The Truth About Vinyl Records

[antcollinet]

This thread needs to end. It mainly consists of ad hominems, and strawmen from both sides.


Not a good look for ASR.

 

[Mart68]

If you want to assert that vinyl is not subject to basic laws of physics like friction, I think it's on you to support that with evidence. I don't bear the burden of proof for the assertion "rubbing two objects together creates friction and will eventually wear them down".

The diamond stylus wears down with use and eventually has to be replaced. Diamond is a pretty hard substance. But the plastic record doesn't wear at all, even though it is wearing a diamond down?

As you say there may be a universe where it works like that but it isn't this one.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

The diamond stylus wears down with use and eventually has to be replaced. Diamond is a pretty hard substance. But the plastic record doesn't wear at all, even though it is wearing a diamond down?

As you say there may be a universe where it works like that but it isn't this one.

Who said record’s don’t wear at all? But let’s shape this question a little bit differently. A stylus will spend 20-25 minutes in the groove of one side of an LP. How much time does each segment of the groove of equal area to the contact of the stylus spend being worn by the stylus? And then how much of the playing time of a stylus get dispersed over multiple records?

Or to put it another way. Styli generally last around 2,000 hours or so before they are noticeably worn. How much time would each part of the groove walls been in contact with the stylus if 2,000 hours of play was dispersed among 400 records?

I’m pretty sure we’re talking a small small fraction of a second vs. a couple thousand hours.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

Anecdotal evidence is unreliable. We can make long lists of things that are “common knowledge” and believed by people who are professionals with years of experience. That also simply are not true.

Thank you. That's EXACTLY what I wrote and why I wrote it the way I did. Read my post again and stop picking unnecessary fights.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

Thank you. That's EXACTLY what I wrote and why I wrote it the way I did. Read my post again and stop picking unnecessary fights.

Nope that is not what you wrote at all.

(Anecdotal evidence is unreliable. We can make long lists of things that are “common knowledge” and believed by people who are professionals with years of experience. That also simply are not true.).

This is what you wrote and this is the second time I am fully quoting it

“Record wear from frequent plays is "common knowledge", by that I mean that "everyone knows it". I had a good LP playback system before digital became domestically common and so absolutely everybody was an "LP expert" because it's all we had access to. You would not find a single person in the 70s who would disagree with the statement "frequent playing wears records out". Why did they believe this? Because they experienced it at first hand. I certainly have, but in those days I didn't have the test gear domestically to prove it.

Professionally I've experienced it first hand. In my experience, test records measurably degrade with frequent playing, especially the highest frequency cuts. However, recently, in a different ASR thread some tests have challenged this. So I have to assume there's something different about my studio experience and modern domestic playback systems.”

That is 100% anecdotal evidence and appeals to common knowledge which is, as I said the first time inherently unreliable.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

I don't think a good stylus on a correctly balanced setup will produce enough wear to be detectable before hundreds of plays. If the stylus was putting enough pressure to cause much wear, the stylus would not be able to follow the track as well and would produce a noticeable difference in sound.

There is microscope-based objective evidence that record grooves suffer wear, especially where there is significant vertical or lateral stylus acceleration. The key thing, though is whether this is measurable in terms of increased noise. Recent research suggests that "popular knowledge" of record wear rate may be wrong and that frequent playing does not cause significant noise increases.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

Nope that is not what you wrote at all.

(Anecdotal evidence is unreliable. We can make long lists of things that are “common knowledge” and believed by people who are professionals with years of experience. That also simply are not true.).

This is what you wrote and this is the second time I am fully quoting it

“Record wear from frequent plays is "common knowledge", by that I mean that "everyone knows it". I had a good LP playback system before digital became domestically common and so absolutely everybody was an "LP expert" because it's all we had access to. You would not find a single person in the 70s who would disagree with the statement "frequent playing wears records out". Why did they believe this? Because they experienced it at first hand. I certainly have, but in those days I didn't have the test gear domestically to prove it.

Professionally I've experienced it first hand. In my experience, test records measurably degrade with frequent playing, especially the highest frequency cuts. However, recently, in a different ASR thread some tests have challenged this. So I have to assume there's something different about my studio experience and modern domestic playback systems.”

That is 100% anecdotal evidence and appeals to common knowledge which is, as I said the first time inherently unreliable.

I used quotes to make it clear I was stating "groupthink" anecdotal evidence. I also pointed out that this anecdotal evidence was not objectively confirmed.

I then summarised my own non-anecdotal objective measurements based on test records and high precision test equipment. In a studio environment, test records measurably wear out relatively quickly. But I then clarified that tests published on ASR challenge this rate of wear, in which case, as I said above, there may be something strange about about studio environments compared to domestic use (possibly because stuff is being used 24/7).

My observation of your approach to textual analysis and critical thinking is that you are not nearly as good at is as you think you are. I'm going to block your posts for a while because I feel like you are enjoying arguing too much whilst not putting enough effort into comprehension.

 

[SuicideSquid]

“Point 1- I simply don't believe you. You're physically dragging a needle across a groove. This creates surface noise. The most pristine record in the world playing the most perfectly-mastered recording on a brand new SOTA turntable with a brand new expensive needle might have imperceptible surface noise, but every time you play it the noise floor increases and the peaks decline because you're physically scraping away a small amount of the material that makes up that groove.”

EVERY TIME YOU PLAY IT THE NOISE FLOOR INCREASES. Did you mean it does so inaudibly?

“Point 2: No matter how carefully you treat your LPs, they will degrade over time. I doubt you're listening in an industrial clean room. Dust will get in the grooves. Each time you play the record, it will degrade as the needle scrapes away a small amount of vinyl. A bit of oil or residue from a fingerprint will get into a groove. It's the nature of the media, it will happen. You'll eventually get ticks and pops.”

“Each time you play the record it will degrade”

Did you mean inaudibly?

No I meant you can clearly hear the increase in noise floor and general degradation each time you play the record and by the tenth play the record is completely unlistenable, obviously. I obviously didn't mean that these differences are tiny and incremental and only add up over the course of dozens or hundreds of plays over many years, because that would be the sensible and charitable interpretation and we don't do that around here.

The fact is that vinyl degrades over time and digital does not. Full stop. If you want to argue about how much or how little it degrades and how you can mitigate these problems by replacing your stylus every two weeks and handling your records with literal kid gloves, etc etc, go nuts, argue until you're blue in the face. You're just mitigating a problem, not eliminating it, and it's a problem that doesn't exist for digital.

 

[levimax]

The fact is that vinyl degrades over time.

That is true about vinyl but in a way it is also true about digital. Assuming you store your digital files on a hard drive it will eventually wear out and fail and unlike a "worn" LP that will still play at reduced fidelity a file on a dead hard drive will not play at all. Of course you can mitigate this problem by taking the extra steps of cloud backup and remote back up but this is just mitigating the problem not eliminating it and LP's don't have this problem.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

No I meant you can clearly hear the increase in noise floor and general degradation each time you play the record and by the tenth play the record is completely unlistenable, obviously. I obviously didn't mean that these differences are tiny and incremental and only add up over the course of dozens or hundreds of plays over many years, because that would be the sensible and charitable interpretation and we don't do that around here.

The fact is that vinyl degrades over time and digital does not. Full stop. If you want to argue about how much or how little it degrades and how you can mitigate these problems by replacing your stylus every two weeks and handling your records with literal kid gloves, etc etc, go nuts, argue until you're blue in the face. You're just mitigating a problem, not eliminating it, and it's a problem that doesn't exist for digital.

I have over 5,500 records. At this point they get one play. A digital rip. Maybe if I think there’s a reason for a redo I’ll do a second rip.

Yeah record wear is by biggest worry in life. I should abandon the medium. It’s doomed to die before my eyes and ears.

There is no argument. Records do wear. But how quickly is an issue. Protons eventually decay. I don’t worry too much about that either.

 

[Robin L]

That is true about vinyl but in a way it is also true about digital. Assuming you store your digital files on a hard drive it will eventually wear out and fail and unlike a "worn" LP that will still play at reduced fidelity a file on a dead hard drive will not play at all. Of course you can mitigate this problem by taking the extra steps of cloud backup and remote back up but this is just mitigating the problem not eliminating it and LP's don't have this problem.

I've experienced some failures with micro sd storage. It's hard to wear out CDs, which is why I'm sticking to that format for the time being. Although I'm running out of space for them, they are hard to resist at the prices they now go for. I got a 16 CD set of historic chamber music recordings for $19 plus tax and a minimal shipping cost two weeks ago. Fortunately, it was in a slim-line box.

I think the level of wear people experience with LPs depends on the playback gear. Most of the time I used inexpensive cartridges, like the Shure 97xe or that inexpensive Grado that the Absolute Sound was crazy about in the early 1980s. Record wear would become audible in as few as ten plays. I suspect that better cartridges with better styli would have slower rates of wear, but I can't say for certain as I rarely had that sort of equipment. Although I would replace the styli every six months or so, that might not have been with sufficient frequency - - - I did play LPs for hours at a time when I had them, now I play CDs for hours at a time.

I realize that anecdotal testimony is not reliable, but factors like the wide differences in the quality of playback gear have to be a major factor in the wear and tear of LPs. I've owned thousands of LPs,. When I worked at record stores in the 1970s and 1980s most were purchased new or were given to me as promos. And I had a tendency to play some frequently right after acquiring them. In the 1990s through 2019 I would buy used LPs, mostly, and on many records that appeared perfectly clean there was audible wear. Anyway, that's my two cents. Others may have experienced something different, but I know many people experienced the same.

 

[atmasphere]

Point 1- I simply don't believe you. You're physically dragging a needle across a groove. This creates surface noise. The most pristine record in the world playing the most perfectly-mastered recording on a brand new SOTA turntable with a brand new expensive needle might have imperceptible surface noise, but every time you play it the noise floor increases and the peaks decline because you're physically scraping away a small amount of the material that makes up that groove. In normal use listening to normal records you're going to hear surface noise. This is not an issue with digital media.

Point 2: No matter how carefully you treat your LPs, they will degrade over time. I doubt you're listening in an industrial clean room. Dust will get in the grooves. Each time you play the record, it will degrade as the needle scrapes away a small amount of vinyl. A bit of oil or residue from a fingerprint will get into a groove. It's the nature of the media, it will happen. You'll eventually get ticks and pops. It's not an issue with digital media.

You can take a lot of steps to reduce the inherent flaws in the vinyl LP format and you can get a system that sounds really good, but it takes a huge investment of time and money. You can get a system that's objectively better while investing a fraction of the money and none of the time with digital media. I can pull a CD off the shelf I've listened to literally 200 times over the past 25 years and it still sounds exactly the same as it did 25 years ago. That's not true of an LP, no matter how expensive your turntable is or how delicately you handle your records.

Your use of 'dragging' isn't accurate; that story causes difficulty understanding how this works. However as pointed out earlier, the comparison was not with digital.

FWIW the Library of Congress did an archival study in the 1980s and found that LPs will last about a century if treated correctly. CDs by comparison don't last that long; how long digital media on static memory lasts is anyone's guess- but if on a server farm, only as long as the local utility can continue to supply power- much like crypto.

IME most of the ticks and pops people experience are due to HF overload problems caused by the input of the phono section overloading. I can go into the physics of how this happens if you like, but as a hint, it has something to do with what happens when you put an inductor in parallel with a capacitance, which most phono section designers don't take into account.

Your claims, as usual, are at odds with almost everyone else in the industry.
IMHO , it's you that are hyperbolic, making exaggerated claims.



What do you call Mr Atmasphere's claims?


Me either, it's the same ole, same ole linec of exaggerations and ignoring the facts of what exists in the real world.

And what have all those toys cost you in an effort to avoid the inevitable.
Digital recordings suffer none of these issues.
Simply wasted money, just like expensive cables and powercords, noise reducing grounding boxes, and all the rest.
If you guys really enjoy playing with all these snake-oil toys, be my guest.
Just don't continually try to deny or minimize the negative sonic effects of vinyls inherit problems to those of us that know better.

I'd be interesting in having a chat with 'almost everyone else in the industy' and see if that is really so. This sort of appeal to authority makes your position inherently false. What I find interesting is this does not appear to be about fact. Right here you have someone who has hands on experience, who it telling you that LPs don't do as well as digital, but do much better than you continually imply, but instead you want to belive stuff you read on the internet.

Belief has nothing to do with it, unless you're not the type to use measurements to back your position. I recommend that you take some valid measurements (which I suspect you won't do, lacking access to a lathe) so you are making the same mistake most of the subjective crowd does. I've done these measurements but sold my lathe two years ago after is was obvious that Appollodisc (supplier of 80% of the world's lacquers) was not going to rebuild after their plant burned to the ground several years earlier.

You put your finger on the real problem with the LP media- that of setup!! But it not snake oil to use a good protractor to find the correct position for the base of the tonearm or the exactly correct position of the cartridge in the arm. That's what you have to do to get the correct setup and its a pain. Most people don't bother and as a result get mistracking, higher noise floors and poor media life.

BTW, power cords can be measured not by measuring the cord itself, but by measuring the effect is has on the equipment with which its used. Its a function of voltage drop (Ohm's Law) which is also easily measured. Equipment that draws a lot of power is affected most and that which draws the least affected the least. The more feedback the equipment has, the better its rejection of issues brought on by the voltage drop. So a high power class A triode zero feedback amplifier will suffer the most and a self oscillating class D amp will suffer the least, with most other parts of the system unaffected. Obviously the problem is easily solved without the cord being expensive- if you use the same cable as used to power an electric stove or dryer you can make an effective power cable at a fraction of the price that most 'high end' cable manufacturers charge.

My point here is you made the same mistake a lot of the 'subjective' camp makes where a declaration was made without measurements to back it up. Yes, I've measured power cords and I've measured as much as a 40Watt loss of output power in amplifiers that used them. Think about it- there's a reason why power cords have different gauges, even if made by Beldon.

There is microscope-based objective evidence that record grooves suffer wear, especially where there is significant vertical or lateral stylus acceleration. The key thing, though is whether this is measurable in terms of increased noise. Recent research suggests that "popular knowledge" of record wear rate may be wrong and that frequent playing does not cause significant noise increases.

In order for this to be valid evidence, the provenance of the playback setup has to be included in the study. Certainly if a Close and Play was used you're going to have problems. Without that, a study like you imply here simply lacks credibility.

 

[deweydm]

No I meant you can clearly hear the increase in noise floor and general degradation each time you play the record and by the tenth play the record is completely unlistenable, obviously. I obviously didn't mean that these differences are tiny and incremental and only add up over the course of dozens or hundreds of plays over many years, because that would be the sensible and charitable interpretation and we don't do that around here.

The fact is that vinyl degrades over time and digital does not. Full stop. If you want to argue about how much or how little it degrades and how you can mitigate these problems by replacing your stylus every two weeks and handling your records with literal kid gloves, etc etc, go nuts, argue until you're blue in the face. You're just mitigating a problem, not eliminating it, and it's a problem that doesn't exist for digital.

Worry about audible degradation of sound with LPs due to repeated playback about as much as I worry about bit rot, which is not at all. Empirically, these must be problems. And the former seems far less unavoidable. But practically, not so much of a problem.

Not in a position to prove it to you, haven’t attempted to objectively measure the blast radius of repeated LP playback, but if you think folks listening to LPs are eventually getting audibly degraded sound, I really think that’s unlikely. Base this opinion on regular comparison of LPs I’ve owned and regularly listened to for decades with the same on CD. (Usually thrifted recently.) Where the source master is similar or the same, it’s very difficult to tell them apart when listening. (When they sound essentially the same, I’ll then often give the LP away to friends or family who only collect LPs.)

An opinion based on subjective experience, so maybe not something to be learned from on a forum focused on audio science. Fair. But for what it’s worth….

 

[MattHooper]

That is true about vinyl but in a way it is also true about digital. Assuming you store your digital files on a hard drive it will eventually wear out and fail and unlike a "worn" LP that will still play at reduced fidelity a file on a dead hard drive will not play at all. Of course you can mitigate this problem by taking the extra steps of cloud backup and remote back up but this is just mitigating the problem not eliminating it and LP's don't have this problem.

If you want to talk about a lot of fuss: ripping my large CD collection so I could stream it from my server was one might, lengthy pain in the ass. It was like a second job. I finally gave up and sent the rest to a company that ripped CDs for you, and even they got the meta data screwed up.

Not to mention I personally dislike CDs (jewel cases in particular) as physical objects.

 

[Mart68]

Who said record’s don’t wear at all? But let’s shape this question a little bit differently. A stylus will spend 20-25 minutes in the groove of one side of an LP. How much time does each segment of the groove of equal area to the contact of the stylus spend being worn by the stylus? And then how much of the playing time of a stylus get dispersed over multiple records?

Or to put it another way. Styli generally last around 2,000 hours or so before they are noticeably worn. How much time would each part of the groove walls been in contact with the stylus if 2,000 hours of play was dispersed among 400 records?

I’m pretty sure we’re talking a small small fraction of a second vs. a couple thousand hours.

Yes, I agree it will take a lot of plays to get to the point where it is audible. Arguably not an issue but I do have records I've owned for forty years, that can mean hundreds of plays.

The thing is, why use something that does wear down when there's a contactless medium available? That's really the part I don't get. Vinyl was superseded in every respect 40 years ago.

Now I can understand maintaining an existing collection from the 1970s and 1980s, and a deck to play them on, but still buying more of them in 2024? I don't get it.

 

[deweydm]

If you want to talk about a lot of fuss: ripping my large CD collection so I could stream it from my server was one might, lengthy pain in the ass. It was like a second job. I finally gave up and sent the rest to a company that ripped CDs for you, and even they got the meta data screwed up.

Not to mention I personally dislike CDs (jewel cases in particular) as physical objects.

A thru H. Some ripped, most not. If I ever cancel our streaming subscription, I’ll rip them all.

 

[Robin L]

Not to mention I personally dislike CDs (jewel cases in particular) as physical objects.

Makes me think of all the time spent in Amoeba flipping through LPs and CDs. Preferred the sound of the LPs softly flapping against each other compared to the hard clacking of jewel cases (even worse, those security cases used when CDs were worth something). Still dislike jewel cases, find the big collections of classical titles in cardboard sleeves much better both in terms of appearance and saving space. Jewel cases are much too easy to break.

I've made a lot of paintings in a 12" by 12" format, it's a good size for art. The CD format, not so much.

 

[deweydm]

The thing is, why use something that does wear down when there's a contactless medium available? That's really the part I don't get. Vinyl was superseded in every respect 40 years ago.

Because what’s delivered with the antiquated, technically inferior medium often sounds subjectively better, due to the mastering, than versions mastered for listening in the car, etc., delivered by technically superior means. Because it’s fun, like a visit to Greenfield Village or something. There’s another thread here largely about the why’s. Can anyone explain….

 

[Punter]

I'm not a vinyl "hater" I composed the original post to illustrate the unavoidable compromises of putting a complex music mix onto a vinyl disk. My HiFi journey began with the Compact Cassette and vinyl LP's but because I'm a Tech, when something demonstrably better from a technical perspective became available, I switched to that. Another thing about me is that I lack a "nostalgia" gland. I would never, for example, own a Harley Davidson motorcycle because I find nothing appealing in a machine which is designed specifically to extend the life of an engine technology that I believe is obsolete (pushrod OHV). I find a Ducati 916 far more appealing as a V twin motorcycle. Late last century, vinyl LP's were the most accessible form of "HiFi" that was available, that all changed with the CD.

As I proposed in my thread about HiFi tech flatlining, we live in an era now where the difference between what the microphone picked up and what the recording can reproduce is smaller than it has ever been and is likely so accurate now that there is little point in continuing to try to improve the technology as it is well beyond the ability of human hearing to discriminate between what is possible now to an incremental improvement in the future.

As has been stated many times, if you as an individual like or prefer the sound of music as it comes off a vinyl LP, knock yourself out! Immerse yourself in the experience and get up in twenty minutes to flip that black disk over and do it all over again. However, refrain from trying to convince me that the quality of the sound as reproduced from vinyl is in any way comparable or worse, superior to a professionally made digital recording.

I didn't concoct any of the content in my original post, I researched the process of creating a vinyl LP and laid that out for anyone who was curious. I stand by my closing statement on that post, namely that it is questionable to even call vinyl LP's "HiFi" in this era as digital technology, even in it's early form, could easily beat vinyl on the basis of specification and ability with respect to music recording and reproduction IF IT"S DONE RIGHT!

The subject of vinyl wear is an interesting one if one considers it's effect on the ongoing quality of the music reproduced from the disk. Based on the mechanism of vinyl playback, it stands to reason that it is unavoidable and logically, the high frequencies will be affected first and the surface noise of the disk will increase with every playing. By how much, nobody seems to have the answer, maybe it's relatively inconsequential. Ultimately, who cares? If you like vinyl and you want to listen to it you've already accepted all the compromises that the format embraces, what's one more?

 

[Mart68]

Because what’s delivered with the antiquated, technically inferior medium often sounds subjectively better, due to the mastering, than versions mastered for listening in the car, etc., delivered by technically superior means. Because it’s fun, like a visit to Greenfield Village or something. There’s another thread here largely about the why’s. Can anyone explain….

I've hundreds of CDs and only a handful have dynamic limiting to the point where it's a problem.

having said that I rarely buy music made after about 1995 and I always try to seek out an original release which won't have the problem. So I confess I don't know how badly afflicted current popular music is. Of course with jazz and classical it's never been an issue anyway.

A few more modern albums I have that I have seen people complaining about the compression - Daft Punk 'Random Access Memories' for example. But that's fine on my set up, leading me to suspect the problem they have is not with compression at all. Possibly gain staging issues, I don't know.