In my travels I've noticed the recent upsurge in interest in vinyl LPs en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki… .

About 10 years ago, I bought an inexpensive Sony PS-LX300USB turntable (which can also rip LPs to MP3s via a kludgy process) to play a shelf full of exquisite vintage classical LPs bequeathed to us by the 94-year-old next-door neighbor before his house was torn down. When I archived my '80s Denon hi-fi in the cellar office, my son and I relocated it to the main house hi-fi, which still had phono inputs.

A few days ago, my daughter found a Sony PS-8750 hifi-wiki.de/index.php/… and an eclectic assortment of LPs, all of which were marketed in East Germany, which was about to go to the dump. I ordered a phono pre-amp from Amazon that arrived in two days for €18 amazon.de/-/en/gp/aw/d/… , which we could hook up to my wife’s old '80s-era Philips AW7684 ghetto blaster/third world briefcase/boom box archive.org/details/man… . The boom box needed a good cleaning, and I still have to clean the potentiometers and contacts a bit more thoroughly, but it really sounds great. It had a dual-dubbing cassette bays, but doesn't have a CD player, but crucially has RCA plug line-ins, which means that along with the turntable pre-amp, one can attach one, as well as a Bluetooth dongle for streaming devices. We live in such a throw-away society, so it always feels great to resurrect well-built gear such as this.

It's also nice to see a new generation appreciating all this technology. I still find that CDs sound better, and digital streaming sounds even better than that, plus includes all the instant access and portability advantages, but there's definitely something meditative in going through the ritual of taking a record out of the sleeve, blowing the dust off the grooves, setting the tone arm, and then sitting down to listen whilst reading the album jacket and enjoying the album art.