I am not making this up. Please, check out the Wall Street Journal article!

I just don't get it. What is this unkillable obsession with dead technology? Reviving phonograph records puts me in mind of Amtrak. For some reason, a stubborn cohort simply insists that, because there was once a popular, but very crappy, medium for music distribution, there must (for some reason) always and forever be in existence that same crappy medium for music distribution.

While we're at it, maybe we should bring back the Pony Express and the Erie Canal.

I remember the first time I ever listened to a compact disc. I think my heart stopped. The departure from vinyl was literally breathtaking -- it literally took my breath. Outside of a live performance venue, I didn't know music could be delivered to my ears with such clarity and purity.

Early critics of CDs complained of an "artificial" sound. They said it was somehow "too clean." One of the most common complaints about CDs made from studio master tapes was the fact that they allowed the listener to hear too much. An example of 'too much' was the sound of a delivery truck driving past the recording studio, something that could not be heard on the old vinyl.

Of course, before CDs, I was a turntable freak. Garrard was my brand, though I hung out with some AR fans. Yes, I understand elliptical stylus vs. conical, magnetic cartridge vs. ceramic, tone-arm counterbalancing and pre-amps, and all that stuff. I preferred belt-driven platters to direct-driven; I considered them 'smoother,' even though they were typically less costly than the direct-drives.

But any way you cut it, before CDs, we were playing music on mechanical devices that carried ratings for "wow" and "flutter" and "rumble." I forget now what a good rating was (lotta years ago), but the point is that EVERY turntable had measurable "wow" and "flutter" and "rumble," which are distortions of the playback. The first CD player I ever owned reported, turntable style, its "wow" and "flutter" and "rumble" characteristics -- below measurable limits. The clarity and fidelity limitation of the early CDs was inherent in the magnetic studio master tape they were burned from. With tape, it was mostly "hiss." Later, digital studio mastering eliminated even that minor flaw.

What do y'all think? Record sales are way up! Why? Should we grab onto this shooting star? Do you think records somehow sound better than digital media? If so, why? If not, why not?

I was reading about this last month, how vinyl is making a huge comeback, and I love it!

   I should be in.  I have over 200 old Vinyl Records.   Like old movies my wife loves them.   She play them, and sing along sewing all day.

Quote from: Solar on December 22, 2014, 11:59:19 AM
I was reading about this last month, how vinyl is making a huge comeback, and I love it!

OK, but why!? What's good about it?

I think it's nuts. It's nearly the equivalent of recycling 8-track tapes or even wire recorders. Why not go back to wax cylinders?

I just don't get this idea of retro-preservation of outdated stuff. People went to digital because vinyl records sound like shit and were astoundingly not portable (hence the intense rise and popularity of FM radio and tape decks). Wow and flutter and rumble are not accolades. They are degradations of the sound. Who can not remember the 'whump' when the needle dropped on the record, and the audible noise until the music started? That's mostly rumble. It's the sound of a diamond stylus grinding through the groove stamped on a piece of plastic.

Oh, I almost forgot signal-to-noise ratio! (The 'signal' was the recorded music, and the 'noise' was the rumble and other mechanical crap coming through the speakers from your turntable.) Compared to vinyl, digital is off the charts. It's all signal and no noise. It's an exercise in dividing by zero.

Quote from: TboneAgain on December 22, 2014, 12:21:29 PM
OK, but why!? What's good about it?

I think it's nuts. It's nearly the equivalent of recycling 8-track tapes or even wire recorders. Why not go back to wax cylinders?

I just don't get this idea of retro-preservation of outdated stuff. People went to digital because vinyl records sound like shit and were astoundingly not portable (hence the intense rise and popularity of FM radio and tape decks). Wow and flutter and rumble are not accolades. They are degradations of the sound. Who can not remember the 'whump' when the needle dropped on the record, and the audible noise until the music started? That's mostly rumble. It's the sound of a diamond stylus grinding through the groove stamped on a piece of plastic.

Oh, I almost forgot signal-to-noise ratio! (The 'signal' was the recorded music, and the 'noise' was the rumble and other mechanical crap coming through the speakers from your turntable.) Compared to vinyl, digital is off the charts. It's all signal and no noise. It's an exercise in dividing by zero.

Au contraire', I have a lot of my favs on CD as I didn't want to wear out my records, and the difference between the two is literally night and day, and here's the simple explanation as to why.

A vinyl is an analog recording, CDs/DVDs are digital recordings. Original sound is analog defined as true source.
While digital recording takes snapshots of the analog signal. A CD is 44,100 times per second) and measures each snapshot with a certain accuracy, but mmisses a small percentage of information with each snapshot.

In other words a digital recording is not capturing the complete sound wave.

Think of it as you would a modified sine wave, which mimics a true sine wave, sure it works by tricking certain electronics, but much of the signal is lost in translation, or technically never existed.
The analog signal is a perfect representation of real sound, while digital captures segments of the true sound.
Sure to some this extra frequency transmission may not matter, but to the purist, it's nothing but a bad fake.

Note the graph depicting my sine wave analogy where analog vs digital copy and just how much is being lost in translation.


A good way to compare the difference is to use a frequency expander, it's literally like taking mono and turning it into stereo, where the frequency is expanded across the spectrum, something a digital copy simply can't accomplish.

By doing this you hear the loss taken by the digital copy due to lost packets from sampling.
To get an idea, read about Dynamic_range_compression, it will help you grasp just how much more is lost through digital tranLATION.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression

Sure, it still sounds good, but it's like a cup of generic coffee compared to a quality blend.
If you don't mind regular coffee, then it really makes no difference in the end.

Quote from: Solar on December 22, 2014, 01:30:10 PM
Au contraire', I have a lot of my favs on CD as I didn't want to wear out my records, and the difference between the two is literally night and day, and here's the simple explanation as to why.

A vinyl is an analog recording, CDs/DVDs are digital recordings. Original sound is analog defined as true source.
While digital recording takes snapshots of the analog signal. A CD is 44,100 times per second) and measures each snapshot with a certain accuracy, but mmisses a small percentage of information with each snapshot.

In other words a digital recording is not capturing the complete sound wave.

Think of it as you would a modified sine wave, which mimics a true sine wave, sure it works by tricking certain electronics, but much of the signal is lost in translation, or technically never existed.
The analog signal is a perfect representation of real sound, while digital captures segments of the true sound.
Sure to some this extra frequency transmission may not matter, but to the purist, it's nothing but a bad fake.

Note the graph depicting my sine wave analogy where analog vs digital copy and just how much is being lost in translation.


A good way to compare the difference is to use a frequency expander, it's literally like taking mono and turning it into stereo, where the frequency is expanded across the spectrum, something a digital copy simply can't accomplish.

By doing this you hear the loss taken by the digital copy due to lost packets from sampling.
To get an idea, read about Dynamic_range_compression, it will help you grasp just how much more is lost through digital tranLATION.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression

Sure, it still sounds good, but it's like a cup of generic coffee compared to a quality blend.
If you don't mind regular coffee, then it really makes no difference in the end.

I knew all that stuff already. I understand the commitment to analog-to-analog recording. I agree with its value, up to a point. And that point is the method of delivery.

Vinyl records are played by causing a relatively fixed electro-mechanical stylus to be literally dragged across a piece of plastic. The attendant noise (mostly 'rumble') is both unavoidable and impossible not to hear. (Somewhere I saw an offer for a sleep-aid .mp3 file that was a recording of nothing but a turntable tracking an unrecorded groove on a vinyl disc.  )

The graphics you posted were correct, except that the digital representation was hugely expanded. Every digital process will look like that if exploded enough. But a more realistic real-time representation would show a curve that clones the analog curve. Let's keep in mind that the phenomenon of sound is itself digital in the physical (analog) sense. It's an assembly of individual waves, each one unique.

In other words, it's more relevant (to me, anyway) to model how digital output compares to analog output. Modeling individual sine waves doesn't really get the job done, in my mind.

Like it or not, the entire universe is digital, and analog is just a subset of that fact. Every line can be broken down into points. They may be infinite in number, but they are definable points. So many who lament the demise of LPs reminisce about the 'warmth' their recordings exuded. That 'warmth' was commonly referred to by hi-fi manufacturers and those who rated such stuff as 'wow' and 'flutter' and 'rumble' and the 'noise' component of the signal-to-noise ratio.

Anyhow, I have around a dozen LPs that Mrs. Tbone (in her infinite wisdom) preserved over the years. I can't even remember how long it's been since I owned a turntable or even a tape deck. (Mrs. Tbone and I never owned anything that could play records.) Since I have no way of playing these records, if you want them, they're yours, if you're willing to pay the postage. Otherwise, they're going to Goodwill.

Quote from: TboneAgain on December 22, 2014, 02:09:43 PM
I knew all that stuff already. I understand the commitment to analog-to-analog recording. I agree with its value, up to a point. And that point is the method of delivery.

Vinyl records are played by causing a relatively fixed electro-mechanical stylus to be literally dragged across a piece of plastic. The attendant noise (mostly 'rumble') is both unavoidable and impossible not to hear. (Somewhere I saw an offer for a sleep-aid .mp3 file that was a recording of nothing but a turntable tracking an unrecorded groove on a vinyl disc.  )

The graphics you posted were correct, except that the digital representation was hugely expanded. Every digital process will look like that if exploded enough. But a more realistic real-time representation would show a curve that clones the analog curve. Let's keep in mind that the phenomenon of sound is itself digital in the physical (analog) sense. It's an assembly of individual waves, each one unique.

In other words, it's more relevant (to me, anyway) to model how digital output compares to analog output. Modeling individual sine waves doesn't really get the job done, in my mind.

Like it or not, the entire universe is digital, and analog is just a subset of that fact. Every line can be broken down into points. They may be infinite in number, but they are definable points. So many who lament the demise of LPs reminisce about the 'warmth' their recordings exuded. That 'warmth' was commonly referred to by hi-fi manufacturers and those who rated such stuff as 'wow' and 'flutter' and 'rumble' and the 'noise' component of the signal-to-noise ratio.

Anyhow, I have around a dozen LPs that Mrs. Tbone (in her infinite wisdom) preserved over the years. I can't even remember how long it's been since I owned a turntable or even a tape deck. (Mrs. Tbone and I never owned anything that could play records.) Since I have no way of playing these records, if you want them, they're yours, if you're willing to pay the postage. Otherwise, they're going to Goodwill.

And comparably, the analog scale was as well. Point is, digital is not an exact copy when you consider the sampling rate.
Take for example the end of a guitar lick being sharp, or the end of a drumbeat being cutoff (100 being an entire note, analog may only deliver 90 on the scale), subtle, you bet, but that is the richness, warmth, the soul of music, and once it's removed, a part of the music lacks that richness you only get from true analog copies.

As I said, most would never notice it, but to a serious audiophile such as myself, a CD is akin to AM radio what analog is to true stereo.

I'm not alone. Someones buying them.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Vinyl-Records/New-Release-Vinyl-Records/pcmcat198100050015.c?id=pcmcat198100050015

Quote from: TboneAgain on December 22, 2014, 11:48:30 AM
I am not making this up. Please, check out the Wall Street Journal article!

I just don't get it. What is this unkillable obsession with dead technology? Reviving phonograph records puts me in mind of Amtrak. For some reason, a stubborn cohort simply insists that, because there was once a popular, but very crappy, medium for music distribution, there must (for some reason) always and forever be in existence that same crappy medium for music distribution.

While we're at it, maybe we should bring back the Pony Express and the Erie Canal.

I remember the first time I ever listened to a compact disc. I think my heart stopped. The departure from vinyl was literally breathtaking -- it literally took my breath. Outside of a live performance venue, I didn't know music could be delivered to my ears with such clarity and purity.

Early critics of CDs complained of an "artificial" sound. They said it was somehow "too clean." One of the most common complaints about CDs made from studio master tapes was the fact that they allowed the listener to hear too much. An example of 'too much' was the sound of a delivery truck driving past the recording studio, something that could not be heard on the old vinyl.

Of course, before CDs, I was a turntable freak. Garrard was my brand, though I hung out with some AR fans. Yes, I understand elliptical stylus vs. conical, magnetic cartridge vs. ceramic, tone-arm counterbalancing and pre-amps, and all that stuff. I preferred belt-driven platters to direct-driven; I considered them 'smoother,' even though they were typically less costly than the direct-drives.

But any way you cut it, before CDs, we were playing music on mechanical devices that carried ratings for "wow" and "flutter" and "rumble." I forget now what a good rating was (lotta years ago), but the point is that EVERY turntable had measurable "wow" and "flutter" and "rumble," which are distortions of the playback. The first CD player I ever owned reported, turntable style, its "wow" and "flutter" and "rumble" characteristics -- below measurable limits. The clarity and fidelity limitation of the early CDs was inherent in the magnetic studio master tape they were burned from. With tape, it was mostly "hiss." Later, digital studio mastering eliminated even that minor flaw.

What do y'all think? Record sales are way up! Why? Should we grab onto this shooting star? Do you think records somehow sound better than digital media? If so, why? If not, why not?

Records are way better because of the sound. It's hard to explain. It's natural. CD's are sterile. Superbly clear but something is lost. I want to hear the squeak of the drummers bass pedal or the guitarists cuff rubbing against the strings. I want to hear every sound. Only a true audiophile will understand. I have always collected records. I have more CD's than records but my LP collection probably is pushing 1500. I prefer Thorens turntables. One of the reasons vinyl is making a comeback is the technology that allows us to transfer vinyl to disc.

Quote from: The Boo Man... on December 22, 2014, 07:19:18 PM
Records are way better because of the sound. It's hard to explain. It's natural. CD's are sterile. Superbly clear but something is lost. I want to hear the squeak of the drummers bass pedal or the guitarists cuff rubbing against the strings. I want to hear every sound. Only a true audiophile will understand. I have always collected records. I have more CD's than records but my LP collection probably is pushing 1500. I prefer Thorens turntables. One of the reasons vinyl is making a comeback is the technology that allows us to transfer vinyl to disc.

Thorens ? Damn! Now that's a fine piece of equipment!

Quote from: Solar on December 22, 2014, 07:22:24 PM
Thorens ? Damn! Now that's a fine piece of equipment!

Yeah. It's the TD 2015. It's made of acrylic and has virtually no vibration.

Quote from: The Boo Man... on December 22, 2014, 08:23:59 PM
Yeah. It's the TD 2015. It's made of acrylic and has virtually no vibration.

And I'm not the least bit surprised.
I've seen you write passionately about music over the years, so it comes as no surprise that you'd have top of the line in the world where reproduction of sound begins.

I too used to have state of the art (four channel just entered the mkt 1972), but as I got older, priorities changed and technology changed while I was busy with other things, reel to reel was no longer state of the art, my hearing wasn't what it used to be.
But I have a feeling as I get even older, a return to yesteryear may make a return in the future and a Thorsen TD 2015 may finally have a place taking up a large percentage of my space and time.

Quote from: The Boo Man... on December 22, 2014, 07:19:18 PM
Records are way better because of the sound. It's hard to explain. It's natural. CD's are sterile. Superbly clear but something is lost. I want to hear the squeak of the drummers bass pedal or the guitarists cuff rubbing against the strings. I want to hear every sound. Only a true audiophile will understand. I have always collected records. I have more CD's than records but my LP collection probably is pushing 1500. I prefer Thorens turntables. One of the reasons vinyl is making a comeback is the technology that allows us to transfer vinyl to disc.

I beg to differ. Records simply can't be "way better because of the sound" for the simple reason that there are so many unintended sounds inherent in listening to a record. As long as tapping your music source involves physical friction -- a diamond stylus plowing across a piece of plastic, powered by a motor-driven device -- there's going to be a LOT of noise that wasn't put there in the recording studio.

Two sentences you wrote strike me: "I want to hear the squeak of the drummers bass pedal or the guitarists cuff rubbing against the strings. I want to hear every sound." Early CDs were criticized precisely because they enabled one to hear exactly that type of sound for the first time ever. There were other, less attractive, sounds too -- a delivery truck passing the studio, a car horn honking, kids yelling, etc. There's no such thing as a sound-proof recording studio, as hard as their owners try to make it so. But before digital, a lot of stuff just got written off as "turntable noise."

If that's what flips your switches, fine. I don't have a problem with it. But let's be honest and admit it has nothing to do with the perceived genuineness or reality or naturalness of the sound. It has to do with a preference for music enhanced by the mechanical groanings of a turntable. Let's keep in mind that the basic technology of the phonograph record dates back to 1889, and it was an invention designed to reproduce sound on a device that was not electrically power or amplified.