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Manufacturing plant fire threatens worldwide vinyl record supply

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Re: Manufacturing plant fire threatens worldwide vinyl record supply

#121

Post by driverdan »

jakobegger wrote: post #31
eganist wrote: post #2

I haven't found an objective explanation for why some populations prefer vinyl analog over any digital renditions of a sound. Can anyone share some insight? (I've listened to both, and the description of vinyl or even analog sound as being generally "warmer" never resonated with me.)

I hate everything about CDs. The flimsy jewel cases that break all the time, the tiny artwork, how easily CDs scratch, how choosing a song requires clicking stupid buttons, the delay after inserting CDs, the high pitched whine of the motor, the sound of the stepper motor as it moves the laser... When I listen to music, I want to slow down and relax, and taking a record out of the sleeve is just so much nicer than fid…

It's 2020. Why would you still use CDs for digital music?

Re: Manufacturing plant fire threatens worldwide vinyl record supply

#122

Post by driverdan »

Hamuko wrote: post #24
lrem wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manual transmission has clear advantage in responsiveness. Being used to manual, I've just driven an automatic for three days. Despite having 50% more power than my old car, it felt terribly slow because of the gear shift delays.

No, manual transmissions are a clear loser when it comes to responsiveness. You have to manually disengage the clutch, manually change the gear and manually engage the clutch. For comparison, the dual clutch transmission in the Nissan GT-R can shift in 0.15 seconds and that's a 10+ year old car. The ZF 8HP, which is a conventional torque converter transmission used for example in the new BMW M5, is apparently able to…

OP didn't mention other types of gearboxes like DSGs. They have their advantages and disadvantages too and are only available on a limited number of vehicles.

Re: Manufacturing plant fire threatens worldwide vinyl record supply

#123

Post by happycube »

Figs wrote: post #54
Animats wrote: post #48

Somebody should come out with 12 inch analog optical disks. Big, thick, solid things.

They did that in the late 70s. They were called LaserDiscs and held about 60 minutes of video per side in the most common encoding format.

Some LD trivia:

- It was the only consumer format that provided standard NTSC/PAL SD video without reformatting. Macrovision didn't work on them either so there's no copy protection.

- Most LD's have digital sound, which literally is CD audio - not just the bitrate but the analog encoding and digital metadata as well.

- The disks were expensive to produce (a dual-sided disk in low/moderate quantity was about $20) and if the glue wasn't done Just Right, the disk would degrade/rot over time. (The majority of surviving disks are just fine today... but some of particular interest to people, like the Domesday disks, aren't!)

Re: Manufacturing plant fire threatens worldwide vinyl record supply

#124

Post by numpad0 »

cormacrelf wrote: post #110
numpad0 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, at very least, Compact Disc is a 1980 standard... not like 20 years old, more like 40 years old. I don't understand why statement like above is met with a response like yours. It's a shitty '80s format that beat vinyl in affordability, why defend it as if CD is the pinnacle of digital recording technology? It is not, never was. Just say yeah CD sucks you gotta try DSD, and move on. Anecdotal but I feel some sor…

CD may be 40 years old, but human ears didn't change at all in that time. If you can tell CD from other recordings, it is almost certainly because the mastering (which is not something intrinsic to the standard) was deliberately changed for CD because it could reproduce sound better, so no format-specific mastering hacks were needed to make it sound good. Face it, you don't have golden ears. For example, if a studio…

Did you know: Nyquist sampling theorem assumes, and only applies to, pure sine waves.

Apparently this is a novice level knowledge in DSP community at StackExchange: https://dsp.stackexchange.com/questions/45032/suitable-sampl...

Re: Manufacturing plant fire threatens worldwide vinyl record supply

#125

Post by KozmoNau7 »

blacklion wrote: post #85
bonestamp2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do both. Digital music is way more convenient to initiate, continue, store and take with you -- so I use that the most. But, it's almost too convenient in some cases to the point where I often don't appreciate what is really happening and the music just becomes background noise. Although it's obviously possible, I rarely use digital music to sit and listen to an entire album anymore. On the other hand, when I liste…

I have never used "AI Curated playlists", and I'm listening to music only by full albums (no shuffles, no random, nothing), because one unit of my favorite music is album, not track (still). But I don't understand vynil records at all. It is worse than even CD, not to mention high-res downloadable albums. Dynamic range is worse, noise floor is worse, stereo separation is worse. I'm old enough to listen A LOT of LP re…

For me at least, the main appeal of vinyl records is that they are physical artifacts, tactile and cozy/nostalgic. I enjoy the physicality, the large cover art and the little rituals. It also forces me to listen to entire albums in order, instead of just shuffling random tracks.

The sound quality is somewhere between "good enough" and "genuinely good", no match for good digital formats, but certainly good enough to get lost in the music and enjoy it. And my turntable cost around $100 second hand, nothing too fancy.

I mostly buy rock and metal from the 70s and 80s, second hand. The only new records I buy are from bands that could easily fool people into thinking they are actually from back then, like Visigoth and Smoulder, old-school heavy metal. It just feels like vinyl is the right format for it.

Re: Manufacturing plant fire threatens worldwide vinyl record supply

#126

Post by KozmoNau7 »

hunta2097 wrote: post #81
bonestamp2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do both. Digital music is way more convenient to initiate, continue, store and take with you -- so I use that the most. But, it's almost too convenient in some cases to the point where I often don't appreciate what is really happening and the music just becomes background noise. Although it's obviously possible, I rarely use digital music to sit and listen to an entire album anymore. On the other hand, when I liste…

Before the Internet, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit hobby forums it was your music that defined you. If you listened to metal you dressed that way too, indie pop another way, your music defined who you were, your friends, the magazines you bought. There are just so many ways for kids to define themselves these days, music is important but I don't think they feel defined by what they listen to (not to the same extent). I a…

Some of us still do the subculture thing. 99% of the music I listen to is hard rock and metal, and fittingly 99% of my clothes are black, mostly jeans and t-shirts and some cargo pants for festivals, and stompy boots.

I wouldn't say that I define myself by my taste in music, but it does influence my choices in clothes and so on.

Re: Manufacturing plant fire threatens worldwide vinyl record supply

#127

Post by runarberg »

eganist wrote: post #2

I haven't found an objective explanation for why some populations prefer vinyl analog over any digital renditions of a sound. Can anyone share some insight? (I've listened to both, and the description of vinyl or even analog sound as being generally "warmer" never resonated with me.)

If you only care about sound quality then digital music is a superior format. I prefer CDs over sound files since it is more fun to pick from a catalog of CDs on the shelf then a list of artists on a display.

That said, if you care about the album or the art vinyl records are superior. A CD has very limited visuals and seeing it disappear into the machine feels disengaging (although it is handy not to have to turn a CD over half way through).

Also old vinyl is really cheap and plentiful. You can go to the thrift store and buy and old Beatles album for half a dollar. It is really easy to start a collection from old cheap records. Old CDs only go back so far and it’s hard to find good CDs among all the trash in the thrift store. I usually have to go to the record store and buy a good used CD for $10 a piece (which I do, but not as often as a thrift store record). Meaning that casual lovers of music that don’t like to spend too much money probably have a greater vinyl collection then CD collection (although they probably have an even greater mp3 collection).

Re: Manufacturing plant fire threatens worldwide vinyl record supply

#128

Post by OzzyB »

7thaccount wrote: post #111
jslabovitz wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... how choosing a song requires clicking stupid buttons, the delay after inserting CDs, the high pitched whine of the motor, the sound of the stepper motor as it moves the laser... Some of the earliest CD players are superbly constructed — and have some of the best sound. I have a couple of Sony decks from the mid-1980s that are quiet, quick, and have excellent controls, complete with 20-odd direct buttons for ind…

What make model do you use?

Technics SL-P990! This was my baby, built like a tank xD

https://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/technics/sl-p990.s...

Re: Manufacturing plant fire threatens worldwide vinyl record supply

#129

Post by twmiller »

OzzyB wrote: post #119
eganist wrote: post #2

I haven't found an objective explanation for why some populations prefer vinyl analog over any digital renditions of a sound. Can anyone share some insight? (I've listened to both, and the description of vinyl or even analog sound as being generally "warmer" never resonated with me.)

Have you ever tried to watch a live event on a streaming service like YouTube, and found yourself a few milliseconds behind the action? Have you ever tried watching digital TV have frames dropped completely because the signal got weak? If you were going analog, you would be watching real live action, and if the signal got weak you'd still be watching but there might be some "screen fizz". Vinyl is like that :D what y…

If you’re interested in ‘what you see is what you get’, CD is MUCH closer to the reality of what was heard in the studio than vinyl is. Vinyl is capped on the high end to prevent distortion, and cut on the low end to prevent volume drops. The frequency range of compact discs, by design, go from the upper range of human hearing to the lowest range of human hearing. To the extent that vinyl sounds warm, it’s a product of the constraints of the medium manifest through the mastering process.

It’s fine if you like the sound of vinyl better, but to argue that it’s somehow ‘more real’ is silly.

Re: Manufacturing plant fire threatens worldwide vinyl record supply

#130

Post by sp332 »

sonthonax wrote: post #91
stereolambda wrote: post #88

Don't forget that some "obscure" music is marginally cheaper/easier to obtain on vinyl. For example space age pop, which is one of things in the sweet spot for collecting (for pleasure, not for money): used to be popular and mass-manufactured, now almost no one cares, so the market has a lot of this relatively cheap. Living in the former communist country, I regret not having easy access to heaps of Western vinyls in…

I think a lot of millennials who formed their music taste in the age of Napster, LimeWire, Torrents and Spotify seem to think the internet has everything (given the illusion of limitless choice). This is of course not the case and there's so much music that's only realistically available on vinyl.

The situation is even crazier if you look at fragile shellac 78-RPM records. The Internet Archive teamed up with the George Blood company to preserve as many as they can - and they're up to 165,000 records available for streaming from the Archive! https://archive.org/details/georgeblood
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