Yet Another Cycling Forum

Off Topic => The Pub => Arts and Entertainment => Topic started by: menthel on 13 April, 2015, 01:44:45 pm

Title: Vinyl
Post by: menthel on 13 April, 2015, 01:44:45 pm
I have new Godspeed! You Black Emperor. It is on 180gm vinyl. Mmm.

Who else is still buying the wonderful, shiny beauties?
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Rhys W on 13 April, 2015, 11:54:53 pm
I might get that - do you get a download code with it?

The physicality and superior sound of vinyl and the convenience and portability of digital files - best of both worlds.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Mr Larrington on 14 April, 2015, 12:09:38 am
While a 12" slab of Shiny is usually a thing of beauty, as a card-carrying cloth-eared wossname any superiority in sound cannot be detected by my ears.  An unscientific experiment the other week put nine or a dozen versions of the same track on random play - formats ranging from "the best FLAC has to offer" to 128 kbps MP3.  I could not perceive any difference and thus concluded that it is a waste of anbarons to store music files at higher quality; any investment in the extra hardware required to wire up my elderly but probably still OK turntable to the AV system would be wasted.

Your ears may vary.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Kim on 14 April, 2015, 12:30:18 am
My general take on the superiority of vinyl is that it's overwhelmingly about the intentions of whoever mastered the track, rather than the properties of the medium itself.  I consider CD (and lossless functional equivalents) to be the superior standard for audio reproduction, let down by the "moar louder = moar better" philosophy that's infected music since at least the early 90s.

Which isn't to say there's not something fundamentally satisfying about playing the things.  It's just not really about audio quality.


Mental note:  Get barakta in a quiet room with a record player, and demonstrate that with the amplifier off you can hear the sound coming directly from the needle.  It's one of those neat little experiences that she missed out on because she didn't have that kind of hearing in the 80s.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Mr Larrington on 14 April, 2015, 12:36:57 am
Perhaps one day someone will apply current mixing trends to the first Motörhead album, coz that sounds positively anaemic today.  Even the 12" single version of the title track is pretty quiet.  It didn't help that producer Speedy Keen was as deaf as a post, but I for one would like it to get the same treatment that Iggy meted out to "Raw Power" (Bowie having been coked off his tits when he did v1.0).
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: menthel on 14 April, 2015, 06:39:55 am
I might get that - do you get a download code with it?

The physicality and superior sound of vinyl and the convenience and portability of digital files - best of both worlds.

Yep, code included!

I can't say I can hear a significant difference it's more about the tactile fondliness and scale of the artwork!
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Hot Flatus on 14 April, 2015, 06:51:20 am
Meh.

I listen to music using a 19th century gramophone with wax cylinders. So much better reproduction than this modern vinyl electrickery rubbish.

And I should know because I'm an audiophile.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Asterix, the former Gaul. on 14 April, 2015, 07:35:07 am
I think I would have to spend big to get a vinyl setup that matched my old digital one.  I ditched the CD player and now use a laptop or tablet to feed Lynn speakers through an upgraded A400 amp of 1992 vintage.  The files need to be FLAC because even my ears can easily tell when it's only mp3 format.  Since the amp was upgraded well-produced digital tracks are very obvious, to the detriment of the low quality ones.   
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: clarion on 14 April, 2015, 08:41:35 am
My general take on the superiority of vinyl is that it's overwhelmingly about the intentions of whoever mastered the track, rather than the properties of the medium itself.  I consider CD (and lossless functional equivalents) to be the superior standard for audio reproduction, let down by the "moar louder = moar better" philosophy that's infected music since at least the early 90s.

Which isn't to say there's not something fundamentally satisfying about playing the things.  It's just not really about audio quality.


Mental note:  Get barakta in a quiet room with a record player, and demonstrate that with the amplifier off you can hear the sound coming directly from the needle.  It's one of those neat little experiences that she missed out on because she didn't have that kind of hearing in the 80s.
Having been working with high quality audio equipment at the time CDs were introduced, I can confirm they were a step backwards from vinyl, and seriously inferior to DAT for sound quality (though for convenience beat it hands down).  I find CDs quite hissy, though not as bad as the first generation.  As for the promise that they would never skip or degrade.... ;D
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: LEE on 14 April, 2015, 09:38:04 am
Some years ago a blind test was conducted.  Vinyl vs (cassette)tape vs CD vs MP3.

Nothing really conclusive was found, apart from finding different people prefer different types of output and that cassettes were rank awful.

The nearest they came to a conclusion was that a CD, played on the cheapest of cheap Philips CD player, gave the most pleasing output.

It seems that the sheer crapness of the electronics actually resulted in a warm and rich sound, comparable to a traditional valve output.

Since I always end up cranking the extreme highs and extreme lows right up, whilst reducing mid range, I suppose I'm the equivalent of an Australian Shiraz wine drinker.  Big taste at the expense of any subtlety. 

Also my phone is one of those modern ones without a record player on it so vinyl fails on that count for me.

320kbps sounds fine to my old ears and I don't need to keep getting up every 20 minutes to turn the LP over.

I still think they should sell CDs in LP sized covers though.  That was always the great appeal of vinyl for me, the whacking great picture of Debbie Harry you could stare at for an hour (other artists are available).
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: ian on 14 April, 2015, 10:11:33 am
I too have cloth hears, vinyl, CD, mp3, it's all just music. I'm happy enough with the practicality of an iPhone full to the brim with middling quality mp3 and AACs.

But there's something about vinyl that makes me miss it. The tactile experience of those big covers, artwork you didn't have to squint at, lyrics on the liner, the heft of the plastic itself, it's smell, and the little symphony of noises as the needle lands, finds the groove, the pops and crackles that busy themselves in the silence between tracks, and that final phut as the needle takes off at the end. Flip and repeat. Albums had sides and each was it's own domain. All this and fond memories of my youth spent flipping through the new releases in Nottingham's Selectadisc and getting the bus home, happily clutching my silver carrier bag. It's all a bit anaemic typing a name into a search field and pressing a few buttons to make it appear on your device. Plus, how does the Devil send us messages without encoding them into the end of albums?

Of course, the boxes of vinyl I have weigh a tonne and sit in the attic straining joists and cracking ceilings. One day I'm going to set up turntable I tell myself without actually doing it.

I'm sure I read plenty of stories about the preference for mastering albums for the loudness, compressing everything – certainly older stuff I have is a lot quieter and the range between quite and loud more expansive.

Cassettes were bloody horrible though. My classy Amstrad stereo system had quite an appetite.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Mr Larrington on 14 April, 2015, 11:59:46 am
The other advantage of vinyl is that it's way easier to construct a Camberwell Carrot on the back of "Live Dead" than on an iPod Shuffle.

Allegedly.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: pcolbeck on 14 April, 2015, 12:04:08 pm
DAT is obviously better than CD in that both are digital but DAT is 24 bit / 48kHz and CD is 16 bit 41kHz. DAT therefore holds more information however for practical purposes that might not make any difference at all. Depends on what you play it back on, how good your ears are and how it was recorded and mixed in the first place. If the mixing was digital (Pro Tools or whatever) that my have been 16 or 24 bit you don't know.
You shouldn't get hiss with either CD or DAT (or any other digital media) as 0 is zero no matter what the digital format so the silence should be inky black whatever unless your playback equipment introduces noise or it was recorded with noise (mastered to tape or some other analogue noise in the recording).
I think you can definitely hear the difference between 128kbs MP3 and CD quality or above IF you play it back on a decent system (and by decent I don't mean mega bucks, a 100 amp and 100 speakers would do it just not an iPod or phone with £5 ear buds on the Central Line).
Move up to 192kbs VBR MP3 and it gets a lot harder but its still there I think if its a good recording. Above that well I cant tell really but since hard disk space is cheap I'll rip to FLAC.
Vinyl sounds fantastic, or it did when everything was mixed for vinyl and you had a reasonable record player (I still do but don't use it much). It doesn't have a higher dynamic range than CD or MP3 in fact its more limited. Good recordings were mastered to take account of the limitations of vinyl though.
As others have pointed out one of the reasons people thought CDs were worse than vinyl to start with is that CDs require a different mixing / mastering than vinyl and a lot of those early releases they just didn't bother. They just digitised the original master tapes without any kind of remixing, quick and dirty or did it without much care. That's why by the mid 90s when CD was understood by engineers better you suddenly started getting lost of re mastered re-releases.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: pcolbeck on 14 April, 2015, 12:09:46 pm
I'm sure I read plenty of stories about the preference for mastering albums for the loudness, compressing everything – certainly older stuff I have is a lot quieter and the range between quite and loud more expansive.

This is true. You can actually get a better dynamic range with digital than vinyl and a quicker change of dynamics - the needle on a record would just jump off the groove if the dynamic changed too much too quickly. The lack of dynamics in a lot of modern stuffs is not due to digital versus analogue but rather to mixing for crap reproduction via radio and cheap / small radio speakers and these days for rubbish ear buds and crappy little iPod doc speakers. Years ago Phill Spector did the same thing with his wall of sound stuff. He mixed i t specifically so it would sound awesome on the radio or jukeboxes.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Mr Larrington on 14 April, 2015, 12:18:05 pm
I initially tried my unscientific testing with a track from the Digital Age but the one I initially chose was too long to listen to ten times back to back so I substituted a 100-second long instrumental from the mid-70s.  Amp and squeakers are good if not mind-buggering.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Kim on 14 April, 2015, 12:33:56 pm
DAT is obviously better than CD in that both are digital but DAT is 24 bit / 48kHz and CD is 16 bit 41kHz. DAT therefore holds more information however for practical purposes that might not make any difference at all.

I thought DAT was 16bit at a variety of sample rates (up to 48kHz), so at 44.1kHz is identical to CD.  Mind you, I haven't used one for a very long time, so maybe the 24bit variant came along later.


Quote
Depends on what you play it back on, how good your ears are and how it was recorded and mixed in the first place. If the mixing was digital (Pro Tools or whatever) that my have been 16 or 24 bit you don't know.

I'd hope that any mixing done this century was floating point.  It's all just data now, so no need to go around quantising things at interim stages because of the hardware.


But at the playback end, I don't really see a need for more than 16 bits: that gives you 96 dB of dynamic range.  Who wants to listen to anything that's painfully loud, in the same track as sounds so quiet you can barely hear them over your own heartbeat and breathing (assuming your hearing's even that good in the first place)?  24bit is literally into bleeding ears territory, so is a healthy degree of overkill for storage of audio that might be manipulated in future without introducing noise.  But I doubt even classical commercial recordings are mastered with anything near 96dB of dynamic range.

What's the dynamic range of vinyl anyway?  70dB on a good day?  I doubt that anyone actually masters recordings at that, either.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: pcolbeck on 14 April, 2015, 12:49:39 pm
But at the playback end, I don't really see a need for more than 16 bits: that gives you 96 dB of dynamic range.  Who wants to listen to anything that's painfully loud, in the same track as sounds so quiet you can barely hear them over your own heartbeat and breathing (assuming your hearing's even that good in the first place)?  24bit is literally into bleeding ears territory, so is a healthy degree of overkill for storage of audio without introducing noise.  But I doubt even classical commercial recordings are mastered with anything near 96dB of dynamic range.
I totally agree. There are some technical arguments about where the noise floor is in 16 v 24 bit but for playback really who cares. I sort of like the idea of the master being higher quality than the playback though. It's the engineer in me just wanting some headroom in there for playing with.

Quote
What's the dynamic range of vinyl anyway?  70dB on a good day?  I doubt that anyone actually masters recordings at that, either.
Vinyl is about 60dB for a really good virgin pressing but usually in the low 50s and CD is over 90dB. The thing is analogue tape is only about 65dB on a good day with a really nice tape machine so you can't really use the 90dB of CD if the master was tape.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Mr Larrington on 14 April, 2015, 12:50:59 pm
I thought DAT was 16bit at a variety of sample rates (up to 48kHz), so at 44.1kHz is identical to CD.  Mind you, I haven't used one for a very long time, so maybe the 24bit variant came along later.

Wikinaccurate would seem to agree:

Quote from: Wikinaccurate
The DAT standard allows for four sampling modes: 32 kHz at 12 bits, and 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz at 16 bits.

I didn't know that Ry Cooder's "Bop Till You Drop" was the first all-digital rock album though, coz I'd always thought it to be "Levitation" by Hawkwind.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: sg37409 on 14 April, 2015, 12:54:49 pm
I kept my record player and still enjoy playing it. Got it connected through my sonos system.
Its not about sound quality, I just enjoy playing it.   Still have a few albums that I dont have on digital, but I find the biggest difference is I tend to play a whole album, turning it over half way obviously. On the sonos, I pick and choose tracks much more, which to my mind is a bit lazy and misses the point of an album.
Note to self: Must play more albums on the sonos and less playlists.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Kim on 14 April, 2015, 12:58:37 pm
Its not about sound quality, I just enjoy playing it.

Wise words.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: pcolbeck on 14 April, 2015, 01:01:54 pm
I didn't know that Ry Cooder's "Bop Till You Drop" was the first all-digital rock album though, coz I'd always thought it to be "Levitation" by Hawkwind.

I've got "Bop Till You Drop" ..... on vinyl :)
I bet there are people who say it sounds better on vinyl than well mixed digital though.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: pcolbeck on 14 April, 2015, 01:06:20 pm
I kept my record player and still enjoy playing it. Got it connected through my sonos system.
Its not about sound quality, I just enjoy playing it.   Still have a few albums that I dont have on digital, but I find the biggest difference is I tend to play a whole album, turning it over half way obviously. On the sonos, I pick and choose tracks much more, which to my mind is a bit lazy and misses the point of an album.
Note to self: Must play more albums on the sonos and less playlists.

Me too. Still have vinyl, CD and digital downloads. I don't buy many digital downloads though I prefer CD so I have a hard copy for backup.
The only thing I have junked is tape. I liked the physicality of my big silver Pioneer tape deck though with glowing VU meters but the sound quality was crap really and compared to vinyl or CD. Hadn't used it for years so it went for landfill :(
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Kim on 14 April, 2015, 01:09:25 pm
That's a point, never mind all this vinyl rubbish, what about reel-to-reel tape?  Now that's an archaic recording system I can get behind.  Sure, it's utterly redundant for anything sensible, and editing is faff in the extreme, but there's something deeply satisfying about taking bits of sound, cutting them up and sticking them back together with sticky tape.   :thumbsup:

(This is probably because about 30 seconds after completing my theatre Revox training, I was handed the manual for the JE510.)
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: PaulR on 14 April, 2015, 01:13:25 pm
^^^^^Menthel, are you going to see them next Monday?  My big bro has bought tickets, perhaps forgetting the ear trauma that followed from the last GY!BE gig we went to...
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: menthel on 14 April, 2015, 01:18:37 pm
^^^^^Menthel, are you going to see them next Monday?  My big bro has bought tickets, perhaps forgetting the ear trauma that followed from the last GY!BE gig we went to...

Unfortunately not. Would have been good to see them live and they don't come to the UK very often. I would imagine it will be a very interesting gig! As for deafness, I couldn't hear for a week after seeing Mogwai at the Brixton Academy a while back. Stupidly got too near the front and the speakers!
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Mr Larrington on 14 April, 2015, 01:18:59 pm
While installing the new amplifier at Fort Larrington over Christmas we plugged in the Colonel's old Ferguson reel-to-reel job and were surprised to find it still worked.  I doubt it had been switched on since 1975.

^^^^^Menthel, are you going to see them next Monday?  My big bro has bought tickets, perhaps forgetting the ear trauma that followed from the last GY!BE gig we went to...

Miss von Brandenburg and I are going.  Last time we saw GY!BE the volume was acceptable, but then again I saw Motörhead at Hammersmith on a night when they'd borrowed Queen's PA in addition to their own.

Where's the smiley with blood running out of its ears?
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: pcolbeck on 14 April, 2015, 01:24:24 pm
Here is an excellent video comparing three versions of a famous ABBA track everyone knows, one vinyl and two CD releases which demonstrates the horribleness of the loudness wards very clearly.

https://youtu.be/ThTc0K49oVo

Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Vince on 14 April, 2015, 01:32:26 pm
I recently emptied a storage unit and as well as The Long Unused mountain Bike, I found a vinyl covered box containing my vinyl collection from the late seventies/early eighties.

This included such delightful articles as Cool for Cats on pink vinyl and Up the Junction on purple vinyl. You don't get that with CDs or downloads.

We even managed to resurrect the JVC turntable to play them on. (I know chain lube isn't appropriate but there was no sewing machine oil available).
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Kim on 14 April, 2015, 01:36:43 pm
Here is an excellent video comparing three versions of a famous ABBA track everyone knows, one vinyl and two CD releases which demonstrates the horribleness of the loudness wards very clearly.

https://youtu.be/ThTc0K49oVo

Good demonstration, though I reckon the first one should have had a bit more amplification for a fair comparison: It sounds a bit quiet and tinny, until you turn the volume up and you realise what you're missing in the other tracks.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: pcolbeck on 14 April, 2015, 01:43:54 pm
This one is better as he gets the volumes more equal. It really shows the clipping on the compressed track as well. Interestingly in this case the newer version is the less compressed.

https://youtu.be/0EIRF7QW0eA

Listen to the bit where its quieter and there are some snare drums, the difference is really obvious.
Of course some music is pretty unredeemable in that it was recorded badly and clipped to hell on the masters.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: ian on 14 April, 2015, 01:47:10 pm
Flipping the album, that I also miss. Physicality. There's ceremony to playing vinyl. It's like raising demons, it's just not the same if you use an app.

Of course, I'm about to travel and my entire music collection can go with me on a small pocket-sized device. I suspect the vinyl equivalent would challenge my baggage allowance and possibly mean my airplane has to drive through West Sussex rather than fly over it.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Kim on 14 April, 2015, 02:22:09 pm
This one is better as he gets the volumes more equal. It really shows the clipping on the compressed track as well. Interestingly in this case the newer version is the less compressed.

https://youtu.be/0EIRF7QW0eA

Listen to the bit where its quieter and there are some snare drums, the difference is really obvious.
Of course some music is pretty unredeemable in that it was recorded badly and clipped to hell on the masters.

I'm not really hearing the difference in the snare (it's a mess of noise and lossy compression artefacts on both versions - I blame youtube and my dodgy hearing[1].), but the vocals in the quieter part sound *much* better on the less compressed version.  And, as he rightly says, more dynamics makes the loud bits louder!

What I'd really like to see is a movement towards doing adjustable range compression on playback.  Nobody doubts the need for less dynamics in the car, or on crappy laptop speakers, or whatever.  But doing it at the mastering stage just ruins it for everyone with a decent sound system, or even mediocre headphones.


[1] I'm now the proud owner of an audiogram showing a 5-15dB loss in the usual 500Hz-6kHz range, which shows that you can have 'perfect' hearing and still not be able to hear things properly.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: sg37409 on 14 April, 2015, 02:22:44 pm
The other thing about vinyl is I find it hard to beleive such a range of sound can be obtained from a needle bouncing around in a groove in plastic.   I saw a Quest: How its Made show featuring how they press the master and copies of vinyl which was no less amazing.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Kim on 14 April, 2015, 02:30:33 pm
The other thing about vinyl is I find it hard to beleive such a range of sound can be obtained from a needle bouncing around in a groove in plastic.

See that doesn't bother me.  Probably because I grew up with 16bit 44kHz audio as normal, so being able to get an inferior approximation by scraping a needle in a groove or dragging rusty plastic past a coil isn't inherently impressive, except when it's done *really* well.

CD mechanisms aren't even witchcraft, really, just normal everyday engineering (as proven by their persistent unreliability whenever I go near them).

Its helically-scanned tape that breaks my brain.  It's the sort of sneaky underhanded manipulation of the laws of physics that makes sense on paper, but has no right to actually work as a practical solution.  See also: helicopters.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: pcolbeck on 14 April, 2015, 02:35:11 pm
The other thing about vinyl is I find it hard to beleive such a range of sound can be obtained from a needle bouncing around in a groove in plastic.

I helically-scanned tape that breaks my brain.  It's the sort of sneaky underhanded manipulation of the laws of physics that makes sense on paper, but has no right to actually work as a practical solution.  See also: helicopters.

I had forgotten about helically scanned tape ! Years ago I used to do support for tape drives (Emerald Systems if anyone remembers them). And coincidentally Kim yesterday I was doing some consultancy at Airbus Helicopters where they had lots of choppers dissembled to their component parts.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Kim on 14 April, 2015, 02:38:29 pm
There's a whole generation who'll never know what it was like to have ride the tracking knob all the way through a rented movie...

Actually, I suppose there's exactly one generation who will ever know how to set the timer on a VCR.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Biggsy on 14 April, 2015, 02:43:09 pm
The lower dynamic range was probably the reason I used to prefer the sound of vinyl - maybe because I wanted all the music loud, not just the loud bits loud - but not painfully (or very anti-socially) loud, as high dynamic-range recording would be when turned up enough to maker the quiet bits loud.  I could have recreated this with digital, but gradually got used to digital as it is. 

The last vinyl record I bought was My Bloody Valentine's 2013 album, for old time's sake, but I haven't even be bothered to take it out the sleeve, as I got the FLAC at the same time.  Seeing, touching and sniffing the physical attributes are fetishes of the past for me, with a hint of regret, though a novelty for youngsters of today, which explains the vinyl revival, I suspect.  I doubt it's got anything to do with sound at all.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 14 April, 2015, 02:44:33 pm
The other thing about vinyl is I find it hard to beleive such a range of sound can be obtained from a needle bouncing around in a groove in plastic.   I saw a Quest: How its Made show featuring how they press the master and copies of vinyl which was no less amazing.
I find it hard to believe such a range of sound can be made by a cone of paper with a magnet on the end. And then I listen to some music live and realise it can't!
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: sg37409 on 14 April, 2015, 02:54:10 pm
This included such delightful articles as Cool for Cats on pink vinyl and Up the Junction on purple vinyl. You don't get that with CDs or downloads.

Ive got "Out of the Blue" on ltd edition blue vinyl, in a gatefold sleeve with a GBFO spaceship on it.  :thumbsup:

Its a bit knackered now mind, as is my copy of The Wall, having been played to death in my youth
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: clarion on 14 April, 2015, 03:01:21 pm
That's a point, never mind all this vinyl rubbish, what about reel-to-reel tape?  Now that's an archaic recording system I can get behind.  Sure, it's utterly redundant for anything sensible, and editing is faff in the extreme, but there's something deeply satisfying about taking bits of sound, cutting them up and sticking them back together with sticky tape.   :thumbsup:

(This is probably because about 30 seconds after completing my theatre Revox training, I was handed the manual for the JE510.)
Ooooh, I'm with you on that.  A nice big bank of Revoxes (Revoces?).  Lovely!
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Mr Larrington on 14 April, 2015, 04:20:46 pm
Somewhere up there ^^^^ are blue, green, red, grey and picture vinyl and quite possibly other hues which old age and lack of use have consigned to history.

Also the plural of Revox ought, in a sane universe, to be "Revoxen" ;D
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Mr Larrington on 14 April, 2015, 04:29:55 pm
The other thing about vinyl is I find it hard to beleive such a range of sound can be obtained from a needle bouncing around in a groove in plastic.   I saw a Quest: How its Made show featuring how they press the master and copies of vinyl which was no less amazing.
I find it hard to believe such a range of sound can be made by a cone of paper with a magnet on the end. And then I listen to some music live and realise it can't!

Top Tip: if you're not going to be in the mosh pit* then get as close to the mixing desk as possible.

* Something sadly lacking from most classical concerts...
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: clarion on 14 April, 2015, 04:43:37 pm
If it's next to the lighting desk, you'll get the best visuals, too.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: marcusjb on 14 April, 2015, 05:32:29 pm
Vinyl is great.  A significant chunk of my income is thanks to vinyl, so very happy to see the current revival in interest (not that it ever went away at our end of the market).
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: PeterM on 14 April, 2015, 10:04:59 pm
^^^^^Menthel, are you going to see them next Monday?  My big bro has bought tickets, perhaps forgetting the ear trauma that followed from the last GY!BE gig we went to...

Unfortunately not. Would have been good to see them live and they don't come to the UK very often.

GY!BE are also playing the Roundhouse on 30 June.  Tickets available last week, coz I snaffled some.

This has been a public service announcement...
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Jurek on 14 April, 2015, 10:33:54 pm
My Mum, who has on occasion sung solo in the Royal Albert Hall, to this day fails to distinguish between the advantages of stereo vs mono.
Go figure.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Kim on 15 April, 2015, 12:09:59 am
My Mum, who has on occasion sung solo in the Royal Albert Hall, to this day fails to distinguish between the advantages of stereo vs mono.
Go figure.

Maybe if she tried a duet?
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Woofage on 15 April, 2015, 11:11:00 am
My Mum, who has on occasion sung solo in the Royal Albert Hall, to this day fails to distinguish between the advantages of stereo vs mono.
Go figure.

In my previous line of work (audio equipment design and manufacture) I came across a great many audiophiles. I can't recall any of them being musicians.

I also came across a great many people whom loved music and had huge music collections (some of whom were also musicians). Not many of these were audiophiles.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Woofage on 15 April, 2015, 11:13:41 am
I didn't know that Ry Cooder's "Bop Till You Drop" was the first all-digital rock album though, coz I'd always thought it to be "Levitation" by Hawkwind.

I thought it was something by Flim & the BB's (don't bother looking them up, the performance* is so sterile it's intolerable).

* If indeed there was one.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Zipperhead on 15 April, 2015, 11:39:25 am
Well if you were an exceptionally pretentious twat you could have the "best" of both worlds with this

Bluetooth disc plays digital music like vinyl record (http://www.wired.com/2015/04/bluetooth-disc-plays-digital-music-like-vinyl-record/)

Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Mr Larrington on 15 April, 2015, 06:07:04 pm
Partly prompted by this thread and partly by a need to tidy upstairs before the new Babbage-Engine arrives, I have re-jibbled the hi-fi up there.

The good news is that the turntable still revolves.

The bad newses are that no sound comes out and the speed change button doesn't.  Singles only, then.

Bah!
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Kim on 15 April, 2015, 06:25:33 pm
So... What singles sound best on a turntable with no amplification?   ;D
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Mr Larrington on 15 April, 2015, 06:54:20 pm
I'm pretty sure it's the squeaker cables at fault but have yet to test this hypothesis with a source of musical tunes I know to work, viz. an iThing.  Squeakers and cables which used to be up there have been redolphined in the Great Hall
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Mr Larrington on 15 April, 2015, 08:04:41 pm
Good news: replacing squeaker cables has lead to Sounds coming out of squeakers.

Bad news: not only does turntable speed control button do nothing but platter revolves at rather more than 45 rpm.  Even Motorhead's first single sounds like Pinky and smegging Perky.  On helium.

Anyone know how to fettle a late-80s Ariston Q Deck?
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Pickled Onion on 19 April, 2015, 10:02:23 am
So what did everyone get at Record Store Day?
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Asterix, the former Gaul. on 19 April, 2015, 10:15:40 am
Would it be impossibly difficult to invent a way of storing/playing sound in analogue form that is more efficient than a record deck or tape?  Or is it all about the record deck/tape player?
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Mr Larrington on 19 April, 2015, 12:15:39 pm
Dunno, but analogue hi-fi is starting to get right on my tits.  Not only does the turntable revolve like John Curry on crystal meth but the cassette deck, while happy to transport the tape back and forth in the approved manner, just cranks its VU meters up to 11 while generating a vulgar farting noise >:(
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Woofage on 19 April, 2015, 04:30:07 pm
Would it be impossibly difficult to invent a way of storing/playing sound in analogue form that is more efficient than a record deck or tape?  Or is it all about the record deck/tape player?

I think the optical encoding of audio tracks on 35mm fillum film was pretty neat.

(Even more neat was the encoding of digital audio in 2D barcodes between the sprocket holes thus retaining full backwards compatibility with full analogue cinema but that's another story.)
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: Kim on 19 April, 2015, 06:14:52 pm
Would it be impossibly difficult to invent a way of storing/playing sound in analogue form that is more efficient than a record deck or tape?  Or is it all about the record deck/tape player?

Starter for one:  Laserdisc.
Analogue, most of the advantages of CD, phenomenally higher bandwidth than vinyl or linear tape.

Obviously you'd have to invent a new standard for encoding high-quality audio - the existing laserdisc standard modulates the audio in with the composite video, which is never a good idea (there's also PCM digital audio, at the same spec as CD).

TBH, you could do a half decent job with FM audio on VHS.  I'm sure a helical-scan tape system would work even better without a video signal cluttering things up.
Title: Re: Vinyl
Post by: sg37409 on 31 December, 2018, 09:20:12 pm
I got explosions in the sky, All of a Sudden I miss Everyone on vinyl for Xmas. Its a double album but only 3 sides. Side 4 has the album cover etched on the vinyl. I shone a light at an angle which is why it stands out like this. Ace !

(https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7919/46494081422_37ba6ec6d9_z.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2dQwjzu)Etched artwork (https://flic.kr/p/2dQwjzu) by sg310 (https://www.flickr.com/photos/24775321@N02/), on Flickr