Exactly, how much does vinyl suck less than it did 30 years ago? This needs to be quantified.

[Sal1950]

I like album covers too. But, the damm space they consume! What a first world problem...

Album covers can be great. If they're important to you the internet is a goldmine of sources of photos, etc off the cover, inside info, included booklets, more
you and open on your PC to read. I can put them up on my 85" Samsung for ease off reading with my ole 75 eyes. LOL

I haven't bought vinyl in 30 years. Still have my tt and vinyl collection, but see no need to add to it.

There will never be a better time to dump it and maximize your income from it, but then you know that.

 

[Robin L]

The attempt to do something like this has been done - but failed economically before they reached something in their research that really worked - The company was called Rebeat Innovation GmbH and tried a lot of things from 2017 and some years onwards - the concept was simply called "HD Vinyl". All along the way I hoped they would succed in developing a method that worked, but they ran out of money before they got a working methode - too sad!
Read the story here:

Breaking News: HD Vinyl Enters Bankruptcy (and Some Thoughts On Vinyl

Over the past 130 years or so, very little has changed in disk recording, mastering and record manufacturing. The shift from acoustic recording to electrical recording took place in the 1930s, the transition from wax blanks to lacquer blanks happened shortly thereafter, and that was followed by...

www.psaudio.com

Fantastic article:

"Steampunk appeal aside, disk records have always been a horrible medium to manufacture! It is incredibly difficult to make a good record, and taming the archaic behemoths required to make records is not a task I would wish upon anybody. It is, quite frankly, a terrible job! Stressful, time-consuming, physically and mentally exhausting, and quite a liability in case anything goes wrong. Why would anyone make records, when, with far fewer skills, they could be a head of state, get paid much more, do far less, and never have to be held accountable for messing things up?"


As is this essay on the resurgence of interest in vinyl records, nested inside the HD Vinyl article:

The Rise, Fall, and Resurgence of the Vinyl Record

Two of the world’s leading chip manufacturers have recently announced moving on to 5 nm manufacturing. Nanotechnology and micromachining are becoming hot keywords in technical and scientific publications. Micro Electro Mechanical Systems are being built with tiny features of just a few dozen µm...

www.psaudio.com

 

[tineared]

Album covers were invaluable for cleaning weed back when there were seeds in it...

 

[Robin L]

Album covers were invaluable for cleaning weed back when there were seeds in it...

 

[Greg Chick]

Danger Will Robinson, Tim possibly you already know this but it's really a bad idea to post your email publicly like that.
That is a generous offer for our vinylhead members but a great alternative is to ask interested parties to send you a PM from which you can then get/give further details.
There are spam bot's and worse that comb the web for emails to add to their database.
Good luck. Sal

My email was on my website for over 10 yrs. and 40 million viewers were able to use it. I am still alive. It is the government that I fear not the public.

 

[Sal1950]

My email was on my website for over 10 yrs. and 40 million viewers were able to use it. I am still alive. It is the government that I fear not the public.

And how many spam emails were you having to filter out each day?
An even better idea would be to post your phone number along with it.

 

[HalSF]

Online forum culture is fascinating. Here we are in a site where serious objective attention to measured performance of digital playback components, amplification, and transducers like headphones, IEMs, and headphones provides value and focus to participants in a spirit of shared enthusiasm and general positivity.

At the same time, a disfavored and (in the context of ASR) out-group vintage technology like vinyl tends to get quasi-trolling bad-faith thread titles like this one and waves of anathemizing scorn, mockery, and get-rid-of-it rubbishing of its distasteful obsolescence. It almost seems somewhat… atavistically subjective? And a bit tribal.

 

[Sal1950]

At the same time, a disfavored and (in the context of ASR) out-group vintage technology like vinyl tends to get trolling bad-faith thread titles like this one and waves of anathemizing scorn, mockery, and get-rid-of-it rubbishing of obsolescence. It almost seems somewhat… atavistically subjective? And a bit tribal.

Nothing it doesn't deserve compared to all the BS spread by the high end media claiming vinyl is the Ultimate High Fidelity source. The truth is it became mostly irrelevant in the 1980s if true transparency to the origins source is the goal, (aka High Fidelity). People have to read the truth somewhere and ASR is the most appropriate place for it to be.
Now if you enjoy the rituals, expense, and inconvience of vinyl, be my guest, have at it.

 

[tineared]

Online forum culture is fascinating. Here we are in a site where serious objective attention to measured performance of digital playback components, amplification, and transducers like headphones, IEMs, and headphones provides value and focus to participants in a spirit of shared enthusiasm and general positivity.

At the same time, a disfavored and (in the context of ASR) out-group vintage technology like vinyl tends to get quasi-trolling bad-faith thread titles like this one and waves of anathemizing scorn, mockery, and get-rid-of-it rubbishing of its distasteful obsolescence. It almost seems somewhat… atavistically subjective? And a bit tribal.

I disagree.
We go to great lengths to eliminate noise from the audio chain.
Vinyl introduces noise that optical and electronic mediums do not.
I think we are entitled to make fun of anachronistic behavior...

 

[EJ3]

Album covers were invaluable for cleaning weed back when there were seeds in it...

Double albums: YES!

 

[EJ3]

My email was on my website for over 10 yrs. and 40 million viewers were able to use it. I am still alive. It is the government that I fear not the public.

Was that you're personal email or your websites email? (which presumably would be better protected than your personal email, also).

 

[mackat]

This is probably the place to post this. I have a used Koetsu Black Goldline that needs a retipping. If someone wants it I will mail it to them. No cost. Prefer someone in the USA. Tim Fleetham email: [email protected]

Sent you an email

 

[egellings]

I'm totally spitballing here, but since the birth of LP technology, there have been gigantic advances in micro-printing and light-etching onto materials for electronics use. Could this be applied to make the waveforms printed into analog platter media more accurate versus literally gouging them out with a lathe? And if so would it be enough of a difference to matter?

Also, would it be affordable for the record buyer?

 

[krabapple]

Vinyl is not sufficient to supply a good dynamic range with a lot of classical music.

I was being generous. And notice I used the word 'good', not something more effusive. It was adequate for generations of consumers, if not for the most sensitive of them.

Of course, the dynamic limitations of vinyl re: orchestral music were one of the reasons classical recording producers and engineers pushed hard for digital audio.

 

[krabapple]

For most rock, pop, jazz, blues, and smaller swing bands, vinyl CAN BE sufficient. So why take what was great and remake it while squashing it?

Robin L said:
Vinyl is not sufficient to supply a good dynamic range with a lot of classical music.

I don't know if it's some sort of reflex to respond like this whenever something conceivably positive about LPs is posted , but I sure wasn't arguing for vinyl against digital. It was directed at the perennial 'buh buh digital releases are too compressed' volleys.

 

[Chrispy]

Album covers can be great. If they're important to you the internet is a goldmine of sources of photos, etc off the cover, inside info, included booklets, more
you and open on your PC to read. I can put them up on my 85" Samsung for ease off reading with my ole 75 eyes. LOL


There will never be a better time to dump it and maximize your income from it, but then you know that.

Yeah, can get more for my SL1200mk2 than I paid for it 40 years ago, but that's largely inflation . Moving all that vinyl into my last house was the end of that road. The inheritors can deal with it. I do use my laptop for research/info rather than liner notes, easier on the old eyes as well as more info.

 

[Robin L]

I don't know if it's some sort of reflex to respond like this whenever something conceivably positive about LPs is posted , but I sure wasn't arguing for vinyl against digital.

I'm someone who bought thousands of classical LPs back when that was the only option and for a fair amount of time after that. I'm sure I'm more sensitive than a lot of others as regards the sonic defects that are baked into LPs, if I'm listening to an LP I anticipate the pops, skips, peak-warp wow and so on. Can LPs sound good? Yes, under the right circumstances. But for me, far too many times it simply wasn't good enough. And I'm sure I'm not alone. Is it reflexive to state the obvious? Know that many of those who argue in favor of vinyl often use the issue of brickwalling. But I've owned a couple of records, digitally sourced, just as compressed as the CDs but sounding worse due to surface imperfections.

It was directed at the perennial 'buh buh digital releases are too compressed' volleys.

Yes, that's silly. One of the (few) useful things I recall from the Hoffman forum is that all too often the cause of sonic problems is operator error. As regards dynamics, the best digital recording is the best. If that's screwed up it's either operator error, or a marketing decision.

 

[mhardy6647]

Danger Will Robinson, Tim possibly you already know this but it's really a bad idea to post your email publicly like that.
That is a generous offer for our vinylhead members but a great alternative is to ask interested parties to send you a PM from which you can then get/give further details.
There are spam bot's and worse that comb the web for emails to add to their database.
Good luck. Sal

Indeed. Better to direct interested parties to send you a "private message" (currently known as a "direct message" in Xenforo-speak) and pass your email along there. In theory, it's undiscoverable (or at least not easily scraped up and abused).

One does note that it's a hotmail account, so there's that.

 

[rdenney]

I disagree.
We go to great lengths to eliminate noise from the audio chain.
Vinyl introduces noise that optical and electronic mediums do not.
I think we are entitled to make fun of anachronistic behavior...

So, you're entitled to make fun of anyone whose behavior doesn't quite match your value system. I think that demonstrates the point Hal was making.

By your definition, most of my system is anachronistic--my preamp was made in 1979, my tuner in 1991 (tuner? TUNER!?), my digital parametric equalizer in 2000 or so, my CD player in 2002, my speakers in 2005, etc. My amp is relatively new and fairly modern, and there are whole threads on this forum devoted to explaining what's wrong with it.

But my system can sustain SINAD from source to amp speaker outputs between 85 and 90 dB. (No speakers are that good, period.) If you think that's easy because your DAC has a SINAD of 120 dB, then perhaps you should measure it and see. I have done so.

I totally get the problem of vinyl enthusiasts implying with their nostalgia (and sometimes outright claims) that vinyl is a superior medium for whatever reason. That's silly, of course. But I don't see that on this forum, except from the occasional troll. Given that this is an elsewhere problem and not a here problem, I don't know why we keep being forced to relitigate it, when in general there is no disagreement.

The question of this thread was this: Has vinyl improved in the last 30 years? Answer: No. It's as bad or as good as it was in its heyday. I think that was answered adequately on Page 1.

Rick "you are not entitled to make fun of people you don't know" Denney

 

[Mnyb]

So, you're entitled to make fun of anyone whose behavior doesn't quite match your value system. I think that demonstrates the point Hal was making.

By your definition, most of my system is anachronistic--my preamp was made in 1979, my tuner in 1991 (tuner? TUNER!?), my digital parametric equalizer in 2000 or so, my CD player in 2002, my speakers in 2005, etc. My amp is relatively new and fairly modern, and there are whole threads on this forum devoted to explaining what's wrong with it.

But my system can sustain SINAD from source to amp speaker outputs between 85 and 90 dB. (No speakers are that good, period.) If you think that's easy because your DAC has a SINAD of 120 dB, then perhaps you should measure it and see. I have done so.

I totally get the problem of vinyl enthusiasts implying with their nostalgia (and sometimes outright claims) that vinyl is a superior medium for whatever reason. That's silly, of course. But I don't see that on this forum, except from the occasional troll. Given that this is an elsewhere problem and not a here problem, I don't know why we keep being forced to relitigate it, when in general there is no disagreement.

The question of this thread was this: Has vinyl improved in the last 30 years? Answer: No. It's as bad or as good as it was in its heyday. I think that was answered adequately on Page 1.

Rick "you are not entitled to make fun of people you don't know" Denney

Yes the question for ASR should be to treat it as any other media .

As an audio entusiast you might have streaming , HiRez files , CD’s , tapes etc . And vinyl records or 78’s How to make the best of of it ?

Vinyl is what it’s is , OK ? But what’s a reasonable approach to play these darn things the ASR fellowship can answer that !

Vinyl playback has the same issues as everything else in hifi a lot of snakeoil missunderstandings and overpriced junk high end .

Super expensive players that looks like chromed oil rigs are not the answer, but something else can be ? Please provide some friendly advice.

I bought myself a vintage Thorens that I’ll try to get in shape soon for example, some people drugged up some technics direct drive players from the past .

What about all these modern players that looks like a slab of mdf with no real suspension ? Was REGA planar really a good idea to begin with ? Lot of things to have a chat about ?