sacd,vinyl, and rebook....

Mprime, your comments are completely understandable, particularly for a music lover like myself.

If I were as young as my son, beginning my first year of college, I might not pursue analog at all. His software is primarily CD and MP3 (Apple iPod) and almost no analog, particularly compared to what I own.

For me, much of the classical, jazz, pop and rock and roll released over the past 50 years, is (or was) available on Vinyl.

For example, I just did a search at EBAY and there are 160309 vinyl records for sale today. Assuming duplicates and excluding a majority of the titles over content, a 2% hit rate would provide you with a library of more than 3000 records.

Those like myself with a large collection, replacing these titles with Redbook or SACD makes little sense. Of course that is exactly what Sony wishes we would do, all the while telling us we are missing the boat by not falling in line with the newest format.

Andrew Litton who is a Grammy Award winner for his classical releases and also conductor for the Dallas Symphony is part of my music group. It would amaze you guys to listen to one of his master digital tapes on our system and then compare it to the publicly released Redbook CD or DVD. You would be horrified, I promise you.

By the way, he is the only member of my group who owns MORE vinyl software than me. He had to build a separate room to house the collection.

There are about fifteen members that attend our weekly (my home) and monthly (bottle head members home) and most are like me, dual format. I have had some very expensive digital gear in my system over the last few years and none of it competes with analog.

I guess since I have not heard the EMM directly in my system I cannot say how well it would do. I did hear a demo with Steve Hoffman (Denver AudioFest) where we listened to analog tape on a Stellvox and compared to Redbook. Again, you would be horrified at how miserable the CD was in comparison. Any of you that know Dan at EAR USA can ask him, we were sitting beside each other.

Anyway, music IS what it's all about and I respect everyone having passion and commitment to their personal favorite. I have developed a rather strong bias through testing and am still waiting for the "next" digital player to come along that will convince me to step up to the bar and lay down the cash.

Albertporter...My point (which you didn't get) is that real world problems of LPs, clicks, pops, warps, dirt on the stylus and groove damage aflict even the most modest system. You don't have to spend much before these medium-related problems limit sonic quality. Even a super high end system like yours cannot overcome these problems, although it might sound good with pristine LPs. On your system, a scratch on the LP will be reproduced with stunning fidelity! Various electronic devices were developed to cope with these problems, but I am sure that a purist like you would not use them.

By the way, did you ever experience DBX encoded LPs? Now that was really superb vinyl technology. It was just as quiet as digital, which is what most people liked, but also phono pickup performance (distortion etc) was greatly improved by avoiding extreme groove modulation. Too bad it died.

Eldartford, I appreciate your position, but the comments are not necessarily applicable.

I have had people sit in front of my system for three, even four hours before a single click or pop is heard from my vinyl rig. Plus, you seem obsessed with picking up on a rare occurrence of noise, even at the expense of listening to an overall presentation that is inferior in fidelity and believability.

You owe it to yourself to visit someone with a properly set up Walker so you can understand that every record player is not alike.

Albert ,it always happen to me,after I listen to vynil
I have a hard time listening to sacd,cd.There is
something on vynil that my ears really enjoy.It takes
at least a day to go back to digital.The SACD of Mark
Levinson are the one that I would play, after a day
of recovering from vynil.But again I dont listen to
vynil a lot, because of convenient reasons.

Albertporter...A system that can recover the most subtle groove modulation cannot avoid response to groove defects. If what you say is true you are fortunate to own LPs in perfect condition. It was my experience that even new LPs from good labels usually came with a few audible defects.

I have heard some very expensive vinyl equipment, although I could never afford/justify owning it. Like a race-tuned Ferari it's nice, but not practical for real world use.