Well put!
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I sure do hope CD’s make a comeback. With liner notes written to fit on a grain of rice.
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I’m pretty sure it came from audiophiles who feel that vinyl sounds superior to CD’s, which is true but with good quality digital the difference is so marginal most folks can’t really tell unless you’re listening to the same piece very closely and flipping back and forth between formats. And as a person who loves old analog tools (typewriters, watches), I get the love, I do. Not enough to want one myself, though. There’s the inconvenience factors and expense, not to mention the fiddly part of keeping record players sounding good (replacing needles, aligning needs, worn records).
I wasn’t aware that the lacquer is nitrocellulose lacquer - must have been quite a fire. No wonder the factory is toast.
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I’d certainly debate that. (Same for tube amps.) But then, by the time I obtained decent speakers, etc., my hearing had deteriorated to the point where it doesn’t matter. Anyway, most listening now is likely MP3s played on a phone.
i think the misconception, similarly with magnetic tape, is that worn media, played on bad equipment sounds awful and that’s the experience for most consumers (those crosley turntables have awful ceramic cartridges and cheap speakers) but clean media played on good equipment sounds very very good. So in the past audiophiles were right to obsess over good turntables and speakers. a cd played through terrible speakers sounds worse than good vinyl played through a good system, but if you play both through the same system its hard to argue the superiority of vinyl. I love vinyl. It’s an aesthetic thing though. looking at the big sleeves. manually turning the record etc. just makes you appreciate the music and take it for granted less.
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Yeah, I’m pretty much in agreement with you. A clean piece of vinyl on quality equipment does provide an improvement in sound. But the difference is not that vast, and keeping it sounding clean such a chore (and expense), that it’s not worth it for most folks.
That said, vinyl will remain for a long time. As you said, for some its an aesthetic, and you can’t put a price on that and nostalgia. Plenty of people still love using and collecting typewriters, and that’s not just because “look cool.” The tactile feedback is so different than normal keyboards, the sound is wonderful (clickety clackety ding! zzzzzzzzppp), and the older manual ones never run out of battery life.
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Second big argument for digital files is house fires. Kareem Abdul-Jabaar lost an enormous jazz collection to a house fire. Keeping a backup of music on a li’l package that fits in your pocket is an enormous asset. I’m waiting eagerly for the day when a computer tower with decent capacity can fit in the same size package and be plugged into a TV and/or phone, tablet, keyboard, etc.
I can recall two or three records offhand where the used vinyl sounded superior to the new CD. If you can find Charles McPherson’s But Beautiful or Sadao Watanabe’s Parker’s Mood on vinyl, you are in for a treat. Otherwise, if you grew up on secondhand jukebox records like I did, anything not terminally scratched sounds just fine.
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oh man. speaking of analog files disappearing in a fire, this one was horrifying. so much music lost. even though a lot had been digitized, much more hadn’t. analog masters of alternate takes, unused tracks and sessions lost forever from thousands of popular artists from louis armstrong and chuck berry to mary j blige. i started to get nauseous reading the list of effected artists on this page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire
Too late!
i know youre kidding but there are actually a couple people that manufacture blanks for those machines and you can get a special stylus that cuts on them. its weird to think but in the early days of cylinder records people were able to make home recordings like that. and some amazing field recordings from that era because of that. when 78s came out home recording became much more difficult. there were some home record cutters in the 40s but for the most part it was elusive to most people until magnetic tape came out.
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In case you’re wondering what a record cutting machine with a nitrocellulose lacquer disc looks like, this one is in my workshop, with a developmental variable pitch carriage drive unit. The cutting stylus mounts under the big rectangular cutting head in the middle of the photo.
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Neat! Where did you manage to find that? Are they easy to get ahold of or did you just luck out and were in the right place at the right time kind of thing?
What do you record with it?
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I occurred to me over the weekend that GZ Media in the Czech Republic does DMM, direct metal mastering-- it may be that this becomes the new standard, or at least takes up some slack while a new supplier of lacquers gets established. DMM has its proponents and detractors, there are issues with the EQ in the upper end that some people dislike.
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For reasons already discussed above regarding the why’s of why people enjoy listening to vinyl, a complete industry shift to DMM would be the death of modern production in the vinyl resurgence. Maybe not an immediate death, but the root cause of an eventual one. That upper end EQ difference you mention is pretty darn unmistakable, and not in a good way. The thought of this possibility makes me truly sad.
Let’s hope a new supply comes online quickly, either from Apollo or another player.
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