It is 5 AM, Do you Know where Mikey Fremer is?

Cleaning vinyl is the bane of our existance. But you gotta do what you gotta do.

I use a Perfection steam claner and listen while I clean. I usually do two to three hours and get a lot of listening in whice I clean. Its fun if you have a Corona or two and teh steam cleaner does not make much noise at all. I use microfiber cloths to remove the water.

I haven't watched my own DVD in quite some time but I don't recall the chapters all ending in freeze frames! It's easy enough to do a fade-out and it certainly doesn't cost any more.

I agree that the footage shot in my listening room wasn't as well lit as it was on the first DVD. I used the same crew and they let me down somewhat but since the first one came out so well, I trusted the director to get it right the second time. When we went to edit, I saw what you're talking about.

However, there was one other issue: I went to the added expense of shooting in high definition. There are various HD formats and fortunately the ones used for both pressing plant shoots looked extremely good while the one used for the home shoot was less so.

As far as the cost of the DVD, please remember it required a trip to Germany, hiring a film crew, a trip to RTI in California and hiring another crew and then a third crew to shoot at home.

Then all of it had to be edited, which took a great deal of time, and then the graphics had to be created, including all of the chapters, along with the opening animated sequence.

Music had to be written and edited to picture and then the DVD had to be authored (similar to CD mastering).

Add a bunch of etceteras to this and believe me, it adds up to a great deal of money...

I hope at least you found it interesting. I found the plant tours really fascinating and the visit to AcousTech really fun.

Also, the unscripted, ad-libbed 47 minute record collecting rant came out pretty good, I thought...

But that's just me! Plus there's a great deal of good info on the DVD-ROM section....

This has been an unpaid advertisement....

I don't understand the OP busting on Fremer, who seems to listen quite a bit indeed and has been a stalwart champion of analog.

I probably have in the neighborhood of 50 records in my "backlog". I've mostly halted my buying until I catch up.

Mr. Fremer, have you had a chance to hear the new Audio Research Ref Phono 2? What did you think? I borrowed a Ref 2 for five days and it blew my socks off; awesome performance in every way!!! I am saving up for one now.