I won't discuss pros and cons CD vs (in my case) direct drive (too), but at least I own old Apple records and Wiki says, that the Beatles recording were badly remastered: http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Cd_loudness_trend-something… I once heard the 'I against I' from the Bad Brains on CD and there was no loudnesswar issue, but the sound anyway was bad. Perhaps they used a mastering with equalisation for records and burned it to the CD, dunno, but the sound had disgusting highs. IMO if you want to be safe to get the original sound for old recordings, buy old, secondhand Vinyl. I suspect that modern recordings are made for CDs. Since I'm a (young) Dino I anyway own LPs (without barcode, it wasn't invented when I bought my first records), I won't buy them as CD too. @ 180 seconds: To be honest, I dare even to hear one song only from e.g. Jeff Wayne's 'The War of the Worlds'. I don't have the patience to hear such monsters completely and very often the stories of conceptual recordings aren't that interesting, e.g. 'Buckedheadland' is nice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucketheadland but it's not music I'm able to listen to a complete CD.