My turntable has a remote control.

Without any familiarity of your remote control, let me ask a couple of questions. When the record has finished playing, can you replay it using the remote? While the record is playing, can you stop it by using the remote? How about a volume control? Bass adjustment? Treble adjustment? Mute? Gosh, I don't know; what else is there? Maybe it was just a sales gimmick to up the price? Out of curiosity, are these CD's or vinyls?

I can play several records on mine.

OOPS!
Oops! They're vinyls, of course: ". . . you have to lift the arm . . . " Sorry for the goof.

That's OK!

Edgabylthe no, you are not still playing a turn table. Where to you find new parts if something goes wrong?

I junk it and buy another in that event, Joanne. I have about a thousand vinyl albums. Can you imagine paying ten to thirteen dollars per album to rplace them all? Plus there are quite a few that may not be available now.
I love the crackle of vinyl when I listen to songs I have loved all my life. I don't need perfect equipment to appreciate this stuff.
The only function to the remote relates to the radio, volume and power. In short, it's useless.

Why no tapes?

I have dozens of cassettes and CDs and a seperate player for all that.

The other day I found a near mint copy of Little Richard's first record album. Mighty fine music there, crackles and all.

Damn! Missed this thread. One of my turntables has a remote as well, and the capability to play selected tracks from a record in programmed order, or to play a given track repeatedly. It is about 20 years old, and has been back for "overhaul" only once. I too am fond of the sonic character of vinyl.

As to "Crackle", I have a specific-purpose record cleaning machine, which does a good job, and I use a friction-reducing vinyl-dressing compound as well ... it helps a lot. I also have, but don't much use anymore, an electronic device which limits crack and click by digitally eliminating signal of particular noise-specific attack-and-decay characteristics.

I love my old records. It hurts me that my son wants to take them (in the event of my passing) and store them because he thinks they will be valuable. Like I told him, "These things are made to be grooved on and I plan to wear all the ridges off of them before I go anywhere."

I still have my Carrra in-line tracking turntable installed and have kept many mint condition LP's, many of them never release on CD.
I do appreciate the modern CD's dynamic range (even though with a good cartridge, those Telarc early LP's can still knock one out of their seat). In surround, LP's noise is accentuated and if you haven't heard the audio digital DVD's, you haven't heard anything!
They are so live sounding you are careful not to get to close to the speakers for fear of getting poked in the eye with a the bow of a violin!

Yeah, LW, DVD-A, particularly when real 5.1, is incredible. I agree that an excellent cartridge on a superb turntable, playing a pristine heavyweight vinyl is an incomparable experience. The dynamic range may not be quite to CD standard, but there are transients, harmonics, spatial cues and other nuances that seem not to translate well to the digital domain. I've just picked up a Miles Davis Bitch's Brew DVD-A, and I intend to do a side-by-side with my Mobile Fidelity Labs vinyl of the same album. I'll let you know.

Vinyl does have it's characteristic sound but is it really true to the source? I heard a demo once at UCLA with a live orchestra and a direct to vinyl reproduction. They weren't the same even on state-of-the-art equipment of the time. True, some of the difference has to be in the speakers and the ambience but the sound technician who was running to show pointed out what timbers, harmonics, et al actually were changed in recording. I've never heard and AB test like this for a CD but I've read enough to know that CD is more accurate to the original sound and is likely picking up eccentricities in the recording locale. Not much was recorded direct to vinyl (some of the best LP's I've ever heard were direct to vinyl like a Boss Brass album I have). It's like printing a picture -- all the processes from the original source changes the image. In LP's case, it's the microphone and placement just like with CD recording. Beyond that, with LP, it's the tape (or magnetic film which produced some legendary Mercury and other recordings), the transfer to master disc, the pressing process, the quality of the vinyl (usually not that good), et al. The recording engineers were notorious in vinyl recording days for tampering with the sound, equalizing it to sound good on cheap phonographs. I could go on but you could argue with me all day about the sound of LP being superior for being different and I would disagreee.

I dunno I'd say one was better, per se ... just that there are distinct and noticeable sonic differences. The current crop of CDs is far superior to those of the 80's and even early 90s, I think. My "Love of Vinyl" owes a lot to my enjoyment of lots of stuff that is not, and likely never will be, available on CD. Heck, some of my favorite recordings are Reel-to-Reel, half-track stereo recorded at 15 IPS right off the mixing board at bars and other tiny venues. And I KNOW those will never be commercially available. Got some great groups, too ... some known, some unknown. I like The Music much more than The Gear. All in all, Live is best, but I've never been able to get REO Speedwagon or Less McCann to show up at my house for a jam, so I listen to recordings

In the early CD days I suspect the engineers couldn't keep their hands off the knobs and were tweaking biases and equalization among other things. Microphone placement is one of the crucial considerations and having done a lot of Ampex tape recording of live concerts in my college career, I am sensitive to how a recording is made in the first place. I sometimes regret not veering off into being a sound engineer rather than art, interior design and lighting but that's certainly hindsight.

The 35 MM magnetic film recordings were the best but if you've never heard a direct-to-vinyl, that was the apex of vinyl recording. No tape noise for one thing although magnetic film is extremely quiet.