Critic's Corner

Reviewers with LP - how many are there ?

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A hard thing to do - find the reviewers who use LP as a *primary* listening source. Digital would be a secondary (or no digits at all).

I cannot prove anything here. It's based on recent reviews and the strong comments they made.

It seems (most) of Stereophile and (all) of Enjoythemusic use digital as a primary source. Audiostream, which has a few writers, is all-digital. But of course, they are a digital website.

Virtually all Soundstage/Ultra Audio, Stereotimes and PFO people use digital as primary. David Robinson (of PFO) always put LP first - but seems to prefer the Gryphon Kalliope DAC nowadays.

Robert Youman, long time LP fan, seems to have put the Esoteric K-01x in a tie with LP. A first for him.

Over 5 years ago, the editor of StereoMojo gave up his turntable for a Lampizator DAC. Two more editors -Steve Rochlin (of Enjoythemusic) and Jeff Dorgay (of Toneaudio) did the same for the Gryphon Kalliope DAC. These guys could still be using turntables as secondary sources, however.

Marshall Nack (of PFO) and Roy Gregory (of Audiobeat) seem to have put the CH Precision DAC in front of their LP gear.

Roy's colleague, Marc Mickelson said recently that the DCS stack he reviewed was the equal (or in some ways better) than his reference LP source. A first for him.

Ken Micallef, uses digital equally with LP these days (I think, after his Line Magnetic DAC review).

I could go on, but here's the "last of the bunch" for pure LP:

Michael Fremer, Jon Valin, Greg Weaver, Jack Roberts, Art Dudley, Herb Reichert, Steve Guttenberg, Dick Olsher (though he loved that Monarchy DAC, which could be a primary for him).

Fascinating how few, out of 150 reviewers.

And out-right shocking that this happened *after* LP improved, greatly, over the past 30 years. Much of it the last 10.

Finally, the fact that 'digital' means Red Book CD (resolution) for most of our files. Meaning a 'low-rez' digital format defeated much-improved analog-LP.

Did anyone think this would happen ?



Edits: 03/03/17

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