Notes

These are Redbook CD tracks made from 12" vinyl records which have been recorded, restored and mastered through a high-end playback and processing system. The recording rate is 44kHz/24bit. For an explanation of why this rate is used please read "Procedure" below.

The sound is better than virtually all 9624 tracks of LPs that I have heard, although there is a poster named VanP%%ten who has an outrageously good-sounding setup and D%%Rob with his high-end vinyl does quite well also. The soundstage is very wide, open and engaging. In part, this is due to the physics of the low-output moving coil cartridge design- a sound that MM type carts cannot hope to achieve. Also, my restoration procedure may be unique. See below:

PROCEDURE:
All records are first thoroughly cleaned. A pink-noise track on a stereo test record is recorded in Sound Forge Pro 10. Then a Behringer Ultra-Curve 24bit dual DSP 31-band constant Q mainframe is used to compensate on left and right channels individually for the tonal coloration of the tonearm/cartridge combination, bringing the frequency response to perfectly flat +/-0.5db  from 25-20,000 Hz. Everything below 25Hz is rolled off at 18db/octave. There is not a tonearm/cartridge made at any cost that has this perfectly flat response. Therefore, your multi-thousand dollar phono pre-amp is only reproducing the color spectrum of your TT/tonearm/cart combination. Furthermore, you may spend 10 or $15k on a cartridge and still not have flat frequency response! As an example, most low-output MC carts have a frequency spike on the high end. Some carts are woefully lacking in the bass register, others are more pronounced, etc. As  far as I know, my hardware setup is something which has never been tried before. Additionally, high sample rates have never been shown to improve the sound of any music, and I certainly don't see an improvement. Therefore I record at 44/24. Most recording engineers will record a project at whatever sample rate the finished product is going to be at! What does this tell you? I personally have many hdtracks albums that sound pitiful when compared to the  44/16 tracks I offer to you here, and I think we all have CDs that sound so good they just blow the average hdtrack out of the water. Sound engineers know that the quality of the input signal and the mastering tools are the most important factors in determining the "listenability" of the final product.

HARDWARE:
Turntable: Sota Star Sapphire (vacuum hold-down). The Star Sapphire uses a 17lb platter, under which is an inverted bearing that consists of a sapphire thrust plate and zirconium ball. The clamping action of the vacuum holding the record to the platter causes the stylus to "see" each record as a 17lb chunk of vinyl, and every record plays absolutely 100% flat on the platter. (180 gram records?.....who needs 'em?)
Tonearm: SME V, using no damping whatsoever.
Cartridge: AT OC9ml/II, at 1.75 grams. Pre-amp: Yamaha CX-1, loaded to 20 ohms.

SOFTWARE:
The master file is recorded at 44.1kHz/24bit in Sound Forge Pro 10, using an ESI Juli@ soundcard (not a typo, it's really Juli@) with +4dBm balanced ins & outs. Waves X-click, X-crackle, X-hum, and X-noise plug-ins are used to make these files as quiet as CD tracks. The transparency and  clarity of Waves plug-ins is astounding, to say the least. However, since the  source is vinyl you may hear (rarely) a click or a noise that has been missed during restoration, or that I was unable to remove manually. Most of my records are quiet enough that I just let the software run on automatic most of the time. After noise reduction the Waves L-1 Ultramaximizer is used to bring the level of the whole sound file up a couple of decibels. The L-1 is a world-renowned look-ahead peak limiter, which, as with all the Waves software I have used, is astonishingly clear and  transparent.