I think phono playback has come a long way since the beginning of the LP. I have many old records - records I am very familiar with, sonically. Just within the last decade or so, changing arms, tables and cartridges (and eventually phono stage) has, with amps, line stage, cable and speakers remaining the same, made a considerable improvement in the amount of information I am able to extract from the record. Is it perfect? Hardly. But, there are so many other variables in the recording process (lousy recording), mastering (bad mastering) and manufacturing (no fill, off center spindle holes, stitching, etc) that the phono cartridge is, in my estimation, just one factor among many. When a record is done well, it can be a revelation. I'm not an avid purchaser of every audiophile remaster, but the 45 rpm version of that SRV set, the track Tin Pan Alley, is pretty amazing (as well as a pretty good electric blues). Many old records sound great too. I have shelves of direct to disc and other "audiophile" records from the '70s-'80s that I don't play because the music isn't interesting to me. Finding music that I am interested in hearing on a well recorded, well mastered record is a smaller universe, but there's probably hundreds of thousands out there that I haven't heard. If I weren't fully invested in the medium, I don't know that I would "do" vinyl, but having accumulated records since I was a teenager (I'm now over 60), I get great joy from them. I do spend more time searching out good sounding pressings than I used to-- not everything sounds great-- but I'm more gratified doing this than chasing the latest gear tweak, and listening to the same small universe of 'reference' records to evaluate the results. If there is no joy in this, what's the point?
