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Can anyone explain the vinyl renaissance?

atmasphere

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"As best you can make out"?? What does that mean.

Care to share any documentary evidence for that -85dB - or even -60dB come to that?
What that means is I ran an LP mastering operation after refurbishing a lathe, cutter head and electronics I bought in 1991. A lot of preconceptions I had about vinyl died an ugly death during that time. For example I found that if I had the stylus set up properly in the cutter head, the groove it cut was dead silent, such that you could not tell the needle was tracking it when playing it back. It was a few years before one of our customers wanted to do a project through QRP and since I've know Chad for decades prior I called him up and made arrangements to do the project. I recounted this prior so won't repeat myself.
I was being generous with the dynamic range as most recorded music has far less range.
The biggest problem there is that dynamic range of all recordings is limited by compression as an industry thing, since they think you're going to play the recording in a car. On that account dynamic range has become, sadly, a red herring. We never ran compression when we mastered LPs FWIW. LPs don't get played in a car, but usually the masters we had already had compression built in.

Still no-one has addressed the simple issue that if digital were really all that much better LPs would be long gone and this conversation would not have occurred. I am not saying the LP is better mind you, simply that the advances of digital are incremental rather than transformative.
 

antcollinet

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What that means is I ran an LP mastering operation after refurbishing a lathe, cutter head and electronics I bought in 1991. A lot of preconceptions I had about vinyl died an ugly death during that time. For example I found that if I had the stylus set up properly in the cutter head, the groove it cut was dead silent, such that you could not tell the needle was tracking it when playing it back. It was a few years before one of our customers wanted to do a project through QRP and since I've know Chad for decades prior I called him up and made arrangements to do the project. I recounted this prior so won't repeat myself.

The biggest problem there is that dynamic range of all recordings is limited by compression as an industry thing, since they think you're going to play the recording in a car. On that account dynamic range has become, sadly, a red herring. We never ran compression when we mastered LPs FWIW. LPs don't get played in a car, but usually the masters we had already had compression built in.

Still no-one has addressed the simple issue that if digital were really all that much better LPs would be long gone and this conversation would not have occurred. I am not saying the LP is better mind you, simply that the advances of digital are incremental rather than transformative.
So, no evidence then :)
 

Frgirard

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fashion is adorned with any type of explanation vinyl is only a matter of fashion and agism.
 

levimax

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What kind of specific evidence are you desiring? Perhaps if that was made clear then an appropriate response could be forthcoming.
Since @atmasphere has access to a cutting lathe he could cut an acetate with a -0dB 1 KHz sine wave tone and then "silence" and then look at the playback results on an Oscilloscope so you could get a measurement of the peak signal vs the noise floor.
 

Leporello

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Still no-one has addressed the simple issue that if digital were really all that much better LPs would be long gone and this conversation would not have occurred.
In this case you first define (purely arbitrarily) "that much better" as something that should have caused LPs to disappear altogether. When it obviously has not happened you hint at the possibility that perhaps digital is not all "that much better". So please do elaborate: what do you think you are trying to say?
 

atmasphere

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Since @atmasphere has access to a cutting lathe he could cut an acetate with a -0dB 1 KHz sine wave tone and then "silence" and then look at the playback results on an Oscilloscope so you could get a measurement of the peak signal vs the noise floor.
Had. I sold the mastering system this last spring.
In this case you first define (purely arbitrarily) "that much better" as something that should have caused LPs to disappear altogether. When it obviously has not happened you hint at the possibility that perhaps digital is not all "that much better". So please do elaborate: what do you think you are trying to say?
What I said. It was very plain English. Please look at my prior posts if you want to know more.
 

krabapple

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Still no-one has addressed the simple issue that if digital were really all that much better LPs would be long gone and this conversation would not have occurred. I am not saying the LP is better mind you, simply that the advances of digital are incremental rather than transformative.

I'd say the introduction of digital audio by itself was pretty darn transformative! CDs nearly wiped out LP for a few decades, and digital remains by far the dominant technology (over analog) in recording, production, and releases. And it will surely remain so.
 

atmasphere

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Indeed it was. But did you actually manage to say something? What do we now know what we did not know before?
'Of course' to the former, 'depends' to the latter; 'depends' if you are pragmatic. If so then you know why LP sales are increasing. And for anyone into digital, that should be a wake up that digital still needs to improve.
CDs nearly wiped out LP for a few decades, and digital remains by far the dominant technology (over analog) in recording, production, and releases. And it will surely remain so.
So then why has the LP been on the upswing? It shouldn't be...
https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/
It really should be ... gone!
I see a lot of denial around its existence. You can say how much better digital is and I won't argue that its better. I argue that its not better enough. The simple fact is the LP is still around and sales are increasing. That doesn't happen when a superior technology succeeds the prior art.
 

antcollinet

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'Of course' to the former, 'depends' to the latter; 'depends' if you are pragmatic. If so then you know why LP sales are increasing. And for anyone into digital, that should be a wake up that digital still needs to improve.

So then why has the LP been on the upswing? It shouldn't be...
https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/
It really should be ... gone!
I see a lot of denial around its existence. You can say how much better digital is and I won't argue that its better. I argue that its not better enough. The simple fact is the LP is still around and sales are increasing. That doesn't happen when a superior technology succeeds the prior art.
Increased sales of vinyl has nothing to do with its technical (or lack of) merits.
 

HarmonicTHD

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'Of course' to the former, 'depends' to the latter; 'depends' if you are pragmatic. If so then you know why LP sales are increasing. And for anyone into digital, that should be a wake up that digital still needs to improve.

So then why has the LP been on the upswing? It shouldn't be...
https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/
It really should be ... gone!
I see a lot of denial around its existence. You can say how much better digital is and I won't argue that its better. I argue that its not better enough. The simple fact is the LP is still around and sales are increasing. That doesn't happen when a superior technology succeeds the prior art.
Partially because of clever marketing of the music industry to sell us their same music once more. Appealing to retro coolness and spreading false / incomplete technical info on the sound despite being technical inferior.
 

Bob from Florida

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When you think about it, the industry shot itself in the foot with CD's. LP's were dominant and copying them to cassette was lower quality and time intensive. Enter CD's - very convenient to play anywhere and turned out to be easy to copy and rip to hard drives. They tried to correct this with SACD's - which are un-copiable in any practical way - and that format went nowhere. The resurgence of Vinyl is profitable as records are not cheap anymore and while you can make better copies now, it is not as easy as copying CD's or files. So, I think new vinyl releases are going to be with us for awhile - certainly as long as the industry can make some bucks.
 

antcollinet

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Partially because of clever marketing of the music industry to sell us their same music once more. Appealing to retro coolness and spreading false / incomplete technical info on the sound despite being technical inferior.
Not to mention : Fashion. Fad. Etc.


And before any of the long time vinyl spinners (just like me) say "I'm not into it due to fashion":

I know that - but you are not part of the rise in sales.
 

Robin L

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