On 28 May 2005 20:02:35 GMT, "Tom Kelly"
wrote:

There's plenty of high-end vinyl available, and it's very, very quiet. Check
out the catalog available from http://store.acousticsounds.com. (I have no
interest in the company.)

Unfortunately, good cartridges are VERY expensive, but they are highly
resistant to the resonances caused by surface noise, pops and ticks. The
best tick and pop filter is a good cartridge/arm/turntable setup, and a good
record played on such a setup produces the best sounding MUSIC. On a good
system, it's hard to tell an LP from a CD, except that the music on the LP
sounds more like the real thing. But great sound doesn't come cheap. That's
why they call it "high end."

Great sound *does* come cheap - just avoid vinyl! If *you* think that
vinyl sounds 'more like the real thing', that's fine for *you*, but
please don't state it as a *fact*, because it just ain't so.

I also find it trivially easy to tell LP from CD, and that's precisely
because of all the *additional* artifacts of vinyl, not anything
mysteriously 'missing' from CD.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering