Article: Vinyl Sales Growing as Digital Sales Decline

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The problem of wearing out your records can be solved by ripping them to hard drive/CD/DVD. Heresy?

I don't think so. Whatever the qualities that make vinyl attractive will be perfectly preserved by ripping the music to 16bit* digital 44.1kHz because that system SO far exceeds the noise and distortion of tape/record and playback.
Those that disagree must please do a proper job of ripping (not just stuff it thru WMP!) and then A/B the result taking care to calibrate levels to better than 0.1dB.

Then, whilst I see a quality descent everywhere, MP3, DAB, etc, there is no case IMHO for better than 16 bits at 44.1kHz (NB I am NOT arguing about the original recording, just the final release format) There are very few studio monitoring systems that can take full advantage of the dynamic range of 16bits, leave alone many domestic systems. (find me a power amp with S/N of -140dB below full output?).

The pressing quality of vinyl was already falling in the 80's. Hi Fi News, The Gramophone and other publication waged a constant war with the record houses and that was when the industry was dripping with money. Can't see the quality improving for a niche market?

Yes, records can be stunning. I remember hearing some direct cut jazz over a very high end system but that is not going to happen, much, is it? It is paradoxical that vinyl/tape was overtaken just as digital systems could have vastly improved it. Reasonably priced digitally controlled parallel trackers. Super tight tape control virtually eliminating wow and flutter. Digital management of tape and cutting levels to avoid distortion. None of these thing directly intrude on the actual analogue signal but could make it even better.

*Rip at 24bits and leave 20dB of headroom to cover spits and pops. These can cause limiting in the converter signal chain and intrude. And actually sub 1gram playback systems do not cause appreciable wear, it is just that is nigh on impossible to keep the damn things clean!

Dave (Kevlar hat on!)
 
They dont wear out, if properly handled, cleaned and played on quality equipment. At least they arent wearing out in my lifetime.
 
mdainsd said:
They dont wear out, if properly handled, cleaned and played on quality equipment. At least they arent wearing out in my lifetime.
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Since I seem to have been bitten by the vinyl bug I should probably invest in a higher quality turntable. What I was thinking of in terms of wear was that my cleaning process is not as effective as I'd like. IIRC the stylus has sufficient pressure to melt the vinyl so if there is any dust or lint still on it it can get baked into the surface.
 
I have a vintage Nitty Gritty for cleaning. I have brought some really dirty swap-meet finds to work and cleaned them in the ultrasonic cleaner.
 
However, the music industry’s core problem—that lots of fans just don’t want to pay for music—remains an issue. Most people use the free, ad-supported version of Spotify, and the company recently expanded its free offering to mobile devices. The most popular platform for listening to music among young people is YouTube, which is almost entirely free.
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..................
 
I have a VPI cleaning machine and they work great but they're pretty pricey unless you're really into vinyl with a large collection.
Amazon.com : VPI HW-16.5 Record Cleaning Machine with 8 Oz of solution and cleaning brush : Turntables : Electronics

However there are a couple of decent systems that are MUCH cheaper and do a very good job according to the reviews I've read and, in fact, even though I have the VPI I'll probably get both of these over the next year:
Amazon.com : SPIN-CLEAN - STARTER KIT RECORD WASHER SYSTEM Mk2 (SYS) : Electronics Cleaning Wipes : Electronics

and:
Amazon.com : In The Groove Record Cleaner : Dvd Cd Lens Cleaners : Electronics

And as long as the 'table has a decent arm with decent bearings, the most important thing is to have a decent cart that's properly set-up and aligned. Also .... set the tracking weight correctly.
Damaging records from playing them shouldn't happen and doesn't IF you have decent gear and have it set-up properly.
 
For the vinyl record guy who has everything and $15,000 spare cash....laser player, no needle:

Laser Turntable Player - Vinyl and Laser Record Player from ELP Japan

:)

The most real *damage* to vinyl records comes from poor handling and poor playback equipment or poor setup.
That said, even in the most perfect situation, vinyl wears out over a long period of playback time, which may not be a real issue for most albums, because you'll still get back a lot of plays, and the degradation is slow and negligible....plus, it probably wears out less then your hearing as you get older....so over time you won't notice it! :D

The only way to know and to actually hear/see the amount of wear....is to take measurements when an album is brand new, and then again after say 50 plays, and then 100 plays, and 200 plays....etc, and assuming that the equipment is not also wearing out over time at any level...because you're still lightly dragging a needle across plastic (basically), and that's going to wear.
 
I did briefly consider the ELP turntable, actually. Long story short, my uncle left me some money and it might have stretched to that, especially if I could score one second-hand. The prospect of not sticking a needle into the record was a very tempting one.
But it sounds like they're more trouble than they're worth, sadly - the record has to be fantastically clean and it won't work with coloured vinyl (Damn you, Threshold!)

(I got a Voyager Minimoog instead).
 
ecc83 said:
The problem of wearing out your records can be solved by ripping them to hard drive/CD/DVD. Heresy?

I don't think so. Whatever the qualities that make vinyl attractive will be perfectly preserved by ripping the music to 16bit* digital 44.1kHz because that system SO far exceeds the noise and distortion of tape/record and playback.
Those that disagree must please do a proper job of ripping (not just stuff it thru WMP!) and then A/B the result taking care to calibrate levels to better than 0.1dB.
Click to expand...

No one objects to CD because of noise, harmonic distortion and potential dynamic range, but because of artifacts that are uniquely digital. We currently have no medium on earth that will “Perfectly” preserve something. Every format adds characteristics that aren’t in the original. We are way past the marketing myths of Sony’s “Perfect sound forever.” Even Sony is over it. It was propaganda.

It was neither perfect nor forever. You're talking about vinyl wear like there is no CD deterioration, but time has proven both pressed and burned CDs have very short lives. You’re still using outdated speculation of the past… like three decades old ideas of what CD was supposed to be. ;) DVD is even worse when it comes to damage because the same size scratch wipes out even more data since its more densely packed on the same size disk.

That being said, my own CDs burned from vinyl sound better than any commercial CDs of the same album I’ve purchased. There are degrees of better and worse, but there is no perfect. It's not a complete or permanent solution.

Hammerstone said:
Spotify, YouTube, Streaming Services Are Killing Digital Downloads | TIME.com

ASCAP sent me this today, I thought it was a bit more on-topic...
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And don't forget the role of public libraries in killing purchased music. There are many things.
 
jpmorris said:
I did briefly consider the ELP turntable, actually. Long story short, my uncle left me some money and it might have stretched to that, especially if I could score one second-hand. The prospect of not sticking a needle into the record was a very tempting one.
But it sounds like they're more trouble than they're worth, sadly - the record has to be fantastically clean and it won't work with coloured vinyl (Damn you, Threshold!)

(I got a Voyager Minimoog instead).
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my take on those from reading a lot of reviews was that they didn't sound any better, if as good, as a conventional rig. Not worth the money at all unless you're just rich.

And that image of a needle dragging across vinyl is really misleading. The styli on quality carts bear no resemblance to a needle and they don't drag across the vinyl .... they are designed in shapes and small enough sizes that they sit down in the groove riding on its sides .... some of the very sophisticated styli are actually linear in shape relative to the groove.

The damage that good styli cause is more of them bouncing off the sides and chipping them if they mistrack. If you have clean vinyl and have the table and arm set up properly and the cart mounted properly with the correct VTA and correct overhang and anti-skating and lastly the correct traking force for that cart., then wear is not a large concern.

Of course ...... you can also throw a CD in there and not worry about any of that crap!


:D


I enjoy my vinyl and the ritual and the sound and I always enjoy showing someone who's never heard a good vinyl rig how good and quiet it can sound.

But for casual listening I just turn on the music channels I get with Brighthouse. :D
 
Lt. Bob said:
.... they are designed in shapes and small enough sizes that they sit down in the groove riding on its sides .... some of the very sophisticated styli are actually linear in shape relative to the groove.
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Well, you can word it in a way that makes it seem like nothing physical is happening between the needle/cartridge/styli and the vinyl....but they DO make contact as the record spins. Sure it's very light contact, and it will handle a lot of plays, and you're not going to see shavings of vinyl coming off, I don't imply that....:D....but there IS friction and "dragging" or rubbing if you prefer, and it WILL wear a tiny amount with each play. Maybe less initially when the vinyl surface is still new/glazed....but with enough plays it's not going to sound just like a brand new record would.
 
Same as tape. So how many plays? Who cares, its plenty by any estimation.
 
miroslav said:
Well, you can word it in a way that makes it seem like nothing physical is happening between the needle/cartridge/styli and the vinyl....but they DO make contact as the record spins. Sure it's very light contact, and it will handle a lot of plays, and you're not going to see shavings of vinyl coming off, I don't imply that....:D....but there IS friction and "dragging" or rubbing if you prefer, and it WILL wear a tiny amount with each play. Maybe less initially when the vinyl surface is still new/glazed....but with enough plays it's not going to sound just like a brand new record would.
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I'm sorry bit other than the fact that the needle does contact the vinyl you're wrong. This is something I've put as much time into as you have put into your studio .... and though I know that you're an expert on everything including things you don't know much about, this is an area where I know more than you do.

And new vinyl is not glazed ..... I don't even know what that may mean. There are mold-release compounds on new vinyl but typically you want to give a new record a good cleaning to get that off but the quietest playback.
And the vinyl is somewhat elastic ...... with good playback gear and a properly set-up cart the wear is negligible ..... I have albums that have been played hundreds of times and there is no discernible wear nor any noise caused by that playing.


Also ..... one time with a particularly bad cheapo ceramic cart I did see a little spiral of vinyl being cut out of the vinyl!
I still have that record and it does sound horrible and that is what can and will happen with cheap gear and/or improperly set-up gear. :laughings:

IF you had made a comment that showed that you actually knew something about this ...... but so far you have not. When you tell me that you have had a properly set-up Sumiko or Koetsu cart on a decent table (NOT a Technics 1200 ) and it damaged your records I'm still gonna say it was improperly set-up.
 
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I didn't know that you did actual testing of vinyl wear and the effects of repeated playback over time....or are you just saying that you don't *hear* any difference in your albums over the years, therefore you know positively that they don't wear with repeated playbacks?
Which is it?
Properly setting up a turntable and cartridge for playback doesn't mean you know anything at all about the effects of playback wear over time. That's something that would have to be done with test measurements and microscopes.

You typed a lot words just telling me how "wrong" I am, and how right you are, but without saying anything specific at all, other than focusing on my use of the word "glazed". I didn't mean *glazed* as a description of some specific coating they add....I meant it was "new/glazed" as in the surface and grooves being fresh and untouched yet.

Here....there is a lot of "vinyl VS CD" stuff in this link, but it also covers some specific points about vinyl wear and audio quality, though at this point, I'm sure you will not accept anything negative mentioned anywhere about vinyl records.

Myths (Vinyl) - Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase


And some more technical reading about vinyl, and specifically about *record wear*:

Micrographia: Applications: The microscopy of vinyl records. Page 3.

Record Wear.

Even though the tracking force of the stylus above is only 1.5 grams, this force is applied to such a small area that the pressure on the walls of the groove can be surprisingly high.
Measurement of the wear surfaces at higher power using an eyepiece micrometer gives a figure of 20 µm for the average width of the worn areas. Neglecting factors such as the elastic deformation of vinyl, the distribution of forces in a V-shaped groove and the accelerations at the stylus tip during tracking, simple calculation based on these figures gives a stylus pressure of 240 grams per square mm, or 340 pounds per square inch. The transient pressures exerted by a stylus tracing a heavily modulated groove during playback will of course be much greater, but beyond my ability to calculate.

The pressure exerted by a new (spherical or standard elliptical) stylus is even greater than the figure calculated above, as the area of contact of the new stylus tip with the walls of the groove will be less.
As areas of wear develop with use, the pressure (and therefore the damage to the walls of the groove) decreases, rapidly at first, then more slowly as the surfaces increase in area. This would suggest that really precious records should only be played with a new stylus after it has been used for a few hours to play less valuable vinyl.
The need to polish a stylus in this way is much less with the special profile elliptical stylus types (Shibata, fine-line, microline, etc.) as these have already been shaped to achieve optimum contact with the groove wall.

Eventually a point is reached where the worn surfaces are so broad that the stylus can no longer accurately trace the higher frequencies or more extreme modulations of the recorded groove, especially those towards the centre of the disc. As this condition is approached, mistracking becomes audible, and the stylus must be replaced.
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Now, the author goes on to say that only some of his records got to the absolute "unplayable" stage of wear...and I think I also said a couple of times that I wasn't suggesting records get ground down to nothing in no time....but that if you want to be a real stickler here talking about the merits of vinyl and about "vinyl fidelity"....you have to accept the fact that it does wear and there are losses of frequencies as the grooves and cartridges wear.
You can replace the cartridges, so that they better track in the now slowly wearing grooves (which is what people usually do)...but you can't put back the groove wear.
Of course, the records will still play, and they may not have any obvious clicks/pops, but there is a small loss of "information" over time with each playback.
I know I'm not wrong about that, regardless of how much bigger your record collection is than mine. ;)
 
Problem for me is I havent bought a new record since may be the late 80s.... It's all going to be used and hit and miss now. But I'm not certain I'll find the blues project or bodacious df on CD...

nobody mentioned dumping an album to 1/4" 7.5ips... :-)
 
Beck said:
No one objects to CD because of noise, harmonic distortion and potential dynamic range, but because of artifacts that are uniquely digital. We currently have no medium on earth that will “Perfectly” preserve something. Every format adds characteristics that aren’t in the original. We are way past the marketing myths of Sony’s “Perfect sound forever.” Even Sony is over it. It was propaganda.

It was neither perfect nor forever. You're talking about vinyl wear like there is no CD deterioration, but time has proven both pressed and burned CDs have very short lives. You’re still using outdated speculation of the past… like three decades old ideas of what CD was supposed to be. ;) DVD is even worse when it comes to damage because the same size scratch wipes out even more data since its more densely packed on the same size disk.

That being said, my own CDs burned from vinyl sound better than any commercial CDs of the same album I’ve purchased. There are degrees of better and worse, but there is no perfect. It's not a complete or permanent solution.

I did not suggest that copying a black record to hard drive was "perfect". I believe that it actually is "subjectively perfect" in that I very much doubt that anyone could tell the difference between a "live" record playing and one that had been copied via THAT system.

I capitalize "that" because it is a very difficult task to make a really accurate RIAA EQ amplifier both as an absolute flat resultant and as a matched pair for stereo. Then, some RIAA amps incorporate the IEC Amendment, some don't. Then there are various ways to "finish" the HF response and just to add to the confusion we have the ill conceived, audiophool "passive" EQ amps! It is therefore vital that any comparisons are made only with the RIAA amp that produce the copy.

I would also aver that any changes made in copying a disc to hard drive shrink into insignificance compared to the mangling that the master tape gets in being made suitable for cutting? The distortions produced in playing a disc with even the very finest cartridge are orders worse than CD. Then of course much vinyl was digitally recorded in the first place or "digitally re-mastered". And should anyone think Sgnt Pepper sound great on Radio One FM, sorry that goes via (12 and a bit, bit I think) digital links and has done for decades.

I do not deny those people who PREFER vinyl but to say it cannot be copied, carefully, subjectively perfectly is wrong IMO. If there are links to any respectable, peer reviewed trials on this I shall be happy to read them.

On the wear issue. Coming back a bit! I seem to recall that back in the days of the Super Trackers, the V151Vs etc, it was said that IF the stylus was well polished and IF tracking was about 1grm and IF there was no mistracking, then the plastic was only elastically deformed and not damage was done.

And don't forget the role of public libraries in killing purchased music. There are many things.
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Dave. (poorly inserted.Sorry, I hate laptops!)
 
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