It depends. Could be the medical sense, as in "advanced dementia."
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Advanced Vinyl Technology
- Thread starter Wombat
- Start date
I still play vinyl but it is "digital" today, using a MacMini and clickrepairRT to remove clicks and pops in real time. I play on a Linn Axis, Moerch UP-4 tonearm and Shure V15Vx/JICO SAS stylus. I can enjoy good produced LPs as I enjoy good produced CD/digital productions.
That said I don't buy the concept of advanced vinyl. It is still an inferior medium of you want the highest quality playback.
That said I don't buy the concept of advanced vinyl. It is still an inferior medium of you want the highest quality playback.
Commercially, no. Dolby was, ISTR, fairly well entrenched (in the UK anyway) by the time dbx put in an appearance.
Your observation about the linear nature of dbx is a good one insofar as line-up was Dolby's major bugbear. This was never a problem in studios that could afford 24 track Dolby racks because such places practised meticulous line-up anyway. I often wonder if something with the linear processing of dbx, but using four or more bands to avoid pumping, could have beaten Dolby to the punch.
I don't think that would have been an issue, had the commercial will been present. You would only have needed one Dolby line-up disc provided the industry agreed on an operating point defined in terms of stylus motion i.e. recorded velocity. Just think! A world of wonderfully quiet Dolby-encoded gramophone records could have been a sufficiently good dis-incentive to the development of commercial digital audio and the audio world might have gone in an entirely different direction
DNL was a playback only noise suppressor, as far as I remember correctly. My Philips N4506 reel recorder had it, but I did not like it because it took away too much treble in quiet passages.
solderdude
Grand Contributor
It was mostly used in cassette tape recorders in a certain period. These had a higher S/N ratio, certainly with Ferro tape.
For these tapes it worked surprisingly well without the feel of treble being reduced.
You just heard the noise disappear in that case. Of course with the hiss the overall sound became 'darker'.
It was a simple yet smart solution. It worked by nulling low amplitude high frequencies only.
somwhat higher amplitude higher frequencies were just very slightly attenuated (because of the substraction being always there) but the higher amplitude frequencies were virtually unaffected.
After several years it was abandoned and Dolby B became the norm.
Most people I knew recorded with dolby B and played it back without because they thought it sounded too dull.
In the many years of servicing cassette decks I always found bias was adjusted a bit too high from the factory.
This prevents distortion (which is audible when too low) but lowered the upper treble range.
On better (3 head) decks where one could dial in bias per tape this issue did not exist.
Below the DNL circuit board which looks the same as used in cassette decks. As the S/N ratio is different chances are it did not work as well for R2R.
The signal was phase shifted (T51) and that signal was compressed/limitered and high pass filtered by the components in the bottom part and 'mixed' in a certain ratio by R18 and R19 and buffered.
One could switch it on and off by pulling the correction signal (the pin right below) to ground.
It was possible to change some components to get it to work at a lower level but there was only one level set hardware wise.
They should have made the threshold variable....
Later on a DIY magazine designed a more modern version (with opamps) that had variable thresholds.
I still have one on the attick somewhere (hate to throw away things)
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restorer-john
Grand Contributor
Clearly those people had used poor tapes, recorders, or the formulations were completely different to the reference tapes used for setting up the decks in the factory. (most used TDK AD/SA/MA or a mixture of Maxells and TDKs. Sony, obviously used their formulations and the Europeans used horrible BASF tapes)
Dolby B, C (with or without HX-Pro), S and dbx all offered excellent performance on high quality decks and tapes. Most people never took the time or effort to correctly set bias (and eq), even if they had manual 'bias trim' pots on their cassette decks. Me, I was a mix-tape perfectionist! Sure, dbx could 'pump' in the low levels in certain situations, but it was amazing too.
In fact, I'd be prepared to play any of my now circa 35 year old recordings for any of you (on the deck they were recorded on) and you'd be amazed how good they sound. (I did this recently for my own edification)
Several of my cassette decks with dbx, had a 'disc' function button which allowed the deck to act as a dbx decoder for suitably encoded vinyl records.
I've had CD-4 decoders which were a bit of fun, considering I only possess one record I know of in CD-4, Pink Floyd's Australian Pressed original DSOTM.
restorer-john
Grand Contributor
Further to my above post, I just had a thought about the CD-4 DSOTM recording. It could be decoded in the digital domain.
Then I found this : http://pspatialaudio.com/JVC_CD-4.htm
(that is the JVC decoder we had a few of before I sold mine- I think Dad still has one) I also think we have a few line-contact styli or at least a micro ridge.
Then I found this : http://pspatialaudio.com/JVC_CD-4.htm
(that is the JVC decoder we had a few of before I sold mine- I think Dad still has one) I also think we have a few line-contact styli or at least a micro ridge.
Just a brief comment about those 'horrible' BASF tapes. My understanding at the time was that BASF adhered closely to the Type I and Type II specs, whereas TDK/Maxell etc 'improved' on the specs, i.e. had a higher MOL, greater sensitivity and could be equalised and biased for wider HF bandwidth. At the time most cassette machines were of Japanese origin, and TDK and Maxell were far more popular than BASF, it's little wonder that few tape machines were optimised for a 'correct' Type I or Type II tape.
There was less variation in Reel to Reel tapes, and BASF tapes were quite popular in European studios alongside 3M (Scotch 206) or Ampex Grand Master, and studio tape machines could be easily lined up for whatever tape the studio/client wanted to use.
S.
There was less variation in Reel to Reel tapes, and BASF tapes were quite popular in European studios alongside 3M (Scotch 206) or Ampex Grand Master, and studio tape machines could be easily lined up for whatever tape the studio/client wanted to use.
S.
Would miss the music on my thousands of LP's -I do always have at least one Sweet Vinyl click n pop killer set up and running (usually 2 of four turntables hooked up in my set up are run thru Sweet Vinyl processing.) . I'm after music and perfection is not very important to me. But better is more enjoyable. And I'll sacrifice some degree of perfection for reliability (thus four tables - super redundancy is a habit). My digital stuff is nice -works most of the time -my analog stuff works all the time/good 'nuff fer me .
And don't forget the uncrowned king, Agfa
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I was never big into the audiophile cassette thing, in spite of owning several decent decks. From my memory, BASF (which were not that common in my neck of the woods) never sounded 'right'. I mean, if you can even consider the compact cassette as sounding right. Whether it was the machine I was using, or the tape, I don't know. I had better luck with Maxell and TDK. Metal tapes were, to me, the best formulation of the bunch. I used to buy the Maxell product by the case, from some mail order outfit. Very cheap. And make copies of records for my after-market car tape player. In a car, the limitations of cassette didn't matter.
I'd usually be able to find Maxell UD (and sometimes UDXL) open reel at the local guitar store. Until Maxell pulled the open reel plug. Then I'd buy Quantegy (Ampex) from a mail order outfit. Until they went out of business. I could see where this was taking me, and quickly got out of the open reel thing, altogether.
DKT88
Active Member
Thomas, do you use an external ADC with the Mac? I'm thinking of trying this with an older Macbook Pro.
I used an M- audio transit (old model) but I did not manage to use it without having the screen on all the time. Right now I use the Mac Mini for ADC. It works fine.
DKT88
Active Member
I decided to try a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 so I can also record guitar.
Hello,
I am new in this forum but enjoying a lot already.
Talking about Vinyl - what about direct-to-disc?
I think they still sound fantastic. I am still not certain why. Even in the late 70‘s, when they were made, reel tape had better specs than vinyl and it is not clear why even the „second generation“ DtoD ( the ones cut from that tape) did not sound as good as the original one.
DtoD recordings like the Harry James sessions on Sheffield compare very well to any recordings available today, or even better. Shows how good, or little, mastering helps. Still like to learn what made those discs so great. And I do not think it is nostalgica that makes me believe that
I am new in this forum but enjoying a lot already.
Talking about Vinyl - what about direct-to-disc?
I think they still sound fantastic. I am still not certain why. Even in the late 70‘s, when they were made, reel tape had better specs than vinyl and it is not clear why even the „second generation“ DtoD ( the ones cut from that tape) did not sound as good as the original one.
DtoD recordings like the Harry James sessions on Sheffield compare very well to any recordings available today, or even better. Shows how good, or little, mastering helps. Still like to learn what made those discs so great. And I do not think it is nostalgica that makes me believe that
- Thread Starter
- #37
The only direct-to-disc LP I purchased was Thelma Houston & Pressure Cooker - I've Got The Music In Me. The MFL discs were expensive in Australia at the time and I didn't purchase any others. Now I wish I had from an investment viewpoint. From the snap, crackle and pop perspective not so.
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Sheffield discs were high quality, however you had men like Doug Sax, men who knew what they were doing, making them. Umbrella (Audio Technica) discs were sonic knock-outs. On the other hand, some DtD didn't sound any better than the usual thing. The problem with DtD was that it was difficult to pull everything together, and easy to screw up (the recording/cutting process happened simultaneously).
Generally, program material was second or third rate, and timing (that is, minutes of program) was few. Sort of like the old restaurant joke: the food here is terrible and the portions are so small. The most egregious I owned (it was a gift) was a Dave Brubeck record. Dave was in a space suit (or something) and the band was his kids. You know going in that any Brubeck performance, especially one with his kids, is not going to be aesthetically proper music. Everyone played acoustic, except a son on electric bass. Electric bass on an acoustic jazz record? You heard right. What the hell were they thinking? The cover was pretty cool. Featuring Stanton Magnetics' (another Gibson 'success' story, /sarc) dual tipped stamper needle in the background. In fact, the album cover was the best part of the package.
I don't even know if anyone is making DtD records anymore.
Robin L
Master Contributor
Kinda like a SOTA steam train.
watchnerd
Grand Contributor
[bold added]
I'm not following this logic.
Audio Technica, for example, offers Shibata, Line Contact, and MicroLine MM carts starting at $169 and going up from there with improvements in cantilever, motor, etc.
According to Stereophile, the Shure V15 IV was $150 in 1979, which is about $557 today.
For less than that price point, one can choose between MM carts like the MicroLine VM740ML for $329, or the Shibata VM750SH for $399.
Or for about the same inflation-adjusted money, get a MicroLine MC with boron cantilever, like the AT33PTG/II at $549.
Hardly seems like the Dark Ages.
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