Turntables - help me understand the appeal?

[watchnerd]

What does surprise me is vinyl popularity in classical music, as classical music for the most part has escaped the decline in master quality of some other genres and some classical labels far from wasting the potential of digital have actually exploited it. So in the case of classical there is not positive I can see to vinyl but a huge disadvantage in the need to keep changing sides and in many cases also changing records to play a full piece.

Also, IGD during end of movement crescendos.

My eccentric philosophy on LP collecting is that I only collect jazz (albeit with a wide definition of what that means) and blues, and only recordings originally issued on LP (no 78s, no CD era recordings, so basically 1950-1982), which helps me avoid these issues because the albums / songs were conceived to begin with to fit the LP format.

However, I also collect 45 RPM LPs, which don't make you flip "mid song" like classical, but you do have to flip twice as much. But the sound quality improvements are worth it.

 

[Eirikur]

Part of the enjoyment is the physical side of it, as this picture demonstrates

Best part: it's only a '45 she's putting on (no sleeve for that on the floor)!

 

[MattHooper]

For some reason my wife refuses to do this for me.

Part of the enjoyment is the physical side of it, as this picture demonstrates

Best part: it's only a '45 she's putting on (no sleeve for that on the floor)!

 

[watchnerd]

Why is it that old tonearms / turntables didn't have anti-skate features?

(Above is a Lenco L75 tonearm)

Was anti-skating not thought be an issue in the 1950s and 1960s?

 

[Eirikur]

For some reason my wife refuses to do this for me.

She makes you get up and change the record yourself? Tsk, other women do it all the time:

 

[watchnerd]

She makes you get up and change the record yourself? Tsk, other women do it all the time:

LOL....maybe in 1960-something when some of y'all were a helluva lot younger.

P.S. why is the audio in round plastic bubbles?

 

[ajawamnet]

It always surprises me when somebody writes that they find their LP system sounds more natural to them on any instrument.
There was never a time when I made a recording using any of the analogue methods I used where the output of the recorder was indistinguishable from the microphone feed. Digital recorders were, from day 1 IME, capable of making a recording I could not distinguish from the microphone feed.
LPs have usually had some manipulation of the signal for manufacturing reasons as well so are even less likely to be accurate.

I wonder if most people have listened to so much more music on record players rather than live that they have come to think of that sound as the real one???

OTOH very few, if any, commercial releases haven't been manipulated even on CD.

I spend a lot of time in studios; have since the 1970's... I have to agree. Even the early Apogee stuff we used on 1610 and Beta for digital mastering were kinda funky...


here's one I designed and had to fix:
http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawamnet/studiohum.html


Studio Hums 'cause it doesn't know the words...

There was a studio in Coraopolis, PA that I was sort of involved in. A local band sort of rented it from a local business guy and he ended up with a partner - Bill. Long story short, a lot of political upheaval and such...

But I was doing some tech work there They had an old Amek 2500 console and a vintage A80 Studer. I recall Blues Travelers and Hootie & the Blowfish being there two different times when I was doing some repairs. Hootie was cool, But I recall Blues Travelers kicking everyone out for their rehearsal.

"You too hippie - gotta go!" as I had the master module out trying to figure out why the logic rail went dead. "Ok cool...." I stated as I was putting my tools and test gear away. While pulling my tool cart out of the control room I mentioned, "Good luck - BTW - the console's dead..."

A quick aside with the head Blues dude and his manager - "OK you can stay..." "Really?" I thought. "Gee, thanks..."

Anyway as you can see in the pic's the equipment was long in the tooth, even back in the early 90's. That's my first born when he was about a year old at the Studer and old Amek...

I recall that with the old gear, any guitar or bass brought into either the main studio or the upstairs MIDI-room was affected by an atrocious hum.

In fact, the old A80 MKii Studer 24tk would hum on repro during mixdown unless you moved it to a certain angle and adjusted the head shield to a 45 degree angle. I didn't know at the time what caused it, we guessed it was something to do with the large power lines located along the building.

I also had recently proto-typed a bass guitar preamp and installed it in one of my basses, an old BC Rich Warlock that used to pick up everything from hum to radio stations near my house. After installing my prototype, I took it to the studio, which we were refitting with a new Studer A827 and AMEK Rembrandt console. To the amazement of the entire staff, I was able to turn the amp to max with no hum or buzz. The amp was turned up so far that just touching my A string with my left hand caused the amp to go into clipping/protection. I was able to walk around the entire main room with no change in the noise floor.

This is the New Stuff ...

So they suffer a lightning hit and I get called in. The partner of the owner wants to just replace the gear. They get hold of a new Amek Rembrandt with Neve EQ; he was working for Harmon/Amek at the time - got invited to meet him at AES - but that's another story. They also bought a new Studer A827 - the last of the multitrack analog decks that Studer would ever make.

Here's some pic of the new design I did. Made it into Mix magazine I'm told...

After installing the bulk of the audio wiring , and having the local electrical contractor finish the new service entrance (3PH 208 wye), and overseeing the room refit I had to leave Pittsburgh due to my day job ( I was the founder a communication electronics firm http://www.ajawamnet.com/amnet/index.html ).

I got a call a few weeks later. Seems that when Studer/Revox finally came to the studio to commission the new 24-track, they encountered more hum and buzz than the old A80 had. After repeated attempts to get Studer to help they told the owner, Bill, that he should have done an EMF survey before building the studio there. He reminded them that it was an existing facility but their only offer was to mu-metal the head stack cover and repro head wiring.

When Bill called me ( I had since moved) , it was so bad I heard the hum over the phone. He had the guys there from Duquesne Light (the local utility) and AMEK. I asked him if it was only in repro and he confirmed my theory; there was a serious EMF field being impressed across the room and the new 24-tracks repro head stack. I told him to try and isolate the old building power from the new studio power service we'd just installed.

Well, Duq Lite brought in a mobile generator along with the VP of Engineering. Even with all the power to the building cut at the utility pole and just the console, monitor amps and Studer on, there was still an atrocious hum - just in repro mode. The guys from Duq Light were stumped. Their milligauss meter showed that the field seemed to emanate from the floor in front of the console. They couldn't understand how, since all of the power for the building was off. They gave up.

Later that day Bill calls to tell me what happened. I told him to check and see if there was a ground wire in the basement, tying the old service to the cold water pipes which came in from the other side of the building. Poor Bill was so distraught he was ready to do anything. In fact he'd just bought $3k worth of mu-metal sheets in a desperate attempt to line the ceiling in the basement.

So Bill went downstairs, told me that yes indeed there was a bare copper wire going between the old service and the pipe near the water meter. It was traveling across the beam, right about where the Duq Light guys measured EMF.

So I’m on the phone, can easily hear the hum in the background. I told him to cut it at the cold water bond point; when he did, I could hear that the hum had changed harmonic content but was still there.

When he got back on the phone he mentioned there was a definite difference in the hum, and that when he cut it, it created a large spark and melted a hole in the dikes.

I mentioned he had to get Duquesne Light back out there immediately and see what was causing that.

I hung up. Within the hour, Bill called me all excited. No more hum.

He said he went down after talking with me about 8:30PM, shut off the water before the meter, and with rubber gloves, grabbed a hacksaw and cut the pipe right after the meter and inserted a plastic section of pipe. He stated that when he finished the first cut, the hack saw blade melted to the pipe coming out of the water meter.

I asked him to grab a DVM from the shop and see what the voltage was across the plastic pipe. About 60-80VAC... I again told him he’d better call the power company back…

When the VP of Duquesne Light came back he again measured the floor in front of the console – no more EMF. As they were inside one of the DL techs came in with a stick mounted version of the milligauss meter and mentioned that the sidewalk outside was now showing an increase in EMI. He also mentioned that as he was outside, a man approached from the VFW across the street and mentioned, " I saw your Duquesne Light trucks and have a question - last night about 9PM all my lights in the hall during bingo got real dim..."

Seems the building across the street had an open neutral, caused by a lightning hit, and their neutral current was actually going down the bonded ground in their box, across the street to his studio via the bonded pipe and finding its way to his grounding system via the building metal. These buildings were older and it was typical to bond the neutral and safety in the mains panels. The VP confirmed this by taking the gauss meter out on to the sidewalk where the water service came in.


Some of the strangest shit I've ever had to troubleshoot...

 

[Soniclife]

P.S. why is the audio in round plastic bubbles?

Devialet phantoms were bigger then.

 

[ajawamnet]

As to vinyl - well I spent a good part of a decade at Opus One in Pittsburgh. Worked on things like Transcription units that cost thousands. This was in the late 70's early 80's right when CD's first came out.

We were so thrilled - even at a high end golden ears shop like Opus - when that happened. All the crap with antiskate, tangential tracking error, mismatched RIAA preamps, etc...

There's a band that a lot of the analog guys love - Steely Dan. The engineer - the late Roger Nichols - hated vinyl to a degree:
https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=5605.0

"Snap, Crackle, and Pop Music

By Roger Nichols

I originally got involved in recording music because I hated clicks and pops on records. I figured that the only way that I was going to get good quality recordings to play was to record them myself. I could then bring home two-track 15 ips copies to play on my stereo. Much better than the Rice Crispy sound of vinyl LPs.

When the Compact Disc became a reality, I was beside myself. I was also close by the side of any record company exec who could get me any discs to play on my new found CD player. Since CDs preserved all the characteristics of the original master tape, I could now enjoy music without the drawbacks of black vinyl.

VINYL VERDICT?

The first project I worked on that became a Compact Disc was Donald Fagen's Nighrfly album. I couldn't wait to get the CD in my hot little hands and compare it with the original mixes. When the CD arrived, I ran to my audio system and threw the CD into my player. After about 30 seconds I was ready to throw in the towel. The CD didn't sound anything like the final mixes. Was I wrong about digital audio? Was the Compact Disc truly inferior to the vinyl disc that it was to replace?

I started doing some checking with the mastering facility where we mastered the album. Bob Ludwig at Masterdisk in New York told me that the record company never asked for the 1610 digital master that we'd made. Instead, they had requested a 30 ips half-inch analog tape copy of our digital mixes. They then made the CD master from this analog copy. No wonder my CD didn't sound like the original mixes. After we raised enough hell, new CD masters were prepared and new CDs were pressed. I compared the new one to the original mixes. It matched perfectly. Whew!

This was in late 1982. I figured that there was a necessary learning curve for the record companies to get their act together and realize that digital audio Compact Discs should not be made from second or third generation analog tape copies. Isn't nine years enough time?

AJA-TA

In 1982, Donald Fagen, Gary Katz and myself gathered up all of the original Steely Dan tapes (15 ips analog) and transferred them to digital format so that they would not deteriorate any further. This was in anticipation of catalog re-release in the new Compact Disc format. The first two albums to be released on CD were Aja and Gaucho. I listened to the CDs and they were fine.

Mobile Fidelity is licensed to produce gold plated CDs of Aja and Gaucho. They called me up to ask me if I liked the sound of their pressings. I listened to them and compared them to the CDs from MCA. I figured that the only difference I would hear would be the difference between the gold plating and the aluminum plating on the stock CD. I was shocked! They sounded completely different. The gold ones sounded worse. The gold Gaucho CD was even a different speed, about a quarter tone sharper than the original CD from MCA.

A writer I know called me to ask if I heard any difference between the stock CDs and the gold CDs. I told him what I found. He said that he didn't hear any difference. The lightbulb went on in my thought balloon! The stock CDs that I had were produced seven years ago, and the ones that my friend used were just purchased at Tower Records. I jumped in my car and zipped over to the nearest record store and purchased new copies of the CDs in question. He was right, the new stock CDs sounded exactly like the gold CDs, including the pitch shift on the Gaucho CD.

The time we spent transferring all of the original masters was wasted. The record company in their infinite wisdom decided that when they needed new 1630 CD masters to send to the CD plant, that it would be better to use the EQ'd analog copy that had been sitting around for fifteen years instead of the digital tapes that we supplied to them nine years ago for just this purpose. And on top of everything else, they couldn't even make sure that the analog machine that played back the Gaucho tape was going the right speed.

I guess this is all just a part of a grander scheme - make all of the CDs sound worse and worse until we can't tell the difference between Compact Discs and the new Digital Compact Cassette that the record companies are pushing. I went to my storage locker and found all of my old vinyl LPs. I haven't thrown my turntable away yet either. Maybe the clicks and pops aren't quite so bad after all.
"

So I have to state that a lot of what I hear about vinyl, I just can't believe. Having had to fix that crap back then...

Again - please don't be offended - just my opinion.

My thoughts on Vinyl:
http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawamnet/Vinyl_Sucks_and_Your_Little_Dog_Too.html

In response to a recent rant from Lefsetz about how great vinyl is:
Rate of change phenomena directly and physically translated from mechanical/electro-mechancial media is limited to asperities in the media which will change and vary as per Archard equation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archard_equation

I too loved the romance of the ol' 24 tracks - here's a pic of my kid (a year old at the time) sitting in front of a 2" 16/24track A-80 Studer, yep, just like the ones that recorded all that "good ol' vinyl" you guys seem to love so much:

http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawamnet/page3/page3.htm
Man, I loved the smell of the tape, big ass 2" reels, 3M 250, Ampex 406/456. Big ass servo's moving an 8 pound reel...

BUTTTT - Do any of you know how fucked up that shit was? Really? I recall a story of how a well known producer took a tape into Mastersound and then realized the 10K alignment tone was wavering 'cause he left his master next to his bookshelf speakers....

Ain't just me - see Jack Endino's page titled "The Unpredictable Joys of Analog Recording" http://endino.com/graphs/index.html (Jack's the guy that did a lot of the early Seattle stuff including Nirvana's Bleach ).

From that page: "To me, analog is unpredictable; it does that funny thing to the bottom end. You work really hard on the bottom to get it exactly right, and then you play it back on your analog tape, and it's like, 'Oh, what happened there?' The storage medium is making decisions about what the bottom end should sound like." ~Bob Clearmountain

I also repaired all those, "good ol" tape decks. Isoloop 3M 56/79's, JH-24 MCI's that had so many issues with the discrete CMOS transport logic (JH110 transports), Did tons of work on Ampex MM-1100/1200's with their funky head loading issues, Otari's (MX80's to non-capstan MTR90's) and everything in between. Setting bias on a Scully 1" was a nightmare if it was older than a year or so - electrolytic caps go to la-la land. You'd never get all the channels to sound the same.

And every Studer known to man... in fact, to set up new brakes on an A-80, one had to flood the hubs with Acetone, then run the units WITH THE BRAKES ON (you pulled the brake solenoid) until it started to smoke slightly - then and only then were the new brake bands broken in... otherwise you'd spill $200/reel 2" tape on the floor next the bass player's cumshot from him fucking some groupie the night before (actually had to fix an Amek 2500 console that happened to before a session with Blue's Travelers at Mulberry Street Recorders).

Do you guys even have a clue as to how fucked up even the best of the best was back then with regards to signal integrity? How many of you actually know how to set the volts per division and triggering on an oscilloscope? Especially an old 500 series Tek that was as big as a stove?
Geeez....

As to the "wow - vinyl" here's a bit of info - it actually sucks... ya know why? You can't track a stereo groove exactly the way a cutter, such as the ol' Neumann lathe/Telefunken cutter actually cut the grooves - and even those weren't the best - here's an actual datasheet with specs:

Specs of a typical Professional Diskcutter Head

What? only rated to 15KHz? Probably one of the reasons for half-speed mastering...

OK - I'll answer one of the questions from the end of this rant - You CANNOT play a record again within 17 hours after a stylus passes over it. Why? The extreme forces of that little elliptical or conical diamond stylus, due to the small surface area of contact, exerts extreme pressures (even at one gram tracking force) and destroys the high frequency info in the grooves - the plasticizers in the vinyl (pure vinyl is brittle) compress to a point that an immediate replay of the record just lops off the hi freq grooves...see the first paragraph of this rant...

Dust on the record? Naw man, that's all the cymbals going bye-bye...that grey dust is actually part of the groove....

I will say that other studies (esp those done by the Last Co.) show more damage is caused by conchoidal fractures than replay. But other studies have shown that as the point of contact goes "plastic" further stress can exacerbate fracturing.

OK... as a kid I worked at Opus One in Pittsburgh - Tasso (the owner) actually built George Benson's first guitar amp (actually one of his techs did out of an old KLH amp)

I remember getting a hi-end audio system on the service lift that claimed it picked up Radio Moscow on the left channel... I went upstairs to the sales guy with a "What the fuck..." question. Didn't even get that far, Phil, the sales guy, said the customer ran the electron microscope at CMU and had a Ph.D. EE.

So I go to the guy's house, he's using a top of the line Thorens, with a Linn tone arm and Supex MC cartridge - turns out the ground system for his DX long wire antenna was inducing RF into the phono preamp.

To get a phonograph to play even close to what happened on the master tape or even the mastering lathe, required such care that it was insane....

OK, I sent this before and I really hope you ACTUALLY post it this time:

Seriously, anyone here that's really into vinyl know how to set antiskate? How do you really do it correctly? It's effects on channel balance?
OK... I just did a Google to see forum results for Rega, antiskate (with all the spelling variations).

Wow - only a few of them that I saw (I realize I didn't do an exhaustive search) failed to talk about the true way to set antiskate.

You see, on any pivotal tonearm, there is a tendencey for the tonearm to be pulled towards the center of the turntable. Back in the day the typical consumer turntable had a dial with a spring to counter this force. The dial had a scale that typical consumers would use to set anti-skate depending on the tracking force; there were all kindsa rec's on how to set it - not any of them were correct.

In fact, the way you really set antiskate, it to get a special test disk - No, not the fancy pants one I saw on all these forums.

A blank (no groove) disc. Blank. Totally. Just a flat fucking vinyl polymer disc. Just like a record but no groove.

Now put that on your Rega- bop thingy. Place the tone arm on the 33-1/3 or 45 RPM spinning blank disk with what you THOUGHT was the correct antiskate.

Watch what happens - you may want to be awake, really awake for this.

As the tonearm starts skating inward or outward (depending upon how fucked the antiskate you thought was right ACTUALLY is), you may want to be ready to keep it from destroying your pinky-pinky stylus as it either slams into the label area or whizzes past and falls off of the needle drop area.

Yep - back in the day, that's how we set it... back in 1975 - back when that, 8 tracks, cassettes were king. Lovely...

Here's a vid -

How long does the average stylus suspension really last? What are plasticizers and how does it effect a phono cartridge?

Speaking of plasticizers, how does the variance in these chemical compounds affect hi frequencies and groove life?

How many people here know how long it takes the typical vinyl formulation to recover after a stylus passes over it?

How's 'bout MC vs MM and inertial differences?

OK... how's bout phase shift due to poor RIAA preamps? Anyone here know the diff? Anyone here know why there even is an RIAA curve? How's 'bout when the electrolytic coupling caps dry out? What happens then? How is the average shelf life of an electro rated?

How does L/R phase effect cutter/Stylus motion? How is stereo cut into a groove? What is the effect on channel separation?

Anyone here actually used a Fairchild limiter on a Neuman/Tele lathe/cutter?

What is the effect of the diminishing circumference as the groove approaches the center of the disk?

OK... How's about linear tracking vs tangential error? How's a record cut - Pivotal or radial? What effects does it have as the stylus moves towards the center of the record?

OK... Anyone here tell me what famous turntable used to use gymbal suspension and could actually play upsidedown?

OK.... anyone here actually uses a Lissajous display to actually observe LF modulation characteristics of the various drive technologies (belt vs puck vs direct drive)?


Some great stuff on vinyl here - http://www.micrographia.com/projec/projapps/viny/viny0000.htm
... love the silverfish turds

 

[MattHooper]

As to vinyl - well I spent a good part of a decade at Opus One in Pittsburgh. Worked on things like Transcription units that cost thousands. This was in the late 70's early 80's right when CD's first came out.

We were so thrilled - even at a high end golden ears shop like Opus - when that happened. All the crap with antiskate, tangential tracking erro, mismatched RIAA preamps, etc...

There's a band that a lot of the analog guys love - Steely Dan. The engineer - the late Roger Nichols - hated vinyl to a degree:
https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=5605.0

"Snap, Crackle, and Pop Music

By Roger Nichols

I originally got involved in recording music because I hated clicks and pops on records. I figured that the only way that I was going to get good quality recordings to play was to record them myself. I could then bring home two-track 15 ips copies to play on my stereo. Much better than the Rice Crispy sound of vinyl LPs.

When the Compact Disc became a reality, I was beside myself. I was also close by the side of any record company exec who could get me any discs to play on my new found CD player. Since CDs preserved all the characteristics of the original master tape, I could now enjoy music without the drawbacks of black vinyl.

VINYL VERDICT?

The first project I worked on that became a Compact Disc was Donald Fagen's Nighrfly album. I couldn't wait to get the CD in my hot little hands and compare it with the original mixes. When the CD arrived, I ran to my audio system and threw the CD into my player. After about 30 seconds I was ready to throw in the towel. The CD didn't sound anything like the final mixes. Was I wrong about digital audio? Was the Compact Disc truly inferior to the vinyl disc that it was to replace?

I started doing some checking with the mastering facility where we mastered the album. Bob Ludwig at Masterdisk in New York told me that the record company never asked for the 1610 digital master that we'd made. Instead, they had requested a 30 ips half-inch analog tape copy of our digital mixes. They then made the CD master from this analog copy. No wonder my CD didn't sound like the original mixes. After we raised enough hell, new CD masters were prepared and new CDs were pressed. I compared the new one to the original mixes. It matched perfectly. Whew!

This was in late 1982. I figured that there was a necessary learning curve for the record companies to get their act together and realize that digital audio Compact Discs should not be made from second or third generation analog tape copies. Isn't nine years enough time?

AJA-TA

In 1982, Donald Fagen, Gary Katz and myself gathered up all of the original Steely Dan tapes (15 ips analog) and transferred them to digital format so that they would not deteriorate any further. This was in anticipation of catalog re-release in the new Compact Disc format. The first two albums to be released on CD were Aja and Gaucho. I listened to the CDs and they were fine.

Mobile Fidelity is licensed to produce gold plated CDs of Aja and Gaucho. They called me up to ask me if I liked the sound of their pressings. I listened to them and compared them to the CDs from MCA. I figured that the only difference I would hear would be the difference between the gold plating and the aluminum plating on the stock CD. I was shocked! They sounded completely different. The gold ones sounded worse. The gold Gaucho CD was even a different speed, about a quarter tone sharper than the original CD from MCA.

A writer I know called me to ask if I heard any difference between the stock CDs and the gold CDs. I told him what I found. He said that he didn't hear any difference. The lightbulb went on in my thought balloon! The stock CDs that I had were produced seven years ago, and the ones that my friend used were just purchased at Tower Records. I jumped in my car and zipped over to the nearest record store and purchased new copies of the CDs in question. He was right, the new stock CDs sounded exactly like the gold CDs, including the pitch shift on the Gaucho CD.

The time we spent transferring all of the original masters was wasted. The record company in their infinite wisdom decided that when they needed new 1630 CD masters to send to the CD plant, that it would be better to use the EQ'd analog copy that had been sitting around for fifteen years instead of the digital tapes that we supplied to them nine years ago for just this purpose. And on top of everything else, they couldn't even make sure that the analog machine that played back the Gaucho tape was going the right speed.

I guess this is all just a part of a grander scheme - make all of the CDs sound worse and worse until we can't tell the difference between Compact Discs and the new Digital Compact Cassette that the record companies are pushing. I went to my storage locker and found all of my old vinyl LPs. I haven't thrown my turntable away yet either. Maybe the clicks and pops aren't quite so bad after all.
"

So I have to state that a lot of what I hear on vinyl, I just can't believe. Having had to fix that crap back then...

Again - please don't be offended - just my opinion.

My thoughts on Vinyl:
http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawamnet/Vinyl_Sucks_and_Your_Little_Dog_Too.html

In response to a recent rant from Lefsetz about how great vinyl is:
Rate of change phenomena directly and physically translated from mechanical/electro-mechancial media is limited to asperities in the media which will change and vary as per Archard equation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archard_equation

I too loved the romance of the ol' 24 tracks - here's a pic of my kid (a year old at the time) sitting in front of a 2" 16/24track A-80 Studer, yep, just like the ones that recorded all that "good ol' vinyl" you guys seem to love so much:

http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawamnet/page3/page3.htm
Man, I loved the smell of the tape, big ass 2" reels, 3M 250, Ampex 406/456. Big ass servo's moving an 8 pound reel...

BUTTTT - Do any of you know how fucked up that shit was? Really? I recall a story of how a well known producer took a tape into Mastersound and then realized the 10K alignment tone was wavering 'cause he left his master next to his bookshelf speakers....

Ain't just me - see Jack Endino's page titled "The Unpredictable Joys of Analog Recording" http://endino.com/graphs/index.html (Jack's the guy that did a lot of the early Seattle stuff including Nirvana's Bleach ).

From that page: "To me, analog is unpredictable; it does that funny thing to the bottom end. You work really hard on the bottom to get it exactly right, and then you play it back on your analog tape, and it's like, 'Oh, what happened there?' The storage medium is making decisions about what the bottom end should sound like." ~Bob Clearmountain

I also repaired all those, "good ol" tape decks. Isoloop 3M 56/79's, JH-24 MCI's that had so many issues with the discrete CMOS transport logic (JH110 transports), Did tons of work on Ampex MM-1100/1200's with their funky head loading issues, Otari's (MX80's to non-capstan MTR90's) and everything in between. Setting bias on a Scully 1" was a nightmare if it was older than a year or so - electrolytic caps go to la-la land. You'd never get all the channels to sound the same.

And every Studer known to man... in fact, to set up new brakes on an A-80, one had to flood the hubs with Acetone, then run the units WITH THE BRAKES ON (you pulled the brake solenoid) until it started to smoke slightly - then and only then were the new brake bands broken in... otherwise you'd spill $200/reel 2" tape on the floor next the bass player's cumshot from him fucking some groupie the night before (actually had to fix an Amek 2500 console that happened to before a session with Blue's Travelers at Mulberry Street Recorders).

Do you guys even have a clue as to how fucked up even the best of the best was back then with regards to signal integrity? How many of you actually know how to set the volts per division and triggering on an oscilloscope? Especially an old 500 series Tek that was as big as a stove?
Geeez....

As to the "wow - vinyl" here's a bit of info - it actually sucks... ya know why? You can't track a stereo groove exactly the way a cutter, such as the ol' Neumann lathe/Telefunken cutter actually cut the grooves - and even those weren't the best - here's an actual datasheet with specs:

Specs of a typical Professional Diskcutter Head

What? only rated to 15KHz? Probably one of the reasons for half-speed mastering...

OK - I'll answer one of the questions from the end of this rant - You CANNOT play a record again within 17 hours after a stylus passes over it. Why? The extreme forces of that little elliptical or conical diamond stylus, due to the small surface area of contact, exerts extreme pressures (even at one gram tracking force) and destroys the high frequency info in the grooves - the plasticizers in the vinyl (pure vinyl is brittle) compress to a point that an immediate replay of the record just lops off the hi freq grooves...see the first paragraph of this rant...

Dust on the record? Naw man, that's all the cymbals going bye-bye...that grey dust is actually part of the groove....

I will say that other studies (esp those done by the Last Co.) show more damage is caused by conchoidal fractures than replay. But other studies have shown that as the point of contact goes "plastic" further stress can exacerbate fracturing.

OK... as a kid I worked at Opus One in Pittsburgh - Tasso (the owner) actually built George Benson's first guitar amp (actually one of his techs did out of an old KLH amp)

I remember getting a hi-end audio system on the service lift that claimed it picked up Radio Moscow on the left channel... I went upstairs to the sales guy with a "What the fuck..." question. Didn't even get that far, Phil, the sales guy, said the customer ran the electron microscope at CMU and had a Ph.D. EE.

So I go to the guy's house, he's using a top of the line Thorens, with a Linn tone arm and Supex MC cartridge - turns out the ground system for his DX long wire antenna was inducing RF into the phono preamp.

To get a phonograph to play even close to what happened on the master tape or even the mastering lathe, required such care that it was insane....

OK, I sent this before and I really hope you ACTUALLY post it this time:

Seriously, anyone here that's really into vinyl know how to set antiskate? How do you really do it correctly? It's effects on channel balance?
OK... I just did a Google to see forum results for Rega, antiskate (with all the spelling variations).

Wow - only a few of them that I saw (I realize I didn't do an exhaustive search) failed to talk about the true way to set antiskate.

You see, on any pivotal tonearm, there is a tendencey for the tonearm to be pulled towards the center of the turntable. Back in the day the typical consumer turntable had a dial with a spring to counter this force. The dial had a scale that typical consumers would use to set anti-skate depending on the tracking force; there were all kindsa rec's on how to set it - not any of them were correct.

In fact, the way you really set antiskate, it to get a special test disk - No, not the fancy pants one I saw on all these forums.

A blank (no groove) disc. Blank. Totally. Just a flat fucking vinyl polymer disc. Just like a record but no groove.

Now put that on your Rega- bop thingy. Place the tone arm on the 33-1/3 or 45 RPM spinning blank disk with what you THOUGHT was the correct antiskate.

Watch what happens - you may want to be awake, really awake for this.

As the tonearm starts skating inward or outward (depending upon how fucked the antiskate you thought was right ACTUALLY is), you may want to be ready to keep it from destroying your pinky-pinky stylus as it either slams into the label area or whizzes past and falls off of the needle drop area.

Yep - back in the day, that's how we set it... back in 1975 - back when that, 8 tracks, cassettes were king. Lovely...

Here's a vid -

How long does the average stylus suspension really last? What are plasticizers and how does it effect a phono cartridge?

Speaking of plasticizers, how does the variance in these chemical compounds affect hi frequencies and groove life?

How many people here know how long it takes the typical vinyl formulation to recover after a stylus passes over it?

How's 'bout MC vs MM and inertial differences?

OK... how's bout phase shift due to poor RIAA preamps? Anyone here know the diff? Anyone here know why there even is an RIAA curve? How's 'bout when the electrolytic coupling caps dry out? What happens then? How is the average shelf life of an electro rated?

How does L/R phase effect cutter/Stylus motion? How is stereo cut into a groove? What is the effect on channel separation?

Anyone here actually used a Fairchild limiter on a Neuman/Tele lathe/cutter?

What is the effect of the diminishing circumference as the groove approaches the center of the disk?

OK... How's about linear tracking vs tangential error? How's a record cut - Pivotal or radial? What effects does it have as the stylus moves towards the center of the record?

OK... Anyone here tell me what famous turntable used to use gymbal suspension and could actually play upsidedown?

OK.... anyone here actually uses a Lissajous display to actually observe LF modulation characteristics of the various drive technologies (belt vs puck vs direct drive)?


Some great stuff on vinyl here - http://www.micrographia.com/projec/projapps/viny/viny0000.htm
... love the silverfish turds

Yeah, all that... but...it sure can sound good though

 

[watchnerd]

OK - I'll answer one of the questions from the end of this rant - You CANNOT play a record again within 17 hours after a stylus passes over it. Why? The extreme forces of that little elliptical or conical diamond stylus, due to the small surface area of contact, exerts extreme pressures (even at one gram tracking force) and destroys the high frequency info in the grooves - the plasticizers in the vinyl (pure vinyl is brittle) compress to a point that an immediate replay of the record just lops off the hi freq grooves...see the first paragraph of this rant...

Dust on the record? Naw man, that's all the cymbals going bye-bye...that grey dust is actually part of the groove....

Every once in a while, I hear this urban legend, but I've never, ever seen it documented or read a scientific paper on it.

If it was true, I would have expected an AES paper or something at some point.

Do you have evidence of this?

 

[watchnerd]

Threads on Steve Hoffman about the issues of LP replay (although most of them say 24 hours before playing again), where the consensus seems to be that, while hypothetically possible, in real practice it's mostly a myth:

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/quick-question-does-vinyl-need-to-rest-between-plays.136063/

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/wait-time-between-plays-of-a-lp.32512/

 

[Eirikur]

Specs of a typical Professional Diskcutter Head
What? only rated to 15KHz? Probably one of the reasons for half-speed mastering...

But you do get "greater than 30dB" of channel separation!

Keep the rants coming man, I like them!

 

[anmpr1]

Why is it that old tonearms / turntables didn't have anti-skate features? Was anti-skating not thought be an issue in the 1950s and 1960s?

Anti-skating never became much of an issue until the mid to late '60s. The best 'inexpensive' manual turntable of that era, the AR, didn't offer it. By 1967 anti-skating was becoming more talked about, and was offered by Garrard and Dual in their higher end record changers. A March 1967 Audio magazine article stated:

...it is useless to reduce skating force unless arm inertia has been reduced to a satisfactorily low figure. Unfortunately, most modern arms have excessively high inertia.

The article did not discuss the threshold of 'high' inertia as opposed to 'low', and it was not clear what constituted 'excessive' inertia values. Since we usually do not speak about inertia in the context of measuring tonearms, I presume that what was meant was a combination of relatively high tracking force in an arm with relatively high friction bearings in an overall relatively high mass tonearm.

The first mechanisms I recall were counterweights on a wire, or pivoted hinged mechanical counterweights affecting the main tonearm. In the early 1970s Garrard came out with a magnetic anti-skating device on their Z-100 changer, a rather elegant solution.

 

[watchnerd]

Anti-skating never became much of an issue until the mid to late '60s. The best 'inexpensive' manual turntable of that era, the AR, didn't offer it. By 1967 anti-skating was becoming more talked about, and was offered by Garrard and Dual in their higher end record changers. A March 1967 Audio magazine article stated:

...it is useless to reduce skating force unless arm inertia has been reduced to a satisfactorily low figure. Unfortunately, most modern arms have excessively high inertia.

The article did not discuss the threshold of 'high' inertia as opposed to 'low', and it was not clear what constituted 'excessive' inertia values. Since we usually do not speak about inertia in the context of measuring tonearms, I presume that what was meant was a combination of relatively high tracking force in an arm with relatively high friction bearings in an overall relatively high mass tonearm.

The first mechanisms I recall were counterweights on a wire, or pivoted hinged mechanical counterweights affecting the main tonearm. In the early 1970s Garrard came out with a magnetic anti-skating device on their Z-100 changer, a rather elegant solution.

So high VTF plus heavy arms plus crappy bearings meant it wasn't needed, as compared to more contemporary lower VTF, better bearings, and med-low mass arms?

Or was it just a made-up marketing feature to sell TT / arm upgrades?

 

[watchnerd]

OK... how's bout phase shift due to poor RIAA preamps? Anyone here know the diff? Anyone here know why there even is an RIAA curve? How's 'bout when the electrolytic coupling caps dry out? What happens then? How is the average shelf life of an electro rated?

One of the benefits of using DSP-based RIAA phono EQ is not having to worry about phase shifts or drying caps.

 

[ajawamnet]

So high VTF plus heavy arms plus crappy bearings meant it wasn't needed, as compared to more contemporary lower VTF, better bearings, and med-low mass arms?

Or was it just a made-up marketing feature to sell TT / arm upgrades?

No not really... when I was at Opus One, we had anti skating discs. Just blank 12" polyvinyl discs...

Believe me, if you had no antiskate compensation that precious little diamond would just slam into the label area...

You can mimic this - sort of - if you have a removable stylus - using a DJ mat (ya know the felt ones that allow them to backspin...). Just put the cartridge down as the platter's a-spinin'... You'll see it is actually a real phenomena as you muck with the little antiskate device (usually a knob with a spring or a weight) .

 

[watchnerd]

No not really... when I was at Opus One, we had anti skating discs. Just blank 12" polyvinyl discs...

Believe me, if you had no antiskate compensation that precious little diamond would just slam into the label area...

You can mimic this - sort of - if you have a removable stylus - using a DJ mat (ya know the felt ones that allow them to backspin...). Just put the cartridge down as the platter's a-spinin'... You'll see it is actually a real phenomena as you muck with the little antiskate device (usually a knob with a spring or a weight) .

I have a blank disk, no grooves, white, that purports to serve this purpose.

However, Peter Lederman contends that using a blank disk isn't a real great way to set anti skate because the grooves themselves have force vectors that change the necessary force, as well as the force not being static or constant through the whole disk:

https://www.sound-smith.com/faq/how-do-i-adjust-anti-skating-my-cartridge

 

[MattHooper]

No not really... when I was at Opus One, we had anti skating discs. Just blank 12" polyvinyl discs...

Believe me, if you had no antiskate compensation that precious little diamond would just slam into the label area...

You can mimic this - sort of - if you have a removable stylus - using a DJ mat (ya know the felt ones that allow them to backspin...). Just put the cartridge down as the platter's a-spinin'... You'll see it is actually a real phenomena as you muck with the little antiskate device (usually a knob with a spring or a weight) .

Though you may have produced some claims that can be disputed here, the general thrust is towards what everyone at this site acknowledges: Vinyl is one Big Kludge after another in order to even get it to work, and there are sonic consequences to much of this.

So that said: have you ever found yourself having listened to a record and thinking "it's frankly amazing that sounded as good as it did, given what we know it takes to make a record?"

Or are you firmly anti-vinyl insofar as you find the sound quality to suck? Just curious.

 

[ajawamnet]

Threads on Steve Hoffman about the issues of LP replay (although most of them say 24 hours before playing again), where the consensus seems to be that, while hypothetically possible, in real practice it's mostly a myth:

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/quick-question-does-vinyl-need-to-rest-between-plays.136063/

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/wait-time-between-plays-of-a-lp.32512/

I know that the LOC has done a lot of research in optical playing - IRENE is one example:
https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2012/03/unlocking-sounds-of-the-past/

As to the fractures that occur on playing - again lots of variables there. Depending on the tone arm mass, the tone arm mechanical compliance and the tracking force - as well as the

groove dynamics and polyvinyl composistion (ie, plasticizers, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasticizer - etc.. ) and age of the disc, one can experience increasing fractures of short wavelength

Note in that LOC gov link that they mention:
"The idea for IRENE was conceived when Carl Haber and Vitaliy Fadeyev, scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, heard Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart discuss on a radio program the loss of cultural heritage through the chemical breakdown of recordings. "


From the IASA TC-04 guide:

Optical replay is available for LPs and should be investigated before selecting any transfer equipment,
however contact transducers, or styli, are presently more common, perceived as less complicated
and preferred by most technicians. When using contact transducers there are so many variables in
the reproduction chain that exact repeatability of any particular replay is not possible. Pick-up arm,
cartridge, stylus, tracking force, previous groove deformation or wear all contribute to the variability
in replay. Even temperature can affect the replay characteristics of a cartridge/stylus combination
to some degree. However, if LPs are to be captured for digitisation high quality components in the
playback chain from stylus to recording equipment will ensure the most accurate audio capture.
5.3.4.2 Perhaps the most important part of the replay chain is the cartridge/stylus combination. Moving coil
pickups, considered by some to be the most sensitive, tend to have a price tag and lack of robustness
that precludes their use for anything but very careful domestic use. A good, high compliance, low
tracking force (less than 15 mN, commonly quoted as 1.5 grams) variable reluctance (moving magnet)
cartridge with a bi-radial (“elliptical”) stylus will be the most practical choice. Replay styli should include
a range from 25 µm (1 mil), commonly used on early mono LPs, to 15 µm (0.6 mil), including conical,
elliptical and truncated styli depending on the age and condition of discs to be played.

The study I link to in my original rant presented some interesting evidence. This was further explained by Kevin Worrell of Greenleaf:

As it turns out, the major cause of record wear is “conchoidal fracture.” For the purposes of our question,
Conchoidal fracture describes the way that brittle materials break or fracture when they do not follow
any natural planes of separation . According to Wikipedia, conchoidal fracture has multiple subsets and all
subsets have one thing in common:
A pressure wave is produced by the phono stylus (needle) as it passes through the record groove. When we
look at this with a high speed camera under magnification, we note a pressure wave rippling forward, ahead of
the stylus. Think of a boat motoring across an otherwise smooth lake, and recall how the bow wave rolls
ahead of the boat. Additionally, rapidly moving pressure waves radiate from the two areas of stylus contact on
the groove wall. Interesting to note that these pressure waves can be far more pronounced when coupled with
imperfections inherent with all playback systems. Platter bearing vibration, motor rumble, incorrect anti-skate
settings, tone-arm misalignment, and incorrect stylus mass and weight setting — these are some factors that
can exacerbate conchoidal fracture.
So what is it, this conchoidal fracture - what’s going on in easy terms?
Good question. While the record is spinning, small imperfections in the vinyl or shellac surface can pop out
due to the shockwaves created as the needle slams back and forth in the record groove. These shock waves can
be assisted by mechanical playback imperfections. The tiny fragments that pop out of the record surface are
then impediments to the unencumbered travel of the needle, creating additional noise, and degrading the
quality of the sound in relation to the length of time subjected to said shockwaves.
Multi-colored records are more likely to experience fracture issues in one or more of the colored areas, and in
different quantities, causing the audible noise to be attenuated or boosted as the needle passes through
differing areas. The non-linear background noise can become quite distracting.
A common method used to treat the effects of conchoidal fracture noise is to use a mechanical record washer
Conchoidal fractures can be produced only by mechanical impact, rather than frost cracking for
example to remove the grit that develops on the record surface. This grit looks like dirt, and I like most people I always
think,

“Where in the !^&* does all this dirt come from on this record?” as they clean their record surfaces.
For the most part, this dirt is coming from the record itself, and what looks like dirt is actually the result of the
aforementioned fracturing.

Successful (inexpensive) methods can be employed to reduce conchoidal fracturing on records. I have had
excellent experience with Last, a liquid which after applied to a record surface becomes viscous (non-drying,
maintaining a semi-gooey state) thus dampening the record surface. The application method is easy: clean
the record surface to remove existing farf (a made up word that describes that dirt that collects beneath the
stylus). An application of Last fluid is applied via an application wiper that looks like a small chamois attached
to a little plastic stick. Some of the carrier fluid evaporates, leaving behind a viscous (VIS-cuss) compound
which essentially dampens the vinyl surface. Apparently Last also repairs or fills in micro-cracks on the
surface which assist in creating conchoidal fracture as the needle collides with these tiny imperfections which
occur during the production process. Many well known audio industry professionals (and I do not mean
individuals with the ‘audiophile’ neurosis) have given Last favorable reviews. Personally I can attest to it’s
efficacy in reducing errant high frequency noise as much as 10db.
One of the three men who created Last, Walter Davies , a Livermore based scientist who has studied the
effects of vinyl fracturing (as well as developing the only commercially viable product to combat it) writes that
record noise is caused when:
…the pressure wave encounters a microcrack, flaws in the vinyl, or other surface imperfections, the energy
builds up, forming a shock wave that can exceed the cohesive forces holding the surface together. When this
happens, cracks occur in the vinyl and fragments can be blown off the groove wall. This kind of damage can
occur on the very first play, and will increase exponentially as a function of both the number of plays and
stylus loading.[1]
I have no ties to the Last company, I have never communicated with them and I have no financial reward or
any other sort of payment for writing this. I have researched record noise in great depth, and I have used Last
while in the employ of two different radio stations between 1992 and 1998.

http://thelastfactory.com/causes-of-record-wear/