Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

APC–2 – A professional record cutter for producing original playback discs

teenage.engineering

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 199 posts

Re: APC–2 – A professional record cutter for producing original playback discs

#141

Post by dijksterhuis »

dale_glass wrote: post #138
Jgrubb wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vinyl is a terrible technology?? Have you never put on an old record and considered the miracle of it? 70 years ago Miles Davis vibrates some air with his horn, which is translated into electricity by a microphone, which is translated through magnetic tape and eventually back into electricity and then back into vibrations on a disk. 70 years later I can take that disk and turn its vibrations back into electricity tha…

It is bad by modern standards. Low capacity, high noise, imperfect stereo separation, pretty bad frequency response. CD quality audio solves every problem perfectly and it's old and dirt cheap at this point. To even approach that with vinyl you have to fuss over needles, weight, turntable mechanics and so on and and spend a lot of money and still won't get there. Personally I see far more magic in digital electronics…

It's bad, according to your definition of what good is.

I enjoy all those things you've listed as bad :shrug:

Re: APC–2 – A professional record cutter for producing original playback discs

#142

Post by strogonoff »

brookst wrote: post #136
taylodl wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most music today is digitally recorded, digitally mixed, and digitally mastered. It's at the end they distribute it on vinyl and sell it for a fortune. They're literally fleecing people. Now I will tell you digital is far superior to analog BUT - the way music is recorded and mixed today takes all the soul out of music. Rigidly fixing to "the grid" makes it so music can't breathe. Drums are programmed. So much precis…

You’ve mixed up a few different stages as well as the reason some people prefer vinyl. There’s composition, where music is written. A drum track may be a boring repetitive loop quantized to 4/4 beat positions, or it may have fills or polyrhythm or free time or who knows what. There’s performance, which may be a sequencer just outputting notes at the right time or may be a human drummer of varying skill, imparting slo…

What’s your current process for discovering new music?

Re: APC–2 – A professional record cutter for producing original playback discs

#143

Post by embedding-shape »

taylodl wrote: post #131
dale_glass wrote: post #108

How does it buffer audio? One thing I didn't realize for a long time is that it turns out that a lot of these machines have a digital stage. To cut a disk you need to pack the grooves as close as possible. But the spiral isn't fixed, it's adjusted dynamically. Quiet sections can be packed close together. That means that before cutting, the machine needs to know how much physical space it needs for the audio it's abou…

Most music today is digitally recorded, digitally mixed, and digitally mastered. It's at the end they distribute it on vinyl and sell it for a fortune. They're literally fleecing people. Now I will tell you digital is far superior to analog BUT - the way music is recorded and mixed today takes all the soul out of music. Rigidly fixing to "the grid" makes it so music can't breathe. Drums are programmed. So much precis…

> In short, today's music is just another corporate product and vinyl distribution is just a means to extract more profit from that product.

Incredibly daft over-generalization, the music scene is enormous, and while for mainstream artists what you say is certainly true, you're forgetting about the rest of the 80% of the music scene, which is mostly just people who like making music and don't even earn enough to make a living from it.

Re: APC–2 – A professional record cutter for producing original playback discs

#145

Post by Jgrubb »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #141
dale_glass wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is bad by modern standards. Low capacity, high noise, imperfect stereo separation, pretty bad frequency response. CD quality audio solves every problem perfectly and it's old and dirt cheap at this point. To even approach that with vinyl you have to fuss over needles, weight, turntable mechanics and so on and and spend a lot of money and still won't get there. Personally I see far more magic in digital electronics…

It's bad, according to your definition of what good is. I enjoy all those things you've listed as bad :shrug:

Yes. Not to mention, I have several crates of records that I've had since the 90s. Some of those were taken from my dad collection that he bought new back in the 60s. Those albums still play just fine, despite less than archival care taken.

Contrast that with several folders of CDs I still have which have begun to delaminate and are plastic trash now. CDs were largely an invention to allow record companies to resell back catalogs, and it worked.

Re: APC–2 – A professional record cutter for producing original playback discs

#146

Post by bux93 »

trq01758 wrote: post #111
geokon wrote: post #97

I wonder if it can make a flexidisc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexi_disc I remember to listening to some in my childhood and never understood why the tech was not the standard (relative to the brittle cumbersome vinyls). Maybe the sound quality is worse. Unsure

Because brittle really is a second name for Flexi disc. They have shallower groove which means limited dynamic range, higher hiss/surface noise/distortion, plus because they are so light they often don't sit flat on a turntable so welcome speed variations aka "wow and flutter" and frequent skipping. You could listen 500-1000 times to normal vinyl before any audible degradation and the same may happen to Flexi disc af…

Flexi discs were cool inserts for some home computer magazines; you'd dub the flexi disc to music cassette, and the noise and beeps were computer programs for your home computer.

Re: APC–2 – A professional record cutter for producing original playback discs

#148

Post by ndiddy »

taylodl wrote: post #131
dale_glass wrote: post #108

How does it buffer audio? One thing I didn't realize for a long time is that it turns out that a lot of these machines have a digital stage. To cut a disk you need to pack the grooves as close as possible. But the spiral isn't fixed, it's adjusted dynamically. Quiet sections can be packed close together. That means that before cutting, the machine needs to know how much physical space it needs for the audio it's abou…

Most music today is digitally recorded, digitally mixed, and digitally mastered. It's at the end they distribute it on vinyl and sell it for a fortune. They're literally fleecing people. Now I will tell you digital is far superior to analog BUT - the way music is recorded and mixed today takes all the soul out of music. Rigidly fixing to "the grid" makes it so music can't breathe. Drums are programmed. So much precis…

> Most music today is digitally recorded, digitally mixed, and digitally mastered. It's at the end they distribute it on vinyl and sell it for a fortune. They're literally fleecing people.

Most vinyl record buyers buy records as a collectable to show that they like a certain album, not because they're deluded audiophiles who are trying to eliminate everything digital from their audio path. Half of all record buyers don't even own a record player: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/50-of-vinyl-buyers-do... . When you look at it from that lens, I think it makes sense that records are so popular. They're the largest music format so you get the biggest version of the album art and the most extensive set of liner notes compared to buying a CD or something. Audio quality or "analogness" doesn't matter, since they're probably going to be listening to the album on Spotify instead anyway.

Re: APC–2 – A professional record cutter for producing original playback discs

#149

Post by gwbas1c »

dale_glass wrote: post #108

How does it buffer audio? One thing I didn't realize for a long time is that it turns out that a lot of these machines have a digital stage. To cut a disk you need to pack the grooves as close as possible. But the spiral isn't fixed, it's adjusted dynamically. Quiet sections can be packed close together. That means that before cutting, the machine needs to know how much physical space it needs for the audio it's abou…

> How does it buffer audio?

The page says DAW integration, but I assume the inputs are analog. IE, I assume the playback is on the computer and uses whatever DAC the engineer has set up.

> To cut a disk you need to pack the grooves as close as possible.

In the analog, computer-free world, that was done by hand and typically had about 15-20 minutes per side. I've come across records that got close to 30 minutes per side, from the late 1960s or 1970s, and very specifically mentioned that it was a computer-controlled process. (And also that you needed to turn the volume up.)

Re: APC–2 – A professional record cutter for producing original playback discs

#150

Post by trumpdong »

bux93 wrote: post #146
trq01758 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because brittle really is a second name for Flexi disc. They have shallower groove which means limited dynamic range, higher hiss/surface noise/distortion, plus because they are so light they often don't sit flat on a turntable so welcome speed variations aka "wow and flutter" and frequent skipping. You could listen 500-1000 times to normal vinyl before any audible degradation and the same may happen to Flexi disc af…

Flexi discs were cool inserts for some home computer magazines; you'd dub the flexi disc to music cassette, and the noise and beeps were computer programs for your home computer.

Could you not play the record directly into the computer? I guess you just didn't have the necessary adapter cable?
Post reply on HN