What is the “World’s Best Cartridge”?

Dear @mijostyn  :  " my own purchases it is about 50/50 LPs to digital files. "

That 50% on LP means that all those LPs were/are ndew/inedit recordings and with no re-issues? and that 50%  of LPs how many bougth you by month?

Totally new LPs have several problems to appears in the market. Even that exist over 100+ pressing plants in the world many of these are small labels that over the time were and will disappears leaving only the around 10 " big " pressings plants that can't fulfill the artist/audiophiles needs of new material on LP. Pressing plants is a business and for the consumer prices does not goes to high the plants needs to presses 10K+ samplers of each new LP title. In the last 10 years the LP prices gones higher and higher and this tendency is far away to dissapears but the other way around: will be higher alaways.

Other problem is that vinyl is not a friendly build material ( petroleum. ) with the erath enviroment and will disappears sooner or latter. From some years now some small or maybe not so small plants are trying that the sources of that vinyl change it for other new material friendly with the enviroment and as a fact there are a few options that could or could not help about because those new materials needs to pass the " test time " of playing.

So, in a few years your 50% will goes to maybe 5% or just zero. So enjoy what you have.

R.

@solypsa

Well, I have spent most of my career in IT. My first PC did not have a hard drive. I have been in charge of large data centers and implemented and been responsible for running multibillion dollar global corporations’ systems.

Digitally an album takes up 16 megabytes + or - 100%. This means you could store around 5,000 albums on one 4 tb disk drive. The environmental impact of producing 5,000 albums is huge… for one person! The environmental impact of producing one drive and servicing hundreds of thousands of people or more is minuscule. There are literally orders of magnitude differences between the two in terms of energy and environmental impact. 

@ghdprentice thanks for the breakdown. Based on your stated qualifications it would appear that you are in a position to know. No argument from me. 

I only wondered when I think of the time factor. Iow every record ever made *could* still be played ( if not physically damaged ) so as much as  100 years of serving music. 

I guess the digital era has saved us an order of magnitude of money and environmental impact. ;)

@rauliruegas , I average about two records a week or 8-9 monthly. My guess is 75% new and 25% reissue. What happens in the future is no concern of mine but I agree the era of vinyl records will end eventually, certainly by the end of this century. My wife made me buy a new Garmin watch because it has an SPO2 meter built in and it does home sleep studies. She thinks I have sleep apnea. It will also take you anywhere in the world, manage 8 different sports, the weather, traffic and your health. All this in a watch. Think where we were 100 years ago, the 1920's. Where will we be in 100 years? 

@ghdprentice , Anyone who thinks vinyl records are a problem needs to go to a dump and look around. Think of mountains of used car batteries that can not be recycled and all the toxic sh-t in them. Be very careful what you wish for.

Some of my European Classical albums from the 70s and 80's are fabulously quiet and are great recordings. I can not imaging new releases being any better.

QRP (Acoustic Sounds) has succeeding in making LP surfaces that are about 10-15 dB quieter, FWIW.