Come on! CD’s are brilliant!! They take pressing quality, deck quality, arm quality, cartridge quality out of the equation. 30 years ago I owned a fabulous deck, arm, cartridge, preamp and power amp but became “precious” about my records: they were so easily damaged that I was only happy being the sole operator of my equipment. Playing records was almost a spiritual experience! Then I bought a Nakamichi 680ZX cassette deck which gave superior sound in every respect (yes, that’s right, a cassette deck!!!) but that, too, was outrageously expensive. Listening to records or cassettes on other people’s gear became an excrutiating trial because most people want to hear the music (almost) regardless of quality. It took about 5 years after the introduction of CD’s for the medium to be properly understood by the people responsible for recording the music but now I can buy a CD, play it anywhere and it will sound OK. On “good” equipment it will sound amazing, on “average” equipment it will sound acceptable. I suppose what I’m really saying is that CD’s allow you to hear music much more like the final mix in a studio than you’d ever get with vinyl, and with no added background noise! COMPRESSION: analogue compression is a wonderful tool in pop music; digital compression can be good, too, if set up correctly. The lack of dynamics in much modern pop is caused by the injudicious use of brick wall limiting on each of the 20 or more tracks that go to make up a recording. I’m sure someone will be able to make this point more clearly but for me it’s time to sleep.
