Is analog & vinyl anoying? Is it worht it.

The only thing that is certain about this subject is that it has been done many times before, and usually ends up in mud slinging. It is necessary to provide information to newcomers, so I suggest that two "white papers" be written each discussing in a rational way the pros and cons of the two media, one written from each point of view. Then, each time the topic is posted Audiogon should put up the two white papers, and close the thread to comments. Some provision should be made for the white papers to be occasionally updated.

Viridian...Some recent tests that I ran on my humble phono system (Shure v15mr) suggests that, to my surprise, some signal up to 35 KHz does actually exist on some records, (at a very low level) so I won't contest your suggestion that 45KHz is possible. The low end is, IMHO, the important difference relative to CD. For a CD there is no roll off the bass to limit groove modulation amplitude, or mix to mono to prevent stylus hopping, or feedback. And, my ears still work quite well down to 20 Hz, but are deaf (to sine waves anyway) over about 14KHz.

Regarding dynamic range, on my system the noise floor of a "silent" groove is about 80 dB down from the peak of a loudly recorded LP, and a similar test of a CD yields about 100dB. I admit that I didn't read your reference (web names that go on for two lines are a challange) but the ones that I have seen usually talk about listening to signal that is many dB BELOW the noise floor. Frankly I don't enjoy listening unless the quiet passages of music are well above the noise floor. A signal that lies well below a noise floor can be detected by computer processing and perhaps by ear, but I would not include that in a practical measurement of dynamic range.

Viridian...I agree that it is astonishing that a mechanical media like a vinyl LP can sound so good. With some dynamic equalization (instead of the fixed RIAA curve) it can be as quiet as a CD, and with reduced distortion. (This was the DBX LP system, which I once had).

I believe that the CD4 system used a carrier with frequency modulation above 20 KHz. Because it was FM an undistorted waveform was not necessary. It was intended that the rear channels have full bandwidth capability (20 to 20K) so the cartridge had to work up to 40 KHz. In fact, although CD4 was a flop, phono cartridge design was greatly improved as a result of CD4.

I really question the need to clean CDs. Except for a few with obvious major defects I have never had one skip. People who clean their CDs as if they were LPs seem to have a lot of problems. Draw your own conclusion. The error correcting encoding of CD data "cleans" the data stream.

Shineola was a brand of shoe polish. I don't know if they make it any more. It was brown, and had the consistency of you know what.

Do people who have skipping CDs clean them a lot, or does cleaning CDs a lot cause them to skip?

Shadorne...Yes, interpolation is a fall-back method which is just an alternative to aborting. The R/S algorithm used for CDs will only fail for very severe damage. It is not intended that interpolation should occur for any significant length of time.

The "robustness" of the RS algorithm (how much bad/lost data it can recover) is chosen according to how noisy the data is expected to be. For a spacecraft orbiting Jupiter, and sending back pictures, corruption or total loss of data for more than a minute is fully correctable. The downsode is that a great deal of redundancy is in the data stream so it takes many minutes to transmit a picture that you might download to your computer in a few seconds.

They say that some things, like making sausage, you don't want to watch. Digiphobics, like Hxt1, probably should not watch LPs being recorded or mixed :-)

My point is that the audio signal is probably digital from just after the mic preamps to the LP cutting head..all through the mixing process. The vinyl final product might be thought of as "new wine in old bottles".

But Viridian brings up the point of transducers...mechanical-to-electrical,(Microphones) and electrical-to-mechanical,(speakers). Transducers color sound far more than any other factor. And the LP loop includes two more transducers than CDs (cutting head and cartridge). Unless you count A/D and D/A converters as transducers (a bit of a streach) CDs have only the microphone and speaker to color the sound.

Viridian...Did you ever listen to that Test CD, I think it was put out by Stereophile, where Julian Hersh (SP?) reads an essay using various models of microphones? Anyone who has heard this recording can't possibly believe that A/D and D/A converters color sound more than mics.

Hxt1...If 80 percent of your LPs predate digital, you are the exceptional case which proves the rule.

And by the way, if you check my first post you will find that I merely pointed out that most of the music on LPs has been through the digital format.

Viridian...Holt or Hirsh. What I remember is the astonishing differences between mics, all of which are well regarded models.