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Vinyl Record Production Gets a Much-Needed Tech Upgrade (engadget.com)
Ever wondered why you sometimes have to wait months after an album's launch to get the music on vinyl? It's not necessarily because the label hates vinyl -- in many cases, it's because the decades-old manufacturing process can't keep up with the format's resurgence. From a report on Engadget: Relief may be in sight for turntable fans, though. Viryl Technologies is producing a pressing machine system, WarmTone, that should drag vinyl production into the modern era. Much of WarmTone's improvement rests in its use of modern engineering. It's more reliable when producing the "pucks" that become records, makes it easier to switch out stampers (the negatives that press records) and sports a trimming/stacking system that can better handle large-scale production. Also, there's a raft of sensors -- the machine checks everything from pressure to temperature to timing, so companies will immediately know if something goes wrong.
Usually, such formats all include DRM. How do they make money without DRM??? If you believe the MPAA, they'd be bankrupt by now!
Can they solve the problem of the record skipping in my car?
I have all of the gold plated monster cables and everything....
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
... how the millions of LPs. EPs and singles were manufactured in ancient times! IRC its not only the pressing, but also the production of pucks and the creation of negative masters that do slow down the production nowadays - not many of the suppliers of specialized services left (some goes for the accumulated knowledge). That aside it seems a good idea that some of the press runs in the 70s and 80s would have needed to avoid that crappy quality sold back then.
Injection moulding is a real step change compared to this
Vinyl had a tech update decades ago. It's called "CDs".
This obsession with obsolete and empirically inferior technology is baffling. Yes, I know it started as a backlash over bad MP3 compression, but that obsession killed superior technologies, the tech upgrades to CDs - SACD, DVD-A and pure DTS albums. All you vinyl obsessed people are making things worse, not better.
What's next? Let's all go back to watching movies on VHS and old CRTs! It's how the director wanted it to be seen, right? How about analogue cellphones and leaded gasoline?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Any improvements on vinyl's serios deficiencies? Surface noise? Channel separation? Frequency response consistency between outside and inside grooves? Need for tracking compensation?
Nothing will undo the terrible mastering job that's done with mp3 compression and cheap in-ear headphones in mind.
I would have assumed to delay was to encourage people to buy albums twice, once they they can get it right away and then again to fulfill there irrational desire to the reto.
Is this some sort of DMM system?
love is just extroverted narcissism
dacs can do 24/192k and even DSD.
Which we aren't physiologically equipped(*) to be able to enjoy any way.
(*): Except to hear the hearing-range ( < ~10-15kHz ) distortions that are caused by throwing ultra-sonics (192kHz sampling means up to 96kHz frequencies) at a setup that was never meant for it.
the ONLY valid reason is that the mix is intentionally different, which makes zero sense.
It does make a sense commercially.
If your mix looks like a set of solid bars constantly locked to the top on the spectrum of your radio/CD-player, it "sounds" subjectively louder and attracts more the attention.
And when you're in the market of selling CDs, you *DO* want to attract the attention of customer to these CDs that you are selling.
LP are marketed to audio snobs who'll be more attracted to the "less loud"/more natural mix. You don't try to attract them with loudness, you attract them with the fact that it IS an LP and with the less shitty mix.
So yeah, the mix found in commercial CDs and files is much shittier to what you can find on LP (even if the technological limitations are actually the opposite), but that's because that's the mix with which you're the most likely to attract suckers to whom to sell those shitty mix.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I knew a guy that swore he could tell the difference between digital and analog playback. Bullsh?t. Human hearing has limits imposed by evolution. Just as our eyes have limits imposed by evolution. Haven't you wondered why you don't see in the infrared range? You are radiating heat; seeing yourself as a blinding light in the dark is not a good survival characteristic. The environment we operate in, the range of sound that might protect our asses, is what we hear. Evolution favors survival not dilatant characteristics. ... it goes on. Irrational behavior. Humans have so many irrational behaviors.
Digital music uses 10 times the nyquist rate; better than a human ear can hear and distinguish. That is why it was picked. Economics were a reasonable factor.
What is even funnier? Analog playback i.e. vinyl is produced from digital recordings. Do you think a modern studio uses tapes to record a session? They have a harddrive. Think about it. I record in digital then press or 'record' on vinyl for 'analog quality' and somehow that is better? The plastic press changes the digital reproduction into something better? It's not a James Pollock work.
Silly buggers wasting their money on silly technology. Oh, by the way they want belt driven over direct drive turntables and diamond tip needles which need replacing after a hundred uses. Really diamond wearing down on vinyl
The loudness war mostly affects pop genres like Rap and Rock.
Classical and Jazz recordings generally don't suffer the same fate.
"Digital" rights management, idiot.
...which entirely doable for an analog medium, and would be probably the way they'll do it if they decide to add DRM to analog mediums.
e.g.:
- Audio tapes and vinyls come with a printed code on a label.
- (let's say a QR-Code on the side of the tape, and a barcode around the edge of the round label in the middle of the vinyl)
- that code is read by the player
- (a small cheap webcam aligned inside the tape-deck exactly where the QR-Code would line once the tape is loaded ; a laser picking up the barcode as the vinyl spins around)
- step one : analog player will refuse to play an analog medium whose code it can't check the signature.
- (similar to how lock-out chips where used in game cartridges. Medium can still play as-is in old school players, but your lobbyist can vote a law to tax them)
- step two : in addition to that, the code contain an encrypted parameter that controls some form of analog encryption (like the Nagravision that was used in the past with analog TV channels. It basically just flips/shifts the frequencies of the spectrum around)
(And it's the perfect parallel to the way DRM disturbs user experience :
- analog audio encryption can be annoying to users (just like DRM region lock-out, or HDCP buggy drops can be annoying) because the wrapped frequencies might be less optimally conveyed by the analog medium (specially on Vinyls, a little bit less on tapes where the audio is modulated anyway) though you can still market your scheme as shifting the frequencies around to better positions.
- analog audio encryption is just as useless as DVD's CSS because it can easily be broken and decrypted. And in fact *was* back in the nagravision days).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
What you call distortion is for some people a huge benefit it adds uniqueness to sound and it is valued by a lot of people. MP3 just lowers the quality which is different. You cannot recreate the experience of 60s with SACD or DVD-A.
Vinly is for queers. Unless it's a Vinly of Trump. Then it's for Putin.
Ever wondered why you sometimes have to wait months after an album's launch to get the music on vinyl?
Nope. It's absurdly obvious. Why would they go to the trouble of building the infrastructure to mass product quickly a niche product that won't sell a huge number of copies? I literally know of no one who actually listens to vinyl records anymore. The only people I know who even own turntables are people in the baby boomer generation. I'm confident most people reading this also don't know many people who listen to vinyl if they know any at all. Manufacturing takes time and there has to be enough demand to build the supply chain if you want it done fast. As the saying goes you can have it fast, cheap, or good. Pick two. There simply hasn't been enough demand for vinyl records to justify upgrading the manufacturing supply chain from where it was before CDs became a thing.
Oh yes, buy the album as a download or a CD. The sound quality is better either way. Vinyl is only sold because there are fools out there who'll pay a premium for an inferior, less convenient, mostly dead format.
Cover art: Vinyl is the best way to deliver large scale artwork
The "best" way to deliver art work (that almost no one gives a shit about and is largely orthogonal to the music experience) is to put it on an obsolete and fragile storage medium that no one buys or wants? How about just making a print on paper instead? It's the same art work either way. Not like you are buying the original work.
But that's not the point, the point is to have a physical recording of music that I love that'll still work when we can no longer play our DVD-As and CDs, and to be able to appreciate the printed artwork.
We'll have the ability to play CDs for just as long as we have the ability to play vinyl records. And the artwork isn't any better just because you print it on a larger piece of cardboard.
I grew up on cassette tapes and CD's yet eventually fell in love with vinyl the most. DJ'd clubs and raves up and down the east coast of the US. I have what I would consider a mid-sized collection of electronic music. Most of my collection are songs you've likely never heard of, from artists you've likely never heard of. Those songs aren't just songs, they have memories attached to them. My memories of where I was, when, who I was with, how I'd gotten there, and why. Vinyl is a physical record in more ways than one. I believe that songs are instinctual to mankind during tribal celebration and grief. That's why our brains imprint memories with song so vividly.
Yes I could transfer my entire rare collection to MP3 and illicit the same memories (studies with Alzheimer patients have proven the song is the medium to memory not the form it's played on). I like having them encased in physical form because the act of playing them causes me to make special effort to play them on my turntable. It's almost a religious process because special effort has to be made. The turntable becomes a shrine to the path of memories in a way. Being able to play them in my car, in a portable MP3 player, on my phone, etc.. all cheapens the experience of releasing those memories and if done consistently in other locations it muddies those memories. I think the real disconnect that young people don't quite understand is due to being too young to really appreciate time. If you are skeptical of what I just said, if you're thinking it's a bunch of bullshit, to you I simply say... wait until you're 50 and tell me what your opinion is then. Perspectives about your favorite music and the memories associated with that music will change over time.
My 19 year old niece recently purchased a turntable and some vinyl. I was blown away that she would do such a thing when MP3's are everywhere. She didn't even know I had turntables or a single vinyl record. I enjoyed teaching her about the difference between a direct drive and belt drive. When she found out I have a huge record collection well, she never stopped asking to have some of my records. As a gift I gave her my mint original of Abbey Road. There is something tribal about passing down vinyl between generations. It's the right thing to do. When I die my entire vinyl collection is now slated to go to her. She won't appreciate each record in the same way I do and some she might not even like at all and discard. She'll come to have her own memories with the ones she enjoys and that's what it's all about. ;)
Everyone will agree that a vinyl record sounds different than the CD/Blu Ray/SACD. This difference is due to the limitations of vinyl. Everybody is in agreement with this so far. The divergence occurs because some people equate the fact that the mixes are different to meaning that one must be better than the other. It would be very interesting if you could put the vinyl master mix on CD and see what people think. If people think vinyl is better than CD, they will play both sources and proclaim that whatever they hear as different is inherently better. Instrumentation will show that the CD is more accurate, of course, but that doesn't matter.
This is true when shopping for loudspeakers or receivers. If you can hear a difference between two speakers in the store, you will invariably say that the more expensive one (or one with more prestige) must be the correct sound and that the other speaker is cheap. Measurements may indicate that the other speaker is technically producing a better representation of what is on the source, but the ears hear a difference then the eyes go about determining WHY they are different.
This applies to many things: vinyl/cd, speaker a/b, wine a/b, and many other things.
Buy what you like.
Everything is recorded digitally,
The main reason to get disc is so that you don't get the analog to digital conversion in the first place.
the only thing you get is worse sound.
When can I make LP's by my 3D printer? This way I can convert all of my mp3's to LP's and listen to them on a record player. They sound so much better on vinyl. :)
It's either called the multitrack tape or file.
No.
-Dave
I love your "upgrade" path to spyware. CD's with spyware, DVDs with spyware, your phone spying on you. Absolutely fabulous.
[googles] Holy crap yes. That's the most perfect business name I've seen all year.
FWIW, here's their press release. They make and sell the machines, not the records.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
...I already have 3000 LPs.
Another valid reason:
the recording magicians of yore knew all sorts of things. A Shure M-57 has a particular sound, and it can be 'tamed' with a little eq hear and there. That is one example of dozens, hundreds. Making lp records is partially a black art--and so is digital!
Anyway, some, not all, of the lps and the master tapes from the vinyl era were tweaked to sound good as an lp. Some of the tweaks involved trying fix nasties earlier in the recording process, some to address deficiencies inherent in lps.
Transferring the master tapes to digital does not guarantee it will sound or have a sound like the original lp.
I really liked the feel of leather seats, but I just couldn't afford them, and was worried the cloth seats would be too hard to keep clean.
The point of high sampling frequencies is that you can then filter out any unwanted distortions in an easy way.
Yes *sampling* at 192kHz makes sense for the record studio :
it's much easier to make a very good filter that filters everything above the hearing range while leaving everything nicely intact underneath when done as a software plugin, instead of an actual physical filter.
What I'm saying is that *playing back* at 192kHz as some sound cards and audio formats are able doesn't make much sense for a human to enjoy music.
(Unless you're a *dog* enjoying music. Or a human doing some *weird scientific experiment* where you actually need a 192kHz signal - e.g.: feeding the output to some RF modulator to create some radio signal).
Or in other words :
- a 24bits 192kHz *ADC* - like you mention - is *useful* - for the exact technical reason you give (filtering out the ultra-sonics at a later stage in software)
- a 24bits 192kHz *DAC* - like the above poster mentioned - has no purpose for the standard "human listens to music" situation (and can even be detrimental to the quality of the output)
- a garden variety 16bits 48kHz DAC is already well enough for most everyday situations (playing an already processed song)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]