Reply #15: I buy directly from artists, high-return-to-the-artist distributors, thrift stores, etc.

[hunter]

But mostly I'm a creature of the vinyl and cassette age. I ripped most of my old vinyl and cassettes to mp3 a very long time ago and I usually enjoy that it sounds like vinyl or cassette -- whenever I listen to the music of my youth it sounds exactly like the music of my youth because it is. Most "remastered" CD's or digital rips of old music express some modern sound engineer's concept of digital perfection, often obliterating the original artists' and engineers' very sophisticated understanding of the limitations of analog media.

I'm not interested in expensive turntables, tube amplifiers, and modern vinyl, probably because I never had sophisticated stereo equipment. My cassettes and records were digitized using the same equipment I once played them on. If I was older and had a lot of 78 records that I used to play on a wind-up Victrola I'd probably put a microphone on a wind up Victrola to rip them.