"they have carved out a niche among audiophiles" ... who prefer the distorted sound of a sharp point dragging on plastic to the clean high bandwidth low distortion sound of the CD. Incidentally, why are LPs referred to as "Vinyl" yet CDs are not referred to as "Carbonate"? I don't say "I'm going to town in the steel." I go to town in the car. Please, call LPs by their proper name/abbreviation.