Return of the Vinyl Album

bulled writes "NPR ran a story this morning about the comeback of vinyl. It seems that sales of new vinyl records are up about 10%; sales will approach a million this year (as against half a billion for CDs). NPR mentioned the popularity of a turntable with a USB interface — they didn't specify the brand; could be this one, or this — and speculated on other possible reasons for the resurgence. They mentioned sound quality and lack of DRM as possible causes. Sound quality can and will be debated, but DRM rates a resounding 'Duh.'"

Comments

Not surprising.

[Chouonsoku]

From a collector's stand point, vinyls never really faded from popularity. I still have all of my old vinyls and purchase new ones today by more current bands.

Re:Not surprising.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Vinyl went underground with the advent of the CD, but otherwise, it hasn't gone anywhere. It still has its niche, and it always will.

Re:Not surprising.

[goombah99]

From a collector's stand point, vinyls never really faded from popularity. I still have all of my old vinyls and purchase new ones today by more current bands. That's so last year. I'm going to digital Vinyl, I take my Vinyl records, convert them to MP3 then send this out over a modem which I then record as analog audio on the vinyl record. This way I don't encounter the dynamic range limitations of the vinyl.

Re:Not surprising.

[Wansu]

  From a collector's stand point, vinyls never really faded from popularity. I still have all of my old vinyls ...

I wouldn't exactly call myself a collector but my collection started back in the 60's when that's all there was and I bought most of them in the 70's. Some of that stuff will never be released on CD. For example, I'm a Commander Cody fan. His Country Casanova album was only released on vinyl. There are tracks on that album which appear nowhere else. So I keep my turntable.

Re:Not surprising.

[DerekLyons]

From a collector's stand point, vinyls never really faded from popularity. I still have all of my old vinyls ...

I wouldn't exactly call myself a collector but my collection started back in the 60's when that's all there was and I bought most of them in the 70's. Some of that stuff will never be released on CD. For example, I'm a Commander Cody fan. His Country Casanova album was only released on vinyl.

I take it you haven't actually looked much then?

Re:Not surprising.

[zakezuke]

There are tracks on that album which appear nowhere else. So I keep my turntable.

My only complants about turn-tables and vinyl

1) gotta replace the stylus from time to time. This is a $20 item
2) If not a dirct drive, you gotta replace the belts. You can get away with boiling the belt once or twice to shrink it. This is a $20.00 item.
3) You gotta pay attention to important things like ground straps so you don't pick up that 60 cycle hum on your cartridge.
4) Since most units don't offer line level outs, you need a pre-amp if your amp does not support turn tables.
5) Vinyl is rather fragile and scraches easily.
6) It's not portable. I do remember as a child I had a fisher price style turn table that took D cells, but it wrecked vinyl.

Aside from these complaints, most of which can be resolved, vinyl is great. Well worth investing the dollars to convert to CD so you don't have to spend $20 and $20 over and over again.

Re:Not surprising.

[toadlife]

Actually, CDs can carry *more* dynamic range than Vinyl. Historically, the problems with CDs and dynamic range has not been with the format, but with the mastering.

My favorite rock album of all time, The Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream, is an example of an album mastered properly for CD. Instead of compressing the hell out of the music, the quiet parts of the songs are left to be...well...*quiet*. When I was a young whipper snapper, the local pizza joint had Siamese Dream in their jukebox. The jukebox would compress the sound on the fly in order to make the volume of the tracks from different albums the same. We noticed that the compression took a couple of seconds to catch up and adjust the volume.

Knowing this, we would play the song Silverfuck whenever we went there. Silverfuck is almost nine minutes long and in the middle, has a long section that is very quiet and almost "trance-like". During this section the jukebox would compensate and raise the volume the track to about three or four times normal, but even with the compression the song was still fairly quiet.

When the song would break back into the loud chorus, everyone who wasn't ready for it would get a shock of their life as the volume would be the roof for a couple of seconds.

After doing that a few times, they ended up taking that CD out. :(

Re:Not surprising.

[Rimbo]

There's a bigger problem than mastering, especially where rock is concerned.

I started wondering about this a few months ago when I was transferring some of my ancient cassettes to digital with my ancient, but quality, tape deck. I was astonished to discover that two of my cassettes -- Sammy Hagar's Unboxed and AC/DC's Who Made Who -- sounded better than every CD in my collection. And in the latter case, we're talking about a 21-year old cassette that has had tons of play and sat in the car through ski trips and Summers in Texas. And here's the layman's version of what I figured out:

The more high frequencies you have interacting with each other, the more little squiggles you get in your waveform that are way beyond the range of human hearing. The squiggles come from the fact that the high-frequency sounds are out of phase with each other, and constantly shifting in phase relative to each other. Now although those little squiggles in the waveform are beyond what you or I can hear, our ears aren't looking for those squiggles -- they're looking for the harmonics that comprised those squiggles. But PCM encoding doesn't do that; it's trying to capture the actual waveform. Since those squiggles are well beyond the sample rate of a CD, they're fucking messed up. Sharp points get sheared off, the tiny squiggles disappear, and the sound wave that ends up being recorded gets aliased across a range of different frequencies.

When played back, instead of responding to a set of pure harmonic frequencies, our ears pick up a random assortment of frequencies near the originals. The crash cymbal goes "TSHHHH" instead of "TSSSS."

Now the standard objection to this argument so far goes something like this: Yeah, well man, vinyl and cassettes don't respond well much above, like, 18kHz!

There's two flaws with that objection.

First, an analog deck's frequency response may not go beyond 18kHz, but what happens is that those higher frequencies just fade beyond the noise threshold. They do not get mucked about with. And if you mix together multiple frequencies at 18kHz and below, record them, and play them back, you can deconstruct the result into the original waveforms pretty cleanly, because an analog recording device doesn't have quants that can go out of phase.

The other problem is that the pitches in question don't even have to be close to the Nyquist frequency (half the sample rate -- 22kHz on a CD, which is slightly above most people's range of hearing) if there's more than a few of them. And with rock 'n' roll is that you have tons of high-frequency shit going on. You've got the lead singer's shriek, the crash cymbals, the gate on the snare (and sometimes bass) drum, and the guitar on the fuzzy channel. All of those frequencies mix together, out of phase with each other.

The ultimate result of all of this is that high-frequency joy, those sharp high-frequency peaks in the guitar, the splash of the cymbals, the things that all combine together that made rock become the dominate pop music form for 30 years, disappeared once CDs became the main standard for audio. And rock, outside of the live show, hasn't sounded right ever since.

Re:Not surprising.

[Anonymous Drunkard]

Interesting argument, but fundamentally flawed.

The simple fact is that neither analog or digital are perfectly accurate, but digital is more accurate even for loud rock music. Many many CDs today are mastered way too high, resulting in severe clipping of the waveform peaks - but that is the fault of ABUSE of the technology, not the technology itself.

Here's a small encapsulation:

Digital recording: you record from your source into an analog-to-digital converter, whereupon the bits are recorded as data. Individual tracks are mixed together, post-processing is done, but the sound quality remains "first generation" throughout. Copies do not result in degradation, so the final CD master contains the sound in as close a form to what the microphone heard as possible, barring any post-processing altering the waveform either by design (echo, reverb, chorusing) or accident (mastering at too high a level, resulting in clipping). If the multitrack original is not processed at all after the recording, then the mixed-down master consists of first-generation tracks mixed together.

Analog recording: you record from your source into a multitrack tape machine, making sure that the azimuth is correctly aligned and that the speed of the machine is constant. In order to get some sort of sound out of those microscopic 24 tracks squeezed onto a two-inch tape, some compression and equalization and noise-reduction has to be done. Oops, we've just compromised the sound signal, haven't we? Not extremely accurate.

Now those tracks have to be mixed down to a 2 track 1/4" master, because vinyl is not multitrack. But in order to do that, we have to make an analog copy from an analog master. Normally this would be a tremendous sonic problem, because when you copy from tape to tape you not only copy the signal, you also copy the noise onto a blank tape with noise of its own, thus effectively squaring the noise. Mix two tracks, get four times the noise, Mix four tracks, get sixteen times the noise. Solution? More noise reduction. That compromises the compromised signal even more. And any analog postproduction, such as adding reverb, requires still another generational loss coupled with artifacts from the analog processing.

Once we get the tape mixed down to two track, which is second generation, it has to be mastered. Cutting that analog tape onto a lacquer blank introduces even more compromise to the audio signal, because unlike a CD, you cannot record the sound wave "as-is" onto vinyl. The highs have to be boosted because otherwise their minute squiggles would be smaller than the width of the cutting stylus and they would be irretrievably lost, while the lows have to be attenuated because otherwise the cutting stylus would cut the groove straight into the adjoining grooves and the record would not play at all. So now we have a minimum of three analog (lossy) generations away from the studio master, and this final generation now introduces an equalization curve just to that the resulting vinyl can be played on its own reproduction equipment.

That lacquer disc now goes for a plating bath, where a negative matrix is pulled, being an exact copy of the lacquer but with its grooves raised instead of sunken. This matrix is then plated to produce a positive mother, which looks exactly like the original lacquer except that the grooves are microscopically larger because it's been plated twice. We are now five generations removed from the studio master - and we still are not finished. The mother is plated yet again to make the stampers, and the stampers are used to press the final record into vinyl - a thermoplastic not particularly known for its dimensional stability. Set the vinyl out in the sun for a few hours and see how accurate the sound is.

So now you have a vinyl record that is seven generations removed from the studio session master. Now it has to go on your turntable, and be subjected the tracking force of the tonearm assembly, as well as whatever sonic compromises come about because

Re:Not surprising.

[fendragon]

One reason why an old tape may sound better than a new CD is that modern recordings get ridiculously heavily compressed at the mastering stage because the bands/producers/record company etc. want their album to be louder than everyone else's. Result: no dynamic range, no music, just loud loud loud.
Things were a little more civilised musically back in the days when tape cassette was a popular release format.

Flashback

[FatAlb3rt]

Didn't vinyl make a comeback about 12 or 15 years ago during the grunge era? What makes anyone think this is anything other than another small bump in popularity?

Re:Flashback

[battery111]

vinyl is also the de-facto standard for DJ's at parties and clubs. CD equivalents that allow you to mix and scratch are somewhat frowned upon in these areas, and while the rave scene has lost most of it's popularity, there are still quite a few fans out there of this type of entertainment. I don't think that anyone's arguing that vinyl is going to overtake CDs or other digital formats in popularity, merely acknowledging that the format is still thriving, and shows no signs of disappearing any time soon.

Re:Flashback

[garry danger]

its not just the "rave" scene that like vinyl. any type of dance music (techno, house, breaks) will generally be released on 12" due to the fact that dj's just love playing on proper turntables.

although that said, you will see all the big name dj's using the pioneer cdj-1000 which work on cd's and not vinyl. it is the industry standard as you can play a burnt cd just like a record (even scratching). There are websites out there that will convert the vinyl record to digital and let you buy the mp3 as drm free, such as beatport

I love my collection of vinyl music, and although the cdj-1000's are very cool I still much prefer to mix on my old school vinyl decks.

Re:Flashback

[adelord]

vinyl is also the de-facto standard for DJ's at parties and clubs. CD equivalents that allow you to mix and scratch are somewhat frowned upon in these areas, and while the rave scene has lost most of it's popularity, there are still quite a few fans out there of this type of entertainment. I don't think that anyone's arguing that vinyl is going to overtake CDs or other digital formats in popularity, merely acknowledging that the format is still thriving, and shows no signs of disappearing any time soon. Vinyl was the standard, but isn't anymore. Today artists like Richie Hawtin and Sasha use Ableton Live http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ableton_Live to produce a dynamic set that is impossible to trainspot. Wikipedia has a list of users: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ableton_Live _users

Others like Mark Farina use cds. Final Scratch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Scratch is still in use as well.

Judging by what was seen at the winter music conference this year, th stand set-up is four decks- two for cds and two for vinyl. Five years ago vinyl was the standard, but times are still changing.

Vinyl is still in common use, esp. for local or regional artists, but of the people I know who actually make their living off of playing music none use vinyl exclusively anymore.

Re:Flashback

[adelord]

I stand corrected. I have been away from this scene for a number of years. I just remember 5 or 6 years ago, all of my DJ friends would balk at DJs using anything other than tech 12's. Clearly, the industry has come a long way, and while it may become more accepted to use digital formats, I still doubt that it will ever dissapear completely from this scene. The sea change began to occur right after you left, and it was mostly top-down, with the most successful and respected making the change first. Depending on what city you live near you may want to return to the scene- for the most part the only people left really are all about the music, and the music is way better than ever before. All genres, with the exception of house, have seen their best releases in the last year and a half. All of those basement DJs now have a few years of experience with Pro-Tools, and music production software is common and the hardware to run all of it is cheap.

(software quality + amount of file sharing)*(number of users)^(experience)= music quality

The music was good then, it is great now, and is expected to be even better tomorrow.

Re:Flashback

[garry danger]

paul is using a cdj-1000 in the photo on that link

Re:Flashback

[Obyron]

I've been reading Slashdot for 7 or 8 years, and this is one of the funniest things I've ever seen! And, for anyone who doubts, that is in fact a Pioneer CDJ-1000. Furthermore, the following is from an interview with Oakenfold in DJ Times:

DJ Times: You said that you're using the Pioneer CDJ-1000 -- have you seen the MK3 version?

Oakenfold: The Pioneer CDJ-1000 is such a masterful piece of machinery, I don't know how you can improve on that unless it sprouts legs and makes me a vodka-tonic.

The gold standard in DJing is still a pair of Technics 1210 turntables, but in a scene that's "all about the music" this doesn't matter to a lot of people besides elitist DJs. As the parent noted, Oakie is using CDJ-1000s, but that's not the end of it. Laptops are becoming a more common sight at raves. Ferry Corsten did an entire album in Cubase and Ableton Live. The only ones making a big fuss about how it has to be vinyl or nothing are elitists. I could fire up Ableton, add its Vinyl Distortion filter to a track ripped directly from a CD, and play it through a PA and you'd swear you were hearing vinyl.

its hip to own vinyl

[Anonymous Coward]

It just happens to be hip to own vinyl again, mainly due to "audiophile" acts like the White Stripes and Modest Mouse, and other hipster indie rockers wannabes.

This too shall pass.

Re:its hip to own vinyl

[Mr2001]

You're joking, right? The White Stripes and Modest Mouse are shining examples of lo-fi. There's nothing "audiophile" about them.

Re:its hip to own vinyl

[TheBeardIsRed]

It's not that its "hip" to own vinyl. People produce vinyl because it's more feasible in small quantities unlike CDs. For example, my band sick fix. We just finished a 2 week tour. Basically sold 50 copies of our record the first night at a basement show and had to scramble to figure out what to do the next 2 weeks.

Second, it gives you more room for artwork. Third, it's better for audio archival (i have plenty of CDs from 1988 that are pitted being stored in jewel cases on a dark shelf) while i have plenty of records produced 20 years before i was bornn that still sound perfect.

So besides the economics, aesthetics, & archival reasons? Yes you're right "audiophile" lo-fi/no-fi acts are getting into the game and "squeezing in" on punk/hardcore acts like mine. But you know what? I'll keep producing & collecting vinyl of bands I'm into and you can keep getting all your tips from the jackasses at Hydrogen audio who are buying $700+ turntables.

You have to understand that there are multiple "markets" involved in the production and consumption of the media you're talking about. It seems that point was missed on you (and i won't even start up on the DJ sector).

USB?

[Anonymous Coward]

record player with USB? doesn't that defeat the purpose of analog sound quality?

Re:USB?

[setirw]

But it doesn't defeat the purpose of coolness.

Re:USB?

[ozbird]

record player with USB? doesn't that defeat the purpose of analog sound quality?

Relax - it's using a valve/tube-based ADC.
(Not really - but it's a pretty cool gadget.)

Re:USB?

[iainl]

Only if you use that crappy deck as your only one. The big downside that made me switch to a primarily CD-based setup was that I got sick of buying albums on both formats, just so I could put it on my iPod for portable listening.

Once I had a decent dedicated CD player the sound quality is just fine, too. I still like my vinyl, but it's just for when I feel like faffing around.

Analogue vs Digital

[ShieldW0lf]

There's no debate. Analogue recordings are better. And they keep better too. If you make an analogue recording of something using top of the line equipment, 50 years from now, you'll be able to use superior tools to pull a more accurate representation of the sonic environment than anything we can do now. If you record digital, a bit is a bit is a bit.

Best method, use the highest quality analogue gear you can find to record, then sample it in the highest quality digital you can for editing and distribution, then throw the original analogue in the vault so you can re-sample it again in 5 years.

Re:Analogue vs Digital

[MightyYar]

I dispute that they "keep better". If you have an analog tape master, it will have a finite life no matter how much you pamper it. Thus the existence of techniques such as tape baking. The only way to preserve this tape over the long-haul is to transfer it to a fresh tape or other medium sometime before it is completely degraded. Every time you transfer the analog tape, you degrade it by a generation... doing the same with a digital master would give you an exact, or near-exact copy. You could do this as many times as you wish with no generational loss.

At the very least, you should immediately digitize the analog master so that you have the digital first-generation copy "forever".

Re:Analogue vs Digital

[mr_matticus]

Persistent analog storage may be best, but consumer analog formats aren't. "Archival vinyl" is an oxymoron unless you never play the album.

If records really want to make a comeback, they'll come up with a nondestructive way to read the disc, like a laser beam. Oops, they did that. It's called a CD.

I agree that high quality analog recordings are a good thing to keep around for posterity, but analog recordings certainly aren't better for home reproduction (they'll get a little worse every time you play them), unless you don't mind having to repurchase albums every so often. You don't need DRM when your recording format expires and can't be reproduced easily at home. There is, after all, no "vinyl burner" on the shelf at Best Buy for $40.

Re:Analogue vs Digital

[servoled]

Amusingly enough they did it for Vinyl as well: http://www.elpj.com/main.html. Sure as hell aint cheap though.

Re:Analogue vs Digital

[garcia]

I agree that high quality analog recordings are a good thing to keep around for posterity, but analog recordings certainly aren't better for home reproduction (they'll get a little worse every time you play them), unless you don't mind having to repurchase albums every so often.

Oh I get it! The RIAA wants these to come back so that they can get you to download and pay for a digital copy for your portable media player and have to keep repurchasing your physical medium as well!

This is the "new" "old" DRM. Vinyl, the gift that keeps on giving...to the RIAA.

Re:Analogue vs Digital

[mudshark]

[cue rumble at -45dB]
[cue surface noise at -38dB]
[needle drop BANG]
skritch...skritch...Yeah, man...POP...Iskritchgree with CLICK you totaskritchly. NothinPOPg like the skritchdelity of vinyl...skritch.

Oh, you meant tape?

[cue tape hiss at -60db]
That's better. But how many machines are going to be around and serviced 50 years from now to play back that carefully stored tape? Lots of rubber idler wheels to dry out and crack, capacitors to leak, parts to become unobtainable, etc. Let's hope that someone is storing a whole bunch of MCI JH-24s in a secure undisclosed underground bunker, along with a stockpile of parts and manuals....

Re:Analogue vs Digital

[Cordath]

A lot of vinyl-philes have this strange notion that an analogue recording is somehow capable of storing a perfectly accurate continuous waveform that is superior to digital media precisely becasue it is continuous rather than discrete. In a perfect world that might be true. In reality, it is not.

Four basic things contribute to the fidelity of all recording formats:

1. The tolerances of recording equipment. (e.g. How closely the signal produced by a microphone resembles the soundwave that generated that signal.)
2. Generational loss in mastering
3. Manufacturing tolerances that affect playback
4. Tolerances of reproduction equipment.

All formats are limited by #1, and #4 is in the hands of each individual end-user. (i.e. If your stereo sucks, what format you prefer won't matter much.) However, number 2 and 3 are biggies.

Generational loss means that if you want to do anything more than slap a live recording onto a LP with no post-production whatsover, the quality will suck. Nobody masters albums in analogue these days. 99.9% of the vinyl being released was mastered digitally and then dumped back to analogue, so kiss that analogue "magic" goodbye.

The manufacturing tolerances of LP's are also a huge issue. When was the last time you picked up a micrometer made out of vinyl? It's not exactly the most ideal material for making something that has to have hyper accurate spatial dimensions. It's easy to scratch, and has a large coefficient of thermal expansion. Just play it back at a different temperature than it was cut at and you're already pretty badly off. The tolerances of a pressed vinyl disk are also larger than you might think, and have the effect of greatly reducing the practical information capacity. (i.e. In theory, analogue recordings contain infinite infomation. If you could record a waveform with even just very very large precision in vinyl, digital media would be useless because you could pack much more data into an analogue pressing. Digital media dominates today. Guess why? The precision of vinyl sucks dingo balls.) Everything that can go wrong with vinyl will have a direct impact on the sound. The lowly CD, by comparison, has built in parity information that allow any decent CD-reader to extract bit-perfect copies that would be identical to the master.

That being said, many CD recordings do suck, but that's the fault of mixing engineers who want to push it to 11 instead of mastering at an appropriate volume that won't clip the waveform. If a recording is mangled in this manner it's going to sound like crap no matter what you record it on.

Re:Analogue vs Digital

[dal20402]

You're being fooled by distortion. Your vinyl isn't even close to as accurate as your CDs.

Your CDs have slightly fucked up high frequencies that *may*, if you have golden ears, make the recording sound somewhat harsher than a live performance and screw up your soundstage a bit. They also have a signal-to-noise ratio of >100dB, huge dynamic range, high-voltage output (for minimal noise after the D/A conversion stage), and they don't require equalization from your components.

Your vinyl has a signal-to-noise ratio of 50dB if you're lucky, low-voltage output that virtually guarantees that some level of 60Hz hum will get into the signal, a shitload of equalization by your record player, and very low dynamic range. You only have any highs at all (and the soundstage they bring) if your needle and record are both perfect. The reason you think your vinyl sounds better is precisely because of these traits. You hear them as "mellow," "warm," and "not harsh." Maybe you like to be protected in a bubble from what your recordings actually sound like, and that's fine, but what you're hearing is not better or more accurate sound... it's precisely the opposite.

Re:Analogue vs Digital

[MightyYar]

Right, but you can make a bit-perfect copy of a CD as many times as you want. A reasonable backup strategy for digital media would be to make several bit-perfect copies of the master, and then make several more bit-perfect copies of those copies at a regular interval of time. Doing this would retain the original "master" quality indefinitely, and would insulate you from format changes, as you could just backup onto whatever the prevalent format of the time is.

This would not work at all for an analog master - you are stuck with only one "master" on whatever format you recorded it on. A good example of why this is bad is the Apollo moon tapes. If these were digital, it wouldn't be such a shame that the originals were missing, and it wouldn't matter that only one facility in the world is still capable of playing them back.

Re:It's a fashion trend

[goombah99]

The social equivalent of tongue piercing. Once everyone goes digital it's fun to shock people by going analog. Plus scarcity creates value among collectors. One thing is true: vinyl will outlast CD in durability, and the error correction is much more robust on Analog.

So let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

People are buying vinyl because it sounds better than digital recordings, and then using a USB turntable to make digital recordings of their vinyl records.

What am I missing?

Re:So let me get this straight...

[fred fleenblat]

>> What am I missing?

Main thing is that vinyl records released these days are likely to be engineered by people who actually care about the quality of the recording. This is like 99% of the difference.

Now at least one of the digitizers claims 24 bits at 96 khz (the m-audio one). A CD is 16 bits at 44khz and a lot of stuff is lost at that rate. Plus cheap CD players have cheap digital filters so you don't get anywhere near the nyquist limit (22khz) out of them, and what you do get is out of phase in the upper registers. Fresh vinyl can get up to 30khz and in fact old quad vinyl used a subcarrier up there for the rear channels.

Vinyl falls down on noise floor, pops/crackles, subwoofer feedback, anyone remember wow & flutter, and RIAA* equalization errors.

*the RIAA back when it was concerned about sound quality!

Re:So let me get this straight...

[mblase]

What am I missing?

The brick wall, with your forehead. A little more damage to your frontal lobes will do wonders for your audiophile logic.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[woodlandbop]

Yes - I do exactly that and I have very mixed feelings about it. I record the vinyl and convert it to mp3 @320 - why?, well, the vinyl just sounds much better which I actually wish it wouldn't. I do not want to join the secret club of audiophiles and I do not want to be one of those tossers that sniffs at the sterile sound of CDs vs the warm sound of vinyl. That said however, I do want my mp3 files to sound as good as possible and so have invested time and money in hardware/software to get a set up that works a treat for me. And damn but the vinyl through a USB turntable does soung great - and that sound is actually preserved when recorded/converted to mp3 and then pumped out through good software/speakers. The vinyl covers are nice and everything but the process of getting that vinyl sound into a neat mp3 file is a bit time consuming and I wish the raw CD sounded as good - then I simply wouldn't bother.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[dal20402]

Sure. You can add distortion and noise either way.

Clearly people like the sound of distorted, noisy playback. I just for the life of me can't understand why.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[kephunk]

There's actually 3 products on the market that does this. Final Scratch, Serato/RANE Scratch Live and MS Pinky's Interdimensional Wrecked System.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[fuzz6y]

I just got done fixing my piano. those metal strings kept distorting the sound of the little swinging hammers.

bah

[Danzigism]

I've always liked collecting vinyl for novelty reasons.. yea of course other types of media might *sound* better, but who cares.. I can buy a jazz record that I'd have a hard time finding on iTunes or some shit if it even exists on there, for $1 at a thrift shop instead.. that is priceless.. plus you own a piece of physical history.. the sound has never mattered to me.. caring about the sound is like only saying you'll listen to bands that record with ProTools and who are Auto-Tune trigger happy.. sometimes it's the music that matters.. the vinyl surpasses the value of a CD as a physical object.. hell, it lasts longer and the inserts and album art are 3 times the size.. 3 times the fun for me baby..

DRM can be implemented in vinyl

[MillionthMonkey]

Surely you don't think they're going to put the raw analog signal right in the vinyl so you can copy it! They're not about to make that mistake again. A generation of USB-enabled record players will come out that will be able to play your vinyl records from the attic, and also some goofy "new and improved" vinyl hi-def format where you drop the needle on an encryption key instead of the first track.

Collectability, nothing more

[stratjakt]

Nothing less.

If someone could set up shop pressing 8-tracks, they'd sell too.. People collect 'em

12" records have nice art and look good on the wall, etc.

Re:Copyright

[Mr2001]

Uh, sure thing amigo. You bought a car, so that means you can just steal as many more as you like. Bzzzt! You just failed Common Sense 101. Stealing a car deprives the original owner of that car. Downloading an album doesn't deprive anyone of anything, especially if you've already paid for it. Come back when you understand the difference between information and physical property, OK?

Vinyl Records Do Have The One Downfall Of...

[morari]

Promoting DJs. Ew.

Digital Vinyl

[goombah99]

I'm going to digital Vinyl, I take my Vinyl records, convert them to MP3 then send this out over a modem which I then record as analog audio on the vinyl record. This way I don't encounter the dynamic range limitations of the vinyl.

While you may think I'm joking I note that a 30-40Kb/sec stream is more than suficient to store audio at near CD quality in real time. You can send 30-40Kb/sec over a telephone which has a small fraction of the bandwidth of a record. Thus I can actually encode about 8 simultaneous stereo streams

since audio records last about 40 minutes, 8 streams gives me 320 minutes of near CD quality music which is longer than an audio encoded CD can provide. Next up VCD on Vinyl

Re:Digital Vinyl

[AJWM]

Next up VCD on Vinyl

Oh, that's been done twenty five years ago.

Re:Digital Vinyl

[AJWM]

twenty five years ago.

Actually, make that eighty.

(Okay, that's arguably analog rather than digital.)

Re:Copyright

[ShieldW0lf]

Copyright infringement isn't stealing.

It shouldn't even be a crime.

It's an obsolete social mechanism that causes more than enough harm to offset any socially redeeming qualities it has.

This imbalance between harm and benefit becomes greater as our technological capacities increase.

If you make any long term plans around copyright continuing to exist, you're a fool, because it's not going to.

It's just that one extra step.

[metalhed77]

What I thought was most remarkable was that this was not a technological breakthrough, we've been able to record turntables since PCs had sound cards, but that it was the packaging that caused this change. Most people simply aren't going to discover that they only need a program like Soundforge and a decent soundcard to do everything these packages do.

All it takes is removing a couple steps to make something extremely attractive to the consumer

Re:It's a fashion trend

[FLEB]

One thing is true: vinyl will outlast CD in durability

When the apocolypse comes, give me a pin, a piece of cardboard, something to use as a spindle, and a steady finger. I'll still be rockin'.

Re:It's a fashion trend

[king-manic]

One thing is true: vinyl will outlast CD in durability, and the error correction is much more robust on Analog.

I don't think so. the abuse a standard CD is subjected to would utterly destroy a record. how many people put a dozen naked Records on top of each other in a care that goe over bumps. 2 bumps and you have yourself a pile of useless plastic. I do the same to CD's and they last about a year with this abuse. Records last a long time now, because those who buy them treat them properly. CD's have finite lifespans because they are small, and versatile and thus often abused.

CD's and Records fail in different ways. A light scratch across the record will render every track with a regular periodic snap/pop or even render it unplayable. A light scratch on a CD may result in a bit of a skip or no data loss. A deep scratch on both results in an unplayable disc. Multiple light scratches on a CD will still often be playable and often without quality loss while the same for a Record renders it unplayable. Repeated play degrades a record, while it doesn't really degrade a CD. And Vinyl is not as mobile.

Also, You can back up a CD. You cannot back up a Record into the same format. Error correction on analog data is not more "robust" it's different. Critical failure on an anologue system is different then on digital. If I introduce random noise to a CD, I can digitally filter it out if I know how. The same type of error on a anologue signal might result in static. cleaning up such a systemic loss is hard on analogue. When the damage is mroe severe the digital may be unrecoverable while the analogue may still cary some of th edata. Digital has a recoverable area/damaged area rate that looks like a inverse log. 0-50% damage = 100% recover 50%+ = 0%. While Anaglogue has a linear decline.

Not surprising-Art for spaces sake.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's another reason that no one has mentioned yet. More space for cover art.

Re:Not surprising-Art for spaces sake.

[JebusIsLord]

I just tried. Mission accomplished.

Re:Wow....

[ScrewMaster]

Before you even concern yourself about the quality of any modern consumer electronics product with a well-known name, find out if that name is still worthy of its history. Many of the former greats in audio reproduction have sold out to Chinese manufacturers, sold their names, their brands, and the respect they earned in the marketplace. Now they're nothing more than marketing fronts, shadows of their former selves.

Digital Vinyl DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

switch from MP3 to WMA so you can add DRM and I might be interested. But I'll have to wait for the Zune version so I can squirt my Vinyl. Chicks dig me.

Re:Digital Vinyl DRM

[Gilmoure]

Didn't Squirt My Vinyl open for the Ramones in '78?

Re:Copyright

[Mr2001]

Sleeping with your wife while you're at work doesn't deprive you of your wife, as long as she's there for you when you want her. Therefore, sleeping with your wife is OK! No, sleeping with your wife is "OK". Sleeping with my wife is fantastic. Sorry you're missing out, but for some reason, she only likes to sleep with guys who have enough common sense not to compare copyright infringement to theft, adultery, or other acts involving force or deceit.

Laser Pickups

[Doc Ruby]

If vinyl turntables (with USB, natch) used a laser pickup instead of a mechanical stylus, vinyl would be a lot more popular. Then records wouldn't wear out nearly as much. They could be sold used for more money with less damage. And a laser turntable could scan a record at high speed (maybe 333 1/3 RPM, 100x) for portable (lower-fi) playing on iPod, mobile phone, etc.

Laser pickups themselves wouldn't wear out like a stylus used to, which used to put the turntable out of commission until a new one was bought. Which was sometimes expensive, especially when the electromagnetic transducer cartridge needed repair/replacement. Those were expensive, especially the really hifi ones. Today, laser pickups would be cheaper than that old precision EM stuff. And they could still be analog, like an original videodisc, with audiophiles fighting over imperceptible differences in the analog/digital converter.

I'd get one. Vinyl sounded so much better at its best than any equivalent priced digital system I've ever heard. But then, I prefer to listen to music that was produced for vinyl's acoustic response. Kids today could get into it, too, though, if it really is a hybrid of phat old analog and cheap new digital.

Re:Laser Pickups

[k_187]

like this? http://www.elpj.com/main.html

Re:It's a fashion trend

[shinma]

Never had a girlfriend (or boyfriend) with a tongue piercing, huh?

There's more to them than shock value. Really.

Re:It's a fashion trend

[goombah99]

And sewer rat might taste like pumkin pie but I'm not eating one to find out.

PRM..

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Isn't Vinyl just Physical Rights Management? My car can play a burned CD, even one with MP3s or WMAs on it. I haven't seen a turn-table since I was like 4 (I'm only 21).

The obvious solution

[whitewhale]

The last two records I bought on vinyl (the new records by Of Montreal and M. Ward) came with a coupon for one-time download of DRM-free MP3 versions of the album tracks from the label's Web sites. So I get the big cover art and the intangible experience (they're both double albums on vinyl) but I can still play 'em on the computer without sweating over the process of digitizing vinyl.

Fact is, the vinyl version of the Of Montreal record (which is awesome) has a scratch that makes track 3 repeat the same crazy groove over and over, and it sounds intentional and much, much better than the digital version, which now seems weirdly short. And it comes with four bonus tracks, which are included in the download too but not on the CD version. Obviously some small record labels are betting big on vinyl as a way to keep people buying records, and I'm all for it.

Records with laser pickups are "Compact Discs"

[rhinoX]

Some crazy Japanese company (Sony I believe) released a product called a "Compact Disc" Player (CD Player for short) in the early 80's that implements a scheme vaguely like what you describe. A laser pickup ("needle" if you will) runs over tracks ("grooves"), looking for divots on the surface.

I wonder whatever happened to it..

Re:There's no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, an interesting thing happens when you compare CDs and vinyl records. Turns out that CDs do a much, much better job of reproducing the original recorded waveform than vinyl. I.e, for sound fidelity, CDs totally kill records. It's not even close.

Now the interesting part. It seems that humans don't really care about sound fidelity. They care about things sounding good, which is actually not the same thing. The vinyl records introduce a whole range of coloring distortions into the audio. This is made far worse by the noise reduction circuitry and lousy, thermally varient amplifiers (I'm talking to you, tube-amp owners). This radically changes the way the sound comes out (go ahead, compare the waveforms using an oscope). It also makes them softer, warmer, and generally more pleasant. The real world has a lot of harsh edges, ringing tones, and crackles that really don't sound too pleasing.

So, in conclusion, vinyl is crap for reproducing audio. It's good for making sounds pleasing to humans (except for the horrible scratching sound, of course). Ever wonder why the totaly voice-synth'd Britney Spears albums sell so many?. It's the same reason that people like vinyl records.

Vinyl Makes Music Fun Again

[ecliptik]

At 25 I just inherited my dad's vinyl collection and I've found they make music fun again. When digital distribution of started to catch on I stopped buying CDs, but then it felt like I was just buying filenames. Even when I occasionally bought a CD, I would just rip it to MP3 and put it on my shelf never to bother with it again. Convenient yes, fun not so much.

With vinyl all this convenience goes away. It's fun to go to the record store and sift through 1.00$ bins, or find pressings of newer groups. Then when you get home, you play it. You don't put it into your computer and hit button. You open it up, carefully take the disk out, notice the large liner notes, spin up the table and enjoy. It's more of an event than just rip. burn. play.

Sure it's analog, and there's the occasional distortion, but with a decent cartridge and stylus it's amazing how good new vinyl sounds. Finding spare sleeves to put your favorite albums in then putting the cover them on your wall make for some good excellent wall art too. To me it's similar to why I buy books even when I can get e-books. Life it's just about making everything streamlined and perfect, sometimes you need a little analog grit to keep it interesting.

Of course, I negated myself already by writing about ripping vinyl with 100% Free Software , but that's more for getting my dads old albums onto CD for him.

"DRM rates a resounding 'Duh.'"

[Aluvus]

Are you quite serious?

Let's think about the actual downsides of DRM. Needing a special player? Turntables are not exactly readily available all over. Not being able to make copies? How do you intend to make copies of a vinyl album? Not being able to just drop songs on your MP3 player and go? Not going to be easy with vinyl.

If you want to produce a readily-transportable, widely compatible, copy-able file from a vinyl album (such as an MP3), you're going to need to record the output from playing it on a turntable, and then digitize that. Which you could do with any DRMed file. The old "analog hole".

I know this is /., but not every story that involves audio needs to whine about DRM.

Turntable emulator

[tepples]

You can analyze the audio playback for noise characteristics and all that good crap all you want, but ultimately it comes down to the listeners preference. There are ways to signal-process the digital audio so that it sounds "warmer" in the vinyl sense: turn down the treble, add a bit of noise proportional to the signal, and use soft saturation with slightly different thresholds on the + and - sides (to add the 2nd harmonics).

Re:There's no debate

[dal20402]

Absolutely right. As usual when someone posts something really smart that bucks the CW my mod points are taking a tropical vacation.

Sadly, CDs are not great either, for different reasons. Where vinyl introduces the uncontrollable variables you talk about (thermal variations, electrical noise affecting the very-low-voltage signal, never-ideal disc and needle quality, dust) CDs, because of their low sampling frequency (which should have been 96kHz from the start), mangle the waveforms at high frequencies. Still, CDs come a lot closer to delivering accurate reproduction in any form of real-world use. For starters, you just can't always keep dust away from your needle...

As for amps, it has always amazed me that people *love* the ones that introduce distortion and claim the accurate ones are "cold" and "technical." It's not the amp's job to be warm and emotional; it's the musician's. I run away from any component that advertises "warm" or "musical" sound; those are code words for distortion.

My own setup consists of various digital sources playing through a big Class D amp into speakers with poly cone woofer/midrange and planar tweeters. Everyone complains the sound is too cold. But it's dead-accurate with test signals and I can actually hear the detail in my recordings, not just "warmth" that may make me feel good but isn't there.

Nothing mixes like vinyls

[YGingras]

Have you seen and heard a DJ with vinyls? I mean, a real DJ, someone who mixes. I was peacefully sipping some malt liquor at a random electro industrial bar on a slow day. It was probably in the middle of the week; I recall that we were no more than five in the place. An electro industrial bar is not a place where you expect a skillful DJ. You expect a DJ knowledgable in the latest trends with a huge collection of obscure music that he had from download^W import from Germany or something like that. Songs go one after the other and there is some effort to keep that BPM constant and to make the transition beat-into-beat. I thought that this was the essence of mixing. Then, out of nowhere, came this rave DJ. He was actually a former electro industrial DJ who was visiting his former workplace. And he made a set.

I don't know how to describe the experience. He started a hard song on the CD player (Funker Vogt I think) then he attacked the turntable. He started with a Depeche Mode vinyls, and I hear you scream at the idea of eletro pop being mixed with Funker Vogt, but what he did was brilliant. He jumped on the EQ and isolated the good baseline so typical of Depeche Mode and gently blended it into the hard stuff, just the baseline. A moment later the vinyl was doing backflips over his head; he wanted to plug in voice sample that was on the other side. It was almost instantaneous, he waved his hand over the EQ, the voice sample played, the vinyl flipped again and we were back with the baseline. We assume that vinyls have poor seek time but, in the hand of an expert, a vinyl will seeks much faster than a CD. The DJ continued his dance, mixing in some elements of trance and goa, building an elecro industrial song out of other songs from a wide repertoire of electronic music. When he left, he was not the resident DJ after all, nothing was the same anymore.

I had discover that mixing was in fact a form of composition but it was all gone. I now pay attention to the work of the DJ. The DJ is an artist an his medium is extremely expressive. A good DJ will keep the dancefloor full but only a greet DJ will coerce people into dehydration and renal failure. When I see a DJ lifting the dusty cover of the turntable, I know that I'm in for a good show. I keep the ear open and I enjoy this rare skill that the CD almost killed.

Noise shaping

[tepples]

105dB of stereo separation on a 16bit (~96dB SNR) medium? Of course. Even in 16/44, modern dithering with noise shaping pushes most of the dither noise above 15 kHz, where it is much less audible. This results in about 120 dB SNR in the band where noise is most audible (1000-5000 Hz). Noise shaping is not a new concept; it dates back to the RIAA equalization curve of vinyl.

Re:It's due to LASER - not those USB crappy things

[night_flyer]

yeah, because everyone can afford 10k for a turntable

One place vinyl absolutely beats CD's

[stox]

I own well over 1,000 pieces of vinyl, and many of them sound better than the CD. This isn't because vinyl sounds better, but because either the master was damaged or poorly remastered for CD. It is amazing how poorly mastered some CD's are. Digital recording does not compensate for an idiot behind the sound board, in fact it makes it much worse.

Easy answer

[jd]

CDs tend not to be of very high quality, by today's standards. 16 bit isn't bad, but anyone with a good sound card can manage to digitize at 24 bits. 44.1 KHz is ok, but most quality sound cards can manage far higher rates. This doesn't make digital bad, it merely makes the digital that we're sold inferior to the digital we can make ourselves.

(It doesn't help that some DRM/watermarking techniques for digital sound degrades the quality further than the mere absolute rates would account for.)

Frankly, I don't expect this to be a major resurgence of vinyl/analogue formats, but if it forces even a few labels to beef up the stuff they're producing, I'm all for it. Who cares if vinyl "wins", if we all "win" by getting a better product? Of course, a better product really isn't likely, but the 0.01% hope that something could improve is better than the near-certainty of nothing changing if nothing challenges the status quo.

Damn kids

[Daishiman]

I hate this stupid fad, and I say it as a vinyl lover an serious collector (I'm buying up over 10 records a week). These kids do this out of nonconformism, except that like most idiot wannabe nonformists, they don't know squat about anything (Disclaimer: I'm 20 years old, but I'm really an old fart in a kid's body).

They don't know how to maintain their records, they can't differentiate between high-quality records and a digital-to-analog dump (worthless). They buy modern or popular music that you can get on CDs without the disadvantage of noise floor, they don't have decent turntables, and worst of all, lack decent stylii (a bad stylus will damage the record). I buy records mostly for Jazz that's never been mastered on CD and other such rarities, and play it on a system that's worth more than $200 bucks; really, anything less than that is simply a waste.

And they raise the price and end up destroying the records and then you can't find anything decent because everything's scratched.

lets set the record straight

[jigjigga]

Why are people going to records? Because on the average, due in part to the technical requirements of the format, the importance of engineers, often times the quality of the music, and a few more decent reasons, vinyl is preferred. It isn't that vinyl is inherently better sounding- a good sounding cd can sound better than vinyl sometimes, but there are so so few that do this that it can't compare. Vinyl is better because back when it was put out they had professionals perform the mastering and whatnot. Vinyl has its limitations to be sure, digital in any format (16/44 or higher), but the vinyl almost always sounds better because they knew what they were doing with the music. The warmth factor is important because a LOT of the recordings and mixing done years ago were made with the explicit intention of the producing being played through multiple layers of tube and other such warming/coloring gear. That is why digital sometimes sounds so lifeless by comparison- it is through the digital recording of music being given the "breath of life" that it can sound like vinyl to a degree. For anyone interested, check out Steve Hoffman's forums (stevehoffman.tv) for more info. People who listen to vinyl aren't crazy- people who have never listened to vinyl and somehow have to dig at it because they don't understand the other details are. Good day :)

hi-fi doesn't really exist in today's marketplace?

[Cordath]

I once read a review of a McLaren F1 that included a phrase that stuck in my head ever since, even though it's turned up in countless sports car reviews over the years.

"Getting into and out of the cockpit of this beast requires the kind of agility that almost nobody capable of affording it possesses."

Likewise, by the time you're old enough to both care about audio and afford a decent stereo, your hearing will already have deteriorated to the point where you simply can't hear much of what you're obsessing over.

A young (i.e. under 20 years old) person with both excellent and absolutely undamaged hearing might be able to hear some output about 20KHz, but not much, and not loudly. (The falloff is quite steep.) The average teenager won't. A teenager who has been listening to his iPod/stereo for most of his life won't. Somebody in their twenties almost certainly won't, let alone thirties or forties.

Now, that's hearing above 20KHz. Hearing above 22Khz is an even taller order. This is one of the reasons why CD's were designed as they are. The engineers did their homework and decided that, even with moderately crappy filters that don't fall off nearly as fast as they could, a low-pass at 22.05KHz would be inaudible. I'm sure that with the wide range of human variability there are a small number of people gifted with exceptional hearing who are able to just barely hear output above 22KHz, and perhaps even a small number of these people will retain that ability past their teens. This, of course, is all when we're talking about test sine-waves. I wish any of these gifted listeners luck in picking out >22KHz details in a musical recording!

Statistics allow me to say with near absolute confidence that you, yes you, cannot hear the effect of the "brick wall" of CD's. Your dog might. Your paperboy is a remote possibility. You can't. I would happily slap down money on the table to bet that you could not tell the difference in a blind test between music that has been low-passed at 22KHz versus 40KHz. The effects of the "brick wall" are merely psychoacoustic.

As for the high-end audio market... What city do you live in? I live in a Canadian city of about a million people. (Calgary) This is not exactly LA, but we have at least half a dozen audio stores where you can sit down and listen to $30K+ systems. (Some that cost *much* more.) Everything from high end B&W to local-grown goodies like Totem acoustic. Yes, the audiophile market is not a high-volume one these days, but it never was. Also, the best sounding rigs I've heard have not been analogue. Some audiophiles really like the sound of vinyl playing through the grandiose euphonic distortion of a SET tube amp. My tastes tend towards something more... neutral. If I really wanted to add that much "color" to my music I'd feed it through an audio editor and apply some filters. I suggest you take a listen to a well recorded SACD or DVD-A album. (i.e. Not yet another #$@%ing remaster of a 30-year old Eagles album.) It's a shame neither format is doing very well because both formats can sound superb.

Anyways, whatever gets your rocks off, I wish you plenty of aural pleasure.

Re:Copyright

[ShieldW0lf]

The purpose of copyright is to subsidize creation for the larger benefit of society.

The cost of copyright is that those good works which are created are not distributed to the population as widely as they might be.

The goal is to have an educated, enlightened society which has been exposed to a great deal of culture and knowledge, that they might be better peers and neighbours.

When 90% of the society is too dog tired from working in the fields to even think about doing something so frivolous as writing...

When only the few and the rich can afford recording gear and instruments...

When the cost to respect the copyright and maintain an artist is a pittance next to the massive costs of the manufacturing and distribution network...

In such a civilization, copyright is a defensible mechanism.

This is not such a world.

In this world, it is trivial to distribute information.

It is trivial to get your hands on the tools to create.

It is trivial to find the idle time to set your hand to it.

And with 6 billion of us and growing, if you don't want to do it without getting paid, go to hell. Someone else will do it, you're not special.

In this world, it is a trivial enterprise to make vast libraries of culture and knowledge accessible to peasants in the jungle.

Soon, it will be trivial to provide a copy of every creative work ever made to every man, woman and child on earth.

At which point, the only thing holding us back from doing so will be small-minded dickheads harping about their "rights".

If you're a creator, stop thinking about copyright.

Brainstorm for other ideas on how you might get subsidized by our society without it being necessary to keep people isolated from what you've created, and throw your weight behind getting them into place.

The writing is on the wall. Copyright is done. Find another way.

Digital Vinyl data capacity blows CDs out of water

[goombah99]

Top notch modems are 56kbps. A DS0 can carry max 64kbps. Semi-OK cd quality is 128kbps. A normal telephone line is 8 bit, MONO 8,000hz.

When you said near CD-quality, you weren't thinking of 8 track tapes were you?

Let's try the math again. First many digital radio stations use ABBAcast or something like it for near-CD quality at 33 to 40Kbs. Even if it's not CD quality it's certainly higher quality that anything that came off the vinyl in the first place. But let's ignore that and incorrectly assume we need 128kb/sec and see how the math comes out.

Audio modems don't actually use the full spectrum of the phone. last I looked they used about 3Khz. Now a vinyl record has a lot of bandwidth. the main limit on the bandwidth is the needles voltage/amplitude response falls off. That's why you equalize them. (which is why your stereo has a different input jack for phono than for tapes) You can only equalize then so far and get a decent sounding thing but you could push this much further if you went to a an analog coding scheme other than amplitude modulation. (hey that's what modems do! how about that).

  So just to have some numbers lets make some up that are not completely crazy. Lets say we could push audio signal recovery out to 30Khz. So that gives us ten 3khz wide modem channels. And since the record is stereo that gives 20 total channels.
20*56kb/sec = 1060 kb/sec

1060kb/sec /128 = 8.4 channels

Hey! that's what I claimed to begin with. I claimed I could fit about 8 cd quality channels (and here we mean 128Kb/sec) on a Vinyl record.

But wait! that's actually a gross underestimate. What determines the bits per second on a modem. it's a combination of two things, bandwidth and signal to noise. A vinyl record has enormously better signal to noise than a telephone. So the number of bits pers second my vinyl can support is vastly higher than the phone.

the shannon capacity scales as:
Bandwidth * log_2 (1 + SNR)
(where SNR is the singal to noise ratio in power)

to if I had 128 times better SNR on a record then that's about 8 times more bits per second.

So you see my Digital Vinyl smokes your CD.

Re:There's no debate

[prockcore]

It's likely more marketting then tech since CD and well kept records sound exactly the same to me

Depends on what CD you're talking about. The Loudness War has adversely affected CD quality for a decade now. The LP version of the latest Chili Peppers album doesn't have anywhere near the amount of clipping that the CD version has. It has a higher dynamic range.. this isn't "feels warmer" this is "measurably different wave forms".

Sound quality.

[Tokerat]

It's not about making the sound EXACT, it's about making the sound BETTER.

CDs win for exact replication, but for things like club music, with lots of sharp synth sounds, bass, etc. A little "natural interference" from the actual physical motion of the vibrating stylus can make it sound "naturally artificial", or, quite to the effect such music attempts to achieve, surreal.

Plus, spinning vinyl is a HELL of a lot of fun. CD decks, not so much.

Re:Digital Vinyl data capacity blows CDs out of wa

[philipgar]

so, you could have all this technology in place and filters and so forth to take out the noise in order to get 8 128Kbps tracks... As each side of a record can hold ~25 minutes, that works out to 8*128kbps*25*60 bits of data per side... or about 192MB of data per side. That works to about 384MB that could be stored on a record... Even assuming you could fit 8x more data, that is still only 3GB of data on a record.

Lets compare this with a cd which is much much smaller than a record and can hold 700 MB per side (a two-sided one would hold ~1.4GB). Not quite up to the theoretical maximum that you claim your record could get, however consider the size, or the fact that a DVD, which is the same dimensions as the CD, and uses similar technology as it can hold up to 4.7GB on a single layer disc. This is far more data than the record can hold, and requires less sensitive electronics, and much less processing power to decode.

Looks like my "CD" beats your record after all.

You just know...

[Quiet_Desperation]

...Volvo will offer a 6 vinyl album in-dash changer.

Re:You just know...

[wjsteele]

Actually, Chrysler had a record player as an option in their cars back in the Fiftys. It was called the Highway Hi-Fi. It didn't use standard records but instead used a propriatery 16 2/3 RPM 7" format (read ARM anyone - that would be Analog Rights Managment.)

Later on, they realized that the custom format wouldn't work and opened up to the standard 45. The 1960 version could allow you to stack up to 12 records in it.

Here is an article from Chrysler about it. http://www.uaw-daimlerchryslerntc.org/images/news/ phono.htm

Bill

Re:There's no debate

[Prune]

Jitter is actually a bigger problem than the filtering. Plus, 96 kHz... that means even higher clock frequency and more jitter sensitivity. It's a big issue, and the distortions produced when jitter (phase noise) gets in the DAC chip are complex and audible in the ppm, unlike the low order even harmonics of class A tube or MOSFET amps. A good technical paper on the nature of jitter-induced distortions in digital audio: http://www.essex.ac.uk/ese/research/audio_lab/malc olmspubdocs/C134%20Paper%20121st%20convention%20(c orrected).pdf

Class D amps have a long way to go. THD is meaningless, as the blind test studies by GedLee that were presented at the Audio Engineering Society convention a few years ago show, THD doesn't correlate with the distortion detectability, since the type of distortion is far more important. Crossover distortion from class B and AB stages, and effects of jitter, are audible in the parts per million. There's another type of distortion that doesn't affect THD measures at all, but is perceptually significant: thermal memory distortion. There's a good description of it and ways to decrease it here: http://peufeu.free.fr/audio/memory/ (there's also an AES paper linked there that describes how to measure it in real amps). Of course, tubes don't exhibit such distortion, and is my guess as to one of the reasons some people prefer them despite higher THD than typical solid state amps (however, this higher THD is simply due to most tube amps being simple; a tube with constant current load is more linear than any single solid state device; you can easily make a tube amp as linear as a solid state one if you use as many tubes as you would transistors).

Re:Digital Vinyl data capacity blows CDs out of wa

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we just witnessed the nerd version of a bar brawl...

Re:Digital Vinyl data capacity blows CDs out of wa

[Nullav]

Lets compare this with a cd which is much much smaller than a record and can hold 700 MB per side (a two-sided one would hold ~1.4GB). Not quite up to the theoretical maximum that you claim your record could get, however consider the size, or the fact that a DVD, which is the same dimensions as the CD, and uses similar technology as it can hold up to 4.7GB on a single layer disc. This is far more data than the record can hold, and requires less sensitive electronics, and much less processing power to decode.

Obviously, this means the LaserDisc is going to make a comeback soon.

Re:Copyright

[zenkonami]

In no particular order...

In this world, it is a trivial enterprise to make vast libraries of culture and knowledge accessible to peasants in the jungle.

How? I mean, effectively. Will the peasants in the jungle even be interested in this panacea they're being offered? Or will it merely be someone thrusting "civilization" and "culture" upon them? Will they be interested in using computers to access this information, or will it merely homogenize them into the vast global monoculture?

It is trivial to find the idle time to set your hand to it.

Is it? Quality, anyone? Or have the great works of art that form the foundation of our history and culture been the work of hobbyists? Professional writers, musicians, painters, etc...have been around a long time, as much for the passion of their work as for the ability to pay their bills and put food on the table. In a world that is so quickly migrating to obtaining all this culture via a vast electronic network, how will these professionals (the one's who created the genuinely powerful, memorable, and quality material) be able to afford to continue to do so? Will the great works of tomorrow be the homogenized sound of Billy in his bedroom in his spare time, scarcely able to use the tools the develop such a work? When will he hone his skills? Has he heard of craft?

Where's the money gonna come from?

Brainstorm for other ideas on how you might get subsidized by our society without it being necessary to keep people isolated from what you've created, and throw your weight behind getting them into place.

You don't think artists try to do that all the time? Except for the large corporations and the elect few, art/music/writing/etc... is not all that lucrative a career choice unless you take advantage of every avenue you can possibly exploit to make money off of your work (and it is WORK.) Eliminating copyright makes it that much harder. Now, I'll be the first to admit that our copyright laws may have pushed the boundaries too far (I don't need a copyright that continues for an entire lifetime after I'm dead and gone, and frankly neither do my heirs), but eliminating copyright does not fix the problem.

This kind of mentality is part of what is killing the potential quality of art. Not the innovation part (for that I applaud you...artists should be innovative in all things, including how they do business), but the notion that anyone can do it, that it's easy, and soon everyone will do it and that's the end of that. Well, five minutes of fame on YouTube is fine, but that's it. It's no guarantee of establishing a place in culture except as a footnote. It's no guarantee of quality.

Soon, it will be trivial to provide a copy of every creative work ever made to every man, woman and child on earth.

At which point, the only thing holding us back from doing so will be small-minded dickheads harping about their "rights".

And then it occurs to me: this is all about the free lunch.

If you're a creator, stop thinking about copyright.

But if you're a consumer, get everything you can for as free as you can. If you're not willing to pay for quality, copy it. Spread it around. There was one copy that the artist made 65 cents off of. That's enough. That's all it's worth, because the copies are free.

Rights. Creators don't have rights. Only those looking for handouts do.

Sorry, but I'm going to have to call bullshit

[Sycraft-fu]

First off, CD quality in 30-40k. Really? Then why the hell haven't we seen it anywhere? You don't think Apple would kill to have a more efficient format for storing and distributing music?

Well I can't find shit on anything called ABBAcast. To me it sounds like you confused ABBA, an old Swedish pop band, with Abacast, a radio streaming service. Of course, Abacast doesn't have their own codec, they use WMA, AAC, and MP3. Well 30-40k WMA is NOT CD quality, not even close, never mind MP3. The good codecs, like AAC and Vorbis do a decent job at 128k, it sounds as good as CD for most music on lower end gear (like portable players) but still not even close. You are talking in the range of 256k with most codecs to get something that is reliably as good as CD on good gear.

Also you seem to have no understanding of the problems of encoding to a broadband format.

For one, you can't stack your channels right on top of each other. You'll find that you have all kinds of problems. Look at any real broadband system, and you'll find out they've built in space between channels for just that reason. For example TV channels are specified at 6MHz each. Within that 6MHz is a video, colour, and audio carrier. Channel 2 is from 54-60MHz. However, the video carrier is at 55.25MHz, the colour at 58.83MHz and the audio at 59.75MHz. Channel 3 is then from 60-66MHz. You might notice that means there's nothing in the lower edge of the range and you'd be right. The reason is that you don't want the channels bleeding in to each other. You need to leave space if the system is to work.

Next, you've got the problem of assuming that two stereo channels can be used separately. Errr, no. In any analogue system, two adjacent channels will have some amount of crosstalk. That is to say a signal on one channel will bleed over to the other to some degree. You'll notice that most stereo amplifiers specify this amount. Well, with records, it's pretty high due to the way that the stereo signal is recorded. It's horizontal needle deflection, not two discrete tracks. Not a big deal for stereo audio, it's highly correlated anyhow and we don't need a ton of separation to hear stereo, however it'll fuck with your encoding real bad.

Then of course we get to things like error correction, assumptions that the SNR is equal with regards to frequency (it's not) and so on. I'm not going to go in to all the problems in detail since it ought to be apparent at this point that you didn't think this through.

John Peel

[TommyMc]

"Somebody was trying to tell me that CDs are better than vinyl because they don't have any surface noise. I said, "Listen, mate, life has surface noise."

Re:Digital Vinyl data capacity blows CDs out of wa

[RockoTDF]

Very funny! Why is it always that I see good stuff when I don't have mod points and there are days of drivel when I do?!

Giggle, you're sooo cute when your ears turn red

[goombah99]

First off, CD quality in 30-40k. Really? Then why the hell haven't we seen it anywhere? You don't think Apple would kill to have a more efficient format for storing and distributing music?
-1 point for reading comprehension. I said "near-cd" and I'm using the term that all the on-line radio simmulcasts use so go argue with them. my sole definition which I stated was "better than the original vinyl".

Also you seem to have no understanding of the problems of encoding to a broadband format.
Thank you for your tedious flame sir. I won't bother to point you to my papers and patents on heterodyne modulation.

For one, you can't stack your channels right on top of each other. You'll find that you have all kinds of problems. Look at any real broadband system, and you'll find out they've built in space between channels for just that reason. This is not even wrong. Let's see where to begin?. 1) first in theory there is no reason at all one cannot virtually stack channels without a buffer between them. run them through a acausal anti-alias notch filter. 2) They have to have that buffer for TV channels because the modulation schema and detection schema in use do bleed outside their channels. 3) this is all moot anyhow. The analysis was (*obviously*) just a gendanken argument about channel capacity. Once could do better not making artificial channel boundaries but just using the whole range directly. It's just that by thinking of it as channels of a modulation scheme one already knows the data rate for, one can quickly suss out the expected data rate for the bandwidth without doing any complex maths

Next, you've got the problem of assuming that two stereo channels can be used separately. Errr, no. In any analogue system, two adjacent channels will have some amount of crosstalk. That is to say a signal on one channel will bleed over to the other to some degree...Not a big deal for stereo audio, it's highly correlated anyhow and we don't need a ton of separation to hear stereo, however it'll fuck with your encoding real bad.
BZZT. sorry no. all that is handled by the SNR term. cross talk sets a noise floor. What the noise floor is may depend on the modulation scheme. Now if you wanted to make a point here you should point out that that the plasticity of vinyl and needles may introduce non-linearities that can't support simultaneous use of the full audio spectrum. Granted. However that is only going to lower my argument by some fudge factor. And the argument is only an order of magnitude sketch to begin with so I that's not something to fret at this point. I'm not going to quibble over factors of 2, are you?

Then of course we get to things like error correction, assumptions that the SNR is equal with regards to frequency (it's not) and so on. I'm not going to go in to all the problems in detail since it ought to be apparent at this point that you didn't think this through. Giggle. You are really taking this proposal seriously aren't you? The whole thing is a joke! if you really wanted to store more music on a cd just use Mp3s. good golly. However, the rather intriguing idea here is that if Mp3 had predated audio CDs Vinyl would have had a much larger storage capacity and signal to noise than we conventionally consider. It's very suprising how good vinyl really could have been.

You're just figuring this out?

[BenEnglishAtHome]

Digital apologists be damned, at the very top levels of achievement in sound reproduction, vinyl whips CD ass. At least it used to; CDs have gotten better and they are now quite good. (Some digital tape can be fantastic, beyond vinyl, btw.) In fact, CDs are now so good I would never suggest someone start collecting music on vinyl. But my 25,000+ LPs aren't going anywhere; they're too good to toss and too much work to change formats.

As for my few hundred pre-recorded reel-to-reel analog tapes - sonic nirvana.

Side note - I started my audiophile life as a digital fan. I was contemplating a career in music as a bassoonist and had lots of experience sitting with real instruments being played in real space by real artists. 8-tracks, LPs (on the crappy turntables I had access to), cassette tapes - they all sounded like garbage. I was used to the real thing and nothing provided it. So I didn't buy music at all. Then the CD came out and Phillips advertised it as "Perfect Sound Forever". All the magazines said it was the Second Coming. I swallowed the hype hook, line and sinker. I bought Vivaldi's Four Seasons on Telarc (a supposedly wonderful demo disc) and started shopping. The problem was, everything sounded like crap. Everything. I annoyed the guys at Pacific and any other place I could find and all the demos sounded awful. Finally, I heard about a "high-end" audio shop in Houston called Audio ProPhiles. I went in and the nice saleslady (it was a weekday afternoon and the place was deserted or else she wouldn't have spent any time at all with a poor college student like me) put my CD in the Phase Linear CD player (a Carver subsidiary, originally sourced from Kyocera, iirc) connected to the Krell electronics driving the original Martin Logan planar speakers. This setup, which cost more than a decent car, would surely show me the glory that was CD.

The sound came on and in less than two bars after the violins started I had shoved my fingers in my ears and was literally screaming at the saleslady to turn it off! Somebody had shoved a running dental drill into my ear canals; I was sure of it. I asked her what the hell was wrong with her demo system. She simply replied that "That's what digital sounds like." Then she sat me down at the Goldmund Reference turntable (supposedly the only one in the country at the time, having been bought off the show floor at CES), showed me how to use it, and let me spend an afternoon playing those beautiful, wonderful LPs. Lesson learned.

I've posted about this before and I won't go into details here. The short story is: Digital sucked in the beginning and continued to suck for many years. Then the players and production processes got better. Now, it's far more convenient than vinyl and, arguably, CDs sound about as good if a bit different. On the top end, it's possible to argue that vinyl is still better, but the top end requires more money than I'll ever have.

The bottom line is still the same as it's always been: If you want good sound at a reasonable price buy a subscription to your local symphony. Arguments beyond that I don't care to wage.