Vinyl versus digital - it's a seemingly unquenchable debate fuelled by passionately-held views. And I use the term 'debate' advisedly because I'm not inclined to treat the subjective preferences of different enthusiasts as a sign of division. While some may see themselves as one side of the coin or the other we are, after all, still a single coin and not a pocketful of change. But it was not always thus. The advent of CD ushered in a new era in domestic music replay but it also marked a step-change in the pace of audio technology's development. From that point on companies that had not, or would not, invest in the required engineering expertise were necessarily going to be on the back foot. And DSP engineers that specialised in audio were pretty thin on the ground in the early/ mid-1980s! So things got heated for a while as the specialist hi-fi industry was at least partially fractured by its own defensive reaction.
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