Nic - I used to have quite a large collection of Classical vinyl, bought new between the early 60s and the dawn of CD, which I loved dearly. Clicks and surface noise were either just there from the start, or appeared from nowhere as the years went by (and I have always been very careful with my stuff) I found that baroque and closely-miked instrumental music (harpsichord, guitar, cello etc) always worked well enough on vinyl - i.e. stuff which has a limited dynamic range, but then when you get to opera, Mahler (very much a composer of the CD age) and a lot else (especially stuff that goes mental in the last movement), I found it became a trial. I know that some people can completely ignore surface noise, and I envy them. For me it is like finding my seat at the Festival Hall and then noticing a bronchitic old man sitting purposefully with a large sheet of bubblewrap across his knees in the next row.
I completely understand the joys of collecting analogue vinyl (and the strokeable box sets & lovely librettos with readable typefaces)and also your point about analogue warmth (or colouration or whatever), but this Decca box shows that we really can have it all. In fact if every mini-sleeve was 'laminated with Clarifoil' then life would be completely perfect.
For me (and, I suspect Basil) once I had heard a classical CD, then really, that was it. So obviously superior in so many ways that I never bought classical vinyl again. My big mistake at this time was thinking that digital recordings would automatically be better, which was of course nonsense, and I've got some right old toss as a result, and now the majority of my purchases now seem to be older recordings.
palp
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