Sony plans to make vinyl records again • Hacker News Board

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#201

Post by Mediterraneo10 » Fri, Jun 30, 2017, 5:35 PM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #98

eterm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why buy vinyl instead of buying CDs? I understand your point about listening to a whole album being preferable to singles, I feel the same way but I'd still much rather listen to a CD than an LP.

The problems I have with CD's that I don't with Vinyl: - CD's scratch and then skip easily - CD's come in horrible plastic covers that break if you look at them wrong. - Skipping to a certain part of a song is much more difficult with CD's. - The benefits vinyl provides (large artwork and liner notes/ lyrics, posters etc.) don't all apply to CD's and at that point there's not much/any benefit CD's have over digital.

> Skipping to a certain part of a song is much more difficult with CD's.

Why would you even play the CD? Just rip it once to your media center in a lossless format, and then put it back on the shelf and never touch it again unless you suffer a hard drive failure with no backup. On a media center, it is easy to skip to whatever part of the song you want. Plus, if you don't open the CD's jewel case again after that initial rip, then you won't have to worry about the jewel case breaking through mishandling.

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#202

Post by edmccard » Fri, Jun 30, 2017, 5:37 PM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #164

Symbiote wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first CD player I used, which my parents bought in about 1988, showed the current time when you held down the "Fast Forward" button. I don't think I've ever owned one that didn't do this. Nowadays, a good professional CD player (or DJ equipment) will have something like an infinite-turn knob, which you can use to seek.

Hmmm maybe I'm just remembering wrong then. It's been a long time since I had a dedicated CD player.

>maybe I'm just remembering wrong then.

Nope; many CD players, like the first one I got in 1986, had only a two-digit led display for the track number -- there was no time display at all.

EDIT: It was a Fisher Studio Standard that looked like this, so I guess it did show an "index number" while scanning through a track.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/J08NITOv2FA/hqdefault.jpg

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#203

Post by gorkonsine » Fri, Jun 30, 2017, 5:38 PM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #98

eterm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why buy vinyl instead of buying CDs? I understand your point about listening to a whole album being preferable to singles, I feel the same way but I'd still much rather listen to a CD than an LP.

The problems I have with CD's that I don't with Vinyl: - CD's scratch and then skip easily - CD's come in horrible plastic covers that break if you look at them wrong. - Skipping to a certain part of a song is much more difficult with CD's. - The benefits vinyl provides (large artwork and liner notes/ lyrics, posters etc.) don't all apply to CD's and at that point there's not much/any benefit CD's have over digital.

>- CD's scratch and then skip easily

Only if you mishandle and abuse them. Doing that to vinyl records is going to make them sound lousy too. Both of them are fairly delicate.

>- CD's come in horrible plastic covers that break if you look at them wrong.

Those jewel boxes are easily replaced, because most of them are standard (the exceptions are weird ones, like the double-CD ones). The plastic boxes keep the booklets and artwork in pristine condition. On vinyl records, there's no plastic, only paper/cardboard, so the more you handle it, the more worn-down and beat-up it gets. There's no way to keep it mint-looking without simply never opening or handling it. With CDs, as long as you're careful handling them, they'll stay mint-looking indefinitely (as long as they aren't those stupid "recyclable" ones that are mostly cardboard without the jewel boxes).

The only advantage LPs have is that there's physically more space for artwork/notes. But that's not a big problem; in the CDs, it's just shrunk down to 1/4 its LP size. Get some reading glasses if you have problems seeing that.

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#204

Post by mark-r » Fri, Jun 30, 2017, 5:41 PM UTC

torrent-of-ions wrote: post #58

gjem97 wrote: post #41

It always makes me cringe when people say that records "sound better". Here's my unsolicited theory on why vinyl was preferred (by some) to CDs in the 90s and 00s. It wasn't the form factor, it was the dynamic range of the masters. I don't know if it was caused by the advent of digital recording, but the loudness war [1] certainly got going around the time that CDs were becoming popular. So comparing a classic vinyl…

They actually did sound better during the very early days of CDs. Consumer DACs were terrible in the 80s. But these days that isn't a problem. CDs can sound great, but they will also happily carry all kinds of non-harmonic distortion which many people find disagreeable. The loudness war is an issue, but it isn't widely understood.

I remember the first time a CD player came to our area, the stereo store had a big showing. I was wondering why they had picked such a harsh system for the demo, but I found out later it was the CD player itself that didn't sound good.

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#205

Post by gorkonsine » Fri, Jun 30, 2017, 5:42 PM UTC

afandian wrote: post #38

If you think this direction is bizarre, consider the 'cutting edge'. In the 21st century my 'CD player' (Spotify) is tracking everything I listen to so they can sell the data to a company who will build a comprehensive psychological profile about me and try to influence where I spend my money (or worse, which way I vote). This tweet specifically was bare-faced about it and appeared to be saying "our users are fine wi…

You don't have to use a streaming service. Just buy MP3s, or buy CDs and rip to MP3/Ogg with an open-source ripper, and store the files on your computer and phone. Android has a built-in music player that plays Oggs just fine; no network connection needed.

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#206

Post by travislopes » Fri, Jun 30, 2017, 5:44 PM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #184

bcrescimanno wrote: post #144

As someone who started collecting vinyl about 3 years ago, it's about the difference between passive and active involvement in music. So much of our music consumption these days is a largely passive activity. We have music in our headphones while we work. We have music on in our cars while we drive. We have music on in the background of social events. While modern digital formats have given us true ubiquity of music…

This is the only explanation for this that I could actually understand. Anyone telling me that they think it sounds better just triggers eye rolling.

There are cases where it sounds better though. Not because the music on vinyl, but because they did a different master for the vinyl release that's not as brick walled as the digital release.

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#207

Post by tnecniv » Fri, Jun 30, 2017, 5:44 PM UTC

eanzenberg wrote: post #191

bcrescimanno wrote: post #144

As someone who started collecting vinyl about 3 years ago, it's about the difference between passive and active involvement in music. So much of our music consumption these days is a largely passive activity. We have music in our headphones while we work. We have music on in our cars while we drive. We have music on in the background of social events. While modern digital formats have given us true ubiquity of music…

I dunno.. digital music just sounds better, is more consistent, portable, and all around easier to play than vinyl. Why stop there? Do you also churn your own butter, milk your own cows, shave with a straight razor? Personally, I think it's just silly hipster bias.

Why not enjoy both? I collect vinyl and listen to digital music all the time. If you buy new vinyls on Amazon, a lot of the time you can get the MP3s for free included.

When I buy a vinyl, it's because it's a physical representation of music that I enjoy. A lot of time, there's a extra items included with the vinyl, like a small poster.

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#208

Post by qb45 » Fri, Jun 30, 2017, 5:45 PM UTC

combatentropy wrote: post #170

I think there's something to the analog hiss, even the scratches. Tangentially, someone on Hacker News mentioned Cathode ( http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/ ), a terminal program that emulates old analog monitors. Screen glow, burn-in, noise, even occasional sync hiccups, can all be tuned to the nth degree, which I have, and now I'm hooked. I think it's also the sounds that can be added, but that's another…

Nice, although the front part of CRT where image actually forms is frankly an anode ;)

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#209

Post by mtalantikite » Fri, Jun 30, 2017, 5:45 PM UTC

sosuke wrote: post #151

bcrescimanno wrote: post #144

As someone who started collecting vinyl about 3 years ago, it's about the difference between passive and active involvement in music. So much of our music consumption these days is a largely passive activity. We have music in our headphones while we work. We have music on in our cars while we drive. We have music on in the background of social events. While modern digital formats have given us true ubiquity of music…

You've hit on a very big part of listening to music that appears largely lost today. Composers would know that they had a captive audience for so long a time and would be able to create large narratives in their music that just can't be pulled off today. I have a hard time imagining just sitting down to listen to music. Not listen to music and converse or eat. Not listen to music and browse the web. Just listening to…

Agreed. Even the way that a service like Spotify organizes its application seems to be based around the song rather than the album. I tend to listen to entire albums still, so years ago I hit a saved music maximum in Spotify because they limit the amount of songs you can have in your collection. These days I usually have to go through my saved music collection and un-save random albums just to add more in to download for offline play.

As a teenager in the 90s I started buying vinyl because it was cheap and browsing a local record store was the best way to discover music, mainly jazz and hip hop. I'd spend hours a day just listening to albums from start to finish, reading liner notes, doing nothing else. A couple decades later and I still discover most of my music the same way. Spotify's Discover Weekly often is good, but it never matches the random LP dug up that completely opens your mind to a style or form you've never run into before.

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#210

Post by kazinator » Fri, Jun 30, 2017, 5:46 PM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #98

eterm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why buy vinyl instead of buying CDs? I understand your point about listening to a whole album being preferable to singles, I feel the same way but I'd still much rather listen to a CD than an LP.

The problems I have with CD's that I don't with Vinyl: - CD's scratch and then skip easily - CD's come in horrible plastic covers that break if you look at them wrong. - Skipping to a certain part of a song is much more difficult with CD's. - The benefits vinyl provides (large artwork and liner notes/ lyrics, posters etc.) don't all apply to CD's and at that point there's not much/any benefit CD's have over digital.

> CD's scratch and then skip easily

You can back up a CD's audio tracks digitally to PCM files, with no loss. You still have the music even if the CD is completely destroyed, and your backup survives.

Vinyl records are also sensitive. They can skip even with slight vibration, because the arm which holds the needle is delicately balanced to exert only a small force to keep the needle in the groove.

Vinyl records easily warp from heat. They still play, but the warps make it easier for skipping to occur.

Fun personal fact: my grandma hard a way to make records flat again. She sandwiched them between cotton cloths, and gave them an ironing!

> Skipping to a certain part of a song is much more difficult with CD's.

Skipping to a certain part of a song is very difficult with a vinyl record. The song consists of a strip of grooves that are only a couple of centimeters wide. The resolution for navigating is not very good. Even if you could pick a specific cycle of the groove, which you won't, your precision is still limited by the rotating latency. At 33 rpm (let's round off to 30 rpm), you have one revolution every two seconds. (Sure, you could stop the rotation, and fiddle with it for five minutes to get the exact spot in a four minute song.)

With a CD-ROM drive and PC/laptop, you can script up some software to seek to a position with sub-second precision.

A decent media player lets you mark off two points, A and B, with sub-second precision, and loop them.

A bookmarking feature is plausible; there is no reason why a CD playing application wouldn't let you make bookmarks associated with CD's. Pop in a CD, and see a list of bookmarks; pick one and there you are at your favorite part of a favorite song. (If this doesn't exist, propose it ... say for VLC, or hack it yourself.)