I live in a sort of technoconfusion of analog and digital technology.

This is my current turntable, a Philips Electronic 312 from the late 1970s featureing "touch sensor" controls. It may not be the best turntable with audiophile aspirations ever made, but it is arguably the coolest.

The tone arm is a bit flimsy due to the prevailing obsession with low mass construction. The platter is light weight by today's (or 1980s!) standards, made of light stainless steel and it's also a ferrous material that some balk at. Check out the touch sensor controls with the green lights. The left light is for 45rpm, the right for 33rpm, the center for off; in the back right are the fine tune speed controls for adjusting the speed using the stroboscopic pattern on the platen (you can't see the stripes because the table is spinning and the camera does not have persistence of vision). I have to consider it "high end" for the period because these were sold at local audiophile type shops like Myer-Emco along with tube McIntosh amplifiers. It was not your typical turntable. The cartridge is an Empire 2000 (made by Empire Scientific now out of the phono cartridge business).

I vastly prefer digital media (CD), but sometimes you need to listen to the original recording to hear the original quality, what made it special. A good example is Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock, which sound pretty lame in most of those cheap re-issues made long after he died without his supervision, especially from the LP era with horrible fake stereo and reverb added. The original 45 reminds me of just how explosive, out of control and revolutionary his sound was when Bill burst onto the scene in the 50s from virtual obscurity. He and stars like Wanda Jackson were really out of control! I have not heard the 20th Century Masters reissue of Bill Haley to compare with the Decca 45, but it is possible it may be just as good or better.