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Can anyone explain the vinyl renaissance?

After I received my MS in Physics, I have worked for over 30 years, designing and implementing sophisticated electronic and optical systems for communications, military, and medical R&D, including the creation of one of the first laser driven optical readers for video and audio . I have created, developed, and used extremely sensitive optical devices. I have become intimitely familiar in the methods used to characterize a system, signal, noise, distortion, gain, saturation, bandwidth, quantum efficiency, optical interference and diffraction and so on. I use quantum mechanics daily.
I have used these skills on my sound system. Although my equipment is not as complete as Amir's I can measure quite a few parameters. I regularly use my Benchmark A/D, TrueRTA and REW, computer, oscilloscope, and DVM to chacterize the performance of every one of my components, every one. I do play digital. And I characterize digital components also. And yes they do test better.

I am the most technically minded person I know. I enjoy this site because it provides an alternative to the more qualitative reviews.

And I can't help but be aware of what my ears say to me. Yes, this is a conundrum. I will say flatly that great specs do not necessarily create the best sound. Great specs are a guide to good audio. I do not think that the human race has designed a test for audio equipment that captures the ear, mind and emotion that occurs when listening to music. Not yet.

I do think that there were a few extremely talented mastering enginers at Decca during the 60s and 70s. After that, the LP mastering skill seemed to drop significantly, probably because CDs became the medium to work on. The first CDs created were done very poorly, no bass and screechy highs. I know, I lived through it. This skill has improved.

Mastering is a skill that requires intimate knowledge of the music itself, the placement of recording microphones, the medium, the mastering equipment and the audience. Those Decca techs were very good at extracting as much performance from vinyl as possible. That is not the case today for either CD or vinyl. Also, the sound techs knew where to place microphones.
Many of those Decca LPs were never digitized into CDs. You need to play a record to hear them.

As I have stated in previous posts, the CD and digital formats are very transparent mediums, far better than vinyl. There is no doubt about this fact. The act of recording and transferring recorded music to the CD and digital format is a skill that is acquired, just as for LPs. I have many LPs that are more pleasing than the CD counterpart. The opposite is also true.

Some wonderful, richly rewarding music exists only on LPs. I will never stop listening to LPs just because the specs are not as good, or is too inconvenient, or is too difficult to maintain, or has too many extraneous noises.
Head and heart - we need both - as long as we stay aware of that

Love the music :)
 
Okay a serious TT tweak. Build an MDF or plywood box a few inches deep with an open top which is wider and deeper than the TT. Fill it 3/4 with sand in a plastic bag. The bag is just to keep the sand contained. Create a base a half inch narrower and less deep than the box you made. Slip it inside the box on the sand, and tamp a bit until level making sure it does not touch the box. Put TT on it. You now have one of the very best damping and isolation platforms for your TT. I originally got the idea from people who make their own holograms. Vibration is a huge problem for them, and using sand tables or sand boxes is how they do it without spending big bucks on active isolation tables.
 
Okay a serious TT tweak. Build an MDF or plywood box a few inches deep with an open top which is wider and deeper than the TT. Fill it 3/4 with sand in a plastic bag. The bag is just to keep the sand contained. Create a base a half inch narrower and less deep than the box you made. Slip it inside the box on the sand, and tamp a bit until level making sure it does not touch the box. Put TT on it. You now have one of the very best damping and isolation platforms for your TT. I originally got the idea from people who make their own holograms. Vibration is a huge problem for them, and using sand tables or sand boxes is how they do it without spending big bucks on active isolation tables.

I'm sure that works quite well. Another "tweak" I saw for unsuspended turntables, like some of the Rega and Project models, was to do something similar with a partially inflated inner tube.

Something like:
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My turntable is long gone, so I no longer have to worry about these things. :)
 
I'm sure that works quite well. Another "tweak" I saw for unsuspended turntables, like some of the Rega and Project models, was to do something similar with a partially inflated inner tube.

Something like:
View attachment 408119
My turntable is long gone, so I no longer have to worry about these things. :)
I don't have a TT either. I tried the one with the inner tube. It was more picky and didn't seem to work as well across the board. I found a platform with small springs, and soft foam lightly stuffed inside the springs between top and bottom plate for damping the spring bounce to be more useable. Of course you are just adding the suspension Rega left out. I had a Rega for several years. Another that worked well was a thick balloon with some sand stuffed inside of it to lightly stretch the balloon. Nothing like the size of it blown up. Three under the table. That worked really well, but balloons deteriorate and eventually spill all the sand in not so many weeks.

One that occurred to me, but I never tried was the inner tube filled with something viscous like maybe corn syrup and with a low air pressure. Sort of like floating on a contained thick fluid. While interesting ideas on some level I don't really miss turntables myself.
 
Is there a reason to think turntables with suspension designed into them are insufficiently damped? I mean mine is sitting on a cheap sheet metal IKEA side-boardy thing (which is on carpet tile on top of vinyl tile which is on a concrete pad) and I can’t say I hear any issues.
 
Okay a serious TT tweak. Build an MDF or plywood box a few inches deep with an open top which is wider and deeper than the TT. Fill it 3/4 with sand in a plastic bag. The bag is just to keep the sand contained. Create a base a half inch narrower and less deep than the box you made. Slip it inside the box on the sand, and tamp a bit until level making sure it does not touch the box. Put TT on it. You now have one of the very best damping and isolation platforms for your TT. I originally got the idea from people who make their own holograms. Vibration is a huge problem for them, and using sand tables or sand boxes is how they do it without spending big bucks on active isolation tables.

Sounds good.

I built a multi layered base for my turntable, sort of a constrained layer damping approach, but the game changer was placing all of that on Townshend isolation pods, which are springs (damn with wrapped rubber, I think) chosen for isolating objects of specific weight.

I don’t know if this amounts to better isolation than what you were describing. But I can say that it’s been very effective in terms of floor or rack born vibrations. Without the springs, stomping on the floor near the turntable rack produces very strong, shuddering vibrations on the top of the rack that you can feel with your hand. They are gone once the springs are employed. Likewise, my vibration measuring app on my iPhone measures large spikes of vibration getting through without the springs, and almost nothing with the springs under the platform.

And records no longer skip when my tall son stomps past the turntable :)
 
...while also avoiding the obvious, cheap solution! :cool:
One just need to separate what people want vs. what people need.
 
Is there a reason to think turntables with suspension designed into them are insufficiently damped? I mean mine is sitting on a cheap sheet metal IKEA side-boardy thing (which is on carpet tile on top of vinyl tile which is on a concrete pad) and I can’t say I hear any issues.
Depends upon the table. Also suspensions usually act something like low pass filters. There is frequency below which they transmit vibration and above that filter it out. Putting a TT on a support with its own suspension is like going thru 2 filters that filters out more of the vibration. Or in the case of something like a Rega it really has no suspension other than the overly hard feet.
 
And: what one wants versus what other people want.
Once I got a telephone call from a salesman who wanted me to change telephone company and offered cheaper telephone bills.
I answered that I want to pay the same as I do today.
He could not offer me that and hung up.
 
Depends upon the table. Also suspensions usually act something like low pass filters. There is frequency below which they transmit vibration and above that filter it out. Putting a TT on a support with its own suspension is like going thru 2 filters that filters out more of the vibration. Or in the case of something like a Rega it really has no suspension other than the overly hard feet.
Correct me if I'm wrong - all these solutions are only going to damp vibrations transmitted through the surface the table is sat on.

None of them do anything for the vibrations transmitted through the air from the speakers. In fact it could be argued that in some cases with the table relatively free to move WRT the platform, airborne vibration might have an easier job of getting into the table itself?
 
Correct me if I'm wrong - all these solutions are only going to damp vibrations transmitted through the surface the table is sat on.

None of them do anything for the vibrations transmitted through the air from the speakers. In fact it could be argued that in some cases with the table relatively free to move WRT the platform, airborne vibration might have an easier job of getting into the table itself?

Fortunately, as far as I can tell, I don’t have to worry about the airborne vibrations very much. My turntable is actually in a different room down the hallway from my listening room.

At the beginning, I thought that might prove inconvenient. But it hasn’t turned out to be.
My turntable arm uses a damping system to lower slowly once the lever is dropped, and I usually find by the time the music actually starts I’m at my seat.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong - all these solutions are only going to damp vibrations transmitted through the surface the table is sat on.

None of them do anything for the vibrations transmitted through the air from the speakers. In fact it could be argued that in some cases with the table relatively free to move WRT the platform, airborne vibration might have an easier job of getting into the table itself?

That's why, for best isolation, you should place your turntable within a vacuum chamber, which in turn rests on a mechanical isolation platform.

After all, we wouldn't want music payback to be any less convenient, would we. :p
 
I lived in an apartment in my 20s above a long carport with columns every three cars and the floor was so springy you could watch the woofer move with your footsteps during the quiet passages in the music. Except for a few nostalgic moments I am so over vinyl and yet I have not sold or given away my TT and 600+ collection of Lps.
 
A sophomore writing about (among other things) why his generation and people of this digital generation are attracted to vinyl records.

Hitting on many of the themes echoed in this thread:


Likewise, view from India’s expanding vinyl record market:


You go to the collection, take it out carefully... You end up paying more attention,” said 26-year-old Sachin Bhatt, a design director who grew up downloading songs.

“You hear new details, you make new mental observations... There is a ritual to it,” he said.

Vinyl records create a “personal, tangible connection to the music we love,” Bhatt added. “I know a lot of young kids who have vinyl, even if they don’t have a player. It’s a way for them to show their love for the music.”

Vinyl is a “completely different” experience than “shoving his AirPods” into his ears and going for a run, said 23-year-old Mihir Shah, who has a collection of about 50 records.

“It makes me feel present,” he said.
 
That's why, for best isolation, you should place your turntable within a vacuum chamber, which in turn rests on a mechanical isolation platform.
After all, we wouldn't want music payback to be any less convenient, would we. :p
I have advocated that if one is serious about sound quality from vinyl, the TT should be in a different room.
Which would also deal with the vinyl lover's fear of convenient audio!

But of course I estimate that hardly anyone reading such advice would take it. After all, no matter how much one is willing to spend in pursuit of vinyl sound quality, and declare one's earnest dedication, if it means not being able to show it off to visitors while playing, not being able to drool over it while playing, not being able to sit and watch the record go round and round, the head shell gently swaying....then it's not going to happen. :cool:
 
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Not that I know for sure, but my hunch is that I’m not getting any major sonic benefit from having my turntable in a separate room.
Even though I would like to maximize the sound of vinyl playback, I don’t think I’d place it in a second room in hopes of better sound.
I just placed it along with the rest of my source and gear in a separate room because my listening room is already packed with speakers, and it’s doing HT duty as well so there’s no room for other equipment.

I still get to gaze at my Turntable and toob amps lovingly with drool, running down my chin, from my computer chair though :)

My friend has his high-end turntable just set upon a sturdy rack behind in between his loudspeakers. (some of which are mighty big and full range.). His vinyl playback still sounds amazing.
 
Please can you use DeltaWave by @pkane to compare your needledrop file with the CD and/or digital file and share the results here?
Check out this thread:

The Quality Of Tape: The new transfers of Decca’s Ring recordings,

Starting at Post #35.

Also this article:


From the Tracking Angle publication. You may not trust this article considering its provenance, but there are a ton of comparisons between Vinyl, CD, and SACD and mastering methods. All sourced from the same original performances. Fascinating story.


 
Made me smile!

But perhaps this is an ASR goal. Given that people still but vinyl and turntables, perhaps this thread should focus on what is the best practice for minimising the downsides. Examples include record cleanliness; ideal high-pass filter settings; minimum preamplifier overload margins; best stylus profiles; cartridge alignment; minimising wow and flutter; controlling resonances. Simply, everything that can be done to minimise vinyl's inherent limitations.
Best practice is not expecting perfection.
 
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