Is vinyl making a comeback?

[jziegler]

Vinyl never died AFAIK. There's always been a strong following of vinyl and tube amps....it just become out of fashion. Tubes, vinyl, silver halide photographs....all superior technologies to their higher tech and more popular replacements. There are pros and cons to each for sure, but in terms of resolution, transistors, digital sound, and digital photographs have a pretty noticeable disadvantage IME. One of the smartest engineers I've ever met still manufactures tube amplifiers and preamps for highend audio systems, and makes a good living at it....Convergent Audio Technology (CAT).

I'll disagree with some of that. Tubes are in no way better technologically than transistors. Some people like the way that they distort better than transistors, but transistors always will produce a cleaner signal when not distorting. For CDs vs vinyl and photography, digital is sure a whole lot easier, and the quality is close enough, so that's good enough for me.

Jim

[Hoover]

Another item in this discussion is a tube amplifier. It has a warmer tone, and when those tubes get to vibrating the sound is just sweet. Think of Duane Eddy and the Ventures, and if you want to really go back Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps.

[knotley]

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/sh...d.php?t=144779

[cwithboat]

I can prove any vinyl disk is inferior to a decently master CD.
Play the LP once.
Play it a second time and measure the noise floor.
Play the CD 1000 times and measure the noise floor.
The CD will always have lower noise floor.
Same pre-amp, same amps same speakers. Any kind of pre-emp or post-emp you like.

Silence (zero noise floor) is critical to great music. Listen to the pauses in the vocal passages of the 9th. On some recordings you can hear the chorus draw their breath. Magnificent.

[Tom Slick]

for those of you that like really old recordings here is the library of congress's recordings available on the internet

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/...d%2BRecordings

which is part of
http://www.saveoursounds.org/



OT
tubes make a defective sound that we find pleasing. new electronics are found to be "too perfect" and don't recreate that vintage sound they way guitar weirdos like it.

[Knottscott]

I can prove any vinyl disk is inferior to a decently master CD.
Play the LP once.
Play it a second time and measure the noise floor.
Play the CD 1000 times and measure the noise floor.
The CD will always have lower noise floor.
Same pre-amp, same amps same speakers. Any kind of pre-emp or post-emp you like.

Silence (zero noise floor) is critical to great music. Listen to the pauses in the vocal passages of the 9th. On some recordings you can hear the chorus draw their breath. Magnificent.

That's kind of analogous to saying that my 5th grader playing in a quiet room sounds better than Itzhak Perlman in Grand Central...? It proves nothing. For those of you who find CD to be superior, have you ever heard vinyl played on a real highend turntable on a high resolution system (preferably tubes not distorting) setup by someone who knew what they were doing? I can understand situations where an average CD player can sound better than an average plastic turntable with a lousy needle and poor setup, but the better examples of each lean heavily to analog IME. I've had the good fortune of being exposed to quite a few really extreme high end systems that would put the better known highend names to shame....the systems that had both sources had top examples of the best CD players and the best turntables. There was not much comparison IMHO, easily 9 out of 10 had better sounding vinyl than CD, and it seemed that the majority of designers who exhibited in the highend section of the CES shows agreed....no Sony, Onkyo, Denon, Bose, NAD, Rotel, or Luxman to be seen here.

It's worth noting that vacuum tubes used in highend audio have distinctly different circuitry and sound from guitar amps. Distortion is desirable in guitar amps, but not in hi-fi...the gains, biases, and ultimate sound of the devices aren't comparable even if they use the same exact tube.

This is an unending debate that defies science and spills into art, which makes it subjective. Pick your favorite color and be happy.

[germdoc]

I have always found that I may find a girl attractive because of her pretty features, but what makes me fall head over heels is the imperfections. I mean, a dimple is an imperfection, isn't it?

[BigguyZ]

Hey- I'm still waiting for SACD and DVD-Audio to come back!

Now those were some sweet remasters....

I always thought that if they just put The Beattles on one of those formats, it would have saved them...

[avaserfi]

Hey- I'm still waiting for SACD and DVD-Audio to come back!

Now those were some sweet remasters....

I always thought that if they just put The Beattles on one of those formats, it would have saved them...

There was a superb remaster of some Beatles songs released on DVD-A titled Love. Both formats are basically dead, sadly, if there is any chance of higher quality audio expect it on Blu-ray.


As far as listening to vinyl on a high end system goes I have done full double blind tests with CDs and vinly using samples before poor mastering was the norm. The system was what is often considered high end costing about $15k. There were three sources: vinyl, cd and the vinyl ripped to lossless format. No one was able to differentiate the vinyl and its rip while everyone preferred the CD due to its larger dynamic range and once all bias was removed. This is a debate that will rage on despite science because of peoples strongly held beliefs. Once bias is taken out of the equation the results are typically different.

As far as tube amps being the source of coloration in most systems that is a partial truth. Typically tube amps do color sound, but more often than not the loudspeaker itself will color sound with cabinet resonance as there are few loudspeakers (no matter the price) that have non-resonant cabs like the ones used in my study from above. This coloration and its thresholds were shown in a paper written by Floyd Toole for the JAES.

[cwithboat]

That's kind of analogous to saying that my 5th grader playing in a quiet room sounds better than Itzhak Perlman in Grand Central...? It proves nothing. For those of you who find CD to be superior, have you ever heard vinyl played on a real highend turntable on a high resolution system (preferably tubes not distorting) setup by someone who knew what they were doing? I can understand situations where an average CD player can sound better than an average plastic turntable with a lousy needle and poor setup, but the better examples of each lean heavily to analog IME. I've had the good fortune of being exposed to quite a few really extreme high end systems that would put the better known highend names to shame....the systems that had both sources had top examples of the best CD players and the best turntables. There was not much comparison IMHO, easily 9 out of 10 had better sounding vinyl than CD, and it seemed that the majority of designers who exhibited in the highend section of the CES shows agreed....no Sony, Onkyo, Denon, Bose, NAD, Rotel, or Luxman to be seen here.

It's worth noting that vacuum tubes used in highend audio have distinctly different circuitry and sound from guitar amps. Distortion is desirable in guitar amps, but not in hi-fi...the gains, biases, and ultimate sound of the devices aren't comparable even if they use the same exact tube.

This is an unending debate that defies science and spills into art, which makes it subjective. Pick your favorite color and be happy.

Actually, it is not analogous. The point I was making was that the very act of playing an LP degrades the recording more each time you play it. If you buy a recording to play only once (or as a demo at CES) then you can certainly convince yourself that spending a couple of kilobucks for a turntable is practical.
As long as name dropping is in order, I will mention that, in a previous incarnation, I was a design engineer for Phase Linear/Pioneer in the late 70's/early 80's, so I have experienced high end audio.
Finally, take it from someone who had to work with the **** things...TUBES SUCK.

[dkerfoot]

But I want to know how I can simulate the 8-track tape experience on digital music.

Some songs are SUPPOSED to be cut into two parts with a whirring and giant "thunk" in the middle.

I miss the subtle to pronounced bleed through from the other side of the tape.

Also, is there any way to recreate the need to shove folded matchbooks into the side of my MP3 player to get them to play right?

.

[billwmeyer]

Ok, I am inspired now. First thing tomorrow, I will pull out some of my old 78's and crank up the victrola.

Bill

[HarmsWay]

Sorry I missed this 'discussion'. I too had not expected it to be of something interesting that was made of vinyl. I was a huge vinyl collector mostly in the 70's and early 80's. Or at least I thought I was until I moved to Victoria and worked with a guy who had over 20,000 lp's. I still display my meager collection prominently but had listened to them less and less over the years. Many of the LPs short comings have been mentioned, except for the inconvenience of having to clean them every time and flip them after 17-22 minutes (It's over all ready? Didn't I just put that on?). CD's were a big improvement over LPs in terms of convenience but having all my CDs on my computer was an even bigger improvement. I had been waiting for the technology to transcribe vinyl to be affordable and decided a year or so ago it was. I got a nice little M-Audio firewire box and started recording. It takes a lot of time but has been worth it and I'm really enjoying the old records. I pick out a few when I have time. Unlike Germdoc though I remove the pops and clicks! This past weekend I did a bunch of Ultravox and Depeche Mode. The early stuff is as enjoyable now to me as it ever was. Last night it was Commander Cody.

Bob

[dkerfoot]

I am a firm believer that artists should get paid for their work. I am not so firm when it comes to them being paid repeatedly for every medium. There are many songs that I had first on LP or 8-track, then on cassette, then on CD. Now I should pay again to download them?

If I have the song in any medium, I have no problem downloading it through a non-label approved channel. If I have it already on CD I'll just rip it myself. If I have it on LP, rather than spend all the time trying to re-master it myself, I'll just download it.

Don't blame me for being such a wild rebel, I listened to too much rock & roll when I was young.