Laurie Strachan

A member of the Philip Greenspun's Homepage community since October 6, 1998

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October 6, 1998, on Stereos of the Rich and Famous:
As a professional music reviewer for around 20 years I still have around 1000 LPs and a growing list of CDs (around 1500 at this point). I also go to a lot of live classical concerts. After all this I have come to the conclusion that the CD is not so much an advance on the LP in terms of absolute sound (no pun intended) as a much better way of delivering a consistently good sound. The worst LP problem, and one that no one has mentioned, is tracking distortion - where the needle just won't follow the groove and you get that horrible grating sound. I have three LP sets of Die Meistersinger and none of them manages to reproduce the finale of ACT I without that garbage (with both MC and MM cartridges). It doesn't exist on CDs. Neither does wow and flutter - and don't tell me they aren't audible on LPs. I interviewed Ivor Tiefenbrun the designer of the Linn Sondek and he told me I should take off my digital watch because it was a transducer and would r...