33 1/2 compared to 45 rpm ????

33 = Long Play => same idea as you video camera long play or photo image sixe "small" on your camera (basically compressed). Before CD arrived I used to buy everything I liked and could get my hands on in 45 RPM format for this very reason. Night and day in my mind. Although individually you can get some really great 33's and some reallt bad 45's - so you can't completely generalize...

Osgorth has answered this well from my experience. The 45 rpm disc, all else being equal, moves a fairly significant step closer to what I would expect from the sound of the master tape: higher resolution, better image focus, improved clarity on the inner grooves. I hear this over and over again on the LPs I've compared where I have both a 33 rpm and a 45 rpm of the same material from the same mastering engineer.

For a quick discussion of why, read the comments from mastering engineer Kevin Gray at Music Matters.
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Thank you very much for the link and all the feed back to make my journey in analog more pleasurable.

Roger Busby

Dear Roger: This is a critical subject ( posted by Rushton ) on what you ask:

+++++ " The 45 rpm disc, all else being equal, moves " ++++

If you ask because you want to buy 45 versions of " today " good 33 ones please do it with care: many ( I can say several ) of those 45 versions are inferior ( quality performance ) over the 33 same ones. Not every thing that " shine " is gold.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

12 inch 45's sound better, but are over too soon. If you are all manual, they are a pain