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The Vinyl Frontier
- Thread starter curiouspeter
- Start date
Indeed and the DAC and signal processing is your brain!Well, that means a kind of discretization, I understand ... a natural ADC
mash
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They were not very good, no coatings so very prone to flare. To reduce this less well corrected constructions with fewer air/glass surfaces in the optical path were designed since poor contrast was considered by many to be worse than poor resolution.
On small format (ie 35mm lenses) which I used to study extensively the "high speed" Zeiss Sonnar design and its copies had fewer glass/air surfaces, higher contrast but lower resolution than the Planar types of the same aperture.
Now with effective surface coatings the problem is much reduced and the most amazingly complex zoom lenses with a gazillion elements are often pretty good.
OTOH a daguerrotype is a unique image so no resolution reducing enlargement but the exposure time is also very long so tripod and environmental conditions like wind will have an influence on the sharpness of the result.
Hats of to the early photographers for their immense skill and the results they got. Today's cameras have a far higher capability than most photographers using them
A few days late but stumbled on this thread.......
Interestingly, my nephew was part of a team that tried to recreate these photos in 2018 with modern equipment. They were sponsored by the Cincinnati Public Library and Hasselblad. As part of the project, they were lent top end Hasselblad cameras (100 Meg) and lenses. While the new pictures were amazing they still lacked the resolution of the original photos. It was pretty eye opening exhibit.
Nothing in the article you linked confirms that the original Daguerrotypes were more highly resolved than the Hasselblad images. I'd love to see examples if you have access to them.
I really don't think lenses achieved real sharpness across the frame until perhaps the Rapid Rectilinear (from Dallmeyer) or the Aplanat (from Steinheil) that came out in the 1860's. The article didn't say what size was used in that Cleveland panorama, but it was certainly no smaller than whole plate (6-1/2 by 8-1/2") and probably it was mammoth plate (not that these "standardized" sizes existed that early). But even though they resolved finely, they lacked contrast, and they had to be stopped down to beyond the diffraction limit to get acceptable performance across the format. And these lenses were astigmatic off-axis, and suffered from spherical aberration, in addition to severe chromatic aberration (which didn't matter with orthochromatic film of narrow spectrum). It was the development of dense barium flint glasses that made the RR possible.
(The classic Tessar is a descendent of the Rapid Rectilinear. The plasmat double-gauss design emerged from the same principle, however--roughly symmetrical lenses groups in opposition.)
Using orthochromatic film, the best of those ancient designs could achieve modern resolution, but with low contrast. Modern color photography imposes a range of further requirements, to say the least. And the 55x40mm sensor in that 'blad will need lenses of three times the resolution to render the same scene detail of an image made using the whole-plate format.
A lot of contact prints and tin-types from the 19th century look amazingly sharp, but then the image is the same size as projected by the lens. For each doubling of the final print, the lens needs twice the resolution to render the same scene details. As late as 15 years ago, ad-work for large displays used 8x10" film, and many landscape photographers are still using that format. An ad photo on 8x10 would be presented in a magazine with no enlargement, and will be limited only by the screen used for process color.
On the topic of flare, the Rapid Rectilinear had four air surfaces and two cemented services in its 4-element, 2-group design. The Tessar also minimized air surfaces, but the Tessar could also perform well at apertures up to f/2.8, whereas the RR was "rapid" because it opened up to maybe f/6 or f/8. The original six-element Planar from the 1890's was impractical because of all the air surfaces. The Sonnar was a very thick hunk of glass originally, but performed well to very large apertures (the first branded Sonnar was a 5-cm f/1.5 lens for the small-format Contax camera in the 30's). It had to be longer than "normal" for SLR's, however, because it didn't leave room for a mirror box. The first longer Sonnar was the Olympia Sonnar, which, at 180mm, was designed for sports photography for use in the 1936 Olympics. That design was little changed for the 180mm f/2.8 Sonnar made by the Carl Zeiss Jena for the Pentacon Six roll-film camera right up to the German unification.
The first commercial planars were made possible by coatings (which were invented in the 20's but used more widely in the 30's), but WWII interrupted its commercial appearance until the early 50's. At that time, the Planar was a five-element lens--not that similar to the original planar design. The Jena factory made nearly the same lens and called it the Biometar (Schneider's version was the Xenotar). Zeiss double-coated some interior elements in the 50's, but it was really the Japanese that commercialized multi-coating in the 60's. They were the first to consider the coatings as like an impedance matching system to eliminate reflections at the glass boundary. That opened the door to complex computer-aided designs. That has made possible lenses with reference sharpness wide open, even if they have variable focal lengths.
But photography is an older enterprise than audio, and analog optics and film developed to a higher state before the advent of digital. Consider how much progress magnetic tape made in the period from the 60's to the 80's, and much of it was driven by the need to make the cassette format less crappy. Had the compact disk not appeared for another, magnetic tape formulations might have improved by another 10 dB. (In photography, the advancements aimed at making 35mm less crappy--such as very thin emulsions and T-grain formulations--found their way into much larger formats, too.) The use of FM multiplexing for audio with rotating-head video was a sea change largely unnoticed by the history books. I was making field recordings with a Teac open-reel deck until I discovered just how good a HiFi VCR was even at the consumer level. I could actually afford a Mitsubishi HiFi VCR at a time when digital recording technology was vastly expensive. That's the first time I heard a recording that sounded exactly like the microphone feed to my ears, and it's the first time affordable and portable audio magnetic tape recorders achieved better than 80 dB S/N--nearly (at least) audibly transparent for most folks and 10-15 dB better than open-reel tape. Had that scheme been developed in the 60's (and there's nothing about it that couldn't have been done in the 60's), it would have certainly become commonplace before the compact disk. Audio just has less of a head start than did photography.
Rick "a confluence of topics that dangerously opens the verbal floodgates" Denney
mash
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I'll have to talk to my nephew and see if he has access. (probably won't be for a few weeks) I'm not a photographer but I know my nephew had said that it was very hard to get the full level of detail that was in the original Daguerrotypes.
Cote Dazur
Addicted to Fun and Learning
Feeling better? I take my vinyl seriously, as in when I want to listen to music seriously in my listening room, my turntable and my albums are my best option.
This afternoon I did 4 sides, it was as good as I ever had music reproduced in a house.
I also listen to and enjoy music on digital medium, including using a Apple dongle.
If you have an issue with having noise with your music, it is not for you, does not mean it is not for other.
Digital medium has the potential for greatness but it is rarely exploited, most of the time the newer recordings are so compress, that older vinyl records, even with their limited 40db, still have better dynamic than new recording that have just a few db of dynamic left after compression.
From your OP, you tried vinyl, good for you, from your short experience, not sure what you were expecting , you did not like it. No harm no foul. You can now be serene in spending the rest of your life listening to digital medium without having second thought you might be missing something.
From my experience, I appreciate digital medium and I can enjoy it, but never as much as my turntable setup. to each its own.
I think here are many interesting concepts ... ahead of theoretical sinad / SNR / blah blah
In my system vinyl is truly fantastic and I don't see it as a REAL (not about theoretical stuff or bad setups) low quality medium. Obviously, everyone can think as they want ... in my home ... vinyl is really, really good.
In my system vinyl is truly fantastic and I don't see it as a REAL (not about theoretical stuff or bad setups) low quality medium. Obviously, everyone can think as they want ... in my home ... vinyl is really, really good.
Cut your loses, ditch the stuff you bought and forget you ever had a lapse in judgment.
The vinyl thing is far more sensory than Digital will ever be.
I can give you an example.
I vividly remember the first time I listened to an album called Days of Future Past with a friend, this was like 40 years ago, and I admit there may have been alcohol and oak trees involved, regardless we spent the whole album not only listening to the music, but also finding the faces on the album cover.
that could never happen with an mp3
Personally I do not mind digital music if I have never heard it on vinyl. if it is something I had on vinyl I expect the random pops or other noise where it always was, and it is disconcerting when it is not there.
it feels like someone is editing history or something.
On the other hand as I have said before I believe there is a little reverb feedback between the woofers and the tonearm/cartridge that is pleasing to the ear.
I also have albums that I have recorded with a pioneer cd recorder. when I give them to people to compare to their copy of the same album they are surprised when the copy I gave them sounds better. I assume the reason is that the mastering is better.
I haven't taken vinyl seriously for the last 25 years or so. It's just not that serious. Plus its a pain in the ass and takes a higher investment in gear. I still have my vinyls and tt, tho, just rarely find them worth anything but nostalgia.....YMMV tho.
Right On
I used to have a crank-up Edison phonograph in my place up in Chicago, and I still have my 1927 Atwater Kent radio that works just fine. They're both fun toys to play with and can bring some staticky music and other things into your life. But when it comes to listening to SOTA music reproduction, the various sources of Digital High Fidelity have been heads and shoulders above anything analog since the 1980s.
We moved into an old house in San Francisco in 1971, and it came with furnishings (separate bid, but dad went for it). We had two crank operated victrolas with records! Just convinced me that pure analog had issues
Robin L
Master Contributor
I gave up LPs for a variety of reasons, space being one factor [prefer file based replay or streaming from a good source].
But the primary reason is the musical damage LPs commit and can't be repaired.
Ever.
Let me rephrase that: spiral analog discs have a 60% reduction in available energy if the entire side of a disc is filled with only 1cm space before the label [that would be something like a single disc LP of Beethovens 9th]
If the deadwax is at the half-way point on the discs, and the disc is properly pressed, properly centered, played back on a properly set up turntable and reproduced in an attractive acoustic, LP replay is as close to perfect as the human ear can detect. It might have self-noise greater than 70db, but the human ear doesn't really notice all that much at that level in most domestic situations, as the environmental noise is usually worse than that. And 45rpm LPs/or 12" Singles can really raise the roof.
LPs can sound glorious.
But it still isn't as rock steady in pitch or have as low a noise floor as digital anything. And out of pitch, not so well centered LPs with bad mastering, or warps, or crappy vinyl formulations, or wear, represent about 90% to 95% of currently available recordings.
Which of course has to include the massive used market.
On top of that: Consider, if you will, just how many spiral encoded analog discs are now landfill. Don't forget 78's and 45s.
It is the greater portion of all spirally encoded analog discs.
Better is always better. But that doesn't alter the fact that record collecting can be great fun. And that LPs can sound awesome.
There is a reflexive habit of bashing just about anyone here who is having fun with LPs at this forum.
And that's simply bad manners.
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Many (many) years ago people doesn't talk about tolerance ... and people was tolerant.
In these days everybody talks about tolerance as a great human aspect and even you can see tough fights about it ... but only few are tolerant. Tolerance to different thinking, to respect decisions on grow up people, decisions that even can't affect your life.
Talking about others as "idiots" with silly things. When you point other people with one finger ... there's four fingers pointing at you.
I love vinyl, and I already know about every theoretical reason / argument you can name it ... and you know what? I love vinyl. I don't listent to pops and clicks after a good cleaning with a RCM, I don't listen to any damage on properly care records after 40 years, I don't listen to any degradation on inner tracks with a fine line stylus and properly adjusted cartridge, etc etc.
And ... many people enjoy vinyl as me in the same way. So, listen to digital (as also I do) and enjoy music as everyone here enjoy.
That's all ... This is a niche market, tending to disappear .. with other people laughing at our audio expensive stuff (even with your intelligent decisions, If you want to satisfy your ego).
In these days everybody talks about tolerance as a great human aspect and even you can see tough fights about it ... but only few are tolerant. Tolerance to different thinking, to respect decisions on grow up people, decisions that even can't affect your life.
Talking about others as "idiots" with silly things. When you point other people with one finger ... there's four fingers pointing at you.
I love vinyl, and I already know about every theoretical reason / argument you can name it ... and you know what? I love vinyl. I don't listent to pops and clicks after a good cleaning with a RCM, I don't listen to any damage on properly care records after 40 years, I don't listen to any degradation on inner tracks with a fine line stylus and properly adjusted cartridge, etc etc.
And ... many people enjoy vinyl as me in the same way. So, listen to digital (as also I do) and enjoy music as everyone here enjoy.
That's all ... This is a niche market, tending to disappear .. with other people laughing at our audio expensive stuff (even with your intelligent decisions, If you want to satisfy your ego).
I went through my 45rpm LP phase a while back, but after realizing how often I pass on listening to them because I want more than 10-12 uninterrupted minutes of listening I'm pretty much over it.
When I want to show things off, or am checking out a new cartridge that's what I'll turn to, but seldom bother otherwise. There is something cool about having the noise floor of the recording be higher than the noise floor of the system, and IGD tends to be more tolerable/less apparent. At least to me...i know you are hyper-tuned to it.
I still enjoy it all as a challenge, but it I don't kid myself about the overall limitations.
Cote Dazur
Addicted to Fun and Learning
This is such a crucial comment as it relates to enjoyment of listening to music in our houses, feeling the emotion that the music convey.
Most post from people here (ASR) that enjoy listening to their records are about how they enjoy the listening experience. Most post from people who are not using their TT or do not have have TT are about how something else measure much better, which is true, so it should be more enjoyable, which may or may not be true.
I would hope, with age and experience, that most people here (ASR), realize that the quest for perfection is all good, but in reality, their is only so much that can be done to get "better" music in our home, but one thing that has to happen is accept the status quo, stop listening to the "sounds" and start listening to the music.
Somehow, some of us seem to get to a very enjoyable musical experience listening to records on a TT, it is not the only way, but it is one way.
I whish to all that have to be intervening in any "vinyl" thread in stating it is technically inferior and/or that they do not listen to TT anymore, that they have found their way to feel the emotion in music and do not spend too much time wondering if their 135db SINAD DAC should be changed or if their streaming service is really lossless instead of being carried away by music for 20mn.
I post in an other thread here that I wish we had a safe heaven thread here on ASR about TT and listening to music on records, safe from people who do not. Why here? Because here, the people who enjoy TT, do not believe in voodoo, they know the technical limitations, they know about good sound, they are rational. I have not found an other forum like that.
Other than a few phono stages, there's no measuring of other vinyl gear here, and seemingly no interest on Amir's part to go further than naming it in this subforum's title (i.e. the phono stages). Not too many threads on vinyl either generally that I've noticed; nothing that couldn't exist in the other existing subforums well enough. My .02.
Cote Dazur
Addicted to Fun and Learning
Thank you for you comment on a post about a thread that would not concern you as from your previous post, you have given up on records and TT 25 years ago. Exactly the reason why that thread would make perfect sense.
Your welcome. I still have the damn stuff and lugged it around for many years/moves, I gots skin in the game....so I'll comment as I see fit. I do get occasional fits of nostalgia, and sometimes something I can only get from some of my old vinyl....but yeah, beyond that, meh.Thank you for you comment on a post about a thread that would not concern you as from your previous post, you have given up on records and TT 25 years ago. Exactly the reason why that thread would make perfect sense.
... and it's totally understandable ... real vinyl lovers that extracts the maximum from the format and achieve good results ... well, we're a species in itself
you need to see all the "inconvenience" as a hobby, as something enjoyable ... and mess with antiskating / azimuth / tonearm compliance / headshell materials / plinth isolation / cartridge setup / record cleaning / blah blah ... and be happy doing it
i understand it's not for everyone, and i don't push anyone to that "dark side" (at least to anyone who doesn't want it), but after all that ... hassle? ... the results are very good. There're many using cheap plastic TTs destroying records with dirty conical styluses only following the "analog way" and many others listening more distortion and noise than sound with dirty records / stylus and horrendous configured systems.
Far, far from "plug and play" like a cd player or a streamer. But ... we like it ... and we take an informed decision, many times with better information than a "digital boy only" repeating theoretical mantras without knowledge about the reality in room noise floor, acoustics, recordings, speakers distortion, etc.
Tolerance ... a good quality.
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