Best Sounding Shellac and Vinyl

T

Twinhit

You gotta speak up!
:spank:


You know, honestly, there ARE some people who still like the old analog and acoustic systems. Record companies are screaming over music being pirated in the digital domain.

I just thought it would be kinda neat to see a resurgeance in vinyl to warrant a new wave of old school listening preferance.
DIY
Make your own vinyls!
yada yada

Bask in the luxury of wind-up phonographs and shellac scribin' glory.
 
I grew up on vinyl myself, and I have to ask; what's the point? Do you really want to go back to the days of worn styli that need replacing, records that get pop and clicks in them just by looking at them the wrong way, having to spend extra for Zerostats, Discwasher and brushes just to keep them clean, needles that bounce around if you dance a little too hard in front of the turntable, having to spend couple of minutes of trial and error just to cue up the right songs on the album or find the right verse or solo, and taking up a hundred square feet of wall space just to store your music collection? And what about when you want to take your music into the car?

If you want that "sound", you can do it with CDs. The idea that you need to go backwards to vinyl to get the right sound is baloney.

G.
 
It's not like music recordings weren't pirated before mp3 and internet. People used to copy LPs onto cassette. Personally, vinyl is my format of choice, even if they are higher maintenance. Yeah, you have to keep it clean, but at least you can't accidentally erase it with a magnet. I make CD copies of my favourite records (and sometimes tapes) to listen to while I drive. I also rip these same CDs to LAME mp3, because I love the way vinyl sounds. It has a certain mojo.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
I grew up on vinyl myself, and I have to ask; what's the point? Do you really want to go back to the days of worn styli that need replacing, records that get pop and clicks in them just by looking at them the wrong way, having to spend extra for Zerostats, Discwasher and brushes just to keep them clean, needles that bounce around if you dance a little too hard in front of the turntable, having to spend couple of minutes of trial and error just to cue up the right songs on the album or find the right verse or solo, and taking up a hundred square feet of wall space just to store your music collection? And what about when you want to take your music into the car?

If you want that "sound", you can do it with CDs. The idea that you need to go backwards to vinyl to get the right sound is baloney.

G.
Click to expand...


"I grew up on vinyl myself, and I have to ask; what's the point?"

Alright, so did I but let me ask you these questions:

Do you like acoustic guitar or digital guitar? (notice I left out electric)
Do you like tube or solid state equipment?
Do you want a vintage U47 or a TLM 103?


Inasmuch as recording studio and audio sound equipment professionals and manufacturers strive to better their product, there are people who simply enjoy variety.

I wasn't saying do away with old tech. I am simply advocating the resurgeance of it for people to enjoy it if they so choose. There is a certain
novelty and nostalgia associated with acoustic and analog playback sound systems that audiophiles value over a cd. Incidentally, the new thing is mp3 players now. bye bye cd/dvds? Hello flash drives?

I'm sorry but "what's the point" simply doesn't cut the mustard.
I certainly hope you don't have a single vacuum tube in your studio
nor any of your all time favorite albums, radio programs and film were
ever produced using such antiquated technology.
Glen, with your simple and careless "what's the point?" tone, that's what you sound like. Someone who simply doesn't care and likely in wrong business.
I can tell you an absolute fact from someone who's hearing impaired and has worn both analog and digital aids. Digital hearing aids SUCK!
( and I am not one to use that word often)
 
Villain S Deeds said:
People used to copy LPs onto cassette.
Click to expand...
True, but you couldn't distribute that cassette to 6 billion people on the planet just by clicking a mouse. You couldn't even distribute it to two people all that easily. And the copy was an inferior copy instead of an identical one. There's no comparison between the two. It's like comparing genocide to swatting a fly.
Villain S Deeds said:
Personally, vinyl is my format of choice, even if they are higher maintenance. Yeah, you have to keep it clean, but at least you can't accidentally erase it with a magnet.
Click to expand...
Not like CDs, right? ;)

G.
 
I don't agree with the too-negative repsonses to Southside ..... he has valid points.

Having said that ..... I prefer vinyl and there in fact IS a vinyl resurgence. Has been for a while now. Anything new that comes out, I buy on vinyl. It's usually available and sounds better IMO.
I can burn a CD of my vinyl records and I hear a difference in very tiny things like reverb tails and such. Analog captures the timbre of instruments better compared to 16bit/44.1 redbook CD's .

However .... as soon as you move up to 24bit/92 and higher sampling rates ..... the analog advantage dissappears as far as I'm concerned.
 
Vinyl will never die, there will always be records. Whether there'll always be something to play them on is, however, another matter altogether.
Maybe Rush's 2112 wasn't so far fetched, after all !

Alot of my vinyl records I put onto CD anyway, then I sold the records and funded my excursion into VSTis. That way, I got the best of both worlds {except for those ones on the infamous 'Blackburn batch'}.

To be absolutely honest, the only thing I miss about records is cover art. There are quite simply many stunning works of art that came out between 1956 and 1990 on LP covers.
 
I don't mean to sound hard on Glen.
Every time I turn around I hear some nostalgia buff say one thing or another, someone else is going to come along and thoughtless knock it down.
I am NOT denying that digital has come a long way, and that there are some good recordings these days. That's not my point, my point was, why not be thoughtful of those who really do like the old stuff at the same time.

I think it would be pretty neat to make a recording and hear myself on vinyl or even some compatible material used for the old wind-up phonographs.
Those things are really cool and they are truly acoustic instruments.

I'm sorry, but I too, happen to like the best of both worlds.
Now watch this... suppose an artist wanted to record a vocal or instrumental track that was then transcribed then played back on a tuneable wind-up acoustic phonograph that yielded some flattering sound that could not be duplicated digitally or via any other means and then recorded into the computer again but this time there is an acoustic quality that would baffle the audience.
Again, I am really thinking about those old Edison and Victrola phonographs.
They are to an acoustic guitar what their succeeding electronic counterparts are to the electric guitar.
That's all.
 
Lt. Bob said:
I don't agree with the too-negative repsonses to Southside ..... he has valid points.

Having said that ..... I prefer vinyl and there in fact IS a vinyl resurgence. Has been for a while now. Anything new that comes out, I buy on vinyl. It's usually available and sounds better IMO.
I can burn a CD of my vinyl records and I hear a difference in very tiny things like reverb tails and such. Analog captures the timbre of instruments better compared to 16bit/44.1 redbook CD's .

However .... as soon as you move up to 24bit/92 and higher sampling rates ..... the analog advantage dissappears as far as I'm concerned.
Click to expand...
My point is that probably 80% of what you're hearing as a difference has almost nothing to do with the playback medium and everything to do with the production technique and production value differences that the humans involved in making those things impose upon the recordings.

If they actually tried to make their CDs the same way, you'd probably be real surprised at just how little of an "advantage" the vinyl itself actually imparts.

And for the rest, it's entirely unfair to paint my post as being so negative. First, as you'll notice, I was born in 1959, and therefore spent the entire first half of my life with vinyl. I in fact still have over 300 albums and a turntable that I play them on. I'm just as nostalgic as the next guy. But I'm also realistic, and don't miss vinyl at all because it is an inferior format sonically and a pain in the ass to use to boot. That's not being negative, that's being honest. And it was asking a question; "What's the point?" And I gave the reasons why I saw no point in devolving back to vinyl.

And so far, the only answers that have been provided are "It would be neat" and "I made good points but was just being negative."

And BTW, if that *is* being negative, than how is supporting them not being negative to CDs. Chirst, I'm not complaining about Lt. Bob or anyone else being "negative" about digital. The point is one's got to prefer one or the other (one cannot prefer two things over each other). Does anyone have any realistic reasons other than nostalgia?

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
My point is that probably 80% of what you're hearing as a difference has almost nothing to do with the playback medium and everything to do with the production technique and production value differences that the humans involved in making those things impose upon the recordings.

If they actually tried to make their CDs the same way, you'd probably be real surprised at just how little of an "advantage" the vinyl itself actually imparts.

And for the rest, it's entirely unfair to paint my post as being so negative. First, as you'll notice, I was born in 1959, and therefore spent the entire first half of my life with vinyl. I in fact still have over 300 albums and a turntable that I play them on. I'm just as nostalgic as the next guy. But I'm also realistic, and don't miss vinyl at all because it is an inferior format sonically and a pain in the ass to use to boot. That's not being negative, that's being honest. And it was asking a question; "What's the point?" And I gave the reasons why I saw no point in devolving back to vinyl.

And so far, the only answers that have been provided are "It would be neat" and "I made good points but was just being negative."

And BTW, if that *is* being negative, than how is supporting them not being negative to CDs. Chirst, I'm not complaining about Lt. Bob or anyone else being "negative" about digital. The point is one's got to prefer one or the other (one cannot prefer two things over each other). Does anyone have any realistic reasons other than nostalgia?

G.
Click to expand...

Glen, I am not suggesting we devolve back to vinyl, but am only promoting it as an "optional" alternative medium for those who enjoy that medium. I'm not an idiot. please don't imply thus.
What I said about digital hearing aids comes from my experience with it.

hiccup
If someone were so inclined to cut their own vinyls, this looked interesting to me.
http://www.vinylrecorder.com/order.html

Of course it's not a Neumann or other but then it doesn't have the sticker price also.

But I am really thinking the real old school acoustic recording as a means of enhancing or complimenting modern techniques in the way of tone.
I think it can be a useful tool.

You may disagree and that's perfectly fine by me.
 
Lt. Bob said:
I can burn a CD of my vinyl records and I hear a difference in very tiny things like reverb tails and such. Analog captures the timbre of instruments better compared to 16bit/44.1 redbook CD's .

However .... as soon as you move up to 24bit/92 and higher sampling rates ..... the analog advantage dissappears as far as I'm concerned.
Click to expand...

Vinyl will actually capture reverb tails worse than a CD because its background noise competes with those reverb tails and tends to mask them.
CD background noise by comparison is very low. With a CD, reverb tails will be longer- and all other quiet sounds clearer - because there is much less competing background noise.

In digital language a 33rpm vinyl record has less than 12 bits, and less than 44khz sample rate, with both those figures diminishing even further as you approach the inner grooves.

In any case, most vinyl recordings were copies of master tapes. What would you prefer to listen to? The vinyl copy or the tape master from which it was made? With any analog recording medium, every copy generation introduces significant noise and distortion, including the original session recording.

It's true vinyl records can sound better for some ears, especially us older folk because of the multiband compression that top mastering engineers used to compensate for the deficiencies of the medium. But again that's almost accidental. A CD can be mastered in exactly the same way if desired. With vinyl it has to be mastered that way or it will sound poor - including the reverb tails disappearing! In fairness though, much depended on the dynamics of the original performance.

I'm almost as old as Lt Bob and so grew up on vinyl. Nowadays I feel the only advantage of vinyl is not the vinyl but the big album covers with their much better scope for art, and not forgetting cover notes with print that you can actually read!
Ideally I'd be holding the original vinyl cover in my hand while listening to the remastered CD version - assuming it was remastered properly.

Cheers Tim
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
My point is that probably 80% of what you're hearing as a difference has almost nothing to do with the playback medium and everything to do with the production technique and production value differences that the humans involved in making those things impose upon the recordings.

If they actually tried to make their CDs the same way, you'd probably be real surprised at just how little of an "advantage" the vinyl itself actually imparts.

And for the rest, it's entirely unfair to paint my post as being so negative. First, as you'll notice, I was born in 1959, and therefore spent the entire first half of my life with vinyl. I in fact still have over 300 albums and a turntable that I play them on. I'm just as nostalgic as the next guy. But I'm also realistic, and don't miss vinyl at all because it is an inferior format sonically and a pain in the ass to use to boot. That's not being negative, that's being honest. And it was asking a question; "What's the point?" And I gave the reasons why I saw no point in devolving back to vinyl.

And so far, the only answers that have been provided are "It would be neat" and "I made good points but was just being negative."

And BTW, if that *is* being negative, than how is supporting them not being negative to CDs. Chirst, I'm not complaining about Lt. Bob or anyone else being "negative" about digital. The point is one's got to prefer one or the other (one cannot prefer two things over each other). Does anyone have any realistic reasons other than nostalgia?

G.
Click to expand...
yeah me ..... I don't agree that it's the production and not the medium. I've read numerous articles about reasons vinyl could sound superior and I prefer a vinyl record to a CD I myself have made of it. I hear a difference and prefer the vinyl. I use Masterlinks to burn my CD's and at 16/24 there is a loss of 'atmosphere' that's quite clear to me. When I go to 24/96 the difference disappears.
I also don't agree that it's an inferior media. If you have good playback gear it's an awesome medium. And I'm not talking about some plastic Technics direct drive POS. I'm talking VPI ...... Clearaudio . that kind of shit, on that gear it's superior to CD.

CD's are crap ...... they're 25-30 year old 'puter technology.
What other 30 year old computer tech do you use?

None because it's crap.

CD's are also the very first digital audio tech. What other product do you use the very first model that came out like say , a Model T?

None because that first model is crap.

The 16/44.1 has been shown in quite a few studies to be insufficient but that was what they could do back then plus they didn't know a lot about it yet ..... aliasing , brick wall filters ..... low sampling rates ...... all that stuff is a factor.

Personally, I know what my ears can hear and that's what I go by.
I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything ..... it's so totally unimportant to me what anyone else thinks or listens to.
But I hear the differences I hear .... if you don't hear them, you're not listening close enough AFAIC but ultimately I don't care ..... my ears are as trained as anyones, I'm gonna go with my ears always ..... I'm not particularly nostalgic.
 
Last edited:
Tim Gillett said:
Vinyl will actually capture reverb tails worse than a CD because its background noise competes with those reverb tails and tends to mask them.
CD background noise by comparison is very low. With a CD, reverb tails will be longer- and all other quiet sounds clearer - because there is much less competing background noise.
Click to expand...
Nope ...... good vinyl cleaned on a good record cleaning machine can be dead quiet. There'll always be some 'rush' but it's way low.
CD's cut off reverb tails, they don't fade into silence ..... it's a very documented thing.

Once again ....... I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything.
But if you listen to noisy records it just means you have 1. crappy records 2. crappy playback gear, especially the cart. You got a grand in your cart? If not then it's crap or so-so at best.
 
Lt. Bob said:
Nope ...... good vinyl cleaned on a good record cleaning machine can be dead quiet. There'll always be some 'rush' but it's way low.
CD's cut off reverb tails, they don't fade into silence ..... it's a very documented thing.
Click to expand...

Lt Bob,

Strictly speaking, any digital audio format, no matter what bit rate, will cut off the audio at low levels. That's quantisation error. On an 8 bit recording it's normally a very unpleasant effect, but who seriously listens to recorded music at 8 bits?
Sure, vinyl is much quieter, smoother and more natural than an 8 bit digital recording. But at 16 bits or higher the situation is well and truly reversed.

Make a digital recording of the quietest and most dynamic LP you have, and using only 16 bits. There will still be bags of unused dynamic range on the digital file. There will not be any appreciable added noise or loss of low level detail.

Now do the reverse and try to capture on vinyl a dynamic orchestral piece and you will fail miserably. You will have to resort to the same signal processing techniques used by all the top vinyl mastering engineers for the past 70 years or more.
If what you say is true the job of vinyl mastering engineers from Bob Katz to Doug Sax and all the others was a complete fabrication and a waste of our money. I dont think so. They knew vinyl, knew its limitations and used all their audio wizardry to disguises its weaknesses and make vinyl sound as good as they could.
By saying what you say, you (I'm sure unintentionally) insult the work of some of the most talented people in the history of analog audio recording and production.
The old guys, the real analog experts, should straighten you out real quick.


Cheers Tim
 
Whilst I still have my LPs and a means to play them I will continue to do so & to prefer doing so.
I do really good CD archiving of LPs as well as digital LP restoration to burn to CD & I use my copies of those CD in places where the turntable is inconvenient but I use the LPs in the right place - ie: where the turntable, speakers & amp are set up for listening pleasure.
I know all the comments about vinyl voodoo and the latest digital hoodoo but I like the sound of LPs. I learnt to like the sound, it's what my brain uses as a reference, (yeah, I know about the very short life of audio memory for quality tests of stereos etc), a very large proportion of what i consider the BEST music was distributed on it. It has romance, phsyicality, fragility and a cover with legible type.
Some poor sounding recordings like my LP of Library of Congress Lomax Leadbelly tracks has a sound, a look, a sense of place that suits an era.
Do I like CDs? Yeah, I have to as the 2000+ albums I have bought as CDs can't, generally, be heard on a better medium, (I loath MP3s and don't really like the sound of digital media players etc).
If I could press 2 dozen Lps of my own stuff or 200 CDs I'd opt for the LPs.
 
I come from the school of thought that no audio recorder and playback system will ever truly match what one can hear in the real world.... live performance. That's the real deal.

Think about all those renowned symphony music halls of old, from simple to orrnately baroque. None of the music recorded there can truely be reproduced and replayed accurately.
Why? Because no matter how much you spend developing the best system with the best components using the best materials. What we've always heard in playback systems was/continue to be an "interpretation" of the original sound.
Whether it be a gramophone, a transcription disc, radio, reel to reel and their consumer counterparts, television and film, to compact discs and the now common mp3s, it's always going to sound different to our ears.
Why? Well, for one thing, speakers cannot play all the individual notes of all the instruments in an orchestra at the same time without coloring it in some way to some extent. The speaker cone is not made of the same material as a cello, a bass, a french horn, a tympani or a piano etc.. My car is not made of the same materials either, nor is my listening room of choice the size of symphony hall. My headphones and the cushion that forms a gasket between my head and the speaker will never be able to duplicate the original sound heard live, in person, in all it's glory.
Furthermore, each and every one of us hear things differently because we are physically different.

Having said that, I DO offer a standing ovation to the achievements of the pioneering inventors and engineers big and small of ALL the advancements of technology throughout the history of audio reproduction. That's a lot of intensely hard work that was required.
 
Twinhit,
read "The Recording Angel".
It's an excellent discussion of what performance, recording and the ever more blurred difference between them was. I use was as it was written pre MP3 &, more importantly in terms of interaction, pre social networking on the internet.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top