20) Sanders Audio and vinyl? Yes?
Vinyl is a very flawed recording medium. I have produced many vinyl LPs for customers back when that was all that was available. I refuse to compromise performance so have no use for vinyl today. All the recordings I make now are stored on digital media because it can produce a perfect copy of my recordings while no analog system can.
Audiophiles constantly make false assumptions because they fail to do valid testing that will reveal the true cause of what they hear. They commonly believe that digital recordings sound badly due to the digital media upon which the recordings are stored. But the true cause of the poor sound they hear is due to the recording itself -- not the digital media, which is essentially perfect.
In other words, garbage in gets you garbage out. Many digital recordings sound truly awful, despite the fact that the digital media is superb. But the bad sound is not caused by the digital media -- it is caused by the poor recording stored on it.
Many vinyl recordings were made long ago before modern processing (compressors, equalizers, artificial reverb) was available. They were recorded in quality acoustical environments and recorded in true stereo (rather than in mono using only one microphone) so they sounded very natural and realistic. Some older recordings on LPs are really wonderful. These recordings sound great despite the flaws and limitations of the LP storage medium.
I have thousands of LPs. I have recorded all the music on them to one of my digital flash recorders so that I can listen to my vinyl music conveniently (LPs are a hassle to find and use).
Since digital recordings are perfect, they sound absolutely identical to the LP. Therefore I never actually play my LPs anymore. I listen to the digital copy instead. This also saves my LPs from wear and tear (each time you play an LP, you damage it). I keep my LPs in my museum rather than playing them.
I have no problem with audiophiles who enjoy old vinyl recordings. That's great. But PLEASE don't try to tell me that vinyl recordings are better than digital ones. That is simply not true.
I accommodate those audiophiles who like playing LPs by having a phono stage in my preamp. It includes all the important features like adjustable gain for moving coil or moving magnet cartridges and it has adjustable resistance and capacitance for ideal loading of cartridges.
21) What were your explorations on of Class D?
I do not consider switch mode (Class D) amplifiers to be high fidelity devices. This is because they do not have linear frequency response.
Their high frequency response depends on the character of the load (the loudspeaker). Therefore they must be specifically adjusted to your specific speaker to have linear frequency response. Since this is not practical, I do not use or recommend switch mode amps for full bandwidth speakers.
However, they usually have a lot of power and are relatively efficient. So switch mode amps are excellent for driving woofers (which require a lot of power). Because woofers do not reproduce high frequencies, the poor high frequency response of switch mode amps is not an issue when driving woofers.
For all these reasons, you commonly find switch mode amps used in sub woofers. In that application, I think they are excellent. But I will only use linea
