6 Reasons Why Someone is Breaking Up With Vinyl and Going Back to CDs


MisterBadger said:
This is a link that I probably won't be sending to my audio friend who just finished installing a $20k (+cart) Technics TT. I've got an innate cruel streak, but it has its limits...
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If he’s spending $20k on a cart, probably none of what’s been said/published is going to be news to him, nor change his position :cool:
 
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Well I'm waiting for a meeting so just some rando stuff to throw at this. Guess I'm still in it!

You can play with soundstage on the recording end with something like this. This is a digital plug-in/effect interface, for an effect you'd use in Logic or ProTools. It's digital but there are analog studio devices that do similar things (Rupert Neve makes one I think) but also many many other devices that manipulate the signal. With this thing you can make the sound more center focused, or spread it out, and you can play with the frequency of the ambience. It's kind of a way to place things in a space or mess with where they feel like they're sitting in an already recorded space. So this idea that soundstage is an audiophile thing- not really. Everybody should be able to hear in stereo if they have two functioning ears, and part of our stereo hearing is to be able to place things in space in relation to us. It's a survival thing. But also good for getting into music.

I don't know a ton about recording but I've seen enough of that world to throw any idea of the signal being sacred out the window, or that being true to it is somehow being true to the real event that was recorded.

Studios manipulate the sound a LOT. To the point that the difference between analog and digital on the playback end is kind of not that important...


k_stereo_ambience_rec_carousel_1_@2x_1.webp
 
I remember being sooo upset about the whole Mofi digital step debacle. I still have a negative view of them for it. Funny enough, it wasn’t so much that there was a digital step involving capturing of the master. More that they didn’t just sell that as a feature instead of denying that was what they did. Anywho, the point is that I find the whole digital steps in analog to be a lame argument as it is ingrained in the recording process.
 
S0und Dragon said:
I remember being sooo upset about the whole Mofi digital step debacle. I still have a negative view of them for it. Funny enough, it wasn’t so much that there was a digital step involving capturing of the master. More that they didn’t just sell that as a feature instead of denying that was what they did. Anywho, the point is that I find the whole digital steps in analog to be a lame argument as it is ingrained in the recording process.
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I'd forgotten about that mess.

Another fun example in studio, the Pultec EQ from the '50s. Word is that just passing signal through it without even engaging the EQ makes the sound better:

"As we said before, many engineers have found that audio can be enhanced simply by passing the signal through the Pultec, with the EQ switched out. In order to make up for the lost gain, the Pultec uses a simple dual‑valve amplifier stage that is, unusually, fully balanced throughout and operates in a classic push‑pull arrangement. Both valves are dual triodes, the two halves of each being used in the push‑pull mode to handle each half of the balanced audio through each gain stage. The input section is built around an ECC83 (12AX7), while the output transformer is driven by an ECC82 (12AU7). Negative feedback is derived from an extra secondary winding on the output transformer — so that transformer distortion and some output loading effects are automatically compensated."

Don't tell the ASR folks that their super clean low distortion signal may already be pre-distorted by tubes in the studio! Oh no!

abbeyroadinstitute.nl

Demystifying the ‘magic’ of the Pultec EQ

There’s hardly any piece of gear that is more revered to about its magic, than the Pultec EQ. We felt it was time to demystify this unique device!
abbeyroadinstitute.nl abbeyroadinstitute.nl
 
Okay, my crack about golden ears maybe not hearing a difference was mostly aimed at some of the older folks who’s hearing is highly likely to be compromised (just like mine), and many of them are very tribal in their subjectivist attitude. Just like many ASR devotees are about objective data. Also there seems to be a bias by a fair amount of reviewers towards expensive equipment, disregarding budget stuff as ChiFi junk. So far my experience at the Haven is we can and have had reasonable discussions on these things.
 
JoeThePop said:
Did you know apples have a natural wax coating that protects the apple from drying out, and protects it from microbes and mold? It’s washed off when harvested and many food producers apply a new coating?
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Yes. We had apple trees in our yard growing up (King, Transparent, Gravenstein, etc.), and I learned to always buff off an apple on my shirt before eating.
 
Thermionics said:
Yes. We had apple trees in our yard growing up (King, Transparent, Gravenstein, etc.), and I learned to always buff off an apple on my shirt before eating.
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We wash apples in water and white vinegar solution. Letting them sit in the solution for 20 minutes or so and then rinsing them.
 
Ya'll have moved onto apples but I'm still on studio gear. There's a logic to this I swear. The studio gear I'm posting is used because of a sound it imparts on the recording. Which is, by its nature, 'distortion'. And I suggest that I like vinyl because I like the way it sounds, in a similar manner. Because of its distortion. And so in my defense just some tidbits on how distortion is used on purpose in studios to create a specific sound. Not because it measures well but because it sounds good.

So...

The Urei (eventually Universal Audio) 1176 Peak Limiter and its famous "All-button" mode. Basically somebody in the UK accidentally figured out that if you pushed in all the compression-ratio buttons on the 1176 at one time, which is not how its designed to be used, then a bunch of harmonic distortion would be fed into the signal which sounded good. So they'd occasionally use it like that ON PURPOSE.

"The ratio buttons are designed to be mutually exclusive, so that pressing one ratio button deselects the others. However, British engineers discovered it was possible to push all four buttons in at once, an unexpected use case that led to unintended behaviour, with a substantial increase of harmonic distortion. This became known as "All-button" mode or British mode." -wikipedia

Below is a photo from Abbey Road's gear storage closet. The two units on the far left with the meters are 1176 compressor/limiters (and harmonic distortion delivery devices!):

Toy_cupboard_shelves_of_equipment.webp



So yes yes do be true to that signal. It's so pure. Vinyl is such a catastrophe with how it alters the sound...... :)
 
I don't have a dog in this fight and Iove any and all methods to get my favorite art form into a room. That I have invested significant time and money chasing a certain sound that I find enjoyable is no secret, either on the forums I inhabit online or with my local audio friends. The journey to very good vinyl playback has been a 40 year effort for me and I do finally feel like I am at the summit, enjoying the view.

I don't know know where music, technology or the world in general is headed. But I do know that it is extremely likely that people will still be playing records in another 100 years. It's just dead simple really and I admire the elegance and brilliance of the format. It makes zero sense while you watch it happen in front of you, and you have to respect how far we have taken Edison's invention.

Yeah I am keeping my records even if I stream most of the time. My kids can have a big sale one day when I am returned to dust.
 
JohnVF said:
Ya'll have moved onto apples but I'm still on studio gear. There's a logic to this I swear. The studio gear I'm posting is used because of a sound it imparts on the recording. Which is, by its nature, 'distortion'. And I suggest that I like vinyl because I like the way it sounds, in a similar manner. Because of its distortion. And so in my defense just some tidbits on how distortion is used on purpose in studios to create a specific sound. Not because it measures well but because it sounds good.

So...

The Urei (eventually Universal Audio) 1176 Peak Limiter and its famous "All-button" mode. Basically somebody in the UK accidentally figured out that if you pushed in all the compression-ratio buttons on the 1176 at one time, which is not how its designed to be used, then a bunch of harmonic distortion would be fed into the signal which sounded good. So they'd occasionally use it like that ON PURPOSE.

"The ratio buttons are designed to be mutually exclusive, so that pressing one ratio button deselects the others. However, British engineers discovered it was possible to push all four buttons in at once, an unexpected use case that led to unintended behaviour, with a substantial increase of harmonic distortion. This became known as "All-button" mode or British mode." -wikipedia

Below is a photo from Abbey Road's gear storage closet. The two units on the far left with the meters are 1176 compressor/limiters (and harmonic distortion delivery devices!):

View attachment 92722



So yes yes do be true to that signal. It's so pure. Vinyl is such a catastrophe with how it alters the sound...... :)
Click to expand...
Some of the best discoveries come when you just push all the buttons.
 
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