Quote Originally Posted by phileserver39
Hi AR. I have had an idea for a while but have thought that it was too simplistic and must be missing something fundamental in nature. I would appreciate your input...

The laser is a very precise instrument- it is used to accurately read the 0's and 1's on a compact disc which is spinning at high speed. Analog rules because it there is no need to sample or "dumb down" the signal to 0's and 1's. Why not marry the two technologies?

After all, the problem with analog lay with the quality of the needle, cartridge, tone arm, platter, etc. Any physical contact between the needle and record, for instance, will ensure that the next time the record is played, it will not sound EXACTLY the same.

If we could use lasers to read an analog format I think that we could get the best of both worlds. Your thoughts?
Been there, done that. Early on in the development of the CD format, there were plenty of discussions about whether the CD would be an analog optical format, similar to the Laserdisc format, which already used an analog FM audio carrier.

As others have mentioned, there are already laser turntables that play LPs.