In article ,
david morley wrote:

revolutionary thoughts coming up...

Music mixed for Vinyl sounds better on Vinyl
Music mixed foor CD sounds better on CD

The problem with CD's is also that you need a serious CD player to hear
it properly...I find relatively inexpensive turntables sound ok (except
for the numark PT01 I just picked up and put on ebay straight away. YUCK).
Also, CD's have been available at the same time as a quest for volume
(hence badly mastered or dynamically butchered recordings)

Personally, I prefer vinyl, but my taste in music is very 70's..new
things I enjoy on CD.

Exactly my thought!
Last year i bought Steely Dan "Everything Must Go" i 3 different
versions just to see what i liked better;
1) LP
2) CD
3) DVD-A
Of course they are all 3 excellently (IMvHO) mixed for their media.

1) The LP is the most capturing of the three in my setup, it even makes
the drums feel interesting (!)
2) The CD is best for use in a car or something, i gave it away
3) I LIKE the surround mix, it's funny, witty, good sound

Conclusion=the guys mixing, mastering these 3 things new EXACTLY what
they were doing;

1) For ppl that want to tap their feet
2) For most ppl out there
3) For the proud owners of gadgets and with great need for showoff

--
Joakim Wendel
Remove obvious mail JUNK block for mail reply.

My homepage : http://violinist.nu

philcycles wrote:
I take it geoff has never heard a well cut lacquer disc, much less a
DMM. You can get 110 db S/N from a lacquer and better from a DMM
although that wasn't the point.

Which alternative universe is this?


This one. Notice I wrote lacquer and not pressed record. But I suppose
a careful reading of the post would be a bit much to ask. In fact if I
couldn't get an silent groove at high playback volumes than I'd put a
new stylus in the head.
Phil Brown

On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 16:20:39 -0400, Codifus
wrote:

Joe Sensor wrote:

Geoff Wood wrote:

What you are hearing and evidently preferring is distortion and
bandwidth limitation.


You sure about that?
OK, vinyl does sound better. You see, let's take a church organ playing
a 20 Hz tone at 80 Decibels. Recorded on CD, it will deliver that tone
to you (if your speaker and amp can handle it) in all its brutal
reality. Recorded on vinyl, it will mix in nicely with the rumble, not
to mention step down the dynamics somewhat because there's only so much
bass energy you can fit in a groove. So the vinyl recording will have
smoother interpretation of that organ playing that note.
Now, let's take high frequency sounds, like thousands of bats suddenly
flying out of a cave. Here, on the record, with its reduced top end
response and gently rolled of eq, will play those sounds back to you in
a much more pleasant audible experiecne. The CD will play those sounds
back to you like bats out of hell, and we don't want that! So unpleasant

CD

I don't know about everyone else, but I rarely listen to recordings of
church organs or bats.

Al

On 18 Apr 2005 13:59:33 -0700, "Buster Mudd"
wrote:

playon wrote:
it's funny how I hardly
ever listen to my CDs except in the car. [CLICK] I always seem to
gravitate
towards vinyl [POP] at home. The is some subliminal [CLICK]
annoyance with CDs, [POP]
they almost never sounds "right" to me. [CLICK POP] The problem
could also be the [SCRAAAAATCH]
converters in my consumer-grade CD player though...[CLICK]


That is correct -- despite the pops & clicks, I still often prefer
vinyl. But as a long time record collector I've learned to
concentrate on the music.

Al

philcycles wrote:
philcycles wrote:
I take it geoff has never heard a well cut lacquer disc, much less a
DMM. You can get 110 db S/N from a lacquer and better from a DMM
although that wasn't the point.

Which alternative universe is this?

This one. Notice I wrote lacquer and not pressed record. But I suppose
a careful reading of the post would be a bit much to ask. In fact if I
couldn't get an silent groove at high playback volumes than I'd put a
new stylus in the head.

I can't get 110 dB on a lacquer.... not even on a 12" single with a whole
lot of modulation.

I _might_ be able to do it if you'd consider restricted bandwidth measurements
but I think that's cheating.

110dB is more than just silent, it's really really silent. Just shockingly
silent.

I will say that I have heard an awful lot of records, and I mean pressings
here, not even lacquers, where the noise floor of the master tape was higher
than the noise floor of the record. So you could tell exactly when the
paper leader finished....
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 18 Apr 2005 20:09:52 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

I will say that I have heard an awful lot of records, and I mean pressings
here, not even lacquers, where the noise floor of the master tape was higher
than the noise floor of the record. So you could tell exactly when the
paper leader finished....

And, FWIW, folks who haven't heard their old vinyl records
after cleaning with an alcohol and vacuum machine simply
have *not* heard their records. And it's much more than
just a matter of background noise.

Or even their *new* vinyl records. Really; it's fundamental.

And to join the fray, when I was finally able to make a
homemade CDR transfer from a vinyl record that I couldn't
tell from the original, I learned something important (to me).

Still have fifty feet plus of vinyl. Yikes. When I die the new
homeowner will have quite the Herculean Labor...

Chris Hornbeck
6x9=42 April 29

playon wrote:
On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 16:20:39 -0400, Codifus
wrote:

OK, vinyl does sound better. You see, let's take a church organ playing
a 20 Hz tone at 80 Decibels. Recorded on CD, it will deliver that tone
to you (if your speaker and amp can handle it) in all its brutal
reality. Recorded on vinyl, it will mix in nicely with the rumble, not
to mention step down the dynamics somewhat because there's only so much
bass energy you can fit in a groove.

I don't know about everyone else, but I rarely listen to recordings of
church organs or bats.

Well, actually, the last thing I listened to before I sat down at
the computer was Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in G minor (BWV 542), which
has this nice sustained low note that goes on for measure after
measure after measure.

Of course, I was listening in the car, so I couldn't hear the low
bass tones there. But then again, I couldn't have listened to vinyl
there either...

- Logan

"vinyl believer" wrote in message
oups.com...
I've done a lot of pro audio recording in the last 20 years but haven't
listened to LPs much at all during that time. But in the last year I've
been collecting some vinyl and bought a turntable....

For classical chamber music, I prefer to hire an appropriate ensemble made
up of musicians from the local symphony. If you're on a budget, you might
find it a tad expensive for everyday listening, and you do need a bit of
room to fit them. Plus, some of them have really bad table manners.

And, FWIW, folks who haven't heard their old vinyl records
after cleaning with an alcohol and vacuum machine simply
have *not* heard their records. And it's much more than
just a matter of background noise.

Or even their *new* vinyl records. Really; it's fundamental.

And to join the fray, when I was finally able to make a
homemade CDR transfer from a vinyl record that I couldn't
tell from the original, I learned something important (to me).

Still have fifty feet plus of vinyl. Yikes. When I die the new
homeowner will have quite the Herculean Labor...

Chris Hornbeck
6x9=42 April 29

I have a little side business restoring old recordings, and one of the
tricks in my technique is to put the LP/78/45 on a spindle, spray it with an
organic cleaner solution and run 70ºF water into the grooves at a shallow
angle. It makes a night & day difference and enables me to start with a
better sounding master before I apply digital cleanup tools.


--
Best Regards,

Mark A. Weiss, P.E.
www.mwcomms.com
-

Wait for DVD-Audio to bridge that gap....24/192k and the ability to do
5.1. I can't wait to start listening to my own mixes in 24-bit 5.1!!

Jonny Durango

I'm already making recordings of everything from keys jangling to fireworks
(and hopefully this fall, a regional symphony orchestra) and let me tell
you, there is NO noise and much of what's recorded falls outside of human
hearing. The keys, for instance, have harmonics up to 45KHz, on the FFT
analysis. 24/96 is a wonderful thing. More than 114dB s/n ratio and
ultrawideband response.


--
Best Regards,

Mark A. Weiss, P.E.
www.mwcomms.com
-

sjjohnston wrote:

For classical chamber music, I prefer to hire an appropriate ensemble made
up of musicians from the local symphony. If you're on a budget, you might
find it a tad expensive for everyday listening, and you do need a bit of
room to fit them. Plus, some of them have really bad table manners.


I've found that for dental work and orchestral music it's frequently
more cost-effective to fly to Prague...

Chewy

BINGO ... The "digital remastering" of a lot of stuff previously on LP
has ruined many of these albums. After spending many years in the radio
business, I really got tired of vinyl that had cue burns and were
handled poorly. Noise, wow, flutter etc were terrible. The first CD I
heard blew me away with the low noise floor and dynamic range and the
lack of wow or flutter. The LAST CD I heard blew me away with the lack
of dynamic range and the clipping distortion. The difference? 20 years
of people screwing it up.



Announcer

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss wrote:
Wait for DVD-Audio to bridge that gap....24/192k and the ability to do
5.1. I can't wait to start listening to my own mixes in 24-bit 5.1!!

Jonny Durango


I'm already making recordings of everything from keys jangling to fireworks
(and hopefully this fall, a regional symphony orchestra) and let me tell
you, there is NO noise and much of what's recorded falls outside of human
hearing. The keys, for instance, have harmonics up to 45KHz, on the FFT
analysis. 24/96 is a wonderful thing. More than 114dB s/n ratio and
ultrawideband response.


--
Best Regards,

Mark A. Weiss, P.E.
www.mwcomms.com
-




Don't mean to rehash this old debate, but to capture that 45k would
require a specialized mic which would probably not also happen to be the
ideal mic for the job...In other words, you'd have to choose between a
great sounding 20-20k or a less-than-great 20-45k recording (I'd take
the former any day). Secondly, even if you are lucky enough to have a
playback system that can generate 25k, it's doubtful that other people
will who might get the recording. And that's with the benefit of the
doubt assuming you could feel/hear those frequencies even if it were
possible to capture and reproduce them accurately.

The main reason I'm excited about higher sample rate recordings is that
it will allow more headroom and a larger rolloff Q for anti-aliasing
filters, which I've found to very "buggy" in some systems. Combined with
the higher bit depth for larger dynamic range and SNR it should be able
to approach the fidelity of analog.....and even if not, I'd love to see
a record player do 5.1 =)

Jonny Durango

"philcycles" wrote in message

I take it geoff has never heard a well cut lacquer disc, much less a
DMM. You can get 110 db S/N from a lacquer and better from a DMM
although that wasn't the point. And while some distortion is inevitable
If you did a good job an playback was with a good stylus you wouldn't
hear it.
Sorry, I know I shouldn't feed the trolls but I couldn't help myself.
Phil Brown

And what sort of electronics is this DMM produced on ? Cryogenic stuff,
given there is a fairly large power amp involved, apart from everything else
in the chain.....

geoff

Scott Dorsey wrote:

For the most part, I think a lot of what you are hearing is the terrible
remastering job that has been done to a lot of old material. For example,
if you want to listen to the Eagle's _Hotel California_, you can either
get the older CD issue that was made on a PCM 1610 machine, or the newer
one that is compressed to hell and back. Needless to say, the LP sounds
a whole lot better.




Also, most of those full remastering jobs are done by baking the
original tape and transfering it to digital for mixing. Whether or not
you think baking has an effect, there's also the fact that tape that's
been sitting around since the 60's is likely chalk full of print through
and other types of noise.

Jonny Durango

Joe Sensor wrote:
Geoff Wood wrote:

What you are hearing and evidently preferring is distortion and
bandwidth limitation.


You sure about that?

What I'm pretty sure of is that I can record that vinyl at
16/44.1 and no one would be able to tell the digital
recording from the original. The usual caveats WRT the
quality of the converters but they don't have to be all that.

Many, many people find that vinyl is an effect that they
like. Nothing wrong with that IMO.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

"Joe Sensor" wrote in message
...
Geoff Wood wrote:

What you are hearing and evidently preferring is distortion and bandwidth
limitation.

You sure about that?

After over 30 years with vinyl and 5 or 6 with 'good' digital, yes .

geoff

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message news:d40q2c$rf2
CD and you'd dislike it as much as a CD that was made last week.

Well, that's another advantage for the LP... you just cannot be as abusive
with LP mastering as you can with CD. Limit the crap out of everything on
an LP, and you don't get any more loudness, you just get more tracking
distortion. The medium makes it harder to get away with stupid things.


I kind of like to be able to have the amount of bass in my recordings that I
want there, rather that have a medium dictate it.

geoff

"david morley" wrote in message
...
revolutionary thoughts coming up...

Music mixed for Vinyl sounds better on Vinyl
Music mixed foor CD sounds better on CD

The problem with CD's is also that you need a serious CD player to hear it
properly...I find relatively inexpensive turntables sound ok

Are you dreaming ? Don't you find a $50 Walmart CD player to be far better
than the average domestic TT /phono cart ever was ?

geoff

"Joakim Wendel" wrote in message


Exactly my thought!
Last year i bought Steely Dan "Everything Must Go" i 3 different
versions just to see what i liked better;

What was the master - digital, analogue, or direct ?

1) LP
2) CD
3) DVD-A
Of course they are all 3 excellently (IMvHO) mixed for their media.

1) The LP is the most capturing of the three in my setup, it even makes
the drums feel interesting (!)

Yes, the impact excites the mechanicals in the replay chain and sounds ooooh
so euphonic.

2) The CD is best for use in a car or something, i gave it away

Or best for sounding what the master sounded like. Was the DVD-A (stereo
track) from the exact same master, and significantly different.

3) I LIKE the surround mix, it's funny, witty, good sound

Witty, or gimmicky ?

Conclusion=the guys mixing, mastering these 3 things new EXACTLY what
they were doing;

1) For ppl that want to tap their feet
2) For most ppl out there
3) For the proud owners of gadgets and with great need for showoff

Maybe .

geoff

"LawsonE" wrote in message
news:ckM8e.15144$%c1.12270@fed1read05...

"vinyl believer" wrote in message
[...]
In defense of digital let me state that the problem seems in most part
the resolution of CDs, 16bit/44khz. I record a lot at 24/96 and it's
worlds better than CD. But vinyl still has a presence that's hard to
beat.

The old TM guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, won't allow vedic pundit's
chanting to be distributed on CD because the subtleties of the human voice
are lost, in his opinion. Since his belief-system says that the effect of
Vedic chanting is due to the phsyical effect of the sound, rather than due
to some undetectable mystical thingie , this is an important issue.

Yes, there is a huge level of mystic/que involved in vinyl. The definition
is so superior to digital that the mystics are preserved through the whole
production chain. It even survives the reduced s/n, rediced dynamic range,
higher distortion, and multitude of mechanical and electrical variables in
the listeners' replay chains.


Apparently, with instrumental music, the issue isn't as important, because
you CAN purchase sitar, etc., music on CDs via his organization. For Vedic
hymns, audio-tapes only are allowed.

Yes, the harmonic range and nuances of instruments are nowhere near as
demanding for instruments as for the human voice. Yeah, right.

geoff

"Chewy Papadopoulous" wrote in message

Sexy Sadie; what have you done?

You've made a fool of everyone.

You've made a fool of everywuh uh uhn..

Sexy Sadie, what have you done?

You'll get yours yet ....


geoff

"Gary Morrison" wrote in message news:WsN8e.9860
I personally find these sorts of impressions hard to follow. First of
all, I personally don't think that there's really all that much difference
in presence, if you play both on a carefully laid out system.


My 'carefully laid out' vinyl solution includes a heavy wood table with legs
sitting on concrete pillars into the ground, totally decoupled from the
floor. Mind you, my ancient 301 probably is the weak link.

CDs recorded from this setup sound pretty much identical to the analogue
replay version. Commercial CDs of the same stuff of course sound different,
because the transfer/mastering is different. Some sound better, some sound
worse. That some CAN sound better on CD indicates somethng , no ?


geoff

"Matt Ion" wrote in message

bed. Listening to the beginning of Pink Floyd's "The Wall", with the
chopper coming in, you could literally "feel" it hovering overhead when
sitting in the middle of the bed, playing from the old LP... the effect
was lost when playing the CD.

Yes, the blades don't excite a laser carriage the same way they get a
turntable arm 'singing'.

geoff

"sjjohnston" wrote in message
...
"vinyl believer" wrote in message
oups.com...
I've done a lot of pro audio recording in the last 20 years but haven't
listened to LPs much at all during that time. But in the last year I've
been collecting some vinyl and bought a turntable....

For classical chamber music, I prefer to hire an appropriate ensemble made
up of musicians from the local symphony. If you're on a budget, you might
find it a tad expensive for everyday listening, and you do need a bit of
room to fit them. Plus, some of them have really bad table manners.

But then you can't edit out the sniffing, coughing, and farting.

geoff

In article . net,
Chewy Papadopoulous wrote:

I've found that for dental work and orchestral music it's frequently
more cost-effective to fly to Prague...

Prague? I can practically WALK to Mexico! (but that only takes care of
the dental work.)

I've heard that Prague is a great place, but only from people who drink
a lot. My Ukranian colleages say they won't set foot in Czech.
Apparently there's an ethnic bias to consider? (Putting it mildly?)

Arny Krueger wrote:

The first problem I see is the implicit claim by "vinyl believer"
that
one can so easily characterize all CDs and all LPs in terms of a
vague
parameter like presence.


Sorry to confuse you with fancy technical terms like "presence" Arny.


To further confuse and clarify my personal sonic impressions of CDs
compared to vinyl I'll quote Gertrude Stein's observations about
Oakland....."There's no there there" ..... ie, no presence. Not
satisfying. Life a cup of decaf.

As I stated, you don't just hear sound. You also feel it and experience
the presence of sound. You can't technically measure presence but it is
an important part of the listening experience...... Presence is the
feeling of realism but not to the degree of total sonic accuracy.

I find "presence" especially evident in things that actually physically
produce sound such as microphones and speakers and noticing their
presence is useful in judging the sound quality of these items

Vinyl on a turntable is the only listening medium that physically
re-creates a sound which partially explains to me why vinyl has a
realism (though certainly not sonic accuracy) that is
appealing......But as with everything we experience, it's all very
personal.

VB

"Blow up 'yer CDs" ...... Once you go Vinyl it's Final!

"Geoff Wood" wrote in message
...

"LawsonE" wrote in message
news:ckM8e.15144$%c1.12270@fed1read05...

"vinyl believer" wrote in message
[...]
In defense of digital let me state that the problem seems in most part
the resolution of CDs, 16bit/44khz. I record a lot at 24/96 and it's
worlds better than CD. But vinyl still has a presence that's hard to
beat.

The old TM guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, won't allow vedic pundit's
chanting to be distributed on CD because the subtleties of the human
voice are lost, in his opinion. Since his belief-system says that the
effect of Vedic chanting is due to the phsyical effect of the sound,
rather than due to some undetectable mystical thingie , this is an
important issue.

Yes, there is a huge level of mystic/que involved in vinyl. The
definition is so superior to digital that the mystics are preserved
through the whole production chain. It even survives the reduced s/n,
rediced dynamic range, higher distortion, and multitude of mechanical and
electrical variables in the listeners' replay chains.


Apparently, with instrumental music, the issue isn't as important,
because you CAN purchase sitar, etc., music on CDs via his organization.
For Vedic hymns, audio-tapes only are allowed.

Yes, the harmonic range and nuances of instruments are nowhere near as
demanding for instruments as for the human voice. Yeah, right.


Most musicians DO consider the human voice to be the ultimate musical
instrument, in my opinion.

"Chris Hornbeck" wrote in message
...
On 18 Apr 2005 20:09:52 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

And, FWIW, folks who haven't heard their old vinyl records
after cleaning with an alcohol and vacuum machine simply
have *not* heard their records. And it's much more than
just a matter of background noise.


Cleaning the records with a vacuum irrigation system makes a huge
difference, but when you say "alcohol", I hope you aren't referring to plain
old rubbing alcohol. Alky leaches plasticizers from the records. There are
various cleaning solutions that use high grade alcohol as part of the
formula. I use Disc Doctor solution myself along with distilled water
rinses. I've also tried using a commercial, ammonia-free vinyl cleaner that
seems to work about as well. I have a homemade vacuum rig to suck it all up
with.

The guy that sells the Disc Doctor solution and brushes feels that simply
mopping it up with paper is fine, but it seems to me that method is going to
reintroduce contaminants to the surface. Of course, just being in ambient
room air with the zillions of dust particles means you can never truly have
the record "clean" unless you set up some kind of dust-free clean room to
clean, store and play your records in.

Quick poll - who here gives a flying **** how their mixes translate over
vinyl?

**** this thread.

On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 17:12:58 +1200, "Geoff Wood"
wrote:


--------------8-----------------------

And what sort of electronics is this DMM produced on ? Cryogenic stuff,
given there is a fairly large power amp involved, apart from everything else
in the chain.....

geoff


--Yes, the cutter head is I think helium cooled. The stylus is cutting
plain copper. It is/was the best cutting technique but eg. here in
Croatia, DMM has unfortunately not been considered as this would
require a change in pressing plant lines which was too costly given
that analogue records have already been much less produced... so they
went on with cutting lacquer.
At the end, all the analog production has been sold. A pity, it is.
But that's life.


Edi Zubovic, Crikvenica, Croatia

On 18 Apr 2005 20:09:52 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
--------------------8------------
110dB is more than just silent, it's really really silent. Just shockingly
silent.
---------------8---------------
-- In reald world, this is as much as nonexistent, I mean it is
measurable but hey, the scale is in decibels!

Edi Zubovic, Crikvenica, Croatia

On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 03:32:44 GMT, "Mark & Mary Ann Weiss"
wrote:

-----------8----------------------
I have a little side business restoring old recordings, and one of the
tricks in my technique is to put the LP/78/45 on a spindle, spray it with an
organic cleaner solution and run 70?F water into the grooves at a shallow
angle. It makes a night & day difference and enables me to start with a
better sounding master before I apply digital cleanup tools.

Pardon me, but which cleaner? --I wash vinyl troughtout and shellac
too (with old records, one must be very careful -- there were
shellack, acetates, celluloid, paper substrate, not all of that can
washed in water, alcohol is also dangerous for some materials).
The difference is huge sometimes but the dirt must get off from the
surface first. All the dirt -- sometimes 100 years old. At really
greyed out 78s, I'm weighting the advantages and disadvantages of such
a trough cleaning since while the well pressed-into and hardened dirt
can, under circumstances even be a better bed for the stylus than
fresh substrate (the shellac layer being long milled away and the
substrate is not so far from -- well a carborundum cutting disc).

Nevertheless, the dirt must go out.

Edi Zubovic, Crikvenica, Croatia

Geoff Wood wrote:
"david morley" wrote in message
...

revolutionary thoughts coming up...

Music mixed for Vinyl sounds better on Vinyl
Music mixed foor CD sounds better on CD

The problem with CD's is also that you need a serious CD player to hear it
properly...I find relatively inexpensive turntables sound ok


Are you dreaming ? Don't you find a $50 Walmart CD player to be far better
than the average domestic TT /phono cart ever was ?

geoff



No not Dreaming
I'll answer once again Geoff

Are we discussing the positives and negatives of CD's re Vinyl whilst
listening on $50 units??
Let's discuss the differences between Neumann and AKG mics whilst
monitoring on an $100 AIWA mini hifi
OK OK A $50 CD PLAYER MAY SOUND BETTER THAN A ****TY TURNTABLE.

I'd like to think people like yourself are listening to music on decent
systems.
On mid range and high end, I prefer turntables (I had a lovely EMT and
have a nice Oracle deck I also have a great Audio Alchemy CD player)

In article ,
david morley wrote:

Are we discussing the positives and negatives of CD's re Vinyl whilst
listening on $50 units??

Yep. Common folk didn't have any bass or any dynamic headroom until
it was handed to them on CDs.

On the production side, where you've lived, you had a better experience;
you and what they used to call "audiophiles."

But regular folks saw a more-or-less sudden transition from their fairly
crummy (though fairly expensive) stereos, to really pretty good sounding
stereos that were ubiquitous and cheap.

I'm talking about the last 25 years or so of consumer audio. I know you
were there.

Digital audio has also greatly improved the quality of radio.

These improvements cast a harsh light on certain flaws, but overall, the
improvement has been no less dramatic than the transition from silent to
talkie movies, or from b&w to color tv.

I myself fell over closer to the "audiophile" side of the line, as close
as I could get with my, oh, zero dollar budget. And I don't have the
language needed to explain the phenomena that would affect my preference
for "vinyl" versus "cd" audio.

I collected records for a long, long time. Beginning in maybe 1965, and
ending in 1996 in a house fire. You don't want to know the details, trust
me. The bottom line is, I should be in a position to make an empirical
judgement, but alas, an arsonist dealt my hand, and I haven't touched a
phono record in nearly 8 years. It was kind of interesting to start
from a clean slate, but I still find myself going through a
reflex process whenever I hear something that's related to something
else I had on vinyl, and I sort of "reach for it on the shelf" in my
mind. It's a strange artifact of cognitive learning, as it's been
explained to me by a psychologist colleage; not exactly the phantom-limb
syndrome, but something else. Like when you're driving a car, the edges
of the car are treated in your mind as edges of your extended body.
Something like that.

Anyway, from about 1983 on, whenever I'd acquire an album, I'd go
through a ritual of cleaning it, and recording it on my prized Teac 3340
and on a cassette. Oh, the first (and usually last) time a record was
played was *special*. Sometimes special enough to make an event out of
it.

Now we have media that will probably be playable after being dug out
of the landfill in the year 2150.

I don't know what point I was trying to make here. Vinyl was cool. I
don't know why. I don't think it was better or worse, just maybe more
fragile and delicate, and it put you more in the process of listening to
music.

On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 03:32:44 GMT, "Mark & Mary Ann Weiss"
wrote:



And, FWIW, folks who haven't heard their old vinyl records
after cleaning with an alcohol and vacuum machine simply
have *not* heard their records. And it's much more than
just a matter of background noise.

Or even their *new* vinyl records. Really; it's fundamental.

And to join the fray, when I was finally able to make a
homemade CDR transfer from a vinyl record that I couldn't
tell from the original, I learned something important (to me).

Still have fifty feet plus of vinyl. Yikes. When I die the new
homeowner will have quite the Herculean Labor...

Chris Hornbeck
6x9=42 April 29

I have a little side business restoring old recordings, and one of the
tricks in my technique is to put the LP/78/45 on a spindle, spray it with an
organic cleaner solution and run 70ºF water into the grooves at a shallow
angle. It makes a night & day difference and enables me to start with a
better sounding master before I apply digital cleanup tools.

I used to import 45s from Jamaica... even the NOS ones had a film of
dirt baked on from the humidity and temperature of the Caribbean
climate, that was really hard to penetrate. The absolute best way I
found to clean the 45s was to use an ultrasound cleaner, like a
dentist or jeweller uses:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...8915 105&rd=1

Basically a tub of water that you put a small amount of detergent
into, that then vibrates the water like crazy... same principal as the
Sonicare toothbrush but more powerful. Using one of these machines
properly you can get damn near every molecule of crap out of the
grooves, the difference in sound was staggering. It works for LPs
too, if you can afford the larger size that a 12" record can fit into
($800 and up).

Al

On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 00:22:29 -0700, "LawsonE"
wrote:


"Geoff Wood" wrote in message
...

"LawsonE" wrote in message
news:ckM8e.15144$%c1.12270@fed1read05...

"vinyl believer" wrote in message
[...]
In defense of digital let me state that the problem seems in most part
the resolution of CDs, 16bit/44khz. I record a lot at 24/96 and it's
worlds better than CD. But vinyl still has a presence that's hard to
beat.

The old TM guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, won't allow vedic pundit's
chanting to be distributed on CD because the subtleties of the human
voice are lost, in his opinion. Since his belief-system says that the
effect of Vedic chanting is due to the phsyical effect of the sound,
rather than due to some undetectable mystical thingie , this is an
important issue.

Yes, there is a huge level of mystic/que involved in vinyl. The
definition is so superior to digital that the mystics are preserved
through the whole production chain. It even survives the reduced s/n,
rediced dynamic range, higher distortion, and multitude of mechanical and
electrical variables in the listeners' replay chains.


Apparently, with instrumental music, the issue isn't as important,
because you CAN purchase sitar, etc., music on CDs via his organization.
For Vedic hymns, audio-tapes only are allowed.

Yes, the harmonic range and nuances of instruments are nowhere near as
demanding for instruments as for the human voice. Yeah, right.


Most musicians DO consider the human voice to be the ultimate musical
instrument, in my opinion.

Most lead singers do, at any rate...

Al

philcycles wrote:
philcycles wrote:
I take it geoff has never heard a well cut lacquer disc, much less
a
DMM. You can get 110 db S/N from a lacquer and better from a DMM
although that wasn't the point.

Which alternative universe is this?


This one. Notice I wrote lacquer and not pressed record.

So what. There isn't a place in our universe where this can happen,
not to mention how irrelevant this claim is to practical use of vinyl.

But I suppose a careful reading of the post would be a bit much to
ask.

Nice job of avoiding an attempt on your part to actuall support your
claim with credible discussion.

In fact if I couldn't get an silent groove at high playback volumes
than I'd put a
new stylus in the head.

I suggest that you consider the meaning of S/N. The basic noise level
of a phono preamp and coils of a cartridge eliminates any possibility
of both tracking a groove and having S/N much greater than 80 dB.

Buster Mudd wrote:
playon wrote:

it's funny how I hardly
ever listen to my CDs except in the car. [CLICK] I always seem to
gravitate towards vinyl [POP] at home. The is some subliminal
[CLICK] annoyance with CDs, [POP] they almost never sounds "right"
to me. [CLICK POP] The problem
could also be the [SCRAAAAATCH]
converters in my consumer-grade CD player though...[CLICK]

LOL!

Now we have this philcycles who thinks that lacquers are somehow
invulnerable to all of this.

Scott Dorsey wrote:
In article znr1113826156k@trad, Mike Rivers
wrote:
In article writes:

What you are hearing and evidently preferring is distortion and
bandwidth limitation.

Naw, I think it's just a matter that we produced music in a more
musical way 25 years ago. Take an LP and "remaster" it like a
current
CD and you'd dislike it as much as a CD that was made last week.

Well, that's another advantage for the LP... you just cannot be as
abusive with LP mastering as you can with CD. Limit the crap out of
everything on an LP, and you don't get any more loudness, you just
get more tracking distortion. The medium makes it harder to get
away
with stupid things. --scott

Excellent point that most vinyl bigots, being audiophiles and not
production people, have no clue about.