET2.

How different is your design from these other attempts? Although I have never owned an air bearing arm, I have always been interested in their design approach. Do you have any drawings of your model?

kh

Phono Linn LP-12 Vahalla / Linn Basic Plus / Sumiko Blue Point

CD Player Rega Planet

Preamp Cary Audio SLP-70 w/Phono Modified

Amplifier Welborne Labs 2A3 Moondog Monoblocks

Cable DIYCable Superlative / Twisted Cross Connect

Speaker 1977 Klipsch Cornwall I w/Alnico & Type B Crossover

system one online / alternate components / Asylum Listing f>s>

This message has been edited by mobile homeless on 01-11-2002 at 09:18 AM

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If I may...

Listening to vinyl records is like a walk in the woods...through dense chigger and tick infested undergrowth in the middle of the hottest Missouri August on record, with blackberry briars and hedge thorns tearing at your flesh with every step.

While listening to a good recording on CD is like walking through the same forest on perfectly maintained nature trails (perfect "forever"? - ha) on a crisp, cool, late fall day. A day when everything is right with the world, and every sensation is distinctly discernable, yet also undeniably part of a greater "ensemble". A feast for the senses!

------------------

JDMcCall

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To the two latest replies I will tell a little story:

It happens from time to another that some, mostly young, people try to convince me about the qualities of the CD's. They come with a player and some CD's and we listen to it. Once when we heard Emmanuel Ax and Yo Yo Ma playing the early Beethoven Sonatas they said: Oh, what a silence, later, what a dynamics! After the sonata was finished I asked: What do Ax and Ma mean about how the cello sonatas of Beethoven should be played? Good? Meehhh. Bad? Meehhh. Is it musically important? Certainly not what we heard.

Nasty as I am I then played a converted 78 recording from 1938 with Myra Hess and Emanuel Feuermann playing the middle sonata and immediately the reactions were: What a beatiful instrument, what a phrasing, what a teamwork!

In my mind the former is not fidelity and the latter is, in the sense that has this 'something' that makes the musical message go through without any effort. Fidelity does only exist if you are not thinking at it, it is a part of the definition as I see it.

To be fair it should be said that this the most provoking experiment was made in 87 and that mainly Feuerman was a much greater cellist than Ma, but Ax and Ma are not playing so badly that it can explain the result. Something has happened since 87 but I still prefer a good LP to a CD and so it has been for all who have heard the two medias here.

The drawbacks of LP's are in my mind:

Difficult acces to new records,

not for dogs and children,

very expensive, between 1 and 2 $ pr hour alone in diamond use, but it inspires to DIY,

the RIAA part of the amplifier is the most difficult of all amplifiers to design, and nobody takes it seriously enough

For various reasons I am so lucky only to have the first problem, not only for market reasons, but also for geographical reasons. If somebody knows a really good (second hand?) mailorder record shop, then I am interested (mostly classical chamber music).

Frankly spoken, I have the impression that some of the latest writers here have never heard a competent analogue system. I know classical musicians who can not accept LP's and others who can not accept CD's, it depends on which kind of distortion you are sensible to. I am reacting very violently to Aliasing Intermodulation Distortion (AID)and jitter just to name a few, being nervous, feel it as an agression, and can certainly not feel or understand the music when exposed to it; and as we all know k-horns and laScala between is the worst combination as you can really hear these kinds of distortion without any masking effect.

Mobile,

the arm I am talking about is basically the arm designed by Poul Ladegaard, and I know him as we have both been writing for the same danish magazine where he published the design of the arm, mostly to be considered as a draft. I have no intension of producing them for several reasons, among others that it will take a long time to make it look nicely and more important that it is so extremely flexible that you should make it to your own turntable and make your own refinements. It is so simple that once you have understood the idea behind it, it can be made in no time for no money + an aquarium (I learned something)pump.

If you give me a fax and phone number I will try to send you a primitive drawing with some text which you are welcome to print on this board. I guess it is a language problem, that you can not read the original article in danish, so I will try to make a short description. It might take a little time, though.

Another thing is that I am actually manufacturing amplifiers which now are on a quality level I find satisfying and they go especially well with Klipsch. Unfortunately there is no RIAA in it for the moment, but I am working on it. I wonder if some of the members of this board would be a good forum for evaluating/testing?

Regards

Søren

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This is lovely, simply lovely.

I am growing interested in vinyl again, my last foray was with a Philips 212, which was ubiquitous when I was younger, but you never see them anymmore.

The surface noise and clicks/pops were what drove me away from vinyl. That and jumping up every 20 minutes or less to start new music.

However, and this was a long time ago now and my memory has certainly romanticized it, I remember visiting a customer somewhere in Ohio that was writing the computer programs for Pizza Hut that are now everywhere -- where they remember your order, etc. from last time.

He was doing this from a big old Victorian house and he had a big room with one of the most Rube Goldberg turntables in it that I ever saw. This is not saying much, remember the 212.

I remember nothing of the associated equipment. Except that it was acoustic suspension speakers of the monkey coffin variety.

He played a jazz disc for me after we talked a bit about CDs -- this was when that technology was new, and folks like Meridian were just coming out with their $1100 (!) CD players.

I was, simply, blown away. 'Analog lives' was firmed etched in my mind since then.

But, I am of the opinion that to do analog well, one must go considerably further than the 212's of my youth.

I am saving up my nickels and dimes, and plan on investing in some kind of analog in the future, but don't know when to stop saving and start buying. At the rate that I accumulate nickels and dimes, it will be years (and years) before I can spend as much on analog as I have on digital. By then I wonder if the new formats (SACD, etc) will finally make the decision moot.

Or is it possible to invest a couple hundred dollars and get good (well, maybe not blown away quality but shocking quality) sound from a vinyl setup?

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mdeneen,

as I have done before, I will tell a little story:

Some twenty years ago I had an Audire Diffet One preamplifier with RIAA, and it was certainly much better than the Quad I used before, which was horrible. However, inspired by Matti Ottala, I found that it could be made better, so I builded a RIAA where I made every effort to avoid among other things TIM (transient intermodulation distortion).

When the first prototype was ready we, my wife and I, listened to a Bach cantata and spontaneously my wife said: How is it slow! I had absolutely the same feeling, and after a symbolic control of the speed of the turntable, we continued with a violin concerto and it was the same: Where I thought that the violinist had some problems moving the fingers fast enough, I found now plenty of time to each note, and that with much more nuances. It became more calm. An explanation was needed.

I found a part of a possible explanation in an interview with Ottala, where he says, that the good God (one of mankinds more doubtful innovations, my comment) created us many years ago with a transient hearing sensibility for alert purposes, and first much later gave us concordance sensitivity for communication purposes.

Now to my own part of the explanation: When we listen to a long chain of false transients, then such a transient goes first to the reptile part of the brain with unconditional priority. There the signal is anlysed for dangerous content, and when no appearent danger is found, a message is sent to other parts of the brain with the message: No danger, you can start the aesthetic analyse. But a millisecond later the same is happening, and my little brain has not time enough to analyse the aesthetics of the music. The result is loss of the pleasure of music, and that the music seems to go too fast due to lack of time in the brain.

A funny side effect of this is, that if you really have a system without these nasty kinds of distortion, then you can directly hear these things when exposed to real transients. I like the sonata by Bartok for two pianos and percussion for demonstration purposes. At certais passages you realise that you are not listening to Bartok so much, but more to your own evolutionary history! When I am extremely sensitive to these things, it is probably because I have fewer layers of varnish over the reptile part of my brain than most people. It gives me many problems but could also make me a better designer of audio equipment, that is at least what I prefer to think.

This is my theory, and take it for what it is.

An indicium that the RIAA is a weak point is seen from the critic of amplifieres/receivers in audio magazines, where they nearly always wrote that the RIAA is bad but the rest is OK.

From a more technical point of view the reason that the RIAA's are so problematic is that we here have low amplitude signals with an extremely high content of treble. In many years the standard solution both with valves and transistors was to place the time constants in the feed-back loop. This can be done without too many problems with valves, and guess that these the good ones you are mentioning; but it is difficult to do it with transistors if you want to avoid TIM and other of these special kinds of distortion. The opposite solution, which I prefer, is to do it with a passive frequency correction, the problems here are that you get the full noise from the components and that it demands an extreme linearity of the amplifier stages.

Personally I use a SRPP, and if some are interested, I can mail a diagram. A scanner is needed. I should like to make them commercially, but I am a little scared of the juridical problems by selling high voltage equipment.

Historically seen, I think that you could sell these bad RIAA's because it could give a subjective impression of more life to a slow and lazy speaker, but with Klipsch we are facing problems of a different nature. In parallel to this, I have the feeling that some of the modifications proposed in this board such as horn damping more are amplifier problems than speaker problems.

Cheers,

Søren

This message has been edited by Soeren Basboell on 01-13-2002 at 03:53 AM

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Q: How many audiophiles does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A:None - They prefer the "soft warmth" of candles.

No, really - To each his own. If you love vinyl, go for it, but realize that vinyl is dead and no amount of eloquent praise will ever bring it back. Instead, we as enthusiasts & consumers must demand an acceptable successor that is not simply the next stage in planned obsolescence. Should it be HDCD, DVD-A, SACD, DTS? What does everyone think?

------------------

We Like our speakers big & heavy!

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Vinyl is NOT dead--at least not in MY house! If I never buy another record I have more than enough great music to enjoy for the rest of my life. And there will hopefully be someone around to re-tip my SPUs and Decca London Gold cartridges (I have a few of each--just in case!).

I'll bet you that in 50 years there will be more people listening to LPs than CDs--I think the CD will go the way of the 8-track, Betamax and cassette tape and hopefully be replaced by something MUCH better! You have to rememeber the CD was developed by Philips as a replacement for the cassette tape--never in a million years did they think it would supplant the LP!

I don't think people will love and cherish CD collections the way many of us now love and cherish great old LPs. I'll bet in 25 years my collection of several hundred Norgrans, Clefs, Blue Notes, Prestiges, Contemporarys and the like will have more value than an acre of CDs (of course I feel that way RIGHT NOW).

Most people think my preference for the LP is rather "quaint"--that is until I invite them in for a listen. I always use "So What" from Kind of Blue and begin with the CD and after about 3 or 4 minutes (after Coltrane's solo) I play them the same cut on a 40 year old original 6-eye and their jaws drop. Every single person every single time has told me the LP sounds better--more "alive" or "more like real music" or some such comment.

And my analog rig cost me about 1/8 what my CD player cost!

My system:

(2) McIntosh MC-30 monoblocks (KT-66 outputs)

Mcintosh C-22 preamp

Thorens TD-124/SME 3012/Ortofon SPU GT/E

B.A.T. VK-D5 CD player

Klipsch Cornwalls (1964, vertical horn)

and recently I've added a Linn Sizmik subwoofer--I think I like it enough to keep it! Never thought I'd say that about a sub, but this one is really something else!

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Allan,

I'm with you on this. I grew up on Miles, have gone through 3 copies of Kind of Blue, and it's still my favorite. In fact, at this late hour I'm going to put it on before I hit the pillow. I have only about 500 Jazz LPs, and vinyl will never be dead in my house. That's why even though I love movies and home theatre setups, I love Jazz more and have spent the last 3 months creating a 2 channel, music only system. Long live the LP. And yes, LPs sound wonderful a good "setup"

Klipsch out.

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Allan and Edmond are exactly on target. The LP is certainly NOT dead as there are more NEW records being produced right now then in the last 10 years. Indeed, you wouldnt believe the number of excellent turntables being made right now - there is actually almost a plethora of tables, both in the mid-price level and the extreme high-end. Dont believe me? Take a look at this page from the latest International CES. It contains pictures of many of the exhibiting tables; they are amazing pieces:

http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/vinyl/messages/103523.html

I have given up debating the many that believe digital sound has easily surpassed analog. It hasnt but perhaps one day it will. It surely is getting closer... and I have to admit, the ease of use issue is definitely won by the CD. My Rega Planet is a picture of ease and works like a charm, even sounding much closer to analog then the average CD player. STILL, when I drop a vinyl duplicate onto the Linn, the difference is so astounding, that you sometimes just shake your head. Just like those that have disdain for horns as passe and colored devices, vinyl will be frowned upon the those that think the absence of tics and pops means quality sound.

I will admit that when people come to me for advice on a turntable, if they have NO record collection, I usually just advise them to go with digital. That is, unless they have a great interest in Jazz or even independent labels where a lot of great stuff is contained on vinyl. I dont know if it's wise to start from scratch at this stage. I will say it is the most rewarding to me as vinyl gets me closer to the music much like tubes and horns. Indeed, I can say that vinyl and Klipsch vintage horns go hand in hand like no other. My Cornwalls LOVE vinyl and the sound is glorious in a way my Rega Planet cannot duplicate.

Many on here would disagree with this...just like many would say a 1960 14w vintage tube amp would be nothing more than an outdated distortion device.

As ole Hunter Thompson would say: Selah...

kh

Phono Linn LP-12 Vahalla / Linn Basic Plus / Sumiko Blue Point

CD Player Rega Planet

Preamp Cary Audio SLP-70 w/Phono Modified

Amplifier Welborne Labs 2A3 Moondog Monoblocks

Cable DIYCable Superlative / Twisted Cross Connect

Speaker 1977 Klipsch Cornwall I w/Alnico & Type B Crossover

system one online / alternate components / Asylum Listing f>s>

This message has been edited by mobile homeless on 01-23-2002 at 09:15 AM

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  • 2 weeks later...

Allright - not exactly "dead" - but the relevance of vinyl is practically nil in terms of mainstream music format. Vinyl survives today as:

A: DJ material for mixes, house music, etc.

B: Nostalgia item for folks like yourselves.

As for the statement that the CD was never meant to replace the LP, to me that seems to defy credibility and I would like to know where that info comes from. If the CD had really been intended to replace tapes, wouldn't they have been recordable from the outset and not 15 years hence?

Let's think back a little - once Philips & Sony had established the CD, then began the quest to develop the portable, RECORDABLE media replacement for the cassette. Enter DAT, DCC and MD - none of which has really emerged as the successor to the cassette, and now seem unlikely to now that CD burners are FINALLY making their way into the hands of the regular Joe. (something of a shame, as I love the versatility and stability of MD and find the quality more than acceptable compared to cassette.)

The real issue, however, has to be availability. LPs are 10 years gone from the mainstream record stores. What sources that remain are hole in the wall specialty stores and mail order houses. I hear the collective cringe when I mention "mainstream", and I cringe a little myself, but like it or not the record industry's bread is buttered by the 15-30 year old crowd - a demographic with no interest in vinyl.

What's interesting is what you ARE starting to see quite a bit of on the record store shelves - remastered editions. That simply confirms what a lot of us have known for years - the quality of CD mastering has been haphazard and often downright poor. I have a few CDs that I kid you not are worse than garden variety cassettes. On the other hand, the superiority of HDCD to standard CD sould be obvious to just about anyone, regardless of equipment.

Therefore, to say that analog is better than digital isn't always saying a lot.

Now we are being offered SACD, a whole new format, as a solution. It seems to get good reviews so far on this board, and I've yet to do a Pepsi challenge comparison, so I can neither confirm nor refute this.

What concerns me are 2 things:

1)As a solution, it does not really address the problem, which is poor mastering methods and standards by the record industry. I think that it is for this reason as much as any that the CD has been frequently maligned in the audiophile ranks. In this regard, all SACD offers is more of the same if a quality standard is not adhered to(and at a higher price tag!)

2)SACD once again denies access to the digital signal for recording purposes. Does anyone think that it is a coincidence that this format was introduced just as CD burners began to show up on the shelves at your Electronicsupermegamart? And by Sony, one of the biggest players in the recording industry no less?

Wait a minute - perhaps I'm starting to see the light here. Screw the format wars! I'm digging out my old turntable and the last LP I bought - a twice-played, 1983 copy of ZZ Top Eliminator.

------------------

We Like our speakers big & heavy!

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Interesting... but a bit off concerning the vinyl and nostalgia item for folks like yourselves... christ

Having worked in college radio for over 8 years and reviewing countless bands, I will say that the indie scene is putting about 90% of their stuff out on vinyl as well as CD.

I live near Chapel Hill, NC where a top college station and club scene is located. There are four record stores downtown. Two of them have just as much vinyl as CD. One of them has an entire three walls of vinyl with the long walls being close to 30 feet.

Listen, it's like some bone head going into Circuit City or Best Buy and concluding there are:

a. NO TUBE AMPS

b. No HORNS ANYWHERE

c. NO RECORDS

d. NO SINGLE DISC CD PLAYERS

e. NO PHONO PREAMPS

d. NO 2 Channel AUDIO PREAMPS

F. NOTHING BESIDES MONSTER CABLE

G. SONY and ONKYO ARE AS GOOD AS IT GETS!

What is with all the mainstream mess? There is a HUGE group of people ALL ages that listens to vinyl over CD. I know many of my cohorts do. IF you go to many of these Indie shows, the bands all sell vinyl in the back, right along side the CDs, with vinyl keeping neck and neck.

Our college radio station here has just as much vinyl as digital.... If you look at FAntasy/Contemporary/PAblo etc records, many of their releases are STILL carried in vinyl.

Of course, Digital is in the mainstream...but then again, so are SONY, DENON, PIONEER, ONKYO, TECHNICS, PANASONIC, etc.

Vinyl is a bigger alternative now then it was six years ago. It is not dead as much as coming back for a resurgance. Will it TAKE OVER digital? HELL NO. But it is alive and kicking and a valid and better sounding alternative as we speak.

kh

------------------

Phono Linn LP-12 Vahalla / Linn Basic Plus / Sumiko Blue Point

CD Player Rega Planet

Preamp Cary Audio SLP-70 w/Phono Modified

Amplifier Welborne Labs 2A3 Moondog Monoblocks

Cable DIYCable Superlative / Twisted Cross Connect

Speaker 1977 Klipsch Cornwall I w/Alnico & Type B Crossover

system one online / alternate components / Asylum Listing f>s>

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interesting post, mdeneen...

still, there are MANY MANY bands that do not record that way... And there is TONS of new music coming out that is FAR more than synthetic bass whomps and cuss words...lord. You sound like a 70 year old man lamenting barber shop quartets!

heh... I DO see what you are saying here. I agree that much of mainstream music is rather horrifying. On the other hand, there is SO MUCH music out there that is NOT this at all.... It's just the Circuit City/WalMart/BUYRITE set remains clueless....as they ALWAYS have!

There many good record labels out right now...many that sprung up in the culturally DEAD Reagan era of the 80s, where intelligent life had to DIG and hang on for dear life.

IT's out there. You just need to know where to go.

kh

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I just got into the swing of things when I hooked up the Corwalls to my Dynakit-70 and dug out my original Prestige LP of Miles' "Man I Love", the legendary session with Monk and Milt Jackson etc.. I am really happy I upgraded to the Cornwalls, this LP never sounded so good. I was amazed that the years of owning this LP and the various incarnations of Styli playing it hadn't destroyed its ability to dig out such rich sounds. There really is something to be said for that old thick deep groove (whatever that means) vinyl. I figure those tubes are also helping warm up the house on these cold winter evenings. For now this basic system is just fine and I can look forward to maybe further upgrades down the road. There are a lot of old LPs to go back to now.

-ClipSh

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"Allright - not exactly "dead" - but the relevance of vinyl is practically nil in terms of mainstream music format. Vinyl survives today as:

A: DJ material for mixes, house music, etc.

B: Nostalgia item for folks like yourselves."

Besides nostalgia I find a most compelling reason to still be involved with LPs (as well as some 78s) is to have access to material that never made it beyond the LP and in many cases never made it beyond the 78. Although lots of things have been reissued there is much important music that has not, and may not ever. Admittedly this is a somewhat esoteric area, but important to the musician, historian, and/or composer or arranger. Nothing like being able to arrange a new version of some great material that no one has heard for 65 years. Incidentally original 78s can sound better than the old transfers to LPs and certainly better than most transfer to CD that are on the market.

Another reason is that many recordings just sound astoundingly better on the original vinyl than the CDs, with some exceptions.

-Bill

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  • 4 years later...

Now to my own part of the explanation: When we listen to a long chain of false transients, then such a transient goes first to the reptile part of the brain with unconditional priority. There the signal is anlysed for dangerous content, and when no appearent danger is found, a message is sent to other parts of the brain with the message: No danger, you can start the aesthetic analyse. But a millisecond later the same is happening, and my little brain has not time enough to analyse the aesthetics of the music. The result is loss of the pleasure of music, and that the music seems to go too fast due to lack of time in the brain.

I'm not sure how much different a bird brain and a reptile brain is, but I've got to say that I personally have never analyzed any of my CDs for dangerous content before enjoying them.

Where have you gone, Soeren Basboell?

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Despite owing an extensive collection of vinyl (many audiophile series), I listen exclusivley to CD's. I must admit to necer owing a "Good" Cartridge etc. so maybe that's why I saw CD's as a giant step, no leap, forward.

And where have you gone, Stu Pidass?

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Now to my own part of the explanation: When we listen to a long chain of false transients, then such a transient goes first to the reptile part of the brain with unconditional priority. There the signal is anlysed for dangerous content, and when no appearent danger is found, a message is sent to other parts of the brain with the message: No danger, you can start the aesthetic analyse. But a millisecond later the same is happening, and my little brain has not time enough to analyse the aesthetics of the music. The result is loss of the pleasure of music, and that the music seems to go too fast due to lack of time in the brain.

I'm not sure how much different a bird brain and a reptile brain is, but I've got to say that I personally have never analyzed any of my CDs for dangerous content before enjoying them.

Where have you gone, Soeren Basboell?

He heard a funny noise - panicked and was off like a rocket never to be seen again.

None of the above applies to you Paul - you stopped before the reptile brain developed.[:P]

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Now to my own part of the explanation: When we listen to a long chain of false transients, then such a transient goes first to the reptile part of the brain with unconditional priority. There the signal is anlysed for dangerous content, and when no appearent danger is found, a message is sent to other parts of the brain with the message: No danger, you can start the aesthetic analyse. But a millisecond later the same is happening, and my little brain has not time enough to analyse the aesthetics of the music. The result is loss of the pleasure of music, and that the music seems to go too fast due to lack of time in the brain.

I'm not sure how much different a bird brain and a reptile brain is, but I've got to say that I personally have never analyzed any of my CDs for dangerous content before enjoying them.

Where have you gone, Soeren Basboell?

He heard a funny noise - panicked and was off like a rocket never to be seen again.

None of the above applies to you Paul - you stopped before the reptile brain developed.[:P]

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Though my vinyl to cd has been around 80% to 20% for years I have

not even had a cd player hooked up in my main rig since the end of December.[:D]

I'm very happy since I have arranged most of my over 6,000 records and

have cleaned over 2,000 in the last 2 months!

http://www.fredmiranda.com/hosting-data//500/13238nocd.jpg

I must say I do enjoy my Vinyl!

Posted Image

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