John Smyth wrote:

>I've been listening to Classical music on vinyl Lp records for the past
>year and I've been loving every minute of it.  The are literally millions
>of Classical Lps out there; generally speaking they tend to be well kept
>and production values are very high.  ...
>
>Early Columbias however,
>called "6-eyes," tend to be collectable, as they are warmer-sounding,
>not to mention the artists-Walter, early Bernstein, early Ormandy! ...
>
> ...  Lyritas are hard to find in the US and can be
>relatively expensive, from $10 and up.

Keeping part of my post to things classical...for me, it is interesting
to see what gets reissued on CD and what does not.  I was thinking of
some Victors like the Ginastera by Leinsdorf and many of those Lyritas
that have never made their way to CD.  Also of interest to me are the
hundreds of Melodia discs of orchestral music written by the likes of
Muradelli, Amirov, Taktakishvilli, Ivanov, Knipper, et al.

But speaking of the format...some advice from an archivist...don't play
that vinyl more than once every 24 hours.  The heat from the passing of
needle repeatedly can warm up a disc and eventually cause changes in the
groove.  Cleaning a disc with a good record cleaning machine will keep
the dust from be coming part of the groove.

The sound quality can be wonderful, even with those old Columbia LPs...
ever hear the barking dog in the old Ormandy Scheherazade?  Processing
with even less expensive (c.  $1,000) noise reduction software can produce
remarkable results, of course, you are then going from analog to digital!

As good as those old LPs could be, once you clean away the surface noise,
you still have the hiss from the original tape, usually some hum and
then there is the rumble from your turntable.  On the other hand, I
remain amazed at how well many of those discs sound once they are
cleaned up.

For a good read...

   http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub137/pub137.pdf

Karl