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There is a long way to go

I've heard CD playback that is surprisingly good - *really* good. It was some old huge gold-colored Sony player going into an old VTL preamp, c-j Premier 12s, and Vandy Quatros in a wonderful room. It was good enough so that I didn't think "Ah, that's better!" when putting on an LP at home.

Even from that level, there's a long way to go. I had a half-track Otari deck, and even with the stock repro amps, it was astonishing. 15-ips half-track, when properly done, is a revelation. Once you hear it you can see why the ebay "tape lady" and Bottlehead/Tape Project's Dan Schmalle tapes sell so fast for so much money. You'll also probably agree with Harry Weisfeld, who, in the VPI Factory tour video, points to a tape deck and says, "That blows away everything else in here."

So yes, there's a long ways to go for digital *and* LP. I think digital may get there. With data storage becoming so cheap, new better-sounding digital conversion/standards that might require huge files will no longer be prohibitive. Even though most of the recorded-music-consumers are listening to MP3 on earbuds in noisy environments, there will always be engineers working at the opposite end of the quality spectrum, trying to push the envelope. When they succeed, we can reap one big advantage of digital playback: making devices or software for those new standards is a relatively low cost item.

And yes, there will always be tweaks, and now and then a tweak will turn out to be pretty important.

WW
"Put on your high heeled sneakers. Baby, we''re goin'' out tonight.

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