"Bret Ludwig" wrote in message
oups.com
On Aug 29, 9:04 am, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:
"MiNe 109" wrote in message
In article
,
jakdedert wrote:
MiNe 109 wrote:
snip
Finally, after doing this a hundred times or so I
have to observe that the audio quality of the run of
the mill vinyl from that era was pretty bad. It got
a lot better starting in mid-1969, probably because
a new generation of disc cutters was just coming on
line.
I find
incomprehensible the affection that some people
evidently have for the audio quality of vinyl from
that era.
Bob Orban
Who is Robert Orban?
Nice appeal to authority. Was someone arguing in favor
of damaged, poor-quality vinyl?
I dunno. I didn't read the thread which provoked the
above. My experience in the 60's/70's was that the
vast majority of vinyl records (the only kind
available, of course) were real crap, quality wise.
If one wanted a quiet, clean copy of a given suite of
music, it was necessary to buy multiple copies and
transfer immediately to tape. I never--repeat,
NEVER--heard a completely pop-free album in my entire
life...and I was a dealer.
I swore off classical lps after a bad stretch of DGs in
the early eighties. After that, the decision was made
for me!
So you never play classical LPs any more?
Still, there is that nostalgia for the 'good ol' days'
that persists and grows.
Can't have that.
Actually, desipite all the phoney angst we hear from
vinylistas, there's no problem with sentimentality at
all.
The problem comes when a tiny minority of vinyl bigots
confuse sentimentality for LP's well-known audible
foilbles with improved sound quality and realism.
The fact is is that when best practices were followed
throughout the chain, vinyl wasn't too bad, but it was
never intended to equal 30 ips half inch half track,
Vinyl was never intended to equal 30 ips half track?
Ask Doug Sax!
and it never did.
Doug Sax thought differently. Hence: Sheffield Records.
To this day GOOD analog tape is the gold
standard of recording, and neither vinyl nor CD equals it.
Both are arguable, but that that the CD format sonically surpasses analog
tape is fact.
There was some pretty good vinyl at times. Most of it was
mediocre, even classical releases, and much terrible.
Most CDs are mediocre and the digitization rate is not
adequate for best results especially in the treble. The
rule of analog accuracy is five times bandwidth, as every
old Tektronix catalog stated, but a 23 kHz brick wall
for 20 kHz repro is obvious horse**** on its face.
No one is advocating vinyl today as a primary release
format. But antivinyl activism fails on the basis of
confusing sunk costs with marginal costs:
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2007/08/w...t-fallacy.html
Relevance to vinyl?????????????/
Vinyl is the BEST source of much of the 100+ year library
of recorded sound which mankind possesses.
Not really. There is no 100+ year library of recorded sound on vinyl simply
because vinyl wasn't available and/or wasn't commonly used for something
like the first half of those 100 years.
Other than oddities like those Sheffield Records direct-disc recordings,
virtually all of the recordings that were made on vinyl were first recorded
on magnetic tape. If they are valuable but aren't available on tape, then
someone screwed up.
If you want
to hear the voice of people long dead (or living people
in historical context if they are even modestly old) and
the sounds of music as it was played decades ago, as a
"consumer", vinyl is often it.
Bad history.
Many LPs were never
reissued as CDs and many others were poorly done.
Bad history. Virtually all vinyl LPs were transcribed from tape. Before
LPs there were 78s, and 78s were generally recorded on far harder substances
than vinyl.
Even
many of the latest releases on CD are from less than
excellent masters and sound worse than extant vinyl.
That's an archiving problem, not a technical situation. If people threw away
their master tapes, that's too bad.
Therefore vinyl playback is not an otiose matter at all.
Thus, the use of vinyl masters is a testimonial to the human propensity to
screw up.