Who are using vinyl as main source?

[PhilP]

... Riaa 1976 (I prefer the 1953 but my current Jelco arm will resonate due to the unfiltered set up of the 1953 ie 1953 goes under 20 Hz).

/Mike

Hi Mike, I am intrigued to know what you prefer about the 1953 curve?
AFAIK they are identical apart from the rumble cutoff and with a digital RIAA correction there is not even a risk of the extra phase shift due to the low filter.
No record player is capable of reproducing non-spurious output below ~ 2x Fn of the arm/cartridge so it is not as if you can be missing any genuine musical information below 20Hz.
cheers,
Frank

I hadn't realised there had been so much controversy about this but there's an interesting article in Stereophile which explains LP equalization in some detail here.

Apparently, the low frequency roll-off introduced by the 1976 revision actually starts above 20 Hz (its actually -3.0dB at 20 Hz, -1 dB at 40 Hz) and low frequency tonearm/cartridge resonance is not well-suppressed anyway because the roll-off is too gradual.

EDIT: The analogue high pass filter apparently introduces low frequency phase errors though, as f1eng says, if the equalization is done in the digital domain then these errors shouldn't be there. I don't know whether the digital equalization that Devialet use means the roll-off starts at 20Hz (i.e. 0 dB at 20Hz) or whether its -3dB at 20 Hz.

Whether the differences between the digitally applied 1953 and 1976 curves are audible I don't know but perhaps they could be. In a perfect system perhaps the 1953 curve would sound better on extreme organ music (lowest pedal note 16Hz) but I heard a demo of an Orbe/Devialet/SF Guarneri system in which the drive units flapped visibly all the time and someone who had heard a v similar system before said he couldn't understand why it sounded so "flat". It later turned out that RIAA curve used was the 1953 one. Presumably the performance of a drive unit must be negatively impacted if its having to cope with large, low-frequency, warp-induced movements?