i bet a double blind sound test would have vinyl afficinados fail to distinguish the two though.
Possibly, but keep in mind one of the drawbacks of vinyl (clicks and pops) actually would make it easy to discern in a typical setup. Of course some people actually love the clicks and pops.
I've listened to one at an audition. It not only works, it works very well.
Oh, I don't question that it works, I'm just trying to figure out how it stays analog. I think I'll PM rubycon and see if she can offer some help in understanding this.
Vinyl and valves will live forever. There's sound there that's too enticing.
Sad thing is, digital audio could have killed off analog, but the music industry screwed things up so badly (a high quality digital source which DVD-A/SACD should have offered). It never likely would have had the resurgence, well the hipster one probably would have happened, but I think even most sound quality focused people would have moved on (actually even most of them have a good digital system as well) had digital audio actually taken advantage of its strengths. I think sound quality wise, we'll be able to eventually make it a moot point (if its not already, although its definitely debatable and ultimately there's too many factors to make it an even comparison). Nostalgia and other psychological factors also play a part, such as putting an album on and letting it play all the way through.
Of course sound quality is moot if we're stuck with crap before we even have a chance to really influence things (in other words, high quality equipment is mostly wasted when we're stuck with compression, autotune vocals, and all the other junk).