Jack, thanks for that. I'm clearly years out of date: Nimbus just dropped off my radar, it's great to see that they're still going - and that they survived the dreaded Robert Maxwell.

Suibhne, yes I believe they were the first firm to press CDs in the UK, but I didn't realise they used to sell the equipment to other people. I know they were always in the forefront of sound technology, ambisonic recording etc.

All sorts of weird stuff seems to have been tried by various people in the early 1980s. How about the Sony portable video recorder which could be bought with a clip on analogue-digital converter? I remember an Australian chap cleaned up a lot of early 78 rpm jazz recordings using this and other equipment - they came out on commercial CDs and were pretty amazing, not that the purists liked the idea.