To use the phono stage of the Sunfire preamp meant (for starters) I needed a turntable. I did have a turntable, two of them actually; a Denon DP-59L and a Denon DP-62L. The 62L was originally the top of the line, superseded by the 59L. These units had been packed away with tender loving care; both in their original shipping boxes, with all original packing material, including the tie wraps! I decided to go with the 59L as it was the newest of the two. While checking out the turntable I became aware of two problems....no phono cartridge and no LPs!

Rather than guess at what was a good cartridge I contacted Soundscape, the oldest stereo shop in the Baltimore/Washington area. Throwing myself at their mercy I agreed to purchase a cartridge of their recommendation but.... they had to install it. I wanted no parts of installing a fragile component while trying to adjust overhang, vertical alignment, horizontal alignment, and vertical tracking angle. They agreed and the result is a van den Hull MM-1 moving magnet (MM) cartridge, installed by the experts in a tonearm that is an integral part of the Denon 59L. One problem down and one to go. I had no LPs!

Somewhere between here and Germany (where I was stationed for several years) are my four hundred fifty plus LPs that were shipped but never arrived at my home. What to do, what to do? If I want to learn about double-blind testing I take (took!) the appropriate college credit courses in psychology and statistical analysis. If I want to pick what are considered audiophile quality LPs I don't have the option of taking appropriate college classes in "LP Selecting 101." I know very little about outfits which specialize in the sale of LPs. Well, as luck would have it, what to my wondering eyes should appear but a sales flyer from ACOUSTIC SOUNDS, located in Salina, Kansas. Based on a desperate need and impressed by several years of seeing advertisements by ACOUSTIC SOUNDS (longevity always gives one a warm feeling about doing business with a company) I made the plunge and ordered several LPs.

Of the LPs ordered, three were purchased on the recommendation of the ACOUSTIC SOUNDS owner, Chad Kassem. He's a person of few words even when the long distance call is being paid for by the customer! He also confirmed that my three choices were good ones. The result was six LPs in all at a price you could buy 25 to 30 NAXOS CDs for! That's not a complaint, just a commentary on the fact that a dead technology is not a buyer's market! In addition to the six LP's I ordered three "gold" CD's which were identical performances of three of the six LP's.

Now I had everything in place....almost. During my audiophile lifetime-most of it spent with LPs as the playback medium-there was one cardinal rule I never swayed from This cardinal rule was treating LPs with tender loving care. I cleaned the LP before and after playing it, never (never!) touching an LP except by the edges and the center, cleaning the stylus every listening session (that translates into cleaning it almost daily), measuring and adjusting if necessary the stylus pressure on a weekly basis, replacing the LP inside sleeve with one made from a soft, non-scratching, non-decomposing, chemically inert material, always storing LPs in an upright position, and always storing them in a relatively cool location. As an added precaution I tried not to play an LP more than once in a twenty-four hour period. The result was an LP collection that I received many compliments on for sound quality, minimal clicks and pops, and looks! Old habits die hard and I wasn't about to treat my new LPs with anything but the same tender, loving care. But I had no cleaning equipment!

Using digital technology and one of its byproducts (a computer and the Internet respectively) I came upon an outfit by the name of GARAGE 'A RECORDS, located in Cromwell, Indiana (garage-a-records.com). Everything and anything you could want in LPs and LP accessories was available from this site. I must admit to spending more than a little time exploring the site for all those neat, clunky, mechanical things associated with LPs. The owner is also very neat, Carole Neat, to be exact. My order was placed for a DISCWASHER record cleaning kit and stylus cleaner, a Shure tracking force gauge, and a package of soft, durable, and chemically inert DISCWASHER record sleeves.

Upon receiving my order from GARAGE 'A RECORDS I immediately used the Shure tracking force gauge to check the accuracy of the built-in tracking force adjustment of the Denon tonearm. A 1 gram reading on the tonearm tracking force indicator was exactly one gram as measured by the Shure gauge! I haven't lost my touch.

This ends my visit to LP land. It was a fun and nostalgia filled visit, and unlike Victor Herbert's Toyland, you can cross LP Land's borders and return as many times as you would like. I'm sure I'll be returning. And just in case: I will keep the analog front end as part of my system. One never knows when one might come upon a rare recording from the early 1900's! It's nice to know that some things never change, huh! The truth is I've been amiss all these years in not having an analog front end as part of my system. And now I can review some of those phono cartridges in future issues of Sound Off!

Three Months later

I have had some time to listen to and compare my analog/LP setup with my digital/CD setup. What follows are my experiences with the old versus the new record/playback technologies. Or I should say the new compared to the old but improved technology. I'll start with a convenience comparison.

I will not belabor the point, but when it comes to convenience the CD has all the advantages and by comparison the LP has none, unless fragile and susceptible to damage are advantages! The CD is smaller (obviously!), easier to handle, much easier to access a given track or portion of a track, requires far less storage area, doesn't wear out (oh yeah!) with repeated playing, doesn't act like a magnet for attracting dust, etc. Having to get up every 20 minutes to turn the LP over is plain torture. Convenience-wise the LP is better than a sharp stick in the eye, but only by a little bit! On a final note: I have been collecting CDs since 1985, have over 2,000 in my collection, and never have had even one CD that succumbed to the infamous, "CD rot."

As for sound quality....you could hardly wait, huh? Okay, let's be fair and not even consider the maddening clicks and pops that are part of every LP (I've never heard an exception) and seem to be ignored by the LP aficionados. I was pleasantly surprised at the sound emanating from my analog setup. But the question is how does the new LP sound compared to CD sound? Having three LPs and three CDs of the exact performance made for comparisons in real time and of the same material. For those interested the comparisons were based on the following recorded performances: Richard Strauss/Also sprach Zarathrusta with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony-CD RCA 09026-6194-2/LP RCA LSC-1806. Rimsky-Korsakoff/Sherazade with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony-CD RCA 09026-68168-2/ LP RCA LSC-2446. Offenbach/Gaite Parisienne with the Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler-CD RCA 09026-61847-2/LP RCA LSC-1817. The LPs are reissues by Classic Records using the original master tapes. My comparisons took longer than one might expect as I never played the vinyl more than once in a 24 hour period.

The first comparison was with Also sprach Zarathrusta. The van den Hall cartridge did an admirable job of reproducing the well known opening lines, much better than any cartridge could have done when this recording was made (1954!). And much better than any Moving Coil (MC) cartridge I have ever owned, including a $1,200 not-to-be-named cartridge that went belly-up in less than a year.

The opening lines with the basses, contrabassoons, organ, and bass drum are blurred in the LP version compared to the CD. The highs in the LP version just aren't there and the lows in the LP version are conspicuous by their absence. No, the LP isn't bad sound. But it definitely is much further removed from the concert hall experience than the CD sound. Perhaps I should say much further removed! And having to get up and turn the LP over to side two after only 16 minutes of playing time is almost as maddening as the clicks and pops!

Although I took the time and effort to compare the other two performances there's no need to go into the details of the comparisons. It would only be more of the same. And I'd rather spend the time listening to music than comparing technologies!

Interestingly, I noticed that the discrepancies between the LP and CD weren't as extreme when listening to small ensembles. My comparisons in this case weren't as rigorous. But I did enough comparing to be convinced that the LP technology isn't stretched to the breaking point when the demands placed on it are relatively modest.

The LP sound has improved noticeably since my last exposure to it. Improved but not enough to cause me to throw away my CD player and CD collection. I definitely will keep my analog front-end. There are enough LPs out there that haven't been transferred to CD and probably never will be. There is now in my listening room the past and the present in sound reproduction technologies. I will enjoy both but for different reasons.