[Arny Krueger]

"Peter Wieck" wrote in message

On Feb 1, 11:00 am, "Iain Churches"
wrote:

Perhaps you have never had access to a good vinyl
replay system. You have made it clear what a penny
pincher you are, and so probably don't know what a
Garrard 401, SME 3012 and Shure V15/III
(or equivalent) can do. Spend some time with an
EMT, SME 30/2 or Verdier turntable, and
Shure V15, EMT or Ortofon MC cartridge.

Get yourself a good vinyl system, a Radford
tube amp, a pair of B+W 801D speakers,
and start to live a little,

No need for tubes to get decent sound out of vinyl - and
if one is attempting to educate a skeptic, adding
additional parameters is a bad idea. Keep it simple and
vary *only* one parameter at a time.

Really? I've got that covered with the Conrad Johnson preamp that I often
use with my LP system.


So, to convince one of the potential of decent sound from
vinyl, I would start with a linear-tracking tone-arm.

Actually, linear-tracking is the *only* way to avoid a source of bass
modulation distortion that is inherent in vinyl playback.

Rabco and Revox come to mind as excellent examples of
those species. I keep both, but the Rabco sees the most
play.

The last linear tracking tonearm I heard in a private vinyl system was by
Eminent Technology.



Sadly, the sound of vinyl is unmistakable such that a
listener with pre-conceived conclusions will be able to
skew the test - unless one has the ability to add
miscellaneous random clicks and pops every so often to
another source to mask its nature. Put another way, this
is an issue of true-believers and the invincibly
ignorant. Never the twain shall meet.

In this case, the invincibly ignorant are the LP bigots.

So, these
wonderful machines (and I still have my Revox) were
perfectly capable of making excellent recordings, and
playing back such recordings - but there was no
'equivalent-of-vinyl' out there. So, they remained a very
tiny component of the Audio market and the realm of the
fanatical few. They have no place in any discussion
comparing the relative qualities of an given source,
comes to it.

Actually, Revox and Tandburg tape machines hovered just around the edges of
the mainstream. Sony and Teac chimed in with a number of excellent machines
and were arguably mainstream.

In the heyday of analog one didn't see a lot of Revox and Tandburgs in the
newly-christened appliance store mid-fi salons, but one sure did see a lot
of Sony and Teac.

Along comes the CD, pretty much coincidental with the
downward spiral of the mass audio market from specialty
sellers (Sam Goody, Zounds, Silo, et. al.) to just
another line in the big-box stores.

A romantic, self-pitying thought, but one that is probably not exactly
factual.

Appliance store mid-fi was a breaking trend a very few years after I
returned to the US from Germany as a guest of Uncle Sam. That was the early
1970s. The CD didn't hit the US market until 1983. It appears to me that
the mass market for mid-fi was fully developed for the better part of a
decade before the CD hit.

And at about the same
time, US makers of mass-items such as AR, Dynaco,
Harmon-Kardon, Scott, Heath, Fisher, Marantz and many
others either stopped making electronics entirely or sold
their trade-marks to the Pacific Rim.

I seriousy doubt that there was ever any Heath or Dynaco finished product
that was made in the Pacific rim. They were kit brands, for the most part
and assembly was completed in the customer's home.

The trend towards pacific rim production was fully-fledged in the middle
1960s. First there were Japanese brands like Kenwood and Pioneer. The first
mainstream american brand to slip into offshore production from your list
was Marantz. Scott being among the weaker went broke and the brand name was
recusitated as a made-in Pacific rim brand, followed by Fisher.

Eventually they all
went dark as dedicated specialists and all became parts
of congomerates run by bean-counters.

Heath simply disappeared as low cost off-shore assembly eliminated its
reason to exist, and building it yourself ceased to be a thrill for most.
Dyna followed a similar path, only to be resuscitated as a tubophile brand.

All this over a few years, of course *not* over night. Also coincidental
to
the rise of the Personal Audio Device, AKA Walkman.

Again, a slipping brain runs aground on the facts. The Walkman was
introduced in 1979, while Heathkit was still fairly strong (they closed
their audio products out later in the mid-1980s) and the original Dynaco
were still introducting new products.


Meanwhile we trained an entire generation of TV-raised
individuals that sound came from a 3" speaker with a
laugh-track.

Peter, speak for yourself!

And that discriminating listening was a
waste of precious time when they could be indulging in
recreational pharmaceuticals or having sex.

I guess you are speaking autobiographically, Peter.

And they trained their children that sounds come from ear-buds or
4-ounce computer speakers - both speakers, the wire and
the power-supply.

And you wonder where production music "professionals" got
the idea that "good enough" was actually "too good"?

That idea comes from something you probably never ever tried Peter - that
idea comes from blind, level-matched, straight wire bypass tests.

Vinyl as it is "practiced" today is an esoteric medium
and as such represents an effort where the actual
costs-of-production (vinyl, lathes, packaging - NOT the
musicians and such) are irrelevant to the cost of the
product.

And the sound quality, barely failing at the best, is really not an issue.
It is all about sentimentality.

People will LISTEN to something they have paid
possibly-thousands to reproduce and serious bucks for the
record.

This is belied by all the whoops and hollaring about vinyl bought in thrift
stores for twenty-five cents or a dollar.