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Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

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Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#131

Post by tzs »

renlo wrote: post #96
tzs wrote: post #71

Is anyone working on a reasonably priced turntable to play vinyl discs without degrading them? In the mid '80s, Finial Technology announced such a turntable, and had a working unit at CES in 1986. It had a stylus that contained laser interferometers that could very accurately and precisely measure the distance from the stylus to the grove walls. It kept the stylus near, but not touching, the groove, getting the audio…

My very limited understanding after talking to someone who was interested in this stuff, is that people are concerned with quantizing of the signal, which will happen with that laser solution. I’ve heard this is why audiophiles also use magnetic tape. To be clear I heard this second hand and am not directly familiar.

It should be possible to do a laser system that is analog. As the distance to the groove varies continuously, that would cause a corresponding continuous variation in the intensity of the recombined beam in an interferometer.

I don't think the correspondence would be linear. There's probably something like cos(2 pi d / W) in there somewhere, where d is the distance to the grove and W is the wavelength of the laser. So you'd need some sort of equalization circuit on the output, but audiophiles are OK with that--they are used to RIAA equilization on vinyl already.

I assume that the variations in groove distance are much larger than the wavelength of the laser, which would mean that there are several plausible grove distances that give the same intensity output of the interferometer. I'm not quite sure how to handle that. I have a feeling an integrator would be involved, but details elude me at the moment.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#132

Post by mikeash »

criddell wrote: post #118
mikeash wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of steaming services will play entire albums in track order.

How well do they do on albums with no gaps between some tracks?

I haven’t paid attention, but from searching around it looks like they generally do this fine.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#133

Post by rwmj »

cortesoft wrote: post #120
tomc1985 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite so literally, but yes. Placing the record on the player, admiring/flipping through the album art, passing it around amongst friends, actually caring/worrying about the state of the record player, all sorts of things. Why the mocking tone?

I wasn't trying to be mocking, just more incredulous. I grew up with albums as our primary source of music, but it was always just put the record on and listen. It was purely functional, being the best way we had to listen to music. When CDs came out, it was so nice because it was easier to handle and care for. I guess it is just the strange feeling of someone describing something that was just the functional way of…

There's definitely a happy medium here which involves all of CDs, streaming and vinyl. I like listening to vinyl records (as I am right now http://oirase.annexia.org/tmp/20190908_183833.jpg) but only because it's a lazy Sunday afternoon. There's a joy (really) to the ritual of getting up and changing the record over, and admiring the 12 x 12 inch artwork. But the rest of the week I'm busy and listening to MP3s off a USB stick.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#134

Post by skinnymuch »

cptskippy wrote: post #35
big_chungus wrote: post #2

Would some one please enlighten me as to what on God's green earth is going on with vinyl? It's less dense, lower-quality, degrades with use, and is more expensive. It's probably less environmentally-friendly, too (though I'm not sure what it's target demographic is, so I don't know if that means much). Why is vinyl popular, all of a sudden? I had to rip all my grandmother's vinyl records, once, and it was a pain in…

You are looking at this as a CD vs Vinyl battle. Vinyl found a niche and never died entirely. Now CDs are dying because of downloads and streaming and you're saying "why the resurgence vinyl?" There is no resurgence, perhaps a Renaissance in vinyl, but what you're really seeing is just the fall of CD down to vinyl's levels.

Go to https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/ and select only LP/EP and vinyl single. Or just LP/EP.

Including both and just looking without inflation, it’s above 1989 levels and could hit 1988 levels eventually. It’s 5x higher than mid 90s through late 00s. Almost 4x since 2010.

Take out vinyl singles and the increase is absurd. It’s 9x to 40x+ increase from any year between 1991 and 2007. 8x from 2008. Almost 2x from 2013.

And this is all for 2018 figures. 2019 will bump things up even more. Though the pace has slowed a lot.

Even if you add inflation, the resurgence is still there. IE for LP/EP, 2019 will beat out 1989. After a low of nearly 25x less in 93 and 05-06.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#135

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

echelon wrote: post #49

As much as it pains me to say this, I think I'm a hipster. I put a lot of attention and care into my audio and vinyl setup, but now that you can find albums at Walmart, the hip factor has been sucked out of it like a vacuum. I've recently been downsizing, and this might be something that doesn't stay with me. I'll keep my signed albums, but maybe not the rest.

Why does it matter at all if they are sold at Walmart? That’s very shallow honestly. Either the vinyl gave you joy or it didn’t. It shouldn’t matter if others have easy access to it.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#136

Post by rwmj »

benj111 wrote: post #125
neallindsay wrote: post #76

Audio quality on CDs is better than Vinyl (especially over time), but it’s not great . If you care about quality you’re downloading music anyway. But if you’re going to get something physical, you want it to look cool, and Vinyl beats CDs by a mile.

Pah, tapes are cooler than vinyl. My Dad has vinyl, plus only popular bands can justify a vinyl print run. You can release a tape album even if you can only count your fans on one hand, including the band members.

If you were a tiny band why would you release a cassette tape album instead of an MP3 or digital stream?

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#137

Post by iforgotpassword »

tzs wrote: post #71

Is anyone working on a reasonably priced turntable to play vinyl discs without degrading them? In the mid '80s, Finial Technology announced such a turntable, and had a working unit at CES in 1986. It had a stylus that contained laser interferometers that could very accurately and precisely measure the distance from the stylus to the grove walls. It kept the stylus near, but not touching, the groove, getting the audio…

Unfortunately I don't have a link since I don't remember the name of the device or company, but I read about such a device that was using five lasers to do the tracking etc. The problem with this tech was that it was too accurate and would reproduce every tiny particle of dust in the groove as audible cracks or pops, where the traditional stylus would just have pushed the particle out of its way.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#138

Post by abdullahkhalids »

tzs wrote: post #71

Is anyone working on a reasonably priced turntable to play vinyl discs without degrading them? In the mid '80s, Finial Technology announced such a turntable, and had a working unit at CES in 1986. It had a stylus that contained laser interferometers that could very accurately and precisely measure the distance from the stylus to the grove walls. It kept the stylus near, but not touching, the groove, getting the audio…

The vinyl groove is about 25-100 micrometer, and feature sizes on it go down to about 22.5 micrometer [1]. Lasers are extremely cheap today compared to what they were back in the day, and doing laser interferometry to detect features this small is not that difficult. I imagine a hobbyist with the right skill set could hack together a reader for a few hundred bucks at most.

[1] http://www.gzvinyl.com/About-vinyl.aspx

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#139

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

renlo wrote: post #96
tzs wrote: post #71

Is anyone working on a reasonably priced turntable to play vinyl discs without degrading them? In the mid '80s, Finial Technology announced such a turntable, and had a working unit at CES in 1986. It had a stylus that contained laser interferometers that could very accurately and precisely measure the distance from the stylus to the grove walls. It kept the stylus near, but not touching, the groove, getting the audio…

My very limited understanding after talking to someone who was interested in this stuff, is that people are concerned with quantizing of the signal, which will happen with that laser solution. I’ve heard this is why audiophiles also use magnetic tape. To be clear I heard this second hand and am not directly familiar.

A completely analog laser scanning solution is entirely practical. There's no reason to sample it digitally.

But honestly, this seems like insane overkill. Vinyl has a ridiculously limited dynamic range, and digital recording at 24/48 is practically transparent even with low-end prosumer equipment. At the high end you have to work quite hard to spend more than $4k on a spectacularly clean and neutral studio-grade ADC/DAC. (You can spend more on madly expensive super-fi, but it's not going to sound any cleaner than a good Burl, Lynx, or Metric box.)

So if you spend $4000 on the turntable/arm/pickup another $4000 on studio grade converters, you can capture recordings that will be absolutely indistinguishable from the vinyl source. And your precious plastic disks can stay in their wrappers.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#140

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

tomc1985 wrote: post #69
cbdumas wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Physical media is for when you want to really enjoy the music. Wow this is some condescending, pretentious nonsense. Also, every streaming service I've ever used is perfectly capable of playing an album in order.

You're discounting the value of physically experiencing the media you're consuming. Pretentious or not, it really is a different feeling, something that streaming can't replicate.

I don't care about physically experiencing musical media. I grew out of that in the 80s when I moved around a lot and had to keep moving multiple boxes of vinyl up and down multiple flights of stairs.

If my FLAC collection was on vinyl I'd have to buy it a house of its own. Moving would require a military budget and a series of strategic planning meetings.

That would rather more physical experience than I care for.

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