"Adam Sampson" wrote in message
...
Stephen Worth writes:

There's a very good reason why people collect LP records. They are
very inexpensive, usually about two bucks apiece, and there's a wide
variety of music on LP that isn't available on CD.

Quite -- that's why I'm into vinyl. It's hard to find interesting
second-hand CDs for much less than four pounds here in the UK, which
puts me off buying music "on spec"; on the other hand, I can go into a
charity shop and pick up four to eight LPs for the same amount, and
I've discovered a lot of interesting music that way. I don't expect
the quality to be anywhere near that available on CD, although I'm
occasionally pleasantly surprised by a well-pressed record in really
good condition...

The lack of really cheap used CD's shows how sought after they are compared
to LP's.

Here in the US, for a used CD I typically pay 1/4 to 1/2 the cost of new
CD's (which seem to run about $15 to $20 US). If I get lucky, I'll find a
used CD I like in the "bargain bin" for maybe $1 to $3 US, which is a great
deal. In the same shops, LP's run about $0.50 to $3 US, and I do pick up
one from time to time.

There's also the historical interest angle: until 1984 or so, LP was
*the* mainstream high-fidelity medium. I can understand how CD can
produce good-quality audio -- that's just the application of
sufficient electronic magic -- but being able to get reasonable sound
quality by dragging a diamond across a sheet of plastic still strikes
me as a pretty cool trick.

I started collecting CD's back in about 1985, years before I bought my first
CD player. I'd borrow a friend's stereo and copy the CD to cassette tape
for listening since this was the Walkman era. Finally in about 1991/1992 I
won a CD player at a Christmas/New Year party thrown by my wife's boss. By
that time I had a collection of maybe 12 to 20 CD's and two to three dozen
LP's and 45's.

(Speaking as a vinyl enthusiast on a student budget, though, I do
really wish someone made an affordable record-cleaning machine!)

Clean the LP really good, record it on a PC as a WAV, then burn to a CD-R
and play the CD instead of the LP. You'll save wear and tear on the LP's
and eliminate the constant cleaning. Plus you can then easily transfer the
audio to an MP3 player or a NetMD via USB. I've done this for several dozen
LP's, mostly ones I got from my grandparents after their turntable finally
stopped working and they didn't want to repair it anymore. I gave them back
copies of the LP's on CD-R along with a little bookshelf CD player with a
remote control.

Just about any PC will do, as long as you've got a decent sound card in it.
All the software I use for this is freeware/shareware (Audacity, CD Wave,
and DePopper). Here in the US, I typically pay about $0.10 US for a blank
CD-R, which is still far cheaper than even a bargain LP. If you don't do
any noise reduction, you even preserve the "authentic LP sound". ;-)

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)