Most expensive Audio disapoinment?

peoples memories are short. the cd was made to displace the audio cassette, not the lp. vinyl was in sharp declined long before cd arrived.....the marketplace was a 70/30 split cassette vd vinyl. spending a fortune on a cd player is just as crazy as spending a fortune on a cassette player was in the eighties. thw soon-to-be extinct sacd is next in line for a fade out.

Jeff, thanks for the compliment. I sold off most of the stuff in virtual system, but hope to one day build another system in that messy room.

I've never tried the Stealth Varig but have read a lot of good things about it. I'd like to hear how it compares to the AZ MC2 when you've come to a conclusion.

In an antithetic example to this thread, the MC2 was a great surprise in my system. For $160 used I think this is a super cable. Just after Y2K, I compared it with four other digital cables over the course of two years and the MC2 and Virtual Dynamics Nite were the clear favorites to my ears.

As for the LP > cassette > CD transition, I can say that I was not disappointed in CD redbook reproduction when it was introduced because I never owned a good analogue playback system. Ignorance is bliss!

Now if I can just control my urge to interject audio irreverence every time I see an Audiogon thread begging to be made fun of, we might get some serious work done hear. Hah!

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to find new releases on 8 track tape for my 1969 Plymouth. I'd appreciate any help.
Beep Beep.

01-11-07: Jaybo
peoples memories are short. the cd was made to displace the audio cassette, not the lp.

Yeah, um, I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you there Jaybo. When originally presented, the CD was specifically aimed at replacing the LP as a read only source. The ads were 'perfect sound forever', aimed at the percieved LP's weakness'. The sound was 'perfect', no snaps, crackles or pops, and 'forever' hinting at the wear of vinyl. Upon release the cd was a read only format, how could it replace a read/write format like the audio cassette? The CD-R didn't come along until many years later. The CD-R is what replaced the analog cassette, not the CD.
The fact that CD's competed/replaced analog cassette decks in cars only gave the CD an additional leg up on the LP, mobility.

John

as someone who was in the music business at the time, i can tell you that the cassette player/recorder and the blank audio cassette industry was booming. the sales of lps in some major national accounts was less than 10% of their total prerecorded business. the prerecorded audio cassette had to go, because it was too cheap...there were too many defectives (which the labels had to eat), and was the 'pirating' format of choice. the lp was dying as a format long before cd arrived. 1975 marked the beginning of the end. thousands of lp catalogue titles where cut-out and dumped for pennies on the dollar(more than ever before). that trend continued up until the lp was nothing more than a one stop boutique item for audiophiles. the compact disc cost less to make than a cassette, and as you know, pretty much killed the blank tape industry as well as the cassette deck/recorder business. at the time, recording disc to disc wasn't an option, and the computer was something as big as a room..not a laptop...geez i'm old. still in the business today, and most of our vinyl pressings are less than 1000 units globally.