Storage
Happy birthday, LP: Can you believe it's only 65?
This storage medium progressed from spinning disk to flash and then entered the cloud... Sound familiar? It's the long-playing music album and this year marks the sixty-fifth anniversary of its inception. The 33 1/3rpm vinyl long-playing record was devised in 1948 by Columbia Records and was an upgrade on the prior 78rpm 12-inch …
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Re: Oh god
@ Steven Jones
" ......in theory, a CD recording of a vinyl playback ought to sound identical assuming that it's done competently."
In normal practice, the CDR can sound better. That's if you record from the turntable using headphones to monitor, rather than having speakers on at full whack.
The reason is that even good and well suspended turntables -- I have, Technics SL1210, classic AR Turntable and Thorens 125 -- feed back to some extent. To demonstrate this, record from a turntable with the stylus resting on a stationary disk while playing another source loudly in the same room. The stylus works pretty well as a microphone, muddying the sound of all music played on a turntable.
Re: Oh god
Oddly, with digital, you have to use higher sampling rates (and use up capacity) to record higher audio frequency, whereas with vinyl, you use up storage capacity faster by recording more low end.
Re: Oh god
Fixed, yes - but not constant.
Linear speed varies the further with distance of the stylus from the hole in the middle.
William
Re: Oh god
I've just realised that I'm very, very old. Witness conversation with friends son:
"What's a tape?"
What's even worse is when it gets to "what's a CD" ... I've had that!
Flash won? No, CDs overpriced.
Tesco today a decent DVD is €6
But Fleetwood mac Rumours is €12.99 on CD. I did buy it on LP at original release and again on CD many years ago. There are also OLD less quality CD titles promoted at Checkout for a "bargain" €17
C R A Z Y !
(1 Euro about 83 pence Sterling yesterday)
Downloaded files need backed up and entire Albums are over priced.
Buy a CD and rip it at your desired quality and you have a decent backup automatically.
BTW 33 & 1/3 RPM was released about 1929 on plastic, 16" for cinema and then 1931 on 12". But same size grooves as 78 rpm.
"Stereo" as done on 33 & 45 was demoed by EMI in 1933 or 1934.
1948 was the microgroove version. LP
1949 was the 45 rpm
Prototype Wurlitzer jukebox 1929. Common production 1934 (10, 12 or 15 off 78s)
BTW the CDs are PRESSED, not etched.
Re: Flash won? No, CDs overpriced.
"Buy a CD and rip it at your desired quality and you have a decent backup automatically"
Nah, not if the LP is in good nick-- I prefer a bit of dynamics rather than the usual 'loud as hell' CD mix.
Re: Flash won? No, CDs overpriced.
I agree and that is a whole other discussion! However well produced and recorded music (extremely rare I know) can sound amazing at 24-bit 96kHz; my audio interface can go as high as 192kHz but not sure I would be able to tell the difference!
Look Hear!
"stereoscopic" ?? There's no video track on these here LPs. I think you mean "stereoPHONIC".
"...stereoscopic..."
Ummm, so you mean stereophonic?
Another one looking for the Olde Pharte icon.
Re: "...stereoscopic..."
Wow...the same answer in "stereophonic"!
Re: "...stereoscopic..."
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon - Quadrophonic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Side_of_the_Moon
I wonder if I can buy a quadrophonic record player and get a needle for it.....
At least once in my life time.
Re: "...stereoscopic..."
argh that's done it - flashback in quad & technicolour !
I used to get back from sea (3 to 6 months away) & head for my sister's flat in London - 1st job sort out my brother-in-law's quad so the speakers were in phase & in the right corners (12 foot squre basement 'flat' - 'Art; leave the friggin quad alone ! ' ) - only one decent record to do that with ... Dark SIde of the Moon.
Then having got the aucostics right - turn the volume waaay up; light up; grab a home brew (bro in law was a Master Brewer..) & chill out in the middleof the room ... Dark SIde - Umaguma (also in quad) a couple of Moody Blues; Clapton/Cream ......
Good quailty speakers; good acoustic environment (damp walls don't reflect much..) not much in this world gets better than that ....
Re: quadrophonic
I have an old Teac A-3340s 4 track/channel reel to reel machine still banging around.
Re: "...stereoscopic..."
I wonder if I can buy a quadrophonic record player and get a needle for it.....
you don't need a quadrophonic record player (or even a quadraphonic one) and a needle as they don't exist. The idea behind quadraphonic LPs was that the extra two channels were encoded into the exsiting stereo channels so that (1) they could be extracted, presumbly in a quadraphoic amplifier, to provide 4 channel sound or (2) could be listened to unprocessed as a normal stereo signal.
"stereoscopic sound"?
I think you mean stereophonic sound, unless you're one of those rare people who say they can see sounds..
Re: "stereoscopic sound"?
>I think you mean stereophonic sound, unless you're one of those rare people who say they can see sounds..
"Son, what you've got to understand is that in the seventies we took a lot of drugs..."
(to paraphrase and re-purpose a Gary Larson caption)
CD is killed off?
Somebody forgot to tell me, I presume, as I've just ordered a few nice prog remasters off Amazon...
HIt and miss
"Playing individual songs was a hit-and-miss affair as you had to locate them on the LP's surface."
LOL, not unless you were really drunk or trying to do it in total darkness...
Re: HIt and miss
How to do it in darkness, when drunk, and sometimes under the influence of drugs*:
1. Plug in some headphones
2. Switch off the power to the turntable
3. Put the stylus as close as you could to the start of the track
4. Move the turntable back and forth by hand until you located the transition from silence to music
5. When the record on the other turntable finishes, optionally gabble something annoying into the microphone
6. Fade up the turntable with the LP on it, and switch on the power to it - with practice you will be able to position the stylus so you don't hear a horrible wind-up noise
7. Repeat until everybody goes home. If they won't go home when you want, start playing selections from your store of records you should never have bought.
*The guy in the icon seems to have rolled a decent-sized joint for himself.
Stereoscopic - why the downvotes?
Not entirely sure why someone felt the need to downvote all the people who (quite rightly) pointed out it is 'stereophonic' and not 'stereoscopic'
Sheesh, the Reg is getting like the BBC
Do you not have anyone on your staff, or even retired from it, that either grew up with shellac/vinyl or is currently one of the growing number of vinyl freaks and who knows something about it?
I don't think we are talking about "albums" here: what was invented in 1948 was the LP, and "albums" were just one thing that came about as a result. Playing single songs was not a hit and miss affair: the tracks were clearly marked by a gap in the dense grooves. It took a steady hand, yes, although there were/are gadgets to raise and lower the arm; a blessing to the shaky-handed!
Odd that these LPs, like their 78RPM predecessors, were recorded in "analogue." Hmmm... I wonder when digital recording was invented!
<<-- Get me my coat! ...and stick. And help me out of this chair!
And why were they called "Albums"?
Interestingly, it actually goes back to the 78 records. If you wanted to play a whole symphony on 78's, you needed several records. They were sold in boxes which were called albums.
So actually, albums pre-dated the 33 1/3 Long Playing Record Album.
If a piece of music was on 3 records, you would find that sides 1 and 6 were on one record, 2 and 5 on another and 3 and 4 on another. You piled them up on the autochanger, and played sides 1, 2 and 3, then turned the whole pile over and played 4, 5 and 6.
Actually, that was even the case with some double-LPs. "Tommy" had sides 1 and 4 on one LP, and 2 and 3 on the other - again, so that they could be played on an autochanger.
OK, I didn't know
That "albums" pre-dated LP --- and what you say makes sense, so that's one point off my previous old-codger post.
I remember the auto-changer stuff, though --- from 78s and our old radiogram
Re: OK, I didn't know
The word "album" is a carry-over from the 78 era when sets of records were sold in books which had hard covers and record sleeves for pages. So they were a bit like photograph albums. I'm not aware that 78s were sold in boxes though it's entirely possible. Box sets really came in with LPs.
Re: OK, I didn't know
>>I'm not aware that 78s were sold in boxes though it's entirely possible.
They did - my late uncle (b. 1926) was a classical music fanatic and regularly bought a symphony as a boxed set - 12-15 discs... I still have many of them complete with the original receipts.
What is this 'analog'?
Hmph. If you're talking about tech from way back then (and you're in the UK), then it's analogue, not analog.
That's as close to a grumpy-old-sod icon as I can find.
Size matters
The move from vinyl to CD also got rid of a very hand 12 inch square joint rolling platform
Re: Size matters
Not a big deal at Uni: engineers always have nice big textbooks.
Guess an iPad does the job these days. iToke.
Re: Size matters
I don't know - bambo place mats were better - and found in all the best houses; but never ever on the table under plates !
Diamond Rio PMP300
First commercially successful flash-based MP3 player. Pre-dated the iPod by about 3 years and was widely regarded as the inspiration for the iPod in the first place. Just saying...
Re: Diamond Rio PMP300
I still have one kicking around the bottom of 'the cable bag' somewhere :)
Re: Diamond Rio PMP300
Rio was a cracking player, limited to 32MB IIRC which is insane to imagine! I had the next generation 500 and loved it (a heady 64MB). Not convinced by the claim of inspiration of the iPod though, Jobs wanted to do a portable player, Rubenstein said it couldn't be done yet, until he saw Toshiba's 1.8" hard drive. It was more a combo of the PMP500's form-factor, and the Creative NOMADs capacity if I recall the presentation.
The only thing I miss (a bit) is the artwork. I owned a vinyl copy of Tusk and I was quite disappointed when I saw what came with the CD. It's a shame that's all some people will ever know. Other than that cracks and pops, lack of portability and the fact I can now stream my collection 24/7/52 across a network means I don't miss vinyl.
I wish I could also say that I appreciate the improved dynamic range but sadly most of today's record producers squander that in a pointless loudness war. I've given up on ripping CDs to a lossless format as a result and succumbed to the convenience of downloading MP3s. Maybe the quality drop masks the worst of the producer's efforts.
How sad.
Time was when I chose media and equipment that enhanced the producer's work.
The loudness war is sad, since most digital player have to ability to normalise the levels if the user requires it.
What would be good is for more portable players to support 192Khz/24bit playback, since music is available in this format- and a good quality external DAC fgor a PC is relativily cheap compared to Hi-Fi components of old.
There are two or three very expensive 24bit portable audio players available, or you could use a high-end portable audio recorder for output, or you could use an iPad connected to a 24bit DAC... (and possibly Android devices too, with the USB Audio feature added to Jelly Bean... but I don't know for sure)
'If it ain't Stiff, it ain't worth a ...'
I miss the messages scratched into the vynyl matrix.
Re: 'If it ain't Stiff, it ain't worth a ...'
I have a Logitech Touch so in theory lossless digital can be better quality than a CD since there should be zero jitter. In practice I doubt my ears would tell the difference. I doubt they ever could and at 46 surely not.
Anyone else remember the vinyl single of I am The Beat by The Look? A never ending track because the groove leads back to itself at the end.
I am the Beat!
The Beat!
The Beat!
The Beat!
The Beat!
The Beat!
The Beat!
...
Good point.
When was the last time anyone bought a recording based on the artwork. (quick calculation - a CD box has about one-sixth of the area of a 12-inch. )
And what's the limit of the info you can store in the comment section of an mp3 track? a matter of a few bytes? Hardly count as extensive liner notes. (I've a feeling Queen's Night at the Opera had the lyrics on the inside of the gatefold sleeve - but it's been a while)
Re: 'If it ain't Stiff, it ain't worth a ...'
Regarding that repeating groove - was it supposed to do that? There were some oddities in vinyl pressings: I remember buying a single of "Mull of Kintyre" by Paul McCartney (don't judge me - it was a birthday present for one of the parents) which, when I checked it once I got home, had no lead-in groove. I had bought the record from a notoriously grumpy record shop owner near school (probably explaining why he was grumpy!), and thought twice before taking it back because of the crap he would undoubtedly give me. However, when I did, he very quickly looked at it and handed me a replacement disc (the UK spelling was acceptable in those days) with no sarcasm. Only later that day, when I related the tale to my more sophisticated(!) friends, did I find out that such records are like unperforated or misprinted postage stamps, and worth several times their retail price ... D'oh!
And, on the topic of the comments scratched on the singles, for some unknown reason I found the comment "I am a Panama Blanket" scratched into "Una Paloma Blanca" by Jonathan King (bought as a present for my younger sister - honest!) to be absolutely hilarious - I still get the urge to giggle out loud as I think about it now!
Re: 'If it ain't Stiff, it ain't worth a ...'
Of course the Beatles did it first, on Sergeant Pepper, side two. (1967) I always heard it as "there never could be any other...ad infinitum" but I'm sure others have their own interpretations.
Re: 'If it ain't Stiff, it ain't worth a ...'
Regarding that repeating groove - was it supposed to do that?
I dunno but I'd assume so. It wasn't "I am the Beat" *click* "the Beat" *click* "the Beat". It was seamless. Either intentional or a very, very lucky mastering defect :)
Actually even most cassette tape recorders were perfectly able to normalize audio.
"And what's the limit of the info you can store in the comment section of an mp3 track? a matter of a few bytes? Hardly count as extensive liner notes."
Limit of the info in a comment (or lyrics) section is huge with ID3v2, in the region of MB without checking the details, so put what you like in there. There's also APE.
@Annihilator
that's good to know. Now what are the chances of the record company using the space for something?
"quick calculation - a CD box has about one-sixth of the area of a 12-inch. "
But many CDs either have a booklet or a fold out insert with lyrics or panoramic aspect ratio artwork. So the main difference is that you can't have two big 12" squares of pop art.
Re: 'If it ain't Stiff, it ain't worth a ...'
I think it was Monty Pythons' Paper Handerchief that had 4 groves - 2 on each side which meant some people never did hear ALL the tracks on the record; IIRC they manged just over 15 minutes per grove to give a total of 61 odd minutes actual playable time.
Re: 'If it ain't Stiff, it ain't worth a ...'
"...messages scratched into the vynyl matrix..."
Oh yes. It seemed back then that Bilbo was the only cutting engineer in the country. If he liked (or loathed!) an album, his comments were on every copy that went out.
For some reason, RCA albums were the only ones I remember that didn't at least have the word 'bilbo' etched in the runout, just a set of machine stamped numbers. Sign of things to come, I suppose. Now where did I leave my translucent green Greenbelt ('bilbo was there - where are ATF?') double album
Re: 'If it ain't Stiff, it ain't worth a ...'
I think it was Monty Pythons' Paper Handerchief that had 4 groves - 2 on each side ...
ITYM Matching Tie and Handkerchief ... yes, it had two grooves on one side but only one groove on the other. Try doing that with an MP3!
Sad old git icon because ...
Re: Woah, woah woah.
I had a Sony stereo system that supported it but never saw one let alone plugged one in.
(Don't think I used the radio either, the 5 disc multichanger CD was good for parties though.)
Re: Woah, woah woah.
A much more recent fragment of audio history.
It's strength was the ability to record with decent quality, far better than anything on cassette, with a pocket machine.
I had a portable and a full-size machine, but I was being a late-starter music student at the time, for which they were invaluable. Sony killed the whole thing by being so restrictive with the compression protocol and digital access.
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