Vinyl

[Jed Peters]

OMG! Nevermind what is that, are you the Wizard Of Oz????

That controls the house. Lighting, alarm, thermostat, tv's, audio, door locks, garage doors, etc. etc etc

 

[crgildart]

The turntable I had in college was a linear track. Panasonic rack system with massive speakers, 100 watts per channel, sounded OK, looked cooler than it sounded..

 

[Posaune]

I get a kick out of hearing how others enjoy analog sound. Vinyl seems to be the rage among some. I'm a musician and have had good sound in the house since I was 19 when I bought a quality setup of an amp, turntable, and speakers. One thing about being a musician, though, is that I recognize what the live sound really sounds like, and vinyl just doesn't cut it if you want the original sound. The highs are muted and the lows cut off by analog. When I sit in a symphony orchestra or a jazz band I recognize that the digital sound is really much closer to the real thing than vinyl or tapes ever used to be.

I've taken all of my vinyl and recorded it digitally (I have over 50,000 tunes altogether) into iTunes and so I enjoy them that way. I rarely fire up the turntable or the CD player any more, and only then to record something into iTunes. (Yes, I regularly back everything up.)

 

[mdf]

what the live sound really sounds like, and vinyl just doesn't cut it

Or is it fashion among recording engineers?
When I was younger and spent a lot of time going out I had a favorite local band. They got a record contract, which apparently led to a lot of angst, drama, and the band breaking up. When the (vinyl) record finally came out, it did not sound like them at all. Turning the treble waaaay up made it sound closer to what I remembered.

 

[crgildart]

I get a kick out of hearing how others enjoy analog sound. Vinyl seems to be the rage among some. I'm a musician and have had good sound in the house since I was 19 when I bought a quality setup of an amp, turntable, and speakers. One thing about being a musician, though, is that I recognize what the live sound really sounds like, and vinyl just doesn't cut it if you want the original sound. The highs are muted and the lows cut off by analog. When I sit in a symphony orchestra or a jazz band I recognize that the digital sound is really much closer to the real thing than vinyl or tapes ever used to be.

There is also the dimension that live sound has added effects far beyond the simple reverb and digital delays of the 60s-80s. Drums sound deeper and ring longer than possible with only natural resonance... There is now a much broader spectrum that needs to be captured than there was with just reeds, skins, and cups..

 

[Posaune]

It always has a lot to do with the studio people. I have digital master recordings of groups that I have directed that don't really capture the sound the group put out. What I was talking about above is a bit different. Analog compresses the sound, and no amount of engineering can change it. It's subtle if the analog is done right, but it's there.

 

[1chris5]

Yes, I too miss my turntable, a Bang & Olufsen Beogram 3000, the sound it put out through my Sony ES amp and Polk 10B's was so warm. I had a nice collection of ablums with a few Mobile Fidelity Half Speed Master Recordings. What I also miss was listening to whole albums, there was a certain flow from song to song that in many cases told a story. The third thing I miss, is album art, Roger Dean's work on the Yes ablums, The Rolling Stones and Elton John used to have really cool artwork.

Yeah, we still rock a B&O. Awesome record player but a new stylus costs a mint. The key to playing records, especially vintage(???) ones is to clean them correctly. The only way I have found that gets the crud out of the grooves is this VPI Record Cleaner unit. It rotates the record, squirts fluid, brushes fluid, then sucks up via vacuum thingy. Only the vacuum thingy works now but that is the key to the clean record. Use the old felt brush and squirt record cleaner on the rotating disc. Its fun but kinda a pain in the ass. I made an ipod out of an old smart phone and put like a 500 cds on that. Quality does not compare but the convenience often wins the day. It is addictive to go out to the used record store and buy old vinyl though. Brings back great memories.

 

[1chris5]

Album art, yep.

Check out 60s art, especially albums like "Live Dead" and "Her Majesties Satanic Request". It's amazing that there are "hidden images."

 

[neonorchid]

It always has a lot to do with the studio people. I have digital master recordings of groups that I have directed that don't really capture the sound the group put out. What I was talking about above is a bit different. Analog compresses the sound, and no amount of engineering can change it. It's subtle if the analog is done right, but it's there.

https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/5/9409563/reel-to-reel-tape-retro-audio-trend
" greater dynamic range than vinyl, with extraordinary sound at the frequency extremes: the treble and bass. Next, consider the amount of signal processing that each medium requires. Vinyl: a lot. Tape: very little. Signal processing is the enemy of hi-fidelity."

http://positive-feedback.com/Issue46/tape_project.htm
"Those 15-ips, 2-track master tapes could make a silk purse out of the proverbial sow's ear. Even a pair of JBL speakers sounded like world beaters when the source material was a master tape. There was simply more information on the tape that gave the music a denser sense of harmonic structure missing with the LP. The tapes sounded far less mechanical and possessed a sense of ease and unrestricted dynamics, particularly in the low frequencies, that eluded turntables past (and even some present). Instruments were fleshed out with an extraordinary sense of space surrounding the musicians and orchestra unmatched by the commercial LP release."

 

[crgildart]

Back in the day we'd put out cheesy demo tapes recorded with one of these. I still have one and some CRo2 tapes back with my dubbing deck under a pile of other old rehearsal studio stuff..

You could also "ping pong" recording a track then pumping it out through the speakers and play along to that adding the next track.. No room for error though, couldn't redo the previous track after adding the next layer when ping ponging..

In addition to using the whole tape one direction-4 rows it spun the tape faster to capture more data per minute.. so a 45 minute take side would really only run for about 30 minutes..

 

[neonorchid]

I get a kick out of hearing how others enjoy analog sound. Vinyl seems to be the rage among some. I'm a musician and have had good sound in the house since I was 19 when I bought a quality setup of an amp, turntable, and speakers. One thing about being a musician, though, is that I recognize what the live sound really sounds like, and vinyl just doesn't cut it if you want the original sound. The highs are muted and the lows cut off by analog. When I sit in a symphony orchestra or a jazz band I recognize that the digital sound is really much closer to the real thing than vinyl or tapes ever used to be.

I've taken all of my vinyl and recorded it digitally (I have over 50,000 tunes altogether) into iTunes and so I enjoy them that way. I rarely fire up the turntable or the CD player any more, and only then to record something into iTunes. (Yes, I regularly back everything up.)

All HD uncompressed audio with marantz DAC's.

Hanging out with Peters Philadelphia Audio Society and actually hearing the exotic stuff and meeting the engineers responsible for them completely ruined me! Btw @Philpug, you seriously missed out!

 

[neonorchid]

 

[crgildart]

Hanging out with Peters Philadelphia Audio Society and actually hearing the exotic stuff and meeting the engineers responsible for them completely ruined me! Btw @Philpug, you seriously missed out!

Playing drums for 40 years, mostly next to big monitors with zero ear protection ruined me.. or my hearing.. Not terrible but definitely not as good as other folks my age without such a history of abuse..

 

[Phelmut]

I was talking with a guy at work who I heard was a serious audiophile (I'm not). He showed me some pics of some equipment and was talking about his turntable. I asked him how much it cost and he said he had several, but the one in the picture was 17. Wow, $1700 for a turntable. No --$17K!!!!

 

[Laurel Hill Crazie]

I still have my early 1980s Luxman amp and Polk Audio speakers. The Luxman turntable has been recently replaced with a new Techno-Audio. My original Denon cassette deck died after CD took over and my Denon CD died about a decade ago. My son and daughter, both millennials, have discovered vinyl. In fact one of my daughter's Christmas presents is a new turntable for the 1970s era tube amp consoles that belonged to my parents for their Lawrence Welk, Glenn Miller, Bert Bacharach listening pleasure. Dad liked country too. The kids have what survived of my vinyl collection going back to the mid-1960s.

Me, I prefer Spotify.