|
|
Post by siggie on Jul 14, 2017 21:30:35 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by socketman on Jul 14, 2017 22:04:09 GMT -5
Good article, all his points are quite valid. I have a nice pioneer turntable from the 80's and it doesnt hold a candle to my Project MMF 7.1 with ortofon cartridge. The level of performance available at such a great price is unprecedented today.There will always be a place for vinyl, though not in the car.
|
|
|
|
Post by novisnick on Jul 14, 2017 22:06:13 GMT -5
Good article, all his points are quite valid. I have a nice pioneer turntable from the 80's and it doesnt hold a candle to my Project MMF 7.1 with ortofon cartridge. The level of performance available at such a great price is unprecedented today.There will always be a place for vinyl, though not in the car. Many manufacturers use vinyl for the dashboard, SEATS, ETC,!,,,,,LOL  |
|
|
|
Post by flamingeye on Jan 18, 2018 20:29:32 GMT -5
great article Thanks'
|
|
|
|
Post by vneal on Jan 19, 2018 8:02:52 GMT -5
I just got a Hana cartridge ($445)
Giant killer
|
|
|
|
Post by mgbpuff on Jan 19, 2018 9:25:07 GMT -5
Dumb article. Sapphire is just the tip not the whole cantilever. Sapphire was always considered inferior to diamond and diamond has been manufactured for many years. The equalizer looks very complicated and pricey. The stylus still touched the vinyl. ELP has produced a non contact ( ELP ) laser turntable since 1989. |
|
KeithL
Administrator 
Posts: 10,256
|
Post by KeithL on Jan 19, 2018 14:57:27 GMT -5
I've got to agree..... it seems like it was written by someone who is all excited abut the technology but wasn't actually there. (And shouldn't the title be "The Application of Science" to be grammatically correct?) I had an AR turntable over thirty years ago. It had a 3-1/2 pound aluminum platter, an AC synchronous motor, and a not especially good S-shaped aluminum tonearm. (And, as I recall, it retailed for about $99 - which was probably about equal to $300-$500 in today's dollars.) It had better rumble, wow, and flutter specs than most modern turntables (when they even publish specs). And, even then, the limiting factor was the vinyl. As I mentioned, the arm on my AR wasn't especially good, and many folks went to the effort to upgrade it (which was no easy project on that turntable). However, none of those upgrades were going to get rid of surface noise, or eliminate the rumble from a warped record. And, while new materials and fabrication methods may make it a little easier to make a good turntable these days, I don't see any "quantum improvement". In the old days, any decent stylus was diamond.... sapphire stylii were reserved for cheap junk. And, back then, most cantilevers were aluminum, and some were beryllium, and some were probably sapphire. (Synthetic sapphire is actually pretty easy to make and work with.... the colored stone in my 1976 high school class ring was synthetic sapphire.) And, yes, my vintage AR turntable had a bronze bearing, with a steel shaft, and you had to oil it once every year or so..... But it still managed to turn in better rumble specs that many of those modern high-tech replacements. In fact, now, as I recall, I also had a Dual turntable (another big brand back then). It also worked just fine. And, sadly, there were lots of really poor turntables back then... and there are some pretty crappy ones out there today for a few hundred dollars. I suppose that, just maybe, the average performance of a typical turntable in the $200-$500 range is better now than thirty years ago.... But I hardly see "a revolutionary change in performance". But, then, modern metal alloys would probably enable you to make a much superior horseshoe to the ones they had in 1920..... And modern bearings are surely better than the ones they used on 1920 vintage carriage wheels..... But I'm not really planning to give up my car and go back to a horse either....  Dumb article. Sapphire is just the tip not the whole cantilever. Sapphire was always considered inferior to diamond and diamond has been manufactured for many years. The equalizer looks very complicated and pricey. The stylus still touched the vinyl. ELP has produced a non contact ( ELP ) laser turntable since 1989. |
|
|
|
Post by flamingeye on Jan 19, 2018 15:55:01 GMT -5
the laser turntable sounds revolutionary and cool but the CD player is cheaper
|
|
KeithL
Administrator
Posts: 10,256
|
Post by KeithL on Jan 19, 2018 16:05:56 GMT -5
Revolutionary... perhaps... but it also has some drawbacks. First, it isn't going to sound exactly like a contact pickup. The walls of the grooves actually flex when you play a record. (The pressure of that one or two grams of tracking force, when calculated over a fraction of a thousandth of a square inch of contact surface, is actually enormous.) Therefore, this must introduce some sort of distortion, which the non-contact LASER pickup will NOT duplicate. So it will sound different. In addition to that, a mechanical stylus has some ability to push tiny flecks of dust out of its way, and so not play them as part of the groove. Because the LASER has no mass, the lightest piece of fluffy dust will be read as a solid part of the groove wall. So I would expect it to be more sensitive to dust and dirt on the record's surface. Other than that, and other than the price, it seems like a good idea. However, a digital file is still a more accurate, more consistent, and more repeatable way to store information. the laser turntable sounds revolutionary and cool but the CD player is cheaper |
|
KeithL
Administrator
Posts: 10,256
|
Post by KeithL on Jan 19, 2018 16:09:18 GMT -5
Yeah..... now that we have a LASER turntable, if we could only figure out a LASER record cutting lathe, we could avoid all of the problems caused by mechanical contact. After all, it is all the mechanical parts of the process that cause the problems, right? Oh, wait a minute, that would be a CD, wouldn't it?  the laser turntable sounds revolutionary and cool but the CD player is cheaper |
|
|
|
Post by mgbpuff on Jan 19, 2018 16:55:52 GMT -5
Revolutionary... perhaps... but it also has some drawbacks. First, it isn't going to sound exactly like a contact pickup. The walls of the grooves actually flex when you play a record. (The pressure of that one or two grams of tracking force, when calculated over a fraction of a thousandth of a square inch of contact surface, is actually enormous.) Therefore, this must introduce some sort of distortion, which the non-contact LASER pickup will NOT duplicate. So it will sound different. In addition to that, a mechanical stylus has some ability to push tiny flecks of dust out of its way, and so not play them as part of the groove. Because the LASER has no mass, the lightest piece of fluffy dust will be read as a solid part of the groove wall. So I would expect it to be more sensitive to dust and dirt on the record's surface. Other than that, and other than the price, it seems like a good idea. However, a digital file is still a more accurate, more consistent, and more repeatable way to store information. the laser turntable sounds revolutionary and cool but the CD player is cheaper A dust burning laser could precede the reading lasers. Mechanically the walls flexing are problematical to even mechanical styli. Cartridge tracking forces are all over the map and there are different styli shapes - all of which would cause the walls to deflect more or less. Analog and digital are two different animals. |
|
|
|
Post by mgbpuff on Jan 19, 2018 17:04:17 GMT -5
Yeah..... now that we have a LASER turntable, if we could only figure out a LASER record cutting lathe, we could avoid all of the problems caused by mechanical contact. After all, it is all the mechanical parts of the process that cause the problems, right? Oh, wait a minute, that would be a CD, wouldn't it? the laser turntable sounds revolutionary and cool but the CD player is cheaper I seem to remember that laser discs actually contained a analog video (pulse width modulated) and audio (FM on a carrier). Digital audio sidebands came along later. But the problem is that we want to play old vinyl records with out damaging them and avoiding those damaged areas. We could, but do not want to, invent some new form of analog disc. |
|
|
|
Post by vneal on Jan 19, 2018 17:14:04 GMT -5
Listening to LPs right now. I think some of you have not heard a good table
What is dead is CDs. I am going to stick my neck and say LPs may have sold more than CDs last year
Who buys CDs anymore? Not young people. Most people download music
|
|
KeithL
Administrator
Posts: 10,256
|
Post by KeithL on Jan 19, 2018 18:05:10 GMT -5
I'm thinking a dust-burning LASER would be sort of problematic (burning leaves residue, and possibly hot ash which would fuse itself to the surface; vaporizing takes a LOT of power). No, I think the best solution there would be to clean the record real well before playing it. I agree that the mechanical flexing issue is problematic - but it is also present on every disc played by a mechanical stylus. Therefore a disc played by a non-contact method will LACK that distortion. (We could then find out if that distortion is part of "the characteristic vinyl sound"  .) I agree, analog and digital are two very different animals, and, in terms of accuracy, digital is - or can be - the far more accurate of the two. Also, to be blunt, unlike analog, with digital you can ALWAYS get an improvement if you want to. For example, if we were to someday decide that 24/192k really wasn't accurate enough (which I sort of doubt), it would be trivial to move to 32/384k and achieve better resolution. Of course, if we really wanted to, we could start recording analog, on pure vanadium metal discs, with a diamond stylus, after softening the surface with a LASER, at 1000 RPM, and that would be a big step up as well. But why bother? Revolutionary... perhaps... but it also has some drawbacks. First, it isn't going to sound exactly like a contact pickup. The walls of the grooves actually flex when you play a record. (The pressure of that one or two grams of tracking force, when calculated over a fraction of a thousandth of a square inch of contact surface, is actually enormous.) Therefore, this must introduce some sort of distortion, which the non-contact LASER pickup will NOT duplicate. So it will sound different. In addition to that, a mechanical stylus has some ability to push tiny flecks of dust out of its way, and so not play them as part of the groove. Because the LASER has no mass, the lightest piece of fluffy dust will be read as a solid part of the groove wall. So I would expect it to be more sensitive to dust and dirt on the record's surface. Other than that, and other than the price, it seems like a good idea. However, a digital file is still a more accurate, more consistent, and more repeatable way to store information. A dust burning laser could precede the reading lasers. Mechanically the walls flexing are problematical to even mechanical styli. Cartridge tracking forces are all over the map and there are different styli shapes - all of which would cause the walls to deflect more or less. Analog and digital are two different animals. |
|
KeithL
Administrator
Posts: 10,256
|
Post by KeithL on Jan 19, 2018 18:08:41 GMT -5
To be honest, I think you're right, and all physical media are essentially on the way out. I'm pretty sure CD sales still top record sales by quite a bit, but they may pass vinyl sales, on the way down to a dusty death, eventually. I'm guessing that more cassettes were sold last year than reel-to-reel tapes..... but not enough of either to really count. (But, then, a lot of the current vinyl craze is nostalgia.... someday CDs will be nostalgic too.) As far as I'm concerned, the argument has been done and lost. Almost all recordings are currently MASTERED digitally. And, once you have a digital copy, there seems little reason to burden it with the additional drawbacks of analog vinyl. (If your original is digital, you can either get an exact copy of that original, or not......... unless you're actually looking for some sort of vinyl coloration, of course.)) Listening to LPs right now. I think some of you have not heard a good table What is dead is CDs. I am going to stick my neck and say LPs may have sold more than CDs last year Who buys CDs anymore? Not young people. Most people download music |
|
|
|
Post by Cogito on Jan 19, 2018 21:30:57 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by bigmule on Jan 20, 2018 10:35:34 GMT -5
I think now is the best time to dump your vinyl before the bubble bursts....for a nominal fee, I will “dispose” of them properly !!!
|
|
|
|
Post by flamingeye on Jan 20, 2018 12:12:52 GMT -5
you will never get my vinyl I use it to time warp
|
|
klinemj
Emo VIPs 
Official Emofest Scribe
Posts: 15,083
|
Post by klinemj on Jan 25, 2018 7:31:43 GMT -5
I'm thinking a dust-burning LASER would be sort of problematic (burning leaves residue, and possibly hot ash which would fuse itself to the surface; vaporizing takes a LOT of power). Yeah - but if the dust can be vaporized - think how awesome it would be to play "Smoke on the Water". The show would be well worth the power consumed!  Mark |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2018 8:23:53 GMT -5
To be honest, I think you're right, and all physical media are essentially on the way out. I'm pretty sure CD sales still top record sales by quite a bit, but they may pass vinyl sales, on the way down to a dusty death, eventually. I'm guessing that more cassettes were sold last year than reel-to-reel tapes..... but not enough of either to really count. (But, then, a lot of the current vinyl craze is nostalgia.... someday CDs will be nostalgic too.) As far as I'm concerned, the argument has been done and lost. Almost all recordings are currently MASTERED digitally. And, once you have a digital copy, there seems little reason to burden it with the additional drawbacks of analog vinyl. (If your original is digital, you can either get an exact copy of that original, or not......... unless you're actually looking for some sort of vinyl coloration, of course.)) Listening to LPs right now. I think some of you have not heard a good table What is dead is CDs. I am going to stick my neck and say LPs may have sold more than CDs last year Who buys CDs anymore? Not young people. Most people download music Re CD's death, I'd suggest that if you thumbed through a BBC Music mag sometime you'd be amazed at how many CD releases of classical music and new labels there are worldwide every month; that mag reviews 60-100 every month. For example, Sony is releasing a 100-CD collection of the complete Columbia recordings of Bernstein, many from original analog tapes. Let's see you download that, or a complete Ring cycle for that matter (15+ hrs). Since the general public mostly only listens to millenia-old music technology, i.e., songs of 2-4 minutes each, downloading at will makes sense for them, but for those of us who like their music as whole symphonies or operas and love to sit down and listen for hours to an entire work at once, downloading is a PITA compared with pulling a boxed-set off the shelf. Plus, the CDs are mine to be listened to whenever I want and to be passed on when I die. To answer your question more directly, lots of folks buy CDs and look forward to new ones, even young people; again, pick up a BBC Music mag and look. Given the diversity of musical interests and listening habits of 7+ billion people, categorical statements I often hear, such as 'CDs are dead', are pretty meaningless, IMHO. |
|
.)
