[PStamler]

Don, Trevor, e know you don't like LPs. Guess what: Those of us who collect music on LPs are as aware of their flaws as you are, maybe more so. To put it simply: from a technical point of view LPs suck. But, in many cases, *that's where the music is". An awful lot of LPs were never reissued on more proficient media, or were reissued badly.

What good turntables do is to retrieve the music with as little effect from the disc's flaws as poaaible. Some of the expensive, fancy tables do that well, some of them do it badly. My own preference is to copy the LP into the computer, use iZotope RX to eliminate the scratches, ticks and pops, do a little judicious filtering to eliminate infrasonic crap (good power amps aren't affected mu ch infrasonics, but radio station processing goes haywire -- and the goal is to broadcast the music -- then divide up into bands and burn a Cd, which is what gets played on the air. CDs are way easier to cue, too.

This is all a pain in the butt, but if, say, you're looking for music by Rev. Pearly Brown, well, you're not going to find that except on LP -- in our case, an LP that's in rough shape. His singing and playing, though, make the work worthwhile, and a good turntable helps. What do I mean by "good"? One that doesn't add significant rumble to what comes from the cutting lathe.. One with a cartridge/arm system that doedn't resonate a typical warp frequencies. One without significant wow & slutter (and, in the case of servo-controlled drive systems, one without cogging). Et cetera, et cetera. Oh yeah, one with a good clamping system to minimize warp. And a tone arm that doesn't resonate.

Like I said, the more you work with LPs, the more you know just how bad they can be. Digital recording has now gotten sufficiently transparent that if a record gets played back well, you can make a good digital recording of it and use software to clean up a lot of the remaining flawsremaining flaws. And finally get to the music, which is what it's really about.

Here's what still needs to be done: a variably off-center spindle to compensate for the wow caused by off-center stampers. Nakamichi had a system to deal with that in the 1970s, but it was kind of cobbled-together at best, and it aoon disappeared from the market. I can hear that wow, a lot, and short of reaming out the center hole, there aren't any good ways to deal with it. Back in the 60s we used to call one another on the phone when we got a Folkways record with the stampers properly centered on both sides -- it was that rare and exciting. To my mind, this is one of the biggest unsolved audible problems in LP (and 78) reproduction right now.

Pesce,
Psul