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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.
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.
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.
No need of DRM. People who buy vinyl want to listen "vinyl" (and vinyls are much harder to duplicate, compared to a CD or a file).
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
records are not lossless and every copy is unique and imperfect. not only that, but the act of PLAYING it destroys and degrades the medium.
I grew up with lp's and I'm happy to say that the last one I played was well over 20 yrs ago.
today's dacs are so good and the a/d's in studios are so good, there is zero reason for using lp's at home.
the ONLY valid reason is that the mix is intentionally different, which makes zero sense. there is more dyn range in cd and 'files' than any LP could produce. and yet, they put better mixes on records for pure marketing reasons.
dacs can do 24/192k and even DSD. records are about 1/10 of that or even less.
sigh ;(
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
This! I don't want vinyl, what I want is a digital download of the master used to produce the vinyl. The one that doesn't have to compete in the loudness wars and isn't compressed all to hell.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
There is more dynamic range on a CD in theory, however with sound compression (i.e. "loudness wars", not "lossy audio compression as in MP3 or AAC") we end up with CDs and audio files from music stores that sound like crap.
#DeleteFacebook
while vinyl is an analog recording by nature.
Which doesn't say anything about any similarity with the original signal.
bickerdyke
Further, is there really _no_ digital going on between recording and pressing in new works? I'd be pretty surprised if they are recording direct to vinyl master these days, or recording to analog tape, cutting the tape, and creating the vinyl master from it.
That.
What really should have happened, when the loudness war started to rise in the mid 90s, was for manufacturers to replace volume knobs with loudness knobs, with some (dynamics) compressor attached to it. Keep the volume knob, but make it something special common people wouldn't need to touch. That way people could turn up the loudness, which in effect would not just increase the amplitude but also compress dynamics.
Because altering [i]loudness[/i] is what people actually want. If they are on a train or in a loud environment they want to amplify the amplitude AND compress the signal to be able to hear the full recording. At home at a party you'd want to be able to hear all parts of the music properly and have high volume by just cranking up the knob to 11. In a quiet environment you'd want to be able to experience the full dynamics. For knowledgeable people we'd still have volume knobs to really alter the volume. In the end you could have tuned every well-recorded record to the environment you're in. There would have been zero benefit and need for the insane levels of compression we're seeing today.
Matter o'fact RIAA equalisation is different from just generalised compression. At the start of the LP era each record producer had its own equalisation scheme so what sounded good on your TT/AMP might sound awful on your neighbour's. So the Recording Industries Association of America (RIAA) tried, and mostly succeeded, in getting folks to use the equalisation scheme that they had so carefully decided on.
The idea was not so much to "make the mix sound good on vinyl" but to permit greater recording times (by decreasing the mean width of each groove), to improve sound quality, and to reduce the groove damage that would otherwise arise during playback.
The power cutting-head could probably have coped, but the recorded track would have been wider (so less tracks would fit on the record) and you would have needed a highly compliant stylus, and much higher tracking weight to keep it in the groove (and so muc faster wear).
The RIAA equalisation curve (NOT compression) was a very neat answer to a difficult problem.
And sorry, but my carefully cared-for LPs have quite a different sound from CDs/DVDs - not necessarily better but different - somehow warmer and more immediate.
'Ol Fart Cutterman
I'm sitting in a recording studio right now. If you want to hear the music as intended by the musicians you would listen to the recording in the medium of the day.
An album from 40 years ago was recorded with studio settings to overcome the limitations of vinyl and the pressing process. The sound was better on the vinyl LP than in the studio. Especially with guitars, where the amps treble settings were set high to overcome treble loss in the vinyl process.
This is also why for the first few years CD's sounded like shit, harsh was the common term, btw.
There is no reason to listen to a recording from last week on vinyl. The people mixing/mastering the music are not mixing/mastering for vinyl. You will not hear the song as intended. It will be degraded.
My old guy classic rock and jazz albums are on vinyl. Most everything else over the last few decades I buy on CD or download in a lossless format.
Bands releasing vinyl LPs in modern times is a gimmick. Not that there's anything wrong with that, and I do pick up a vinyl version of a new release now and then myself, but not for the sound of vinyl.
To add insult to audiophiles who fuss over their gear (like me), we have a pair of really, really shitty speakers in the studio here that we use for our final mix down. We do not mix for audiophiles, we mix for the shitty speakers 95% of listeners have.
And along that same line, I use standard mic cables, guitar, patching and speaker cables, I do not purchase 1,000 dollar oxygen free copper or whatever the voodoo of the day is in my studio, I have no idea why some people spend more money on cables than speakers or room treatments at home.