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'High Definition Vinyl' Is Coming As Early As Next Year (pitchfork.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Pitchfork: In 2016, a European patent filing described a way of manufacturing records that the inventors claimed would have higher audio fidelity, louder volume, and longer playing times than conventional LPs. Now, the Austrian-based startup Rebeat Innovation has received $4.8 million in funding for the initiative, founder and CEO Gunter Loibl told Pitchfork. Thanks to the investment, the first "HD vinyl" albums could hit stores as early as 2019, Loibl said. The HD vinyl process involves converting audio digitally to a 3D topographic map. Lasers are then used to inscribe the map onto the "stamper," the part that stamps the grooves into the vinyl. According to Loibl, these methods allow for records to be made more precisely and with less loss of audio information. The results, he said, are vinyl LPs that can have up to 30 percent more playing time, 30 percent more amplitude, and overall more faithful sound reproduction. The technique would also avoid the chemicals that play a role in traditional vinyl manufacturing. Plus, the new-school HD vinyl LPs would still play on ordinary record players.
Yeah, it goes to 11
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Call me jaded, but every time I hear an advertisement claim a percentage improvement in efficiency, I hear "up to" even if it's unspoken.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The volume of the record is dependent on the movement of the needle which is dependent on the width of the track. Louder tracks are wider which reduces the length of play. Remember those old compilation albums with 10+ tracks per side sounded tinny compared to the original because to fit the tracks were compressed and volume (especially bass) was lost.
Larger dynamic range, I'm sure. Stupid dumbed down writing.
Larger dynamic range would not make something louder. That’s the whole reason the loudness wars involve compressing the dynamic range.
Who wants to bet that any improvement in vinyl audio quality will only cause vinyl lovers to hate it nearly as much as they did when CD's came out?
I find it amazing that in the age of devices capable of handling arbitrary precision arithmetic, someone opts for a process inherently limited by scales of size of physical material features. This is definitely not one of those things I'd be pining for.
Ezekiel 23:20
(shamelessly stolen from Men in Black)
Or.. now hear me out on this one... or ... we could just, you know, send the digitally converted audio, you know, without converting it back into a bumpy piece of plastic.
I know this might sound radical, but it seems to me that converting analog sound to digital format then to a digital 3d map then to a laser-cut stamper then to a piece of bumpy vinyl then to a vibrating stylus and into a varying electrical current to drive an amplification system to run the speakers that you listen to might just be a little more complicated than just taking the digital format for storage and transport and converting that back into analog sound at playback.
Why do people buy old cars when they make perfectly good new ones?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Trust me this will go over as well as HD-CD and SACD did. Include MiniDisc too for that matter.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Being able to use my Technics 1200s isn't the only factor. I have a pair of Shure M44-7 needles, as well as a pair of Ortofon Clubs, which have a tip of a particular size. If HD vinyl is fitting louder tracks at higher fidelity, and more of them, onto a 12" vinyl record, then the grooves *have* to be more narrow. Will I need new needles for these? If not, won't my wider needles just wear them out faster? If neither of these are true, is it because of a tougher material that is more resistant to wear at the expense of the stylus?
The information here is unclear regarding whether I'll need nothing but a record. However, the *real* question is whether there will be any music pressed on HD vinyl that will truly leverage the medium. Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" is great, but I doubt they will an end-to-end remaster from the original recordings, themselves in good enough shape, to warrant listening with the format. Modern stuff that's compressed to hell and generated in Ableton or Logic isn't going to sound any better. Perhaps new recordings of classical works might be the closest thing, but I'd argue that even these are going to have a very small audience; said audience is more likely to see a live performance by the local philharmonic.
'cause they're cheaper?...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Cheap conversion rate?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Minidisc was viable, and very durable. DRM killed it.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The volume of the record is dependent on the movement of the needle which is dependent on the width of the track.
Relax, dude
Every kind of defects can be fixed with the addition of GOLD PLATED MONSTER CABLE
the rush of high definition 8 track players that are sure to follow....
a little every time you play them. Someday people are going to start collecting CDs again, when this vinyl nonsense has run its course.
If only record companies would put a fraction as much effort and resources into mastering their CDs properly and making them sound good, all this would be unnecessary.
Digital audio to vinyl records? I guess if someone is stupid enough to make it there will be people stupid enough to buy it.
Vinyl isn't a good format in general. It was the best that could be done for a number of decades, but it will always suffer from the problems related to having physical contact between the vinyl and the needle. This new technique may improve the possible dynamic range, but that's largely a moot point as modern CDA gets compressed to the point where it's not any better than vinyl. And the sound quality sucks as a result. I heard Harvey Danger's Flagpole Sitta over a restaurant speaker a while back and it had been remastered to sound like crap. It was completely lacking any interest or pop that the sound had over the radio years earlier.
What's more, even though we've been able to do better than CDA for decades now, there just hasn't been a market for it. CDA is better than the equipment most people are using to listen to music on at home and the next step up in terms of hi def audio has never really caught on.
To make matters worse, people have somewhat backtracked in what they demand with lossy formats being more popular than lossless ones.
That is a shitty car analogy and you know it. It would be "why do people buy new cars with old car parts put in them" or "why do people buy replicas of old cars but without any modern conveniences". This is digital music converted to vinyl, not old vinyl people buy to appreciate.
Vinyl is about the status conferred by being seen to use vinyl. It's not about the music or the technology. People, especially men, will go to great lengths to attain status. Buying vinyl is relatively mild.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
half speed masters ?
The Loudness War is THE reason why records have made a come back over the past decade- because of the analog nature of the format, it isn't possible to force the ridiculous amount of compression and loudness that's on CDs on to records, resulting in the records having a much more accurate sound. If someone tells you that the record sounds better, this is almost certainly why.
FOR WHATEVER REASON, the record companies want to force the horrendous, artificial, severe sound compression that's appeared on CDs over the past 20 years on to records- and the digital nature of HD Vinyl will allow this.
Can we please keep the loudness war away from the turntable? If I want to listen to shitty compressed music I'll go on to youtube thanks.
For those of you unfamiliar with the loudness war, here is a good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ
Another great example was Metallicas "Death Magnetic"- the CD release was absolute garbage, but an uncompressed and unaltered version was found and it sounds much, much better (and it rocks!).
This scheme is a shoe-in for the 2018 "polished turd of the year" award.
There are other reasons people purchase VINYL. The larger album artwork, the physical tangible packaging delivers a greater connection with the music your listening too. While the sound quality of vinyl over digital formats is debatable they do offer some beautiful packaging. As a collector they are way more satisfying to hold in your hands and look over at over any other format. Vinyl records offer a different listening experience. There is something to be said about sitting down and listening to a record rather than pressing play on a digital device. It seems that "HD VINYL" seems to be a better manufacturing process aimed at improving the quality of records produced. As vinyl isn't compressed hopefully this will lead to a more faithful sound reproduction of the source material.
Now we get HD vinyl... another format in an attempt to spur sales of the requisite players.
No. TFS says they can still be played on old turntables. It seems that what they are doing is taking the digital audio, computing the shape of the groove and passing that on to a numerically controlled laser cutter. The end result is a record track much the same as (and compatible with) older LPs. But they have removed the limitations of the analog master cutting techniques.
Have gnu, will travel.
I used to think like that, but it occurred to me to just look at it differently.
Steampunk aesthetic is producing modern outcomes with archaic (generally 19th century) means and/or styling. Generally it involves overly complicated mechanisms (as complex as needed to achieve the outcome mechanically, only 'overly complicated' when compared to a solution using electronics.)
Using rotating turntables, vinyl and needles to reproduce sound fits this description neatly. So all those people who like vinyl are just a variety of steampunks (whether or not they realize it.) And I'm cool with steampunks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Really? No one remembers this?
https://youtu.be/1qtxPSR8q98
Mostly random stuff.
I still have a pile of records from .... a long time ago. I thought that the encoding was a limiting factor, and I don't mean the RIAA equalization. Some disconnected neuron in my brain is saying LPs use velocity and 78s and older used amplitude encoding.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
PPH theorized:
TFS says they can still be played on old turntables. It seems that what they are doing is taking the digital audio, computing the shape of the groove and passing that on to a numerically controlled laser cutter. The end result is a record track much the same as (and compatible with) older LPs. But they have removed the limitations of the analog master cutting techniques.
It's important to keep in mind that professional digital audio recording is done at frequency sampling rates as high as 320kbps sampling rates at 32-bit resolution (although 192 kbps at 24-bit resolution is more common). In the process of mastering for CD, the final mix is down-sampled to 44.1 kbps at 16-bit resolution (the CDA standard). So the source material is of FAR higher audio quality than the end product that consumers hear.
Rhino Records has issued a stream of premium-quality LPs for the audiophile market that are pressed using 180-gram, very high-grade vinyl discs. These extra-thick records, made of nearly bubble-free vinyl, sound very different than the old-school LPs I bought in my youth. At first play, they are nearly as noiseless as CDs, they're highly warp-resistant, and they're mastered at higher SPLs than the original vinyl releases. On an audiophile-grade sound system, they make the CD versions sound as sonically-impoverished as they actually are.
It's not just the much-vaunted analog "warmth" of the vinyl sound (in reality, that's a product of the distortion characteristics of the vinyl/needle/cartridge/preamp signal chain), either. They offer measurably-better resolution than CDA, and the product of that higher resolution is a richness and detail to the sound they produce of which CD audio simply is incapable.
If you play them on a laser turntable, and keep them properly stored to minimize their exposure to dust, they'll retain that pristine, first-play sound indefinitely. This new vinyl format, then, holds the potential to make future such premium LP releases sound even better than the current audiophile versions.
I'm interested in hearing whether the real-world improvement matches the hype. And I'm willing to withhold judgement on it until I get a chance to do so ...
Check out my novel.
the final mix is down-sampled to 44.1 kbps at 16-bit resolution (the CDA standard)
If you don't think that's enough, you don't understand signal theory. Higher rates earlier in the chain are useful for digital filtering and mixing, but 44 ksps is plenty for hearing.
They offer measurably-better resolution than CDA
Apart from being able to reproduce frequencies which we can't hear, please show the measurements where vinyl is better.
I am sure it will work for vinyl also..
When I listen carefully, I find there are things I like about each format better than the other, and that anyone who says that either is superior are more focused on the things that format does better and ignores the things it doesn't do as well.
The advantages of digital are obvious. Much lower noise floor, greater dynamic range, and a complete lack of ticks, pops, etc. It's also much easier to use, can be used in a nice variety of circumstances - home audio, automobile audio, portable audio. Vinyl obviously can only be used in stationary systems.
I find that on voices and acoustic instruments have a more life-like quality on vinyl than on Redbook (44.1 khz, 16 bit) digital. It takes some very careful listening, but it does appear to be there.
But this is really just a curiosity to me because I really don't care. I've been buying vinyl since Nixon was president and have many things which will never be available in digital form. And I have enough stuff in digital form that were I to play it all, end-to-end, it would make a few months to go. All those people who rant about this medium is better than the other really need to get a life. There's too much good music to listen to.
More than one visitor has complimented my system as being of reference quality and my loudspeaker cables are 14 gauge zip cord.
Because new cars are full of unrepairable electronics, and mechanical parts precision engineered to die just after the warranty expires. This destroys their second hand value.
If older cars have survived 30 years, with a small amount of maintenance, they can be made to survive another 30.
The "convenience features" of modern cars are mostly plastic bits that break off once the plastic has aged a bit. And the metal panels are so thin you can dent them with one finger.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I'm a dog, you insensitive clod!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I would love a replica of a D-type Jaguar. They look fantastic, but the brakes and steering of the original are not up to modern standards by a very long way.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
The answer to quadrophnic remains unchanged:
I will buy Quadrophonic as soon as I have four ears!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
No, still not true.
CD, as a medium, has every audio advantage over vinyl other than myth.
What is different — and does matter — is the recording technique. Vinyl with good recording technique can sound better than a CD with poor recording technique.
Part of what takes people legitimately back to vinyl is that many older recordings sound better, primarily because the dynamic range wasn't horribly crushed, as is often the approach taken today with CD recordings.
But best recording technique on vinyl, against best recording technique on CD... CD wins on every possible audible metric. Signal to noise, dynamic range, accuracy of reproduction, consistent audible frequency response, ancillary distortion, immunity to surface defects that damage the recording, repeatability, THD, etc.
Vinyl offers some non-audio features, such as large jackets, with larger artwork. Those same large jackets can, and often do, carry great liner notes you won't get with a CD due to the packaging area; such as interesting colors and artwork on the center of the platter. And of course, for those of us who are older, just plain old nostalgia.
Personally, speaking as an older fellow, I don't find the trade of the art and liner notes worth the candle when I can have better audio from a CD. I buy from high-end CD makers such as Telarc, and those productions are well worth the money spent. But when I can't find a good modern recording of something I treasure, then sometimes, it's vinyl FTW.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There is already a digital step in all vinyl cut after the mid-70s.
sudo ergo sum
So what you're saying is you prefer the way the vinyl was mastered.
Take the output of your record player, pump it into a moderately okay sound card, write the files to a standard CD and then tell us if you can still tell the sound apart. I bet you can't.
By the way this has also fuelled an online piracy campaign that records vinyl in HighDef and then gets shared via FLAC. The medium itself had nothing to do with it.
Similar SACD. The SACD versions of old classics owe their sound to the remastering and sound identical whether you play the DSD bitstream perfectly though a quality DAC or you downsample to 44.1khz
It's more likely the patent involves a more "higher resolution" print, eg the grooves have a deeper print into them.
That said, "HD Vinyl" records, you have got to be shitting me. You're basically inverting causality, you can't create anything higher resolution than what you can do with 192khz 48bit 8.2 channels digitally. Analog recordings at best are equal to 32khz 24 bit recordings, and that's assuming you can get no hiss or feedback.
The only thing that has improved in the last 40 years in sound systems analog pathways are the moves from tubes to transistors, and thus the elimination of a lot of noise. The downside of that is that a lot of speaker systems have moved from being large, loud and full-range to tiny sattelite speakers with no bass. Instead you have a subwoofer that gives you the haptic feeling from sound with a deep bass range. You can not create a deep bass effect on vinyl. The upper and lower pitches on vinyl records just do not exist because it moves the needle too much.
And this is the problem with Vinyl, if you ever had a "phono" input on any device ever, the audio is very quiet, and thus plugging a record player into something without a phono input would generate a lot of hiss as it has to be amplified. The Phono input on the device actually had specific pre-amplification.
So people who think Vinyl sounds better, are full of shit, or deaf.
Everyone knows that if you want real high quality sound you skip the CD, Vinyl, SACD, and HD-DVD, copies and go straight into playing guitarhero: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
In case people don't understand this comment I mean that any positive attributes of sound attributed to vinyl has nothing at all to do with vinyl. Studio mastering is a dead art killed by people in suits.
Vinyl obviously can only be used in stationary systems.
I beg to differ!
Or.. now hear me out on this one... or ... we could just, you know, send the digitally converted audio, you know, without converting it back into a bumpy piece of plastic.
What you're saying boils down to "You shouldn't make records." That's not the point, and TBH it seems to be needlessly pissing on other people's hobbies, both people who collect vinyl and bands who want a physical copy of their album for posterity.
What a lot of people seem to be missing is that there is already a market for producing vinyl. So much so that new cutting shops and pressing plants are coming online. If these people can skip most of the expensive steps of getting a stamper cut, that will make it easier and cheaper for bands to produce vinyl, and as someone who's paid to have one of their albums pressed, that would be a welcome change.
No it is not.
Oh, right. You believe in fairy dust.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Why would vinyl want to degrade to CD quality?
Surely you jest!
---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
It will certainly be lossy.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Or, we can say that, empirically, digital recordings provide for a better, more accurate format.
We can run around in circles saying that this sounds better than that - we have different hearing profiles, different sensitivities, so some things can sound better to one person and worse than another.
Whatever people like listening to, great. Nobody should be forced into listening to something the "correct" way.
But when they are digitally mapping the audio in order to create the vinyl, it should be pretty evident that - at a suitable resolution - it is not the digital format itself that some people object to, but the lack of "flaws" inherent in vinyl.
You could just as easily apply a (subtle) digital filter to the digital audio to create a sound that those people would find preferable.
Means you don't even need an amp. Switch the thing on and voilà, the 20 kilos diamond needle heavily presses the record surface allowing the release of a loud sound.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
And every time you play it, the quality degrades due to wear. Fantastic.
I think I'll stick with still-superior-in-every-way FLAC, MP3 and CDs.
Vinyl was a shit format
Vinyl is a shit format
Vinyl will always be a shit format
Your vinyl is shit
My vinyl is shit
His or her vinyl is shit
Their vinyl is shit
Vinyl is made of shite.
That year of Latin in school has finally paid off.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Depends on the source material.
If the source is the CD and it is converted to vinyl then it's a horrible idea. ... unlike the CD.
If the source is the original tracks and it is converted to vinyl though this convoluted niche process then it is a great idea as some bumbling studio exec may ignore it and we may end up with a decent result
HD-CD was a stillbirth. MiniDisc was HUGE and incredibly popular killed by a completely different and vastly superior medium. SACD is still active, you can still buy equipment, there are new releases in the format etc.
The only one here worth comparing to is HD-CD.
I was hoping they developed a laser based virtual needle (LIDAR in micro-miniature) ...
Here you are. Spoiler alert: the devices are sold in the 15k USD range.
oh well - now that I brought it up, I'm sure it will be a failed Kickstarter soon enough.
Sorry, you're making too much engineering sense with lasers.
Crowdfunding is more for the kind of hipster that will scoff lasers off as not being authentic enough.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
About a decade ago I read about a record player which uses laser beams instead of physical cartridges that can wear down the vinyl and decrease the sound quality.
Ob. wikipedia link.
Combine this with laser record player
Spoiler alert : these record player still cost in the 15k USD range (source from above).
So not gonna happen except in a very small and limited market of ultra-rich audiophiles.
Your standard hipster can't afford them.
On the other hand, patents have expired, so you can bet some chinese no-name company will be trying to jump into the bandwagon. (But probably without the advanced signal post-processing, so tons of hiss and pops and distortion)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Because for "thinking" games at least, they find that amazing graphics are no substitute for an interesting challenge.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
I have several CDs that degraded on their own due to cheap manufacturing processes. I also had several that with a tiny scratch became unplayable. A vinyl record would have produced a pop and then continued on. It also depends on the type of music. With punk, grunge, and heavy metal the wear factor is negligible.
what is next; HD laserdisc?
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
So the source material is of FAR higher audio quality than the end product that consumers hear.
Resolution != quality. The main reason to use high resolution for the recording and mastering process is to have excess headroom, allowing for capture of unexpected lulls or transients and being able to adjust those to the final dynamic range.
No album release in the history of commercial music has had a dynamic range in excess of 40 dB, which means that there is no extra quality at all to gain by going from 16 bits to anything else in final reproduction.
Human ears can not hear about 20 kHz (give or take a few kHz), but even more important, no commercial music is ever done with instruments designed to produce sound at above 20 kHz, meaning there is no point what so ever in going above 44 kHz in final reproduction.
What you hear when you listen to vinyl is two things. First, and most important, is nonlinear distortion, or "warmth", which is what many consider more pleasing than purely linear depiction of the sound as intended.
Second, you hear a different mastering, intended to work around the limitations of the analog medium.
What you do not hear is any increase in "resolution", because there is no such increase present - and even if there was, you could not hear it, because the CDA is already producing a better reproduction than your ear is capable of resolving.
"With punk, grunge, and heavy metal the wear factor is negligible."
Because it's unplayable junk music and stays in storage?
I assumed that a modern record player would have no needed and use a laser for reading.
A better fitting needle, wow ?
I Analog recordings at best are equal to 32khz 24 bit recordings, and that's assuming you can get no hiss or feedback.
Ehm no. That is a misconception. 24 bit is overkill, even for digital (most `24` bit is actually no more than 18 bit, at most, and more likely 15-16). But as far sampling rate goes, (studio) tape reels happily go over 20kHz, and so does vinyl. You may be confused by FM broadcast, which has a 15kHz bandwidth. More fair would be to compare vinyl to '48kHz/16 bit'.
So people who think Vinyl sounds better, are full of shit, or deaf.
Define better. It sounds different, i think we easily agree on that. Mechanical issues, harmonics and more all play a role. If people say that it sounds better to them, you will have to accept that as a truth, since perception is subjective by definition. It's like saying 'you cannot find yellow prettier than blue, because blue is a nicer color because it has a shorter wavelength'. For similar or other reasons, some people do prefer tube amplifiers.
It's probably said a dozen times elsewhere in this topic, but personally i think the big difference between the vinyl vs digital `experience` is in the mastering. That's most likely why this 1970's old vinyl album of [fill in favorite band] sounds better than the 2005 cd release. Disclaimer: i am one of such people.
A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
"Surely you jest!"
Only partly. Vinyl is truly high fidelity. Various notable musicians have expressed that they believe that CD's "lose something" that is captured better on vinyl. Have seen these from time to time from some big rockers, don't remember who.
I was surprised when I fired up my 50 year old turntable and put on a record after having not done so for a long time. The sound was only less quality due to the clicks and pops which, since I've always taken care of my records, were few. I've always used a tracking force of 0.5 - 1 gram, and that doesn't damage records very much.
Or.. now hear me out on this one... or ... we could just, you know, send the digitally converted audio, you know, without converting it back into a bumpy piece of plastic.
I know this might sound radical, but it seems to me that converting analog sound to digital format then to a digital 3d map then to a laser-cut stamper then to a piece of bumpy vinyl then to a vibrating stylus and into a varying electrical current to drive an amplification system to run the speakers that you listen to might just be a little more complicated than just taking the digital format for storage and transport and converting that back into analog sound at playback.
Next you'll be telling me that gold cables won't help.
I stopped reading at "converting audio digitally". The lure of vinyl isn't fidelity. It's the ability to own energy waves that were transferred through physical means.
First thing I thought of was Monster and their digital HD audio cables at a bazillion percent markup.
Have you looked at music waveforms lately ? There really isn't any dynamic range. Everything is cranked just shy of the clipping limits across the entire song.
They need to fix that first.
Vinyl is the best analog format around, but what's the point when it's the only analog component? Everything between the mics/instruments and the vinyl is digital, so is there any real advantage?
I wondered why they don't compress the music before cutting the master and then uncompress it in the player.
I've been maintaining my ow old cars since 2002. It was always pretty easy to spot the problem and then fix it.
The problem is by making this better than vinyl surely it makes it worse than vinyl for the hipsters wanting vinyl distortion?
It a problem. Just add fake surface noise to the music you play on this new fake format.
Yes, vinyl records were not affec-
Yes, vinyl records were not affec-
Yes, vinyl records were not affe (bump)
-tches in any way.
The HD vinyl process involves converting audio digitally to a 3D topographic map.
So this new vinyl process ends up being digital anyway. So what advantage is possible? There's some DAC involved in producing the sound either way.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
I understand the people that are nostalgic about LP's. I love the album art. But let's stop pretending that mechanical sound reproduction is anywhere close to a faithful reproduction of the real thing. It's not. I will always introduce sounds that were not apart of the original performance. It's impossible not to do this. It's also extremely expensive to get the best possible reproduction.
A true audiophile knows that the first rule of accurate sound reproduction is to not add to the original performance.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
So they create yet another digital medium. DAT, Digital Reel to Reel, CD, lossless DA, etc., it doesn't matter. DA is still ones and zeros. Digital is digital and analog is analog. People like LPs because of the warmth and depth of the sound - they are analog. Making them digital defeats the whole advantage.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
it could be done with a laser, and has been, but apparently, it was too expensive. Fact: LPs use this EQ called an RIAA curve - it rolls off the top and bottom after mastering, then restores it during the amplification stage. The reason for this is that too much low end would make the needle bounce and too much top end would make the needle skip - not track the highs.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
The High Definition Compatible Digital and Super Audio CD formats were lonely and needed a new companion on the pile of failed formats.
...but it will always suffer from the problems related to having physical contact between the vinyl and the needle.
"Always," huh. Replace the needle with a laser.
"Perfectly good" and "new" don't generally go together anymore when it comes to cars: they're virtually impossible to work on (my '15 Suburban has been the exception, thankfully) and the best performing cars (Audis) are also notoriously unreliable for 80,000 miles until you throw them away because they're not worth repairing.
It flopped then even when vinyl was the predominant format. Not least because you needed special noise reduction / amplifying circuitry to extract the audio from the format it was stored in.
It will flop now for the same reason. That and because vinyl is just a stupid hipster format that offers not a single advantage over digital audio except for audiophile wankage.
Maybe you should learn that a receiver is just an amplifier with a radio built-in and that they haven't been separate pieces of equipment in decades.
I can go buy them separately right now. Brand new, even.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
How far should me setup allow me to descend? I don't think one that only costs a few grand will go very far down...
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Take the output of your record player, pump it into a moderately okay sound card, write the files to a standard CD and then tell us if you can still tell the sound apart. I bet you can't.
This is what I do, and why. Vinyl is, as you mention, mastered differently and it does sound better to me for that reason; and I want to keep it that way, so much of my vinyl has only been "listened to" once, when it was dubbed to 192/24 digital, which gets archived and FLAC, AAC, and MP3 versions are created for use with my current devices. If a better compressed format comes along and I eventually get something that can play it, I have the 192/24 archive copy as a source.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
More accurate != better. If the original performance sounded like crap, playing it back less accurately might sound a lot better.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Same as if you saved a JPEG as a PNG, or vice versa
PNG is actually a lossless format, so...
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Maybe for you... but you're right, the lure, for anyone with any common sense, isn't fidelity. In my case, it's that vinyl is (usually) mastered differently and I often prefer that sound over the sound of how a CD or streaming/download release is mastered; and the experience, handling the record, placing the needle on the surface, there's just something wholesome about it. Of course, I've been disappointed by vinyl with poor mastering, as well, and the experience doesn't make up for that; especially considering that I rip my vinyl to 192/24 anyway, so I only get the experience once per record.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Dust with flour before playing.
CDs have 2 layers of error correction.
There's the underlying 8 to 14 encoding (plus 3) for the physical structure, meaning 17 physical bits gets you 8 bits of data, then there's CIRC on top of that for redbook audio.
The upper and lower pitches on vinyl records just do not exist because it moves the needle too much.
Source?
The only thing that has improved in the last 40 years in sound systems analog pathways are the moves from tubes to transistors, and thus the elimination of a lot of noise.
Many people who care about sound (and who aren't stupid audiophiles) don't consider that to be an improvement at all.
Or they possibly have a better system than you do. I'm recording vinyl at 192/96 and I can tell you unequivocally that the quality, depth, and detail far surpass CDs and rival DVD-A. People who say vinyl is no better are typically listening to it on a cheap USB turntable running through their onboard sound card. And in that scenario, yes of course it's going to sound like shit. Go spend a few grand on a descent setup though and the difference is night and day.
Bullshit.
You can't hear past ~20 KHz.
You will never need more than ~40 KHz to accurately sample anything you can hear.
The common 44.1 KHz covers all of human hearing perfectly.
Time and time again blind testing has proven this to be true.
And no, 16 bit samples aren't a limitation either.
Prove me wrong. Show me a controlled test where any human can hear the difference.
Because once the master is cut, the compression is baked in. Any attempt to expand it upon playing will result in a significant increase in noise. That's just the nature of the beast - compression is lossy.
Similar SACD. The SACD versions of old classics owe their sound to the remastering and sound identical whether you play the DSD bitstream perfectly though a quality DAC or you downsample to 44.1khz
Don't forget to convert from 1 bit to 16 bit.
If you just switch from 2.8224 MHz to 44.1 kHz but stay at 1 bit, you're fucked.
Take the output of your record player, pump it into a moderately okay sound card, write the files to a standard CD and then tell us if you can still tell the sound apart. I bet you can't.
You're saying that if he takes the analog and converts it to digital, he won't be able to tell the difference. That misses the point that the conversion to digital is where you lose the qualities that make analog desirable. It's equivalent to saying that if you convert the digital files to vinyl that you won't be able to tell the difference in the convenience between the two. Well, of course not - you're changed the format so it no longer has the advantage in question - in both cases.
Almost all vinyl recording start life with digital audio. So what is the point of converting to analog and then reading the analog?
It's going to be converted to analog at some point. The question is really, is it better to have that done at the manufacturer, who presumably will have the highest quality available DAC for the purpose, given that quality is their selling point, or to leave it to the consumer's device.
Don't forget to convert from 1 bit to 16 bit.
If you just switch from 2.8224 MHz to 44.1 kHz but stay at 1 bit, you're fucked.
You know I'm almost interested in giving that a go, but I'm afraid my ears may bleed :-)
You're forgetting a fundamental piece of the digital source, the DAC. You're home stereo outputs an analog signal to your amplifiers, and then to your speakers. A digital source (which i DO prefer) requires a DAC to convert the signal to an analog path. Much of the loss of quality happens at this layer, not in the source itself. I've noticed a large difference in audio output quality based on this single component. I'm really enjoying the Schiit Audio DACs for the money, hard to beat!
You're saying that if he takes the analog and converts it to digital, he won't be able to tell the difference.
Precisely.
That misses the point that the conversion to digital is where you lose the qualities that make analog desirable
Negative. There are no losses that anyone has able to prove they are capable of hearing. My entire point is the thing you think makes analogue have a desirable sound is entirely due to the mastering process that is specially formulated to suit the medium.
It's equivalent to saying that if you convert the digital files to vinyl that you won't be able to tell the difference in the convenience between the two.
Not at all, vinyl has some major drawbacks as a format. Take a standard CD and convert it to vinyl and it will be noticeably inferior if you're lucky, and the needle may jump the grove if you're unlucky (especially the way modern CDs are recorded).
Well, of course not - you're changed the format so it no longer has the advantage in question - in both cases.
Nope, just in one. There is no inherent quality of vinyl that makes it in any way at all superior in any aspect of a CD. ... Other than the size of the album art.
I think it depends on what era you're talking about. In the 50s, 60s, and 70s it was all tape in the studio. In the 80s we started to see digital recordings and the resolution has increased over time. Recording to recording the quality is very dependent on the engineer. I love Alan Parsons. And he lives in both worlds recognizing the benefits of both analogue and digital. Eye In The Sky is an amazing album which was recorded with a hybrid of analog and digital equipment. I have it on CD, BluRay Audio, and vinyl. They all sound good. I prefer the vinyl but the bluray sounds amazing too in 5.1. A Valid Path was all recorded digitally I have it on DVD-A and CD. The DVD-A sounds better because it's a higher resolution. He produced Dark Side of the Moon. Listen to the vinyl (a new copy, not one that's been played a bazillion times) vs the CD. There's no contest. The vinyl has details that are simply lost in the transfer to CD.
Much of today's pop is over compressed crap to start with. So you're right. If you take that and put it on vinyl there will be no improvement and it will still sound like the crap that it is. Additionally, if you take something that's CD quality and transfer it to vinyl all you've added is all the bad of vinyl with no sound improvement (Capital records I'm looking at you).
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
Not all. Check out what Dave Grohl is doing with Studio 606.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
I don't have any vinyl any more. but my friend down the street does, and he enjoys the social aspects of browsing stores for it, talking about it with friends, the way it looks in the room. The "ritual" of playing it. There are a lot of non audio aspects that add to the experience and if it gets more people together to listen to music then more power to it.
Nullius in verba
...in HD!!!
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
When everybody listens to MP3s. I have not trained my ear to hear MP3 distortion/artifacts because I don't want to hear them every time I listen to music. But I am sure even with my poor hearing (childhood ear infections) I can learn to hear them. It is kind of like seeing the two wires on Sony Trinitron monitors. The guy showing me them asked if I really wanted to see them because I would then be aware of them most of the time. He was correct I did start seeing them all the time.
High fidelity or high definition audio is now a fetish with 99.9% of audio being reproduced as MP3 audio streams. I even see Iphones plugged in million dollar PA systems for background music.
I smile when I hear people argue the importance of 4K video when so much video is watched on a computer monitor or smart phone.
That horse is dead. Get out the whips!
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It should have less noise because a compressed master can be recorded louder overall and any noise in soft passages will be muted during expansion.
In high fidelity audio, better reproduction is closer to the original.
Lower noise, less distortion, wider bandwidth, flatter frequency response, are better. In one word, accuracy. The only room for subjectivity is when a trade-off must be made.
Note that I'm only referring to hifi; techniques to improve intelligibility or remove noise present in the original environment are a different subject.
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People have varying abilities. When I was young, I could hear to about 27 kHz, and some stores with "ultrasonic" burglar detection were painful to enter.
16 bits is roughly 98 dB. That's great for almost all music if the recording engineer is careful. Human audio dynamic range is on the order of 120 dB, depending on how much pain you're willing to endure and whether audio tricks are used to improve low-level detection.
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It's been done, look up dbX. It never got traction in the record market, and had some side effects that bothered some people.
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By the time transistors became common, tube circuits could be designed that would be within 2 dB of the noise floor (as determined by the equivalent resistance of the source, the source being a microphone or phonograph pickup.) That didn't leave room for much improvement, although transistors can get the noise down to a fraction of a dB.
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People have varying abilities. When I was young, I could hear to about 27 kHz, and some stores with "ultrasonic" burglar detection were painful to enter.
No they don't. And what you're referring to was not ultrasonic. Human hearing range is very well modeled. You're not special. No audiophile is special. You're just delusional.
Prove it with ABX testing or shut up. Your claims are on the level of homeopathy.
I've had a couple of records (one was Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah by Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans) which were mastered at such a high volume that one groove impinged on the adjacent one. (It's visible with a little magnification.) It's not possible to increase the loudness above that level; the stylus can't track when 2 grooves become one.
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You do realize you can find 7.1 receivers and discreet amplifiers quite readily, right? Discreet amplifiers are still quite popular in pro audio where 8 channels isn't typically enough. Not that more than two channels even matter if we're talking about listening to music; nobody even releases quadraphonic anymore, let alone 5.1 or 7.1 recordings.
Also, by having your amplifiers physically separated and isolated from your receiver, you avoid a fair bit of noise and corsstalk, which is certainly audible at moderate volume. You go on and enjoy your 7.1 channels of hiss and whine while I crank up 8 channels that remain dead silent when I'm not giving them any input. That's step one in obtaining vastly superior sound.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
No, it doesn't make it louder per se. But the distance between the quietest sound possible and the loudest sound possible is increased. So the loudest thing is louder, assuming that your volume is adjusted to make everything else roughly equal.
A quick follow-up, it took me all of 30 seconds to find this 7.1 channel decoder on Amazon. Basically any HDMI audio decoder will output at least 5.1 analog, which you can feed into your discreet amplifiers or a mixer (which then feeds into your discreet amplifiers).
The reason 99% of what's out there is integrated is because 99% of people prefer convenience over sound quality.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
We're talking about music here, and there is very little content that isn't stereo or mono.
Larger dynamic range, I'm sure. Stupid dumbed down writing.
Yes, but not necessarily the way you're thinking.
With vinyl, it tends to be a compromise between volume and running time. That is, if you need more bass or a louder signal, it requires wider grooves which take more space. If you need to cut a single long track, e.g. "The Great Nothing" which is about 27 minutes long, you have to reduce the amplitude to shrink the grooves enough for it to fit.
The business about it being 30% longer and 30% louder is probably a misunderstanding - I would assume it's actually "30% longer OR 30% louder" but that message got garbled somewhere along the line.
Quality/Quantity improvements aside, I'm more excited by the idea that they've skipped all the steps of cutting and electroplating to get the stamper. That could make it a lot cheaper to get records pressed, and that would be a worthwhile breakthrough for independent bands who want their own vinyl.
BadDreamer in part proclaimed:
No album release in the history of commercial music has had a dynamic range in excess of 40 dB, which means that there is no extra quality at all to gain by going from 16 bits to anything else in final reproduction.
Human ears can not hear about 20 kHz (give or take a few kHz), but even more important, no commercial music is ever done with instruments designed to produce sound at above 20 kHz, meaning there is no point what so ever in going above 44 kHz in final reproduction.
...
What you do not hear is any increase in "resolution", because there is no such increase present - and even if there was, you could not hear it, because the CDA is already producing a better reproduction than your ear is capable of resolving.
Mmm ... no.
What you are failing to understand about audio resolution is that, while the human ear cannot, by definition, hear ultrasonic frequencies directly, they interact both with other signals in the same ranges and with those well within the range of human hearing to produce complex, lower-order harmonics and transients that humans can very definitely hear.
Just as one example: I own and have for a couple of decades used a Korg Triton digital workstation keyboard. It's a great tool and I love it.
(Here's an example of a recording I made with it where, aside from my voice, and my acoustic and electric guitars, every sound is a product of the Triton.)
However, the samples it employs are CD-quality (44.1 kbps at 16-bit resolution). Last year, I purchased a Korg Kronos 2 to supplement it. That device employs 48 kbps samples at 24-bit resolution - and the improvement in detail, resolution, and overall quality of the instruments (most of which duplicate those of the 1990's-era Triton) is striking. It's so obvious that even my wife, whose ears are strictly untrained, can immediately identify which keyboard is producing a given sound in a blind A/B listening test. (This is with both devices running through the same sound system, using identical cables and connectors, and volume-matched to eliminate the tendency of untrained human ears to perceive louder sounds as higher quality.)
You're just flat-out wrong.
The 1970's-era CD-DA Red Book audio standard (it was formally published in 1980 - the last year of the 1970's - but had been developed over the course of the preceeding 3 years) was developed as a compromise between competing standards championed and patented by Philips and Sony. It was considered "good enough" for consumer audio - a decision that was made based on a number of different, competing factors (cost of components required to reproduce the signal in a consumer-affordable player being one of the most influential), but the biggest one was the technological limitations of that era's digital audio processing technology. In short, it was as good a standard as the mass market could afford.
With the introduction of DVD audio in 2000, consumers finally got access to audio encoded at rates of up to 192 kbps at 24-bit resolution (that's for stereo - 5.1 surround maxes out at 96 kbps). Put both CD and DVD-A editions of Dark Side Of The Moon on the same sound system and A/B them and even you will be able to hear the difference. 96 kbps kicks the stuffing out of CDA's 44.1 kbps, even to completely untrained ears.
Unfortunately for audiophiles, by that time, consumers of digital audio had already become accustomed to crappy 128 kbps MP3 rips, and DVD-A died a slow-ish death in the commercial marketplace. By 2007 it was officially declared extinct, when new releases in the format stopped altogether.
Which is why we're currently stuck with 40-year-old digital audio technology - and also why Neil Young's ultra-high-quality Pono digital audio format is doomed ...
Check out my novel.
First off, I never claimed to be a musician, but that's an idiotic assumption to make. Second, you completely missed my point. Even with that, your second remark is pretty much spot on; and illustrates my point in a way you might not realize: you see, something that sounds good is certainly not an accurate reproduction of something that doesn't. A CD mastered with too much dynamic range compression will sound like garbage versus the same recording, properly mastered, on vinyl. Due to physical limitations of vinyl, recordings on vinyl are often mastered with less compression than theid CD counterparts and, thus, sound better.
There would be no argument if most CDs weren't stamped with overcompressed shit. Yes, of course, CDs would be the clear winner then.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Try to find a 30 year old car in good shape in the rust belt.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
What do you mean by virtually impossible to work on? Are you not able to change brake pads and rotors? Ball joints or a wheel bearing? Yeah you need the dealer software to diagnose specialized systems like air suspension but the ODB-II codes still work. While they shouldn't taken as gospel they are a good starting point.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Vinyl does have a different sound but unless the record is scratched there isn't any noise. Hell most vinyl is mastered better and not normalized to 100%.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Different strokes for different folks. I enjoy looking at the album artwork and reading the lyrics sheet and whatever else is included.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
MiniDisc was never huge. Stores typically had a very small section devoted to them but that died on with the long box CD. The only time I heard about them being used was to record concerts.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
That's not a function of the vinyl. With the same master a CD would have better sound quality.
Do not confuse cause and effect.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
MiniDisc was never huge.
I see you've never left the USA. Minidisc was incredibly widely used not only in Asia but also in the radio industry with lots of commercial MD equipment dedicated to radio studios. Even my car back around 2000 had two options: CD player + MD stacker in the boot, or MD player + CD stacker in the boot, and I bought the latter.
You say stores had a small section devoted to them? I found stores that *only* stocked MDs.
What you are failing to understand about audio resolution is that, while the human ear cannot, by definition, hear ultrasonic frequencies directly, they interact both with other signals in the same ranges and with those well within the range of human hearing to produce complex, lower-order harmonics and transients that humans can very definitely hear.
And what you are failing to understand is that the end result of those effects are - sounds below 20 kHz which get recorded and sampled, so are included in the CDA.
I didn't spend the extra 30 seconds to find a quality unit, sue me. My point was that they're easy as hell to find in the first place, which disproves your "point" about them being difficult to find. As for the amplifiers, they're so easy to find you literally trip over them at any pro audio supplier, I didn't think I'd have to do the legwork for you. I still don't think I do, you're either a low-quality troll or too willfully ignorant to be educated; if I'm wrong about either of those things, you'll find that you're perfectly capable of doing 5 minutes of your own research to find the components required to assemble a literal movie theater sound system -- which will sound measurably better than any integrated system
Also, pointing out my misspelling of discrete, while possibly amusing to you, didn't really do much for your argument.
Try going up to an actual sound engineer at a theater (or theatre, if you prefer liver performances), concert hall, or stadium, and asking them a few questions about the sound system(s) they oversee. I'm sure the'll tell you you're right and they're using integrated systems, rather than discrete components, because they sound better.</sarc>
Here's a hint: I have industry experience, I actually know you won't find a single employable sound engineer who would ever tell you that. Care for me to explain why?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I also had several that with a tiny scratch became unplayable.
As long as the scratch is not parallel to the track, in my experience, this is more a function of how good the player is. In particular, discs that wouldn't play on an old clamshell CD player play fine and can be ripped perfectly in a slot or tray CD-ROM drive. I find it more surprising when this happens with a CD that has had damage to the reflective layer on top. Apparently there is still enough reflectivity that when the disc is fully enclosed in a slot or tray player, that a good laser can still read the data.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
You can get a player that uses a laser on vinyl, but it's even more of a pain in the ass than you would expect, because while a needle may easily move the smallest bits of dust out of the way, a laser will happily pick it up as noise. The discs have to be kept extremely clean. They mostly get used for archival purposes, and I guess also for the few people who are willing to pay the price just for the geekiness of having one.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
And this is the problem with Vinyl, if you ever had a "phono" input on any device ever, the audio is very quiet, and thus plugging a record player into something without a phono input would generate a lot of hiss as it has to be amplified. The Phono input on the device actually had specific pre-amplification.
That was for two reasons. One, on most turntables*, the output is literally a direct connection to the pickup. Two, the pre-amp compensates for the RIAA curve. You don't want to use a Phono input on an amp for anything but a turntable, and you don't want to connect an ordinary turntable to an ordinary analog input.
*recent turntables with USB will likely have a pre-amp, and thus present a line-level signal at the analog outputs
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
With vinyl, it tends to be a compromise between volume and running time. That is, if you need more bass or a louder signal, it requires wider grooves which take more space.
Audiophool fluff aside, I think this is really cool. With mechanical mastering, the recording engineer had to have an instinct on how to set the groove tracking, and since it was a "one-take" operation, there was no way to optimize it. Creating the master via CAM techniques means that the optimal groove spacing can be used across the whole disc, and excessive cutting that could bump the needle out of the track can be avoided, before ever moving an atom on the master.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Next you'll be telling me that gold cables won't help.
Of course not, you need oxygen-free silver, aligned long grain, and with the current direction specified on the cable ends. Just like you can't use aluminum foil for tinfoil hats, you have to use actual tin.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
or MD player + CD stacker in the boot, and I bought the latter
That only applies to cars who wear boots.
Trunks are for elephants.
Yes, very sad. But there are plenty of "still-had-a-production-team" discs on the used market, and I hunt down releases in the genres I am interested in as a sort of hobby.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Whatever. Point is, people who think they get a signal untainted by digitial steps whenever they buy vinyl are clueless. Data compression aside, the difference they hear is either a difference i production, or more commonly a distortion introduced by the medium which that happen to enjoy. Nothing wrong with that, but any kind of 'purity' innate to the technology itself has nothing to do with it.
sudo ergo sum
...you mean like how a speaker moves air that reaches your ears and moves little hairs? Or do you mean how hitting a drum with a stick makes a sound?
Seems to me that sound IS mechanical.
So what's your point?
No, not at all. I can play a digital recording 1,000 times through a speaker and it will sound exactly the same on the 1,000th time as it did from the first. The same cannot be done of a recording from a vinyl LP record 1,000 times. The record will wear from the friction of playback. It will not sound the same after 1,000 plays.
The drum example is a live performance and doesn't pertain to this discussion.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
If you want higher quality sound, then BUY A FEAKIN' CD/DVD!?
The novel return of vinyl LPs was to include the novel LP noise and quality.
Vinyl is no where near CD quality and versatility. LPs will NEVER make mainstream in mobile/automobile players.
Even CDs are going away in lieu of digital downloads and streams.
I will be selling short any vinyl stock I see. This is a mini-bust about to happen.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
i think this isnt aimed at your global geek market but more like here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (the king)
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?