Phono Accessory Reviews

As long as you're spinning an LP for your listening pleasure, and if digitizing it at a resolution of 24-bit/192kHz is transparent to the analog source, why not record and store the LP on your computer at that high sampling rate for future convenient playback via iTunes or for iPod use, or for burning to CD-R? And, while you're at it, why not record the LP unequalized and apply the RIAA curve in the digital domain, where you're not dependent on capacitors and resistors that are imprecise to begin with, and can drift over time? With no drift of phase or value, the virtual filter's results should be better than with any analog filter. And in the digital domain, you can program in any curve known, and select it at the click of a mouse. Aside from the sweat equity invested in programming it in the first place, it wouldn't add a penny to the program's cost.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.—Hebrews 11:1

Analog maven Wally Malewicz is no stranger to these pages. His first commercial product, a cartridge-alignment tool called the WallyTractor, became a hit among the vinyl cognoscenti after Michael Fremer wrote about it in "Analog Corner" in the November 1998 Stereophile, and Malewicz's full kit of Wally Analog Tools was the joint winner of our Accessory of the Year award in 2002.

Stuff that works, stuff that holds up/
The kind of stuff you don't hang on the wall/
Stuff that's real, stuff you feel/
The kind of stuff you reach for when you fall.