Why vinyl?

Asa, well said. I agree completely.

OH MY GOD, Unsound, we've met in the middle! I saw your post and thought I was in for a real drumming (which, sometimes, I am...). Thanks though.

Gosh, really thought I had trolled good on that one...Hmmm, maybe I'll switch to a Mister Twister, or a Rebel floater, or maybe a spoon. I must be losing my touch...

No one gonna give me crap for big word "egalitarianism", or for polemic as not-nice-and-warm-and-fuzzy enough? Jeeeez, you guys, come on!

Muralman, 6ch, detlof, please, hit me!

Oh well...

Oh yea, the digital rig sounded very nice last night...

I am eating peanuts, don't bother me! Oh, you want some? ;-)

Hi William!

Yes, I can see that, like Elmucy, that if ticks and pops just happened to drive you crazy that going analog would not be for you. I would say that, yes, I don't like them either, but I've also found that as my analog rig has gotten better, and I've used a record cleaning machine, and taken care of my records in that context, that such distractions have lessened significantly.

I know that there are some people that will never get past the ticks, but with the above progression, I think, if you allowed yourself to go that way, many of those people might find that the remaining ticks become, for listening purposes, insignificant.

Tape: ends up running through your fingers like sand...

On analog vs. CD, its an old topic, and I keep up with it, like many do, because every once in a while someone gets a TT and gets terrifically juiced about our 'lil mutual quest. How can that be bad?

I like vinyl for the "cheapness". Just today I bought a stack of 45's and a couple LP's at Goodwill for four dollars. Last week, I was in the next town north of where I live picking up some VW parts I bought off of E bay; I casually mentioned that I had fixed a turntable I got off of E bay. He said, You listen to records??? and then went inside and got a stack of records - mostly rock from the sixties an early seventies and asked, Is Fifteen dollars fair??? I said yes!
Even in High School in the eighties, I bought new records for eight or nine dollars each instead of a CD for fifteen. The sound was great to me then, and I had one of those "linear tracking", "P-mount" turntables. I'd record those records on a cassette and after buying the blank cassette, it was still less than the price of a new CD. I still play those cassettes, and they still sound good to me.
All of those records I bought new in the eighties are still at my mom's house, mostly unplayed for the past fifteen years. I finally got myself a "good" turntable, and records sound better than ever - from old Beach Boys and Temptations, to Virgil Fox and E. Power Biggs on the Organ, to some new 2002, unopend, hip hop records I bought the last time I was in the City...
I do buy CDs now, but most of my CD's are bought directly from "small-time", independent musicians and bands that I hear live. I always buy the CD when the musician or band sells them after the show. Never does the CD sound as good as the live performance.
I did buy the Alan Parsons project CD that was released around 1992. I thought the sound was harsh (on a late eighties Kyocera CD player) I recorded it onto a cassette, and that smoothed out the sound, to my ears. But that is a different issue, the variances from cassette deck to cassette deck and variances between brands and types of casette tapes. -JB