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Half-speed mastering can sound quite good*, but even better if the replay stylus tip is a narrow elliptical or preferably line contact profile to reproduce those HF. *Assuming the inverse RIAA is adjusted by an octave, and the tape player's LF (soon to be LMF) head bump at half speed isn't...

It is meaningless to opine that a single recording represents an entire medium or the other re sound quality. A well-made recording on vinyl may well sound better than a poor digital recording, and vice versa. Objectively, digital recording & reproduction can be better than any analog, but...

Clicks\pops can definitely be exacerbated by phono preamp clipping, but that happens well past the cartridge\preamp input's loading, that sets a HF resonance for RIAA. Clipping is a function of the preamp's signal levels after gain is applied. The solution is to design for gain with levels well...

I too left vinyl for CDs, but soon discovered not every worthy recording has been transferred to digital - that's a total of 140 years of recorded history on vinyl and shellac. We "hear" music through the artifacts. I've said that well recorded digital is superior to grooved recording, but...

Clicks\pops can definitely be exacerbated by phono preamp clipping, but that happens well past the cartridge\preamp input's loading, that sets a HF resonance for RIAA. Clipping is a function of the preamp's signal levels after gain is applied. The solution is to design for gain with levels...

VINYL "SOUNDS" DIFFERENT THAN DIGITAL. Sounds can be either a subjective preference, or the result(s) of objective causes. Distortion "colors" any close-to-original undistorted sound. Distortion is typically higher for vinyl replay than for digital, unless poorly recorded. Intermodulation...

Matt, I align tonearms routinely for clients, grandsons, and of course myself - it gets easier with practice. I include the usual tracking force, the visual method from my Phonograph book for skating compensation and the free tools in it for optimizing resonance - often ignored because it's...

I abandoned vinyl when CDs happened - even trashing a couple turntables that I wish I hadn't. Then added disk restoration to my audio engineering business, and wrote a textbook on the science behind it. Now, my son 50 and grandsons 16 and 14 have their own turntables and record collections...

Yes for us oldsters, but my posts (and Phonograph book) are written to help "youngsters." En masse, they could discover what we can't live long enough to.

I've mentioned preferring any of many of JBL highest quality implementations, from portable PA boxes to movie theater installs, that contain their best neo woofers - 2262 12in, 2265 15in, 2268 18in, and 2269 18in. While designed for high levels in concert arrays, these have the best distortion...

Popular music has been thoroughly explored and digitized. But only a small fraction of longer-lived acoustic classical, jazz, folk, bluegrass, opera, Broadway, organ, choral, lieder, chants, sacred, Delphic hymns, zydeco, etc, etc and electronic music with their smaller shares of the listening...

You “can live without them” because you don't know what they are, what you’re missing. (None of us knows what we don't know.) I’ve restored and added to my collection historic 16in radio transcriptions from the 1940s~50s with jazz by the all the great big bands, and featuring the best singers...

My big listening system is all commercial speakers, and all my pro audio and studio owner colleagues rave about it. It’s in a 500 cubic meter studio, and I demonstrate it with acoustic music at concert level. A musician and composer friend says “it's the best stereo I’ve ever heard” - and...

Opinions claiming a given speaker is for "home" or "PA" use are biased in the audiophile echo-chamber, and in truth need more nuance. Today's quality PA gear is hard to beat when loafing at home levels - JBL commercial drivers populate their best studio monitors, and at home would not distort...

Subwoofers solve several problems, both LF performance and acoustics, being able to place them to better advantage that where the mains need to be. The premium 12in MonoPrice are quite good, and lower in distortion than many others for the price. Why distortion matters is in my paper...

Newly released content on vinyl is tricky, as some is mastered from an over-processed digital. A few (the new remix of Sgt Peppers for example) are stellar. And vintage used disks offer much good music. Today's streaming (like the premium Amazon Music) are high quality, and support a wide...

Why still have a turntable? Above are many of rhe reasons. I’ll add that 140yr of recorded history are on records, but most are not in digital form. Much of the growing digital library is by restorers (like me) from these disks when no usable tape is available. Conservator level alignment...

Why still have a turntable? Above are many of the reasons. I’ll add that 140yr of recorded history are on records, but most are not in digital form. Much of the growing digital library is by restorers (like me) from these disks when no usable tape is available. For example a few of the...

Why still have a turntable? Above are many of rhe reasons. I’ll add that 140yr of recorded history are on records, but most are not in digital form. Much of the growing digital library is by restorers (like me) from these disks when no usable tape is available. Conservator level alignment...

Analog and digital recordings sound different especially because of their different distortion mechanisms that were decades apart in era. Digital's artifacts are minimal unless in mastering and distribution of pop music played on low quality systems has entailed abusive level compression and...