"I used to obsess about cartridge compliance and anti-skating force."

I had so many LPs that distorted like mad in loud passages once the stylus was getting close to the inside of the disc. It used to drive me bananas and I never managed to resolve it. I once bought a cleaning system called Permostat. It worked like a dream when first applied, but once the disc had been back in its sleeve for a week or two it adhered disgustingly to the inner liner and came out with more static than ever. You could even see swirly residue marks all over it. It was the clicks that you knew exactly where they were and that you sat there anticipating that were the worst. With cassettes, I'd sit there waiting for long, steady notes on pianos, clarinets or oboes, a dead giveaway for detecting wow and flutter and it never failed. The thin tape and slow tape speed must have had a lot to do with it. And don't get me started on bogus degaussing kits and yards of tape getting jammed in the mechanism. CDs were a liberation. Minidisc was very good, as was said above, except for Sony's neurotic obsession with not letting you make digital copies of stuff and providing just about the clunkiest music platform (SonicStage) known to humankind.