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#42
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On 23 Apr 2005 15:01:25 GMT, "Harry Lavo" wrote:
"Chung" wrote in message ... Stewart Pinkerton wrote: On 20 Apr 2005 23:59:14 GMT, Chung wrote: wrote: But, if you cannot hear the complexity of the decay of a sustained note on a real live piano maybe you simply aren't picking up on the substantial differences between a live piano and the recording and playback of a live piano. So you are saying that you cannot observe the complex amplitude decay of piano music on CD's? Here is a good one for you to try out: Emil Gilel's Beethoven Sonata #8 (Pathetique) on DG 400036-2. This is an early 1980 digital recording. You can easily find it at the local library. Check out track 1. Listen to the solid frequency stability of the big chords. See if that sounds like a real piano in your experience. What a bizarre coincidence! I only have half a dozen or so solo piano recordings, but that superb performance is one of them, and the first part of the 'Pathetique' is indeed a superb recording of the natural decay of a solo piano, as is the 'Moonlight' on the same CD. On vinyl, there would be impossible distractions from wow and surface noise, but that CD is an immaculate recording which allows the natural sound of the piano to flow into your listening room. Wheeler is just plain wrong about this. I mentioned that particular recording because I also have the vinyl version. Now someone may want to argue that I do not have the ultimate vinyl gear, but the CD is simply superior in every respect: stability of the tones (frequency domain) in sustained notes, the huge dynamic range that allows the big chords to decay to silence and the quiet passages (like the Moonlight Sonata) to come through cleanly, and the lack of any surface effects or tracking distortion. All this from a 1981 digital recording. I continue to wonder if those who claim in the past to be horrified by wow and flutter on piano tones when playing vinyl, or who go on and on about clicks and pops, ever really optimized their vinyl setup. Oh dear, here we go again.................. In the first place, no decent vinyl rig should have audible wow or flutter on its own. If it does, then it needs a belt, idler wheel, or DD motor replaced. Secondly, the arm and cartridge must be matched...high compliance cartridge with low mass arm, medium compliance with medium mass arm, and low compliance with high mass arm. Any other combination will result in anomanolies caused by stylus compression or unweighting. Yes, all the above is a given for the serious audiophile who has a collection of vinyl. Third, records must be cleaned. I don't necessarily mean with a washer, but at least cleaned with a record brush before every playing or as I do using Last cleaner fluid and application brush. Otherwise the stylus will run into grunge in the grooves which will distort sound in addition to creating lots of the dread clicks and pops, which will only become worse with time if they are ground in by playing an uncleaned record. If you have a supply of Last record preservative (hard to get these days) treatment will create records that sound subtly cleaner in the mid's and high's, an effect that is permament (only need to treat once). It must also be mentioned that a bi-radius or line-contact stylus is necessary to minimize noise and get the most from the grooves. Indeed, vinyl is a serious pain in the butt if you wish to get the best from it! :-) Finally, a record clamp is needed to prevent vinyl resonance..no using one will accentuate pops and clicks and can cause slight disintegration of image localization. I agree, but there are certainly those of a different presuasion. Indeed, the original Roksan Xerxes even had a removable spindle! Personally, I'd go the whole hog and advocate vacuum hold-down. If it's good enough for the cutting lathe............... All this of course is to naught if the cartridge is not matched properly to the preamp input. This requires an effort to get and understand information and to work to make whatever changes are required to get that optimization. This is one area where most high end phono preamps made the job much easier than lower priced preamps, which tended to be non-adjustable. Since 1990 I have used three different cartridges in three different turntable/arm/cable combos and into two different headamps/preamps. I hve never been unable to get the cartridge/turntable/preamp combo to sound tonally identical to my CD players during this period of time. There are still subtle differences, often to the preference (in my case) to phono, but they are subtle and not in any way major difference in tonality. I cheated and built my own headamp, but my GyroDec/RB300/OC9 combo certainly sounds 'drier' than most vinyl rigs, and quite neutral in balance - or as near as it can be, playing vinyl. When all is right, their needs be little or no difference between CD and vinyl. Including wow and flutter. Now *that* is utter rubbish. While wow *may* be inaudible if the record centring is *exactly* correct, there remains a *very* significant audible difference between CD and vinyl. The regular 'swoosh' of surface noise, the inevitable ticks and pops, and the equally inevitable splashy treble as you approach the inner grooves, are fundamental weaknesses of vinyl, and not subject to the expense or careful setup of the replay gear. Case in point, I picked the top record off the group of RCA's I had out, which was Van Cliburn playing the Rachmaninoff 2nd Piano Concerto with Fritz Reinger and the Chicago Symphony orchestra. I recently picked this up as a $2 used record, but only played it once now that I also have the SACD release of this same recording. This is not the original, but a Dynagroove re-release on inferior, thin vinyl. Accordingly it is somewhat warped and especially vulnerable to vinyl resonance. So put it on the turntable (at this point a modest Dual 701 with Accuphase AC-2 MC cartridge, into a modified Marcoff PPA-2 headamp). Cleaned it, clamped it, synced the start with my Sony C222ES SACD machine...and listened through the whole piece, occassionally switching back and forth CD to Vinyl and back. The two where reasonable level matched and synched. Other than an occassional low-level pop (maybe one a minute) I'd be hard pressed to remember which I was listeing to. Plenty of sustained tones and no difference in wow and flutter. The record was showing plenty of warp, but the cartridge and arm were riding the groove with equanimity and no sign of "bounce". Interesting claim, since Dynagroove records are known to contain a lot of *deliberately* introduced distortion, which is at its worst with a line-contact stylus, as well as being notorious for the heavy-handed use of compression to lift 'low level' detail. Of course, to the uncritical listener there might be a passing resemblance to an SACD............... :-) My conclusion, if you really want to enjoy your records, make the time and effort to optimize your system...the annoyances of vinyl will be largely minimized and the sound quality may astound you. Indeed, it can sound very good, but it will never have the fidelity of CD. -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
#43
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"Stewart Pinkerton" wrote in message
... On 23 Apr 2005 15:01:25 GMT, "Harry Lavo" wrote: snip Case in point, I picked the top record off the group of RCA's I had out, which was Van Cliburn playing the Rachmaninoff 2nd Piano Concerto with Fritz Reinger and the Chicago Symphony orchestra. I recently picked this up as a $2 used record, but only played it once now that I also have the SACD release of this same recording. This is not the original, but a Dynagroove re-release on inferior, thin vinyl. Accordingly it is somewhat warped and especially vulnerable to vinyl resonance. So put it on the turntable (at this point a modest Dual 701 with Accuphase AC-2 MC cartridge, into a modified Marcoff PPA-2 headamp). Cleaned it, clamped it, synced the start with my Sony C222ES SACD machine...and listened through the whole piece, occassionally switching back and forth CD to Vinyl and back. The two where reasonable level matched and synched. Other than an occassional low-level pop (maybe one a minute) I'd be hard pressed to remember which I was listeing to. Plenty of sustained tones and no difference in wow and flutter. The record was showing plenty of warp, but the cartridge and arm were riding the groove with equanimity and no sign of "bounce". Interesting claim, since Dynagroove records are known to contain a lot of *deliberately* introduced distortion, which is at its worst with a line-contact stylus, as well as being notorious for the heavy-handed use of compression to lift 'low level' detail. You are correct, and as a result I went back and looked at the album cover, and I was wrong. The recoding is indeep the thin, warped vinyl. But it is labeled "Dynaflex" which is what RCA started calling them after they dropped the "pre-distortion" aspect of Dynaagroove (which was roundly criticized). Of course, to the uncritical listener there might be a passing resemblance to an SACD............... :-) As does any other high quality recording in which I have been able to make the comparison. My conclusion, if you really want to enjoy your records, make the time and effort to optimize your system...the annoyances of vinyl will be largely minimized and the sound quality may astound you. Indeed, it can sound very good, but it will never have the fidelity of CD. Maybe not on paper, but in reality with proper care it can. And it opens up a whole additional world of collecting...I know I've taken chances on $1.50 or 2.00 records that I never would have if they had been $15.00 CD's or SACD's. Not to mention the fact that my LP library with choice titles from the '60's and '70's is pretty damn large and hugely enjoyable. |
#44
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wrote:
Ban wrote: wrote: Of course not. You believe they all sound the same don't you? Does anybody believe all turntable rigs sound the same? Well, the crackles and the distortion sound similar, but of course each catridge has its own colour, which is superimposed on the music, much like a loudspeaker. Then some have more hum than others, and some are better isolated from vibrations. Scott, a simple test can be done: Record your favourite music from the rig to CD. Now start the turntable and play the record and when the sound arrives, start the CD player. listen with the headphone to the CD and synchronize the vinyl by slowing the platter with your hand. Now turn down the volume, switch the preamp over and turn up the volume to the same loudness. (It will be good to mark the 2 settings with a chalk pen). Have a friend or your wife switch without your knowledge. Now try to identify the real turntable. Can you do that? I have done comparisons of CDs ripped form my turntable and direct feed from my turntable. I have no problem hearing differences. Unless you have done them badly: baloney. BTW, none of Yundi Li's music is available on vinyl. Only on CD's. Only CD? Can't get it on MP3? Scott Wheeler Even MP3 is much more difficult to identify than vinyl, I wonder why? You have trouble hearing the colorations of MP3? You can't make an MP3 that's audibly indistinguishable from source? -- -S It's not my business to do intelligent work. -- D. Rumsfeld, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee |
#45
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Well the real bad reasoning is ignoring the fact that the medium was around for quite some time as a niche market product and did not dominate the market until such a time as it became convenient to play in the car and on portable players. This is not wholly correct. It is true that CD did not supplant cassettes as the top-selling medium until portable/mobile disk players became popular in the early to mid 90s, but CD "took off" long before then. In fact, CD's year-to-year growth rate was falling by the time it started really eating into cassette sales. But by the latter half of the 80s, CD was anything but a niche product. In 1989 (the earliest figures at www.riaa.org), CD had 28% of the long-playing market share by units shipped. In a three-competitor market, 28% is not a niche. By contrast, vinyl fell below 2% in 1991, and has never recovered. Ignoring single-year blips, it's basically flatlined at 600,000 units per annum for the last decade. That's a niche. (Not that there's anything wrong with being a niche!) bob |
#46
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#47
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Chung wrote: wrote: Stewart Pinkerton wrote: On 19 Apr 2005 23:54:39 GMT, wrote: Stewart Pinkerton wrote: Heads up now, what really launched CD into the mass market was *classical* music listeners, i.e. people who live with live music. Stewert gets his facts wrong again. What really launched CD into the masss market was the availablity of portable CD players and car CD players. The classical music listeners are very much a niche market that barely impact the commercial scene over all. By the way, many classical music lovers do not spend much time with live music. This comes from a guy who has just attempted to tell someone who *owns* a grand piano, what sustained notes from it sound like...... What does Chungs inability to recognize that a sustained note from a live piano is not solifd but cmplex and constantly changing in tone? Does it make my true statement a false one? Where is your logic? Well, you choose to mis-interpret Chung's statement in a way that you could attack Chung's ability to listen. Despite the subsequent clarification by Chung. One would think that this is a display of your tendency to argue on semantics, and to burn the strawman. The statement that "many classical music lovers do not spend much time with live music" is patently false. Absolute balony. One need only look at concert ticket sales to see this. How can you see this by looking at concert sales? The last piano concert I attended was sold out two months in advance. And, of course, there are many ways of "spending time with live music" without attending concerts. I can do that any time of the day, in my home. Most classical music lovers I know of play instruments, attend concerts and recitals, and a lot them have children who play classical music. Well that is a sound scientific rebutal of my claim. Not. It is a lot more scientific that the other claim "many classical music lovers do not spend much time with live music". Out of curiosity, do you consider the jazz music market a "niche market that barely impact the commercial scene overall"? Unfortunately, yes. Are you aware of the sales being done in the music industry? Not sure what you meant by "sales being done", although I am aware that there are sales in the industry . I have some access to sales figures, though. Do you? Unfortunately for Wheeler, he doesn't get to write history books, and the plain *facts* of the matter are that CD sales in the first two years were below predictions, until the word began to spread among classical music lovers that this new medium simply did not suffer from wow and flutter (which, contrary to Wheeler's bizarre opinion, are horribly destructive of solo piano music), and had such low background noise that all kinds of musical subtleties became noticeable, which had previously been swamped by surface noise. It was the classical market which dragged CD out of the red in the early years, and everyone but you is well aware of this - ask any record store owner who was in business in the '80s, or of course go straight to RIAA sales archives. Fortunately for audiophiles Pinkerton does not get to rewrite history. The *fact* is that CD sales took off exactly when portable CD players and car CD players became widely available at affordable prices. Fortunately for people who enjoy CDs the success of that medium was driven by somethging more than a niche market like classical music. Certainly portable players and car players helped to boost volumes, but note that they did not become widespread (especially car players), until well after CD was firmly established. Wrong. You are wrong, CD displaced vinyl several years before the widespread use of portable players and car players. Now you are ridiculously wrong. Lps were never displaced by CD in the first place. They were displaced by cassettes and for the very same reason. Portability and car play. Now you are wrong again. CD displacing vinyl means CD taking over the place of vinyl in sales. You seem to have trouble understanding what I said, again. The point is, of course, having displaced vinyl, CD was now "firmly established", before the widespread use of car and mobile CD players. Unless you want to argue that vinyl was never firmly established. As early as 1989, CD's already outsold vinyl LP's by a ratio of 2.7 to 1. In 1989 Cd was still not the dominant medium for music consumption. Nice try. Funny, It had been on the market for six years by then. Funny, when it did become the dominant medium it was when car players and portable CD players did become common and affordable. The point is that it had solidly displaced vinyl's position in sales. Wonder why you found all this funny? In 1989, portable and car CD players were not in widespread use. For home audio, CD became the dominant medium as early as in the mid-to-late 80's. Guess again. Actually dont guess, just look at sales. Been there, done that, have you? Of course, for mobile audio, CD did not replace cassette until mobile CD players became popular in the mid-90's. Sorry Stewert. You don't know what people were doing with their cassettes. We can look at sales. Sales support my claim not yours. Sorry Stewart for having Mr Wheeler feel sorry for you . Wouldn't you call a medium that outsold vinyl LP 2.7 to 1 "firmly established"? Seems you are now trying to change the subject. Just to make sure you understand, when Stewart said that portable and car players did not get widespread use until after the CD was firmly established, you said he was wrong. My question was not to change the subject, but to ask you if outselling vinyl 2.7 to 1 mean that CD was firmly established. If the answer is yes, then clearly you were wrong when you said Steware was wrong. Got that? Scott Wheeler |
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Ed Seedhouse wrote: On 21 Apr 2005 23:59:10 GMT, wrote: Fortunately for audiophiles Pinkerton does not get to rewrite history. The *fact* is that CD sales took off exactly when portable CD players and car CD players became widely available at affordable prices. Fortunately for people who enjoy CDs the success of that medium was driven by somethging more than a niche market like classical music. This could go in a textbook as an example of bad reasoning! Balony. I guess anything that Mr. Wheeler does not agree with tends to be called "Balony" (sic). Correlation does not prove causation. It supports it. The fact that two things happen at the same time does not prove that one causes the other. It supports it. The fact that something occurs before something else does not prove it causes the something else. "Pos hoc, ergo propter hoc" is still a fallacy and always will be. Well the real bad reasoning is ignoring the fact that the medium was around for quite some time as a niche market product and did not dominate the market until such a time as it became convenient to play in the car and on portable players. It would be quite bad reasoning to ignore the fact that exactly the same "coincidence" took place with the previously dominant medium. It would also be poor logic to ignore the fact that classical music sales by their sheer lack of volume cannot possible impact the market the way sales due to portability can. Oh well. The real bad reasoning is saying that CD was just a niche market because it did not have the largest sales. In 1990, there were 9.2 million CD players sold annually in the US, and 288 million CD's sold in the US. And as early as in 1986, there were already 53 million CD's sold in the US. A niche market? Perhaps now is the time for Mr. Wheeler to provide another definition of niche market. Scott Wheeler |
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By contrast, vinyl fell below 2% in 1991, and has never recovered. Ignoring single-year blips, it's basically flatlined at 600,000 units per annum for the last decade. Pardon me. I was reading a chart of market share, not units. That last sentence should read, "...flatlined at 0.6% of units shipped for the last decade." BTW, the 2004 RIAA figures came out earlier this month. Overall sales were up for the first time since '99, with CD unit sales up about 3% over 2003. By contrast, vinyl was down 12% from 2003, DVD-A down 21%, and SACD down 40%. "Niche market" may now be an overstatement. bob |
#50
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chung wrote:
wrote: Chung wrote: wrote: Stewart Pinkerton wrote: On 19 Apr 2005 23:54:39 GMT, wrote: Stewart Pinkerton wrote: Heads up now, what really launched CD into the mass market was *classical* music listeners, i.e. people who live with live music. Stewert gets his facts wrong again. What really launched CD into the masss market was the availablity of portable CD players and car CD players. The classical music listeners are very much a niche market that barely impact the commercial scene over all. By the way, many classical music lovers do not spend much time with live music. This comes from a guy who has just attempted to tell someone who *owns* a grand piano, what sustained notes from it sound like...... What does Chungs inability to recognize that a sustained note from a live piano is not solifd but cmplex and constantly changing in tone? Does it make my true statement a false one? Where is your logic? Well, you choose to mis-interpret Chung's statement in a way that you could attack Chung's ability to listen. Despite the subsequent clarification by Chung. One would think that this is a display of your tendency to argue on semantics, and to burn the strawman. The statement that "many classical music lovers do not spend much time with live music" is patently false. Absolute balony. One need only look at concert ticket sales to see this. How can you see this by looking at concert sales? That is where classical music lover go for quality live music. The last piano concert I attended was sold out two months in advance. That is good to hear but how many seats were there to begin with? And, of course, there are many ways of "spending time with live music" without attending concerts. I can do that any time of the day, in my home. Not quite the same thing. Most classical music lovers I know of play instruments, attend concerts and recitals, and a lot them have children who play classical music. Well that is a sound scientific rebutal of my claim. Not. It is a lot more scientific that the other claim "many classical music lovers do not spend much time with live music". No it isn't. Out of curiosity, do you consider the jazz music market a "niche market that barely impact the commercial scene overall"? Unfortunately, yes. Are you aware of the sales being done in the music industry? Not sure what you meant by "sales being done", although I am aware that there are sales in the industry . I have some access to sales figures, though. Do you? Sure. Now lets look at what percentage of over all music sales are from classical music. Unfortunately for Wheeler, he doesn't get to write history books, and the plain *facts* of the matter are that CD sales in the first two years were below predictions, until the word began to spread among classical music lovers that this new medium simply did not suffer from wow and flutter (which, contrary to Wheeler's bizarre opinion, are horribly destructive of solo piano music), and had such low background noise that all kinds of musical subtleties became noticeable, which had previously been swamped by surface noise. It was the classical market which dragged CD out of the red in the early years, and everyone but you is well aware of this - ask any record store owner who was in business in the '80s, or of course go straight to RIAA sales archives. Fortunately for audiophiles Pinkerton does not get to rewrite history. The *fact* is that CD sales took off exactly when portable CD players and car CD players became widely available at affordable prices. Fortunately for people who enjoy CDs the success of that medium was driven by somethging more than a niche market like classical music. Certainly portable players and car players helped to boost volumes, but note that they did not become widespread (especially car players), until well after CD was firmly established. Wrong. You are wrong, CD displaced vinyl several years before the widespread use of portable players and car players. Now you are ridiculously wrong. Lps were never displaced by CD in the first place. They were displaced by cassettes and for the very same reason. Portability and car play. Now you are wrong again. CD displacing vinyl means CD taking over the place of vinyl in sales. You seem to have trouble understanding what I said, again. The point is, of course, having displaced vinyl, CD was now "firmly established", before the widespread use of car and mobile CD players. Unless you want to argue that vinyl was never firmly established. It didn't displace vinyl regardless of how you try to re-word your claims. Vinyl was the top selling medium until Cassettes displaced it. Cds did eventually displace Cassttes after the portable CD players and car CD players became readily available and affordable. As early as 1989, CD's already outsold vinyl LP's by a ratio of 2.7 to 1. In 1989 Cd was still not the dominant medium for music consumption. Nice try. Funny, It had been on the market for six years by then. Funny, when it did become the dominant medium it was when car players and portable CD players did become common and affordable. The point is that it had solidly displaced vinyl's position in sales. Wonder why you found all this funny? Because of all the backpeddling. In 1989, portable and car CD players were not in widespread use. For home audio, CD became the dominant medium as early as in the mid-to-late 80's. Guess again. Actually dont guess, just look at sales. Been there, done that, have you? Yes, that is why I am making the claims that you are reading here. Of course, for mobile audio, CD did not replace cassette until mobile CD players became popular in the mid-90's. Sorry Stewert. You don't know what people were doing with their cassettes. We can look at sales. Sales support my claim not yours. Sorry Stewart for having Mr Wheeler feel sorry for you . Wouldn't you call a medium that outsold vinyl LP 2.7 to 1 "firmly established"? Seems you are now trying to change the subject. Just to make sure you understand, when Stewart said that portable and car players did not get widespread use until after the CD was firmly established, you said he was wrong. Wrong again. this what Stewert actually said. "Heads up now, what really launched CD into the mass market was *classical* music listeners," To which I said he was wrong. CDs were "launched" into the mass market with the wide spead availablitity of portable CD players and car CD players. Not with the introduction of classical material on CDs Classical CDs were available for years before CDs were a successful "mass market" item. My question was not to change the subject, but to ask you if outselling vinyl 2.7 to 1 mean that CD was firmly established. Once you and Stewert started talking about "firmly established," whatever you guys want that to mean, you changed the subject. The subject was the launch into the mass market. Hey our local burger joint has been in business for 50 years. I think that makes it "firmly established." It has never been launched into the mass market. Apples and oranges. If the answer is yes, then clearly you were wrong when you said Steware was wrong. Got that? The question has no meaning since I never said no to the claim of "firmly established." Got that? Scott Wheeler |
#51
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Steven Sullivan wrote:
wrote: Ban wrote: wrote: Of course not. You believe they all sound the same don't you? Does anybody believe all turntable rigs sound the same? Well, the crackles and the distortion sound similar, but of course each catridge has its own colour, which is superimposed on the music, much like a loudspeaker. Then some have more hum than others, and some are better isolated from vibrations. Scott, a simple test can be done: Record your favourite music from the rig to CD. Now start the turntable and play the record and when the sound arrives, start the CD player. listen with the headphone to the CD and synchronize the vinyl by slowing the platter with your hand. Now turn down the volume, switch the preamp over and turn up the volume to the same loudness. (It will be good to mark the 2 settings with a chalk pen). Have a friend or your wife switch without your knowledge. Now try to identify the real turntable. Can you do that? I have done comparisons of CDs ripped form my turntable and direct feed from my turntable. I have no problem hearing differences. Unless you have done them badly: baloney. 1. How does one do them badly without clipping the signal? 2. How do you know my claim is balony? Were you there? I don't think so. BTW, none of Yundi Li's music is available on vinyl. Only on CD's. Only CD? Can't get it on MP3? Scott Wheeler Even MP3 is much more difficult to identify than vinyl, I wonder why? You have trouble hearing the colorations of MP3? You can't make an MP3 that's audibly indistinguishable from source? Yeah. You can't? Scott Wheeler |
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Ed Seedhouse wrote:
On 23 Apr 2005 20:53:14 GMT, wrote: Ed Seedhouse wrote: This could go in a textbook as an example of bad reasoning! Balony. Calling in "Balony" doesn't make it balony. I suggest you think more carefully about the claim. You are putting the cart before the horse here. Calling something balony doesn't make it balony but calling something that is balony, balony is just accurate reporting. Name calling isn't good reasoning either. Calling things as one sees them is just honesty. The reasoning takes place first. I would expect any reasonable person to see that. Correlation does not prove causation. It supports it. By itself, no it doesn't. Yes it does. The fact that two things happen at the same time does not prove that one causes the other. It supports it. By itself, no it doesn't. Yes it does. Well the real bad reasoning is ignoring the fact that the medium was around for quite some time as a niche market product and did not dominate the market until such a time as it became convenient to play in the car and on portable players. No one has ignored that so far as I can see. You certainly did in your rebuttal to my claim. You still do when you start off with "by itself..." Obviously my reasoning was not done in a vacuum but with the consideration of such things as the history of dominant media. You've stated it was the *cause* of the CD's success, Into the mass market. You are taking this claim out of context without including this part of the claim. but the only evidence you've supplied is a claimed correlation. And the repetition of history. That's a lot of corolation. And you offer nothing to show that the claim is wrong. That's fallacious reasoning and all your handwaving won't change the fact. Wrong. See above. Scott Wheeler |
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Harry Lavo wrote:
"Stewart Pinkerton" wrote in message ... On 23 Apr 2005 15:01:25 GMT, "Harry Lavo" wrote: snip Case in point, I picked the top record off the group of RCA's I had out, which was Van Cliburn playing the Rachmaninoff 2nd Piano Concerto with Fritz Reinger and the Chicago Symphony orchestra. I recently picked this up as a $2 used record, but only played it once now that I also have the SACD release of this same recording. This is not the original, but a Dynagroove re-release on inferior, thin vinyl. Accordingly it is somewhat warped and especially vulnerable to vinyl resonance. So put it on the turntable (at this point a modest Dual 701 with Accuphase AC-2 MC cartridge, into a modified Marcoff PPA-2 headamp). Cleaned it, clamped it, synced the start with my Sony C222ES SACD machine...and listened through the whole piece, occassionally switching back and forth CD to Vinyl and back. The two where reasonable level matched and synched. Other than an occassional low-level pop (maybe one a minute) I'd be hard pressed to remember which I was listeing to. Plenty of sustained tones and no difference in wow and flutter. The record was showing plenty of warp, but the cartridge and arm were riding the groove with equanimity and no sign of "bounce". Interesting claim, since Dynagroove records are known to contain a lot of *deliberately* introduced distortion, which is at its worst with a line-contact stylus, as well as being notorious for the heavy-handed use of compression to lift 'low level' detail. You are correct, and as a result I went back and looked at the album cover, and I was wrong. The recoding is indeep the thin, warped vinyl. But it is labeled "Dynaflex" which is what RCA started calling them after they dropped the "pre-distortion" aspect of Dynaagroove (which was roundly criticized). Of course, to the uncritical listener there might be a passing resemblance to an SACD............... :-) As does any other high quality recording in which I have been able to make the comparison. My conclusion, if you really want to enjoy your records, make the time and effort to optimize your system...the annoyances of vinyl will be largely minimized and the sound quality may astound you. Indeed, it can sound very good, but it will never have the fidelity of CD. Maybe not on paper, but in reality with proper care it can. And it opens up a whole additional world of collecting...I know I've taken chances on $1.50 or 2.00 records that I never would have if they had been $15.00 CD's or SACD's. Not to mention the fact that my LP library with choice titles from the '60's and '70's is pretty damn large and hugely enjoyable. On the other hand, there is a distinct advantage in being able to go to the library and checking out CD's, knowing that the quality is going to be just as good as brand new discs unless they are damaged (which happens to a very small percentage of discs). This way, you can sample a lot of recordings before you have to spend money. To me, that truly opens up a whole additional world of collection. |
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wrote: Well the real bad reasoning is ignoring the fact that the medium was around for quite some time as a niche market product and did not dominate the market until such a time as it became convenient to play in the car and on portable players. This is not wholly correct. It is true that CD did not supplant cassettes as the top-selling medium until portable/mobile disk players became popular in the early to mid 90s, but CD "took off" long before then. Then how is it not wholly correct? It seems you are agreeing with my claim that CDs did not dominate the market until the availablity of portable players. In fact, CD's year-to-year growth rate was falling by the time it started really eating into cassette sales. But by the latter half of the 80s, CD was anything but a niche product. In 1989 (the earliest figures at www.riaa.org), CD had 28% of the long-playing market share by units shipped. In a three-competitor market, 28% is not a niche. In 1989 the medium had been around for six years and classical music on CDs had been around for as long. The Beatles had practically come and gone in that amount of time. Sorry, the bottom line is that Stewert's claim that classical musaic lovers' support of Cds was the catalyst for that medium's launch into the mass market just doesn't hold water. It was the portability that did the trick. By contrast, vinyl fell below 2% in 1991, and has never recovered. Ignoring single-year blips, it's basically flatlined at 600,000 units per annum for the last decade. That's a niche. (Not that there's anything wrong with being a niche!) I agree that LPs have been reduced to a niche market and will never be more than that ever again in all likelyhood. Cds are headed there as well. Convenience always wins the day in the mass market. I-Pods are the talk of the town. They are even more convenient. So long CDs. Scott Wheeler |
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Wrong again. this what Stewert actually said. "Heads up now, what really launched CD into the mass market was *classical* music listeners," To which I said he was wrong. CDs were "launched" into the mass market with the wide spead availablitity of portable CD players and car CD players. Not with the introduction of classical material on CDs Classical CDs were available for years before CDs were a successful "mass market" item. In which case you're both wrong. Classical fans aren't numerous enough to *launch* anything into the mass market (although they were among the first to recognize and trumpet CD's virtues). But CDs were definitely a mass-market item by the mid-to-late 80s. Portables and car units were rare before 1990. bob |
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I agree that LPs have been reduced to a niche market and will never be more than that ever again in all likelyhood. Cds are headed there as well. Convenience always wins the day in the mass market. I-Pods are the talk of the town. They are even more convenient. So long CDs. Yes, eventually, but given that there were 767 million CDs shipped in the US last year, they are a loooong way from a niche market. And a fair amount of what's stored on iPods these days was ripped from CDs. (Ever thought about what it would cost to fill a 40-gig iPod at 99 cents a pop song?) I predict that CDs in large quantity will be with us for some time yet. As a point of comparison, consumers purchased downloads equivalent to less than 20 million albums last year. They have a ways to go yet. bob |
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wrote: Wrong again. this what Stewert actually said. "Heads up now, what really launched CD into the mass market was *classical* music listeners," To which I said he was wrong. CDs were "launched" into the mass market with the wide spead availablitity of portable CD players and car CD players. Not with the introduction of classical material on CDs Classical CDs were available for years before CDs were a successful "mass market" item. In which case you're both wrong. Classical fans aren't numerous enough to *launch* anything into the mass market (although they were among the first to recognize and trumpet CD's virtues). OK we agree on the impact of classical music consumers on the mass market. But CDs were definitely a mass-market item by the mid-to-late 80s. I didn't say they weren't a "mass market item." Perhaps we are talking about two different definitions of "launch." This was what I was thinking. 1 a : to throw forward : HURL b : to release, catapult, or send off (a self-propelled object) launch a rocket . When portable players and car players became widely affordable CDs went from a distant second to a clear cut first in market share. That would be a catapult or throw forward in my book. Portables and car units were rare before 1990. bob |
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chung wrote: wrote: Chung wrote: wrote: Stewart Pinkerton wrote: On 19 Apr 2005 23:54:39 GMT, wrote: Stewart Pinkerton wrote: Heads up now, what really launched CD into the mass market was *classical* music listeners, i.e. people who live with live music. Stewert gets his facts wrong again. What really launched CD into the masss market was the availablity of portable CD players and car CD players. The classical music listeners are very much a niche market that barely impact the commercial scene over all. By the way, many classical music lovers do not spend much time with live music. This comes from a guy who has just attempted to tell someone who *owns* a grand piano, what sustained notes from it sound like...... What does Chungs inability to recognize that a sustained note from a live piano is not solifd but cmplex and constantly changing in tone? Does it make my true statement a false one? Where is your logic? Well, you choose to mis-interpret Chung's statement in a way that you could attack Chung's ability to listen. Despite the subsequent clarification by Chung. One would think that this is a display of your tendency to argue on semantics, and to burn the strawman. The statement that "many classical music lovers do not spend much time with live music" is patently false. Absolute balony. One need only look at concert ticket sales to see this. How can you see this by looking at concert sales? That is where classical music lover go for quality live music. Now we see the back-peddling to using the new term "quality live music". So now Mr. Wheeler's claim becomes "many classical music lovers do not spend time with *quality* live music"? Who are you to define what is quality live music for the rest of us? I attended a junior Bach festival the other night, and the performances were uniformly excellent. I am sure the attendance figures would never appear in any concert sales data. The pitch was rock solid in those sustained piano notes. I can definitely compare what I heard in that live performance to what is on CD's and on vinyl. No doubt you would argue that that was not "quality" live music. The last piano concert I attended was sold out two months in advance. That is good to hear but how many seats were there to begin with? Sure the numbers are smaller than rock concerts, but given that classical music lovers are also smaller in number, the percentage of those who attend concerts is still comparable to fans of other music taste. And why the fixation on concerts? Don't you know that people can spend time with live music by playing instruments, or attending recitals, or attending young musicians' performances, or simply listening to friends and relatives play? And, of course, there are many ways of "spending time with live music" without attending concerts. I can do that any time of the day, in my home. Not quite the same thing. That is truly baloney. You are simply in denial. Someone can be practicing on the piano 8 hours a day, and yet by your standards, never spends time with live music. Most classical music lovers I know of play instruments, attend concerts and recitals, and a lot them have children who play classical music. Well that is a sound scientific rebutal of my claim. Not. It is a lot more scientific that the other claim "many classical music lovers do not spend much time with live music". No it isn't. So what is your scientific proof? Can you provide figures for the percentage of classical music lovers who do not spend time with live music? That seems like a truly extraordinary claim, and you should provide some evidence. Although we shouldn't be holding our collective breath... Out of curiosity, do you consider the jazz music market a "niche market that barely impact the commercial scene overall"? Unfortunately, yes. Are you aware of the sales being done in the music industry? Not sure what you meant by "sales being done", although I am aware that there are sales in the industry . I have some access to sales figures, though. Do you? Sure. Now lets look at what percentage of over all music sales are from classical music. Hey we all know that classical music sales is not a big percentage of overall music sales. Neither is jazz. Unfortunately for Wheeler, he doesn't get to write history books, and the plain *facts* of the matter are that CD sales in the first two years were below predictions, until the word began to spread among classical music lovers that this new medium simply did not suffer from wow and flutter (which, contrary to Wheeler's bizarre opinion, are horribly destructive of solo piano music), and had such low background noise that all kinds of musical subtleties became noticeable, which had previously been swamped by surface noise. It was the classical market which dragged CD out of the red in the early years, and everyone but you is well aware of this - ask any record store owner who was in business in the '80s, or of course go straight to RIAA sales archives. Fortunately for audiophiles Pinkerton does not get to rewrite history. The *fact* is that CD sales took off exactly when portable CD players and car CD players became widely available at affordable prices. Fortunately for people who enjoy CDs the success of that medium was driven by somethging more than a niche market like classical music. Certainly portable players and car players helped to boost volumes, but note that they did not become widespread (especially car players), until well after CD was firmly established. Wrong. You are wrong, CD displaced vinyl several years before the widespread use of portable players and car players. Now you are ridiculously wrong. Lps were never displaced by CD in the first place. They were displaced by cassettes and for the very same reason. Portability and car play. Now you are wrong again. CD displacing vinyl means CD taking over the place of vinyl in sales. You seem to have trouble understanding what I said, again. The point is, of course, having displaced vinyl, CD was now "firmly established", before the widespread use of car and mobile CD players. Unless you want to argue that vinyl was never firmly established. It didn't displace vinyl regardless of how you try to re-word your claims. Vinyl was the top selling medium until Cassettes displaced it. Cds did eventually displace Cassttes after the portable CD players and car CD players became readily available and affordable. You have problem understanding a simple word like "displacing"? I never re-worded my claim. Check it out again. I said: "CD displaced vinyl several years before the widespread use of portable players and car players". What you said was rewording was simply my effort in trying to help you understand what "displacing" means. As early as 1989, CD's already outsold vinyl LP's by a ratio of 2.7 to 1. In 1989 Cd was still not the dominant medium for music consumption. Nice try. Funny, It had been on the market for six years by then. Funny, when it did become the dominant medium it was when car players and portable CD players did become common and affordable. The point is that it had solidly displaced vinyl's position in sales. Wonder why you found all this funny? Because of all the backpeddling. I agree that all the backpeddling can get funny. In 1989, portable and car CD players were not in widespread use. For home audio, CD became the dominant medium as early as in the mid-to-late 80's. Guess again. Actually dont guess, just look at sales. Been there, done that, have you? Yes, that is why I am making the claims that you are reading here. You mean like your claim that CD's were a niche item before the car and portable players became popular? Perhaps it's time for you to supply us a definition of "niche"? Your only claim that holds is that CD's did not overtake cassettes as the number one medium in terms of unit sales until mid-90's. But have you noticed that we are not arguing with you on that? Your other claims like (a) CD's did not get launched until mobile/car players are popular, or (b)many classical music lovers do not spend much time with live music, are simply figments of your imagination. Or really poor choice of words. BTW, CD's entered the market in 1983, and already 53 millions CD's were sold annually in 1986. By any reasonable definition, CD's have been "launched" and were "firmly established" several years before widespread use of mobile/car players. Of course, for mobile audio, CD did not replace cassette until mobile CD players became popular in the mid-90's. Sorry Stewert. You don't know what people were doing with their cassettes. We can look at sales. Sales support my claim not yours. Sorry Stewart for having Mr Wheeler feel sorry for you . Wouldn't you call a medium that outsold vinyl LP 2.7 to 1 "firmly established"? Seems you are now trying to change the subject. Just to make sure you understand, when Stewart said that portable and car players did not get widespread use until after the CD was firmly established, you said he was wrong. Wrong again. this what Stewert actually said. "Heads up now, what really launched CD into the mass market was *classical* music listeners," To which I said he was wrong. CDs were "launched" into the mass market with the wide spead availablitity of portable CD players and car CD players. Not with the introduction of classical material on CDs Classical CDs were available for years before CDs were a successful "mass market" item. Please pay attention now. Stewart said "Certainly portable players and car players helped to boost volumes, but note that they did not become widespread (especially car players), until well after CD was firmly established." To which you replied: "Wrong". Just read up a couple of posts back. You were clearly wrong, because CD's were firmly established before portable players and car players were in widespread use. My question was not to change the subject, but to ask you if outselling vinyl 2.7 to 1 mean that CD was firmly established. Once you and Stewert started talking about "firmly established," whatever you guys want that to mean, you changed the subject. But you still said "Wrong"! Was that some sort of reflex action? The subject was the launch into the mass market. Hey our local burger joint has been in business for 50 years. I think that makes it "firmly established." It has never been launched into the mass market. Apples and oranges. Now you are arguing with yourself... If the answer is yes, then clearly you were wrong when you said Steware was wrong. Got that? The question has no meaning since I never said no to the claim of "firmly established." Got that? Please re-read what you wrote. Scott Wheeler |
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Steven Sullivan wrote: wrote: Ban wrote: wrote: Of course not. You believe they all sound the same don't you? Does anybody believe all turntable rigs sound the same? Well, the crackles and the distortion sound similar, but of course each catridge has its own colour, which is superimposed on the music, much like a loudspeaker. Then some have more hum than others, and some are better isolated from vibrations. Scott, a simple test can be done: Record your favourite music from the rig to CD. Now start the turntable and play the record and when the sound arrives, start the CD player. listen with the headphone to the CD and synchronize the vinyl by slowing the platter with your hand. Now turn down the volume, switch the preamp over and turn up the volume to the same loudness. (It will be good to mark the 2 settings with a chalk pen). Have a friend or your wife switch without your knowledge. Now try to identify the real turntable. Can you do that? I have done comparisons of CDs ripped form my turntable and direct feed from my turntable. I have no problem hearing differences. Unless you have done them badly: baloney. 1. How does one do them badly without clipping the signal? That's one way. Using a preamp stage that introduces audible distortion would be another. Using a very poor A/D converter would be another. Using a rig that is not shielded from computer noise is yet another. These are all unlikely for anyone competent at doing A/D transfer, but I wanted to at least allow the possibility. 2. How do you know my claim is balony? Were you there? I don't think so. How do I know a perpetual motion machine doesn't work as claimed? I don't need to be there. There's no voodoo involved, nor is it a purely subjective claim. You assert you have 'no problem' telling a digital transfer of an LP from its source. I assert that *if* you hear such a difference -- and that assumes you did the comparison using good level matching and blind controls and a statistically robust number of trials , of course -- then there was something wrong with the transfer. It also assumes that new pops and clicks were not introduced onto the LP after the tranfer, which would of course allow for its identification. Because otherwise there's no scientific reason why a 16/44.1 digital transfer would not completely and accurately capture the information from something as bandwidth- and resolution-limited as an LP. Even MP3 is much more difficult to identify than vinyl, I wonder why? You have trouble hearing the colorations of MP3? You can't make an MP3 that's audibly indistinguishable from source? Yeah. You can't? No, I *can* make an MP3 that you will not be able to distinguish from its source. -- -S It's not my business to do intelligent work. -- D. Rumsfeld, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee |
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Chung wrote:
On the other hand, there is a distinct advantage in being able to go to the library and checking out CD's, knowing that the quality is going to be just as good as brand new discs unless they are damaged (which happens to a very small percentage of discs). This way, you can sample a lot of recordings before you have to spend money. To me, that truly opens up a whole additional world of collection. And even the damaged ones can often be repaired back to 'like new' sound. -- -S It's not my business to do intelligent work. -- D. Rumsfeld, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee |
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wrote: By contrast, vinyl fell below 2% in 1991, and has never recovered. Ignoring single-year blips, it's basically flatlined at 600,000 units per annum for the last decade. Pardon me. I was reading a chart of market share, not units. That last sentence should read, "...flatlined at 0.6% of units shipped for the last decade." BTW, the 2004 RIAA figures came out earlier this month. Overall sales were up for the first time since '99, with CD unit sales up about 3% over 2003. By contrast, vinyl was down 12% from 2003, DVD-A down 21%, and SACD down 40%. "Niche market" may now be an overstatement. bob One thing I am trying to find out is whether those figures are USA only, or worldwide. According to this website: http://www.oneoffcd.com/info/historycd.cfm there is a pretty big difference between US sales and worldwide sales. For instance, in 1990, worldwide sale of CD's was close to a billion units, whereas the US sales was *only* 288 million units. Here is a very interesting 5-part "Sony History" on the CD: http://www.sony.net/Fun/SH/1-20/h5.html Make sure you read all 5. BTW, on the second paragraph: "on October 1, 1982, Sony launched the CDP-101". I think it is pretty clear what we all meant by "launch" . An interesting piece of trivia, CBS/Sony launched the world's 50 CD titles, and the very first one was "52nd Street" by Billy Joel. Another piece, according to Sony, it was Mr. Ohga of Sony, a trained musician, who pushed for the 75 minute, 12-cm disc, because it needed to be big enough to fit Beethoven's 9th Symphony. I had heard that it was conductor Von Karajan who stated that requirement. |
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wrote in message ...
wrote: By contrast, vinyl fell below 2% in 1991, and has never recovered. Ignoring single-year blips, it's basically flatlined at 600,000 units per annum for the last decade. Pardon me. I was reading a chart of market share, not units. That last sentence should read, "...flatlined at 0.6% of units shipped for the last decade." BTW, the 2004 RIAA figures came out earlier this month. Overall sales were up for the first time since '99, with CD unit sales up about 3% over 2003. By contrast, vinyl was down 12% from 2003, DVD-A down 21%, and SACD down 40%. "Niche market" may now be an overstatement. I wonder about the SACD numbers. If there was a substantial movement from SACD-only to dual layer SACD, that might explain the large drop. Dual-layer discs are usually classified as CDs, rather than SACDs, n'est-ce pas? Norm Strong |
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Chung wrote:
wrote: BTW, the 2004 RIAA figures came out earlier this month. Overall sales were up for the first time since '99, with CD unit sales up about 3% over 2003. By contrast, vinyl was down 12% from 2003, DVD-A down 21%, and SACD down 40%. "Niche market" may now be an overstatement. bob One thing I am trying to find out is whether those figures are USA only, or worldwide. According to this website: According to my source (This Week in Consumer Electronics, 4/4/05), those are US-only figures. bob |
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wrote:
wrote in message ... BTW, the 2004 RIAA figures came out earlier this month. Overall sales were up for the first time since '99, with CD unit sales up about 3% over 2003. By contrast, vinyl was down 12% from 2003, DVD-A down 21%, and SACD down 40%. "Niche market" may now be an overstatement. I wonder about the SACD numbers. If there was a substantial movement from SACD-only to dual layer SACD, that might explain the large drop. Dual-layer discs are usually classified as CDs, rather than SACDs, n'est-ce pas? Good catch. From the report I saw: "In the first half, DVD-Audio sales were up while SACD sales were down, and Sony attributed that at least in part to music labels that coded hybrid CD/SACD discs of big releases as CDs to get the disks in the CD section of music retailers." Of course, it's highly likely that almost no one who bought the hybrids knew or cared that they were SACDs, but there's no way to know for sure. bob |
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wrote in message
... wrote in message ... wrote: By contrast, vinyl fell below 2% in 1991, and has never recovered. Ignoring single-year blips, it's basically flatlined at 600,000 units per annum for the last decade. Pardon me. I was reading a chart of market share, not units. That last sentence should read, "...flatlined at 0.6% of units shipped for the last decade." BTW, the 2004 RIAA figures came out earlier this month. Overall sales were up for the first time since '99, with CD unit sales up about 3% over 2003. By contrast, vinyl was down 12% from 2003, DVD-A down 21%, and SACD down 40%. "Niche market" may now be an overstatement. I wonder about the SACD numbers. If there was a substantial movement from SACD-only to dual layer SACD, that might explain the large drop. Dual-layer discs are usually classified as CDs, rather than SACDs, n'est-ce pas? An equally large question is whether or not the RIAA numbers include internet sales, or simply just bricks-and-mortar retailers. I've heard rumours of the latter; I do not know the answer. Do any of you have that info? |
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wrote in message ...
wrote: wrote in message ... BTW, the 2004 RIAA figures came out earlier this month. Overall sales were up for the first time since '99, with CD unit sales up about 3% over 2003. By contrast, vinyl was down 12% from 2003, DVD-A down 21%, and SACD down 40%. "Niche market" may now be an overstatement. I wonder about the SACD numbers. If there was a substantial movement from SACD-only to dual layer SACD, that might explain the large drop. Dual-layer discs are usually classified as CDs, rather than SACDs, n'est-ce pas? Good catch. From the report I saw: "In the first half, DVD-Audio sales were up while SACD sales were down, and Sony attributed that at least in part to music labels that coded hybrid CD/SACD discs of big releases as CDs to get the disks in the CD section of music retailers." Of course, it's highly likely that almost no one who bought the hybrids knew or cared that they were SACDs, but there's no way to know for sure. bob That may be true for some folk, but certainly the SACD enthusiasts knew they were SACD's and bought them largely because of that. |
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Chung wrote:
An interesting piece of trivia, CBS/Sony launched the world's 50 CD titles, and the very first one was "52nd Street" by Billy Joel. Another piece, according to Sony, it was Mr. Ohga of Sony, a trained musician, who pushed for the 75 minute, 12-cm disc, because it needed to be big enough to fit Beethoven's 9th Symphony. I had heard that it was conductor Von Karajan who stated that requirement. I'd always heard it was the Sony exec, but I've also read that the story is apocryphal. It is true, though, that the 9th holds (or held, back then) a special place of reverence among Japanese music consumers...I recall reading an article about the almost fetishistic worship of the piece there, a long time ago. -- -S It's not my business to do intelligent work. -- D. Rumsfeld, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee |
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wrote: By contrast, vinyl fell below 2% in 1991, and has never recovered. Ignoring single-year blips, it's basically flatlined at 600,000 units per annum for the last decade. Pardon me. I was reading a chart of market share, not units. That last sentence should read, "...flatlined at 0.6% of units shipped for the last decade." Here's a spreadsheet that is informational: http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/...arEndStats.pdf In 2004, the US sales of CD totalled 766.9 million units, while LP/EP's totalled 1.3 million units. So the vinyl LP/EP total is only about 0.17% of CD. And no doubt a significant percentage (perhaps even the majority) of vinyl sales goes to the DJ/club market. The 0.6% is probably the sum of LP/EP and vinyl singles, the latter accounting for 73% of total vinyl unit sales. In the US, cost per unit is rather high: both CD and vinyl LP/EP costs close to $15 per unit, while SACD costs $21 per unit. I can't find the worldwide numbers, but in 2000, US accounts for 38% of total CD sales. Assuming the same percentage, the worldwide CD sales would then be 2 billion units. I can't find any data on the US percentage of total worldwide vinyl sales either. BTW, the 2004 RIAA figures came out earlier this month. Overall sales were up for the first time since '99, with CD unit sales up about 3% over 2003. By contrast, vinyl was down 12% from 2003, DVD-A down 21%, and SACD down 40%. "Niche market" may now be an overstatement. bob |
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On 25 Apr 2005 23:29:29 GMT, wrote:
wrote in message ... wrote: By contrast, vinyl fell below 2% in 1991, and has never recovered. Ignoring single-year blips, it's basically flatlined at 600,000 units per annum for the last decade. Pardon me. I was reading a chart of market share, not units. That last sentence should read, "...flatlined at 0.6% of units shipped for the last decade." BTW, the 2004 RIAA figures came out earlier this month. Overall sales were up for the first time since '99, with CD unit sales up about 3% over 2003. By contrast, vinyl was down 12% from 2003, DVD-A down 21%, and SACD down 40%. "Niche market" may now be an overstatement. I wonder about the SACD numbers. If there was a substantial movement from SACD-only to dual layer SACD, that might explain the large drop. Dual-layer discs are usually classified as CDs, rather than SACDs, n'est-ce pas? They're classified as SACD, and this is a rerun of Betamax and Elcaset. Unfortunately, DVD-A looks likely to suffer the same fate, due to widespread audience satisfaction with DD/DTS on DVD-V. -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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Harry Lavo wrote:
wrote in message ... wrote in message ... wrote: By contrast, vinyl fell below 2% in 1991, and has never recovered. Ignoring single-year blips, it's basically flatlined at 600,000 units per annum for the last decade. Pardon me. I was reading a chart of market share, not units. That last sentence should read, "...flatlined at 0.6% of units shipped for the last decade." BTW, the 2004 RIAA figures came out earlier this month. Overall sales were up for the first time since '99, with CD unit sales up about 3% over 2003. By contrast, vinyl was down 12% from 2003, DVD-A down 21%, and SACD down 40%. "Niche market" may now be an overstatement. I wonder about the SACD numbers. If there was a substantial movement from SACD-only to dual layer SACD, that might explain the large drop. Dual-layer discs are usually classified as CDs, rather than SACDs, n'est-ce pas? An equally large question is whether or not the RIAA numbers include internet sales, or simply just bricks-and-mortar retailers. I've heard rumours of the latter; I do not know the answer. Do any of you have that info? I'd really be surprised if they skipped e-tailers, esp. since this report also lists download sales. They might miss the smallest sites--just as they miss the smallest stores, which I believe they have to extrapolate for. But the thing about the small places is that, well, they're small. Even if they're pumping out a disproportionate share of a certain format, they aren't going to change the numbers much in a $12 billion market. And as far as trends are concerned, RIAA probably missed the same places last year. bob |
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wrote in message ...
Harry Lavo wrote: wrote in message ... wrote in message ... wrote: By contrast, vinyl fell below 2% in 1991, and has never recovered. Ignoring single-year blips, it's basically flatlined at 600,000 units per annum for the last decade. Pardon me. I was reading a chart of market share, not units. That last sentence should read, "...flatlined at 0.6% of units shipped for the last decade." BTW, the 2004 RIAA figures came out earlier this month. Overall sales were up for the first time since '99, with CD unit sales up about 3% over 2003. By contrast, vinyl was down 12% from 2003, DVD-A down 21%, and SACD down 40%. "Niche market" may now be an overstatement. I wonder about the SACD numbers. If there was a substantial movement from SACD-only to dual layer SACD, that might explain the large drop. Dual-layer discs are usually classified as CDs, rather than SACDs, n'est-ce pas? An equally large question is whether or not the RIAA numbers include internet sales, or simply just bricks-and-mortar retailers. I've heard rumours of the latter; I do not know the answer. Do any of you have that info? I'd really be surprised if they skipped e-tailers, esp. since this report also lists download sales. They might miss the smallest sites--just as they miss the smallest stores, which I believe they have to extrapolate for. But the thing about the small places is that, well, they're small. Even if they're pumping out a disproportionate share of a certain format, they aren't going to change the numbers much in a $12 billion market. And as far as trends are concerned, RIAA probably missed the same places last year. Yes, but they would have picked up Best Buy and Circuit City closing down/shrinking their high-res sections, but might not pick up the migration of those purchases to the internet. |
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chung wrote:
wrote: Chung wrote: snip Well, I attended a piano recital by the rising star Yundi Li last week. And throughout the recital, I kept thinking how close my CD rig sounds to the live piano I was hearing. You know, the solid sustained notes, Solid sustained notes? I've certainly heard this on numerous CDs of piano but never on a live piano. This is one of the most easily identifiable shortcomings one can hear on most CDs. A sustained note on a real piano is anything but solid. Well, I have a grand piano, and the sustained notes are solid. Perhaps you are too used to vinyl? No. It is not natural for any real paino to have solid sustained notes. The decay of a note from a live piano is anything but solid. Perhaps you were confused when I said solid sustained notes. I don't think so. Perhaps you didn't mean what you said. As another poster once said, how could you possibly argue with me about what I meant when I said it? I cannot argue with what you "meant." It does appear that it is in conflict with what you "said." What you "said" is in print and the meaning of the words are clear and not yours to manipulate. I even offered dictionary meanings of some words. If you wish to comunicate with any success you cannot change the meaning of those words. If by the dictionary meanings of the word solid you wish to stand by your claim that "sustained notes" from a piano are "solid" go right ahead. I find them to be anything but solid in character. Now as far as your revised claim,that the "frequencies" are solid (of course one wouldn't need to revise a claim if they "said" what they "meant" in the first place) I think your claim still stands on ahakt ground. You may "know" that those frequencies don't change but the perception of "tone" from the combination of those "frequecies" decaying differently does change. I suspect you are claiming to hear what you already know is there. Solid does have a pretty well known definition. (2) : joined without a hyphen a solid compound c : not interrupted by a break or opening a solid wall 3 a : of uniformly close and coherent texture : not loose or spongy : COMPACT b : possessing or characterized by the properties of a solid : neither gaseous nor liquid . I clarified what I meant when I said solid sustained notes already, so you are simply trying to argue semantics. No. I am also agruing perception. The tone of a piano due to the complex decay of the many overtones is hardly "solid" in tone. You may claim to be hearing the individual overtones sounding solid but I am skeptical of that claim. The "tone" of a sustained paino note is constantly changing as it decays. Just so we don't go down the road of misunderstanding this is the dictionary meaning of "tone" I am using in this post. 1 : vocal or musical sound of a specific quality spoke in low tones masculine tones; especially : musical sound with respect to timbre and manner of expression I meant the frequency of the notes, and not amplitude. I thought it was obvious from the context, but I guess one never knows. Well there are several different overtones coming from a sustained note from a piano, Their decay patterns are each different which creates a sound that is constantly changing in tone, location and volume. By the above definitions how does one find such a character of decay solid? IMO the decay of a sustained note of a piano is quite the opposite of the above cited definitions of solid. I thought I said the frequencies already, but perhaps you were too busy caught up in your own thoughts? Perhaps you were. The tone of a piano is the combination of all the frequecies of sound coming from it at any given moment. Perhaps you were so caught up in your thoughts to chose not to answer my question. So, it is perfectly natural for a real piano to have solid sustained notes in terms of frequency stability. Now, do you still want to argue that it's not the case? Yes. You are now changing your claim and yet it still doesn't hold water in terms of human perception. I never changed my claim. It's only for your edification that I provided the clarification. Sorry but you don't get to determine the meaning of words. Your claims were clearly different. One was far more global than the other. You either meant what you said the first time and changed it the second time or you didn't mean what you siad the first time. you take issue with both but it is an either or situation. Other posters don't seem to have any trouble understanding... A group of people that are IMO highly biased in their support of some posters and dismisal of other posters. If one listens to a sustained note on a piano it does not *sound the same in tone* as it decays. Now if one were to take a test tone or a combination of test tones and dim the level at a constant rate in time you would have what I would call a solid sounding sustained note. That is nothing like what one hears from a live piano. It does acurately describe the sound of a sustained note on any number of CDs I have listened to. I suggest you either (a) listen to live pianos, I suggest you pay more attention to the content of my posts if you are going to respond to them in any meaningful way. I have told you in no uncertain terms that I do listen to live pianos. and (b) get good CD's, preferably good digital recordings. See above. It seems rather obvious that you have been preconditioned to the vinyl sound, and the CD sound somehow does not sound right to you. You couldn't be more wrong. Maybe you should check your own biases at the door next time. Maybe you would say the same of the original poster of this thread? You know, the one that conducts live music. You think there are some magical process in CD's that stabilize those "real-life" wavering notes? No. Simplifying a a complex signal is not magic. Taking out the frequency variations (which caused the wavering of the pitch) is almost magic... No it's not. Well, why don't you provide some examples of technologies that take out frequency variations in recorded sound? Are you serious? You think pitch vannot be manipulated after a recording has been layed down? Now, do you think the CD is capable of removing frequency instability? I think it is possible to get CDs in which this has happened. I don't think it is magical or desireable. Examples of CD's removing any frequency variations from the original please? What you think really is not that important, is it? I suggest you reread what I wrote. I never said Cds did anytyhing of the sort. I guess you feel that no one can manipulate pitch before a final CD is burned. Hey, there will certainly be fame and riches for you if you could figure out how... No. Just lower the resolution of any signal and ou will loose information. I'm surprised you didn't know this already. If you can lower the resolution and hence remove the frequency instability, there will certainly be fame and riches for you. Really? It's that difficult to lower the resolution of a live piano in the recording and playback proccess? I think you are quite mistaken here. Any telephone will do the trick quite nicely. No fame or riches for me. Loss of resolution has been with us all along. Can a telephone remove the frequency variations in sound? Now you are being seriously technically challenged. No you are just stuck on this one. If you loose harmonic information of an instrument like a piano that has many overtones you loose the accurate senseation of pitch. If you loose that accuracy then the perception of pitch can change. There is no magic involved. Now if you think the percieved pitch of a sustained paino note will sound the same over a phone as it does live..... the great dynamic range, and so on. There was no way the LP can reproduce that piano sound without very noticeable degradation. There is no way any recording/playback system can reproduce a live piano without very noticable degradation. I doubt your system CD player and all are really any exception. The degradations from a CD are much less than those from vinyl. In fact, I have piano recital CD's that sound very close to the real thing. Again. I am quite skeptical of such claims. There is nothing like listening, I guess. An odd guess. It seems you arte assuming that I am not listening to CDs of piano recordings. I suggest you listen more carefully if you really believe sustained piano notes sound "solid." That was an obviously educated guess, No it was an obivously biased guess and it was totally worng. Get past it please. based on your descriptions of how the piano sounds worse than on vinyl. Where did I ever say any such thing? Can you not argue your point without inventing such ridiculous claims about the content of my posts? The other guess is that you simply have not listened to good CD recordings. Yet another bad guess that appears to be based on biases rather than actual attention payed to the content of my posts. Try recording the output of the phono stage onto CD's. Voila, all the magical "complex" signals that you claim can only be heard on vinyl are preserved! Been there, done that. Didn't seem to happen so well. Well, it does take some competence to do this right. Certainly not a given that everyone is capable of transcribing to CD's, but it is definitely not difficult to do either. I didn't have any trouble. Thank you for the concern. But, if you cannot hear the complexity of the decay of a sustained note on a real live piano maybe you simply aren't picking up on the substantial differences between a live piano and the recording and playback of a live piano. So you are saying that you cannot observe the complex amplitude decay of piano music on CD's? I am saying that IME it is often reduced or lost on CDs. Your experience is simply, shall we say, unusual? Hardly. If you want to pretend no one has had any issues with the sound of many many CDs that is fine. It isn't the truth but whatever. Here is a good one for you to try out: Emil Gilel's Beethoven Sonata #8 (Pathetique) on DG 400036-2. This is an early 1980 digital recording. You can easily find it at the local library. Check out track 1. Listen to the solid frequency stability of the big chords. See if that sounds like a real piano in your experience. I'll keep an eye out for it. I don't have high expectations though. I have heard nothing but awful sound from that label in that era. That particular record is very highly regarded. Don't take my word for it, check out the reviews. OK but can you tall me how it compares, IYO, to the sound of paino recordings from Wilson Audio, Reference Recordings (Nojima records come to mind) Performance Recordings or even Waterlily? I would rank those as amoung the best recordings of piano in terms of life like sound quality IME. That was a reminder of why I like digital so much. As someone who owns a grand piano, I can say without any doubt that the CD sounds so much better than vinyl on piano music. Opinions abound. The person who started this thread clearly disagrees. It seems she does speak from considerable experience with live music. That's my point, in case you missed it. Opinions abound. and I speak with considerable experience from listening to a live piano. And yet you think the decay of a sustained note is solid. I'm afraid that there is more to it than just experience. The frequency is solid. The tone is not. That is what we percieve. Your definition of tone may not be conventional. It comes from the dictionary. 1 : vocal or musical sound of a specific quality spoke in low tones masculine tones; especially : musical sound with respect to timbre and manner of expression If you find the number one dictionary defintion "unconventional" that in and of itself may be unconventional. Not sure what solid decay means, since I never used that term... You said sustained notes. They decay as they are sustained. decay:2 : to decrease gradually in quantity, activity, or force Since I did not use that term, not sure why you bother defining it for me... You did not use the term "sustained notes?" I beg to differ. Are you claiming that sustained notes from a paino do not decay? I beg to differ again. So whether or not *you* used that term or not is irrelevent. "Sustained piano notes" do "decay" and I can talk about the "decay" of a "sustianed piano note" and be on topic whether *you* used that term or not. In fact, I just did. And to the OP, someone *could* have said "But you have not heard a decent CD rig and decently recorded CD's!" But of course, we won't resort to that. Of course not. You believe they all sound the same don't you? Does anybody believe all turntable rigs sound the same? No, some CD rigs sound bad because of poor speakers. And then there are poorly recorded/mastered CD's. Of course, the competent CD players sound very similar, but you know that. I don't know that. I know some people believe that and some believe otherwise. I have not spent much time c0omparing CD players myself. BTW, none of Yundi Li's music is available on vinyl. Only on CD's. Only CD? Can't get it on MP3? You can make mp3's out of CD's, of course. What exactly is your point, or do you have one? That it can be had on more than just CD. Wasn't it obvious? It is a rather, shall we say, pointless point then. No. You can of course make cassette tapes, MD tapes out of the CD. You can also legaly down load music on line in the form of MP3s. It is a different medium in which commercial music can be aquired and used. You still are either totally missing the point, or simply want to argue for the sake of arguing. How can *I* be missing the point? I was the one making a point there. To make it clear for you, his music is only mastered for CD release, not for other format The mp3's are simply compressed versions of the CD. That could not be any more irelevent to the point *I* made which is that it is commercially available on more than just the CD format. I guess according to your logic, when someone releases a movie on DVD, it is simultaneously released in divx, mpeg4, vcd, realmedia, windows media formats already. In some cases they are released on vcd. Most of those others would be pirate copies. I am not talking about pirated copies but legal releases on various formats. To make it easier for you to grasp, Yundi Li's music is not released in vinyl. So is a lot of new classical music. I guess *you* didn't get *my* point. If it was the rather pointless point, it really does not matter. Oh, you are the arbitrator of what matters and does not matter? Guess again. Scott Wheeler |
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wrote:
wrote: wrote: wrote: Wrong again. this what Stewert actually said. "Heads up now, what really launched CD into the mass market was *classical* music listeners," To which I said he was wrong. CDs were "launched" into the mass market with the wide spead availablitity of portable CD players and car CD players. Not with the introduction of classical material on CDs Classical CDs were available for years before CDs were a successful "mass market" item. In which case you're both wrong. Classical fans aren't numerous enough to *launch* anything into the mass market (although they were among the first to recognize and trumpet CD's virtues). OK we agree on the impact of classical music consumers on the mass market. But CDs were definitely a mass-market item by the mid-to-late 80s. I didn't say they weren't a "mass market item." Ah, so you mean they were "launched into the mass market" they were already in. Yes, that makes perfect sense. Perhaps we are talking about two different definitions of "launch." This was what I was thinking. 1 a : to throw forward : HURL b : to release, catapult, or send off (a self-propelled object) launch a rocket . When portable players and car players became widely affordable CDs went from a distant second to a clear cut first in market share. That would be a catapult or throw forward in my book. I wouldn't use the word "launch" to describe something that was already in motion--and starting to slow down. It was hardly starting to slow down. CD consumption grew tremenduosly after that time. Scott Wheeler |
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This part of the thread has certainly degraded to arguing semantics:
what you think I meant and what I think you meant and so on. So we just have to agree on the differences: I believe that the CD is much more capable of reproducing live music, especially sustained notes from piano solos for instance, where any slight wavering in frequencies can be readily detected. Mr. Wheeler thinks that it is one of the easily detectible shortfalls of the CD that piano notes do not sound natural to him. |
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Theporkygeo... :You may
claim to be hearing the individual overtones sounding solid but I am skeptical of that claim. The "tone" of a sustained paino note is constantly changing as it decays. This is very true, as it is for any sound. In addition, the issue of timbre is major in the perception of music. Two voilinists sitting next to each other will often be perceived to be out of tune, when in fact they are actually "out of tone" due to instrument quality differences, different bows, even different bow HAIR. The room the music is played in also is a major factor, as everyone knows. I've heard the same ensemble play in Carnegie, the Eastman Theater, and a typical 500 college theater. Obviously, the music sounds DIFFERENT, but it's more subtle than that. The difference in timbre in, say, a Bach trumpet played in those three venues causes it to sometimes sound to the less experienced listener as "out of tune" when it's really not. As for piano, in a good hall, the tone doesn't really sound "solid" at all, in my interpretation of that word. The attacks generally aren't as "sharp" and in what are regarded as the best halls, the lower frequences of the instrument ring far longer than the highs. This is one way that the music sounds "warmer". |
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Jenn wrote:
Theporkygeo... :You may claim to be hearing the individual overtones sounding solid but I am skeptical of that claim. The "tone" of a sustained paino note is constantly changing as it decays. This is very true, as it is for any sound. In addition, the issue of timbre is major in the perception of music. Two voilinists sitting next to each other will often be perceived to be out of tune, when in fact they are actually "out of tone" due to instrument quality differences, different bows, even different bow HAIR. The room the music is played in also is a major factor, as everyone knows. I've heard the same ensemble play in Carnegie, the Eastman Theater, and a typical 500 college theater. Obviously, the music sounds DIFFERENT, but it's more subtle than that. The difference in timbre in, say, a Bach trumpet played in those three venues causes it to sometimes sound to the less experienced listener as "out of tune" when it's really not. As for piano, in a good hall, the tone doesn't really sound "solid" at all, in my interpretation of that word. The attacks generally aren't as "sharp" and in what are regarded as the best halls, the lower frequences of the instrument ring far longer than the highs. This is one way that the music sounds "warmer". And somehow the CD fails to capture that, and the vinyl format, with its much higher likelihood of adding wow-and-flutter, plus noise, does it better? DO you agree that the sustained piano notes should be solid in frequency? |
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Chung: And somehow the CD fails to capture that, and the vinyl
format, with its much higher likelihood of adding wow-and-flutter, plus noise, does it better? Do MOST CDs played on MOST players fail to capture the "warm" sound that I hear live in decent halls in my view? In my experience, yes. Are there good sounding CDs and good sounding CD players in my view? Yes, certainly. I'm speaking here about what I hear on average. And, to my ears, the best sounding CDs tend to be those that have an analogue original source, on average. I've heard really good DDD discs as well. DO you agree that the sustained piano notes should be solid in frequency? Yes. And, I have to admit that I don't listen to piano recordings nearly as much as I do to wind music and string music. I don't recal ever being put off by variation in pitch while listening to piano recordings. And in my listening to string and wind recordings, I may not notice it because virtually all of those instruments are played using vibrato. Or maybe the w&f are below the level where it bothers me; I don't know. Based on what I do for a living though, I'm fairly sensitive to pitch differences. |
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