Colcam

Vinyl records are enjoying a comeback, apparently. It just goes to show there are an awful lot of people around who have too much money to waste, are masochists, or are too young to have known the misery of a favourite album, bought with cash either saved up or, if it was one that was impossible to wait for, the food money, only to get it SCRATCHED - tik tik tik tik tik. Or even worse, We're Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Ba tik Ba tik Ba tik Ba tik Ba tik Ba.......................

Sod that. I was delighted to move over to tape cassettes, despite the agony of the infernal machine chewing the odd gem of an album to death, and even more delighted to progress to the compact disc.

I have to admit I have never been just totally happy with the sometimes rather cold, harsh digital quality of some music on CD. Vinyl does have something special about its rendering of sound. Not enough, however, to make me even give a record deck house room, never mind the bloody records to spin on it.

Today I buy CDs, and immediately transfer the tracks to iTunes on my Mac iBook. I seldom play the discs again. The Mac, with an excellent set of three speakers attached, does all I could ever want, with a brilliant graphic equalizer to get the sound the way I like it, and fabulous visuals to make the whole pleasure of music complete.

If anyone really wants to go back to the wicked old dark ages of vinyl, I have the answer for you. If you don't have a Mac, get one, then download (for free, Mac only) RetroPlayer ver 1.6.0 and play your MP3 music through it. You can configure it to play too fast, too slow, with scratches, and make the "needle" stick - just like the real thing.