Stick to what you’re doing. Don’t sweat the small details. As long as it hasn’t got scuffs, looks like someone has been at with sand paper and or packing is in good good nic buy away. Let’s face it if you’re after the best you’d be buying digital formats in bit rates as high as you can get them in.
Having said that, many of today’s digital recordings on vinyl are better than there cd counter parts due to the format needing a “lighter touch” . Daft punk RAM for example sounds Better on wax then digital. So does DJ shadows entroducing latest reissue.
If your after that special limited pressing you have to preorder months in advance so there is no research to be done. So the research comments just don’t come in to play for that kind of thing. By the time you’re hearing it those pressings have long since gone.
For some reason people talk about vinyl as though new pressing don’t exist and anything bought today is all rubbish and it couldn’t be further from the truth.
I have some new vinyl and it’s good, the more I look the more I find I like, it doesn’t take away that some pressings are poor but after a bit of research I am picking up some good stuff.
As for CD’s, well I buy them as well, vinyl tends to be those records that I missed from my youth or really want to own a copy whereas CD’s being much much cheaper can be a bit of an impulse buy. The combination of the CDT and Hegel amp makes for a great CD experience.
Limited pressings, order months in advance and pay huge sums of money, no that’s not for me. When I hear that some of these audiophile pressings are in excess of £100 for an LP, single or double disc, then I move on, plus I’m not sure my little RP3 would do it justice.