In article , Trevor Wilson
wrote:



**It always has been.

[big snip]

Record companies never cared much about quality and what cares they did
have, went out the window with the arrival of CDs.

I've been enjoying reading my way though a large number of back-issues of
HFN that I've acquired recently. Various things have struck me when I have
jumped back and forth between decades.

1) The regular articles which humourously warn of the 'addictions' of
audiophilia and how normal people are baffled by the weird behaviour.
(Although I suspect some of these were written by John Crabbe under various
house pen-names. ;- )

2) Regular articles bemoaning the lousy state of many LPs due to pressing
or handling faults at the factory.

3) The music reviews which remind me of just how many excellent recordings
have been made that I haven't yet caught up with. :-)

WRT (2) I've just been reading an article by Adrian Hope (Barry Fox) about
the way he - and the rest of us - were unpaid conscript 'quality checkers'
for the LP companies. Main point of the article was to discuss the use of
'factory sealed' LPs to stop shops allowing people to play the discs on
their in-store spiral lathe players and then sell them to some other
unsuspecting buyer as if 'new'. Question was if the Sale of Goods Act made
this illegal. However one comment from a retailer was that 'factory sealed'
discs would mean *more* returns from buyers. The comment was along the
lines, "If you think the LPs you buy are bad, you should try the ones we
sent back because we checked them visually before putting them up for
sale!"

Slainte,

Jim

--
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