You know all that Pink Floyd stuff you bought on vinyl, CD, cassette & whatever?

[xoggoth]

Remember leaving a treasured PJ Proby LP on a window sill in the sun once. Then tried to flatten it by covering it in newspaper and running a hot iron over it and melted bits of newspaper onto it. Sounded brill after that.

[PAH]

I wonder if anyone's come up with a way of copying LPs using a molding process, as a way of preserving them in a duplicate form that can be played on the same equipment?

If some LPs are so valuable and rare maybe there's a market for it, targetting the rich or audiophile.

[Bunk]

I converted a few LPs onto minidisc and later CD as they weren't available in those formats at the time. May still not be available, I don't care, I have it in a good enough format.

I'm surprised the music industry didn't try to get SACD and other super-duper audio formats beyond CD to be more popular, so they could re-sell the same music to a whole new bunch of mugs.

Remastering is the same ethos from a different angle (find a new way to sell the same music to the same person). Especially when in some cases you can't really tell much difference. I'll choose the 'free upgrade path' thank you.

I think it's harder to convince people that something sounds much better than the last thing. It's a lot easier with visuals, DVD compared to video, HD compared to SD. People can see the difference a lot easier than they can hear the difference, or at least they're more willing to pay for something they can see than hear.

[PAH]

I think it's harder to convince people that something sounds much better than the last thing. It's a lot easier with visuals, DVD compared to video, HD compared to SD. People can see the difference a lot easier than they can hear the difference, or at least they're more willing to pay for something they can see than hear.

True. Particularly now many listen to music using earphones, which by nature are never going to be as good as a proper set of loudspeakers.

e.g. the bass is felt by the whole body not just the ear when experienced 'traditionally', and is part of the reason why you haven't experienced a musical artist properly until you've seen them live.

I think technology is reaching the limits of the human senses so any new format is already into the problem of diminishing returns. e.g. human eyesight cannot fully resolve higher definition at a certain distance, so larger screens are needed to make an impact as resolutions increase.

Maybe similar can be said for audio. I can't tell the difference between high bitrate MP3 (e.g. 320kbps) and lossless and I'm sure many others can't.

So what new audio format can possibly improve current standards significantly?

Maybe something that recreates big sound (e.g. auditorium level) without big noise (e.g. not bothering neighbours), but at an affordable price is one avenue still untravelled.

[Sysman]

PS Is there anyone who has ever actually bothered copying their LP collection onto CD or have they, like me, just kept a record player and box of LPs in the attic for 30+ years with the intention of doing so?

The last time I went through all my LPs was during the radio blackout after Diana's death.

I soon realised how much I'd got used to the playing time of CDs that getting up to change LPs was a pain in the neck. I converted them as soon as I could figure out how to do it for myself (i.e. FREE!!!).

I did the same with some cassettes and briefly toyed with that as a Plan B. The unemployed beat me on price and free time on that one. No matter how much I could automate the process, I still needed to listen to the result and edit out farts and scratches.

[Sysman]

I was always wary of LPs wearing out after many plays. They seemed to lose their dynamic edge, though maybe that was just psychological, or the needle wearing.

Also don't keep them in the loft unless it's well insulated from the elements. Some of my dads old records have warped in the extreme summer temperatures.


For those reasons I backed up the rarer stuff into digital.

Yep. I used to record new LPs to tape and listen from that to save wear.

I lent one favourite 45 out and it got left in a car on a rear parcel shelf. It got amazingly warped. That reminded me of a kids' DIY book I had as a nipper. With some hot water you could mould old 78s into wobbly looking flowerpots, and the drain hole was already built in. I never actually tried that, because I quite liked the music on the pile of 'em my parents had.

[Sysman]

Does anyone else remember the much vaunted laser stylus?

It was supposed to be the dogs wotsits of vinyl reproduction, but, sadly enough, was even more prone to dirt & dust than your bog standard diamond stylus.

I had a Technics deck which could allegedly play records when mounted vertically. It used some optics to determine how far to move the stylus arm. If I remember correctly it could skip to the next track, and it did this without the clunks and scratching sounds you got when doing t manually.

In fact if you observed its progress, the motor would move the arm a chunk, and the stylus would pivot around an arc, then the motor would move the arm another chunk. Not quite as advertised, but it worked and produced a decent sound.

I never tried this, but it was supposed to work in a car as well, though I didn't have an amp and speakers that would run off a car battery, so this seemed a bit pointless. There was a warning in the instruction book that you shouldn't try playing it when the car was moving.

[Mich the Tester]

I remember leaving a James Last record over the back of a valve colour tv.

It ended up a most curious shape.

A bit like Salvador Dali's watch?

[xoggoth]

It's brilliant if you break an LP in half and chuck the halves off the Clifton suspension bridge, they rotate and flutter down very slowly like birds.

[Scrag Meister]

They don't make many of them these days.

Trying to get a new stylus for a Shure V15 III is like trying to find hen's teeth.

And it would be about £100 or so if you could.

I think the beryllium cantilever doesn't pass H&S these days.

Like this?
Stylus


Unless you are a complete audio junky you can't tell the difference between the high quality digital media these days.

Got all my music on a NAS now, playable on PC, PS3, laptops over wireless network anywhere in the house, or the world for that matter, although I haven't actually tried the cloud connectivity yet.