Vinyl Records Sound The Best

Subject: RE: Folklore: Vinyl Records Sound The Best
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 29 Oct 24 - 04:41 AM

It depends upon what you decide is “the best”.

I’ve always wanted to hear is what it sounded like in the studio and anything added/subtracted by the media it’s delivered on detracts from this. So called, “audiophiles” have traditionally had weird views!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Vinyl Records Sound The Best
From: GerryM
Date: 29 Oct 24 - 05:39 AM

I think vinyl records beat the old shellac ones.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Vinyl Records Sound The Best
From: cnd
Date: 29 Oct 24 - 08:33 AM

It's not false to say that, most often, vinyl discs and receivers have a higher possible degree of audio fidelity. That's because the way discs are pressed doesn't "chop" off natural peaks and valleys in sound, and because the (older/nicer) receivers were made with more analog components that behaved similarly. On the contrary, most digital recordings are recorded and then encoded into "lossy" file formats and then replayed on cheaper speakers with fewer/smaller components. That's because repeated studies have shown the average listener (key note -- AVERAGE) does not mind, nor notice, a considerable loss in audio fidelity, unless they're really and truly searching it out. And if they're searching it out, the argument would be that they're no longer an average listener, but a purist.

That said, as with many things in life, it is what you make it. There were certainly budget discs with 15+ tracks jammed to a side with TERRIBLE audio fidelity, and similarly cheap turntable setups with cheap needles, bad capacitors, and tinny sound. I've even had a turntable that turned at 33 rpm (instead of 33-1/3) which made the records sound different on it compared to other turntables to the astute listener. And there's some very nice digital equipment out there, too, if you're willing to shell out the money.

I must confess two things: 1) audio snob though I often am, it's hard to beat the convenience of more lossy digital music, and 2) despite the protestations of a friend, I never could hear a difference from the tube-type amplifiers many avow.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Vinyl Records Sound The Best
From: Johnny J
Date: 29 Oct 24 - 08:41 AM

These days, I'm not really in a position to judge as I'm lucky to hear at all!   You obviously don't get the full benefit of what's going on as your hearing deteriorates and there's obviously certain frequencies you can no longer pick up even with tehhelp of good hearing aids.

However, good vinyl on a decent system sounds great but many of the older albums especially those which featured "our kind of music" were poorly recorded and the vinyl copies weren't that great.
So, when many of these recordings were eventually released on CD, the quality was much better. Of course, new vinyl copies could also be made from the master tapes but replacing them with CDs was obviously the easier solution and more fashionable at the time.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Vinyl Records Sound The Best
From: DaveRo
Date: 29 Oct 24 - 10:27 AM

The original post was spam. But here are some vinyl myths.

Subject: RE: Vinyl Records Sound The Best
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 29 Oct 24 - 01:27 PM

.... Was that original post snipped? just asking, as the one currently at the head (from GUEST.Ray) has some things right. Excessive digital compression has thankfully gone out of fashion, even with rock-CD producers. Meanwhile, I've got an early-music LP which I can't bear to listen to, because there's a serious pre-echo distressingly evident in the quiet passages.

Subject: RE: Vinyl Records Sound The Best
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 29 Oct 24 - 02:18 PM

The original post seems to have disappeared!

---

You responded to a spammer's post. Since there was a discussion going already the spam was removed and the discussion can continue. ---mudelf

Subject: RE: Vinyl Records Sound The Best
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 29 Oct 24 - 02:24 PM

Pre-echo? Probably due to print through caused by bad storage of the original tape or possibly over enthusiastic use of a vari-pitch cutting lathe when the original disc was mastered. Try to get too much on the disc and you can sometimes hear two grooves superimposed.

Subject: RE: Vinyl Records Sound The Best
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 29 Oct 24 - 07:04 PM

The (negative) time delay exactly corresponds to one turn of the record at 33-and-a-third RPM; the pre-echo is muffled and a tad distorted, and only appears in one stereo channel (I forget which side). It's a cutting-time fault, caused by the wax for one turn being displaced slightly when the next turn is cut.

I've heard pre-echo on other records, but in this instance the quiet bits are so near silence that the break-through has the sore-thumb nature. Let's be charitable, and assume that the engineer was used to cutting rock-music records :-) .

PS: Thanks for the clarification, MudElf.

Subject: RE: Vinyl Records Sound The Best
From: DaveRo
Date: 30 Oct 24 - 04:45 AM

I thought that the original spammer's labelling of the post as'Folklore:' was quite apt.

Subject: RE: Vinyl Records Sound The Best
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 30 Oct 24 - 05:00 AM

As I said, probably down to the vari-pitch lathe which tries, depending upon the dynamic range of the music, to pack record grooves as close together as possible. If it’s not set up correctly, one groove impacts on another or, in extreme cases, one runs into another and you have to start again.

There was one story, I think it had something to do with Monty Python, where the client wanted to put both sides of a record on the same side so the listener didn’t know which would play when the needle was dropped; i.e. concentric spiral grooves. The vari-pitch tried to pack them together whilst the operator tried to override the thing to leave room for the other side between them.

Subject: RE: Vinyl Records Sound The Best
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 31 Oct 24 - 09:26 AM

I remember that Monty Python LP: it had one groove on one side and two on t'other, which made it a bar-steward to set up on student radio. The material for the latter were of course not *quite* of the same length; as it happens, the final sketch on the shorter one (a radio phone-in) ends with something with the form of "and I'm afraid we've run out of time". Cue five seconds' extra silence.

Until you mentioned it, Ray, it hadn't occurred to me that the argument which broke out between two of the callers in the sketch would have been mirrored by the fight between the lathe and the engineer. Another case of man vs excessive automation.

Subject: RE: Vinyl Records Sound The Best
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 31 Oct 24 - 10:04 AM

'Monty Python's Matching Tie and Handkerchief' had two different grooves on the B side. 'There's only one thing worse than being talked about, that's not being talked about'.

Subject: RE: Vinyl Records Sound The Best
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 31 Oct 24 - 11:30 AM

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam… Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam!

That said: There's commercial vinyl… and then there's audiophile vinyl. Quite a bit of current, high-end analog tech got spun off from 1970s era Quadradisc (Compatible Discrete-4/CD-4.)