Discussion on:

Tech gadgets we once loved but since abandoned (Photos)

I beg to differ on your choice of vinyl and turntables, they have carved out a niche among audiophiles

But they have become sort of a specialized item, haven't they?

When you have Discount Supermarkets selling USB Turntables in vast numbers there must be someone buying them.

Here we have the German Aldi who very regularly have USB Turntables listed for about $70.00 AU and they sell out within a few days.

They are just one source of supply.

Col

They are being bought primarily for copying your old vinyl records to digital ( all of mine got ruined in the latter eighties from getting wet and moldy from an overseas move on a ship - just in time for me to switch to cd's, ). The only argument for using older "High Fidelity" equipment, of which phonographs were an integral part of - is the fact that tubes on older amps can have a cleaner sound than the solid state transisters that are in amplifiers nowadays. But that does not have anything to do with the phonograph itself. By the way a good quality reel to reel has a pretty good dynamic range ( 110db with Dolby, about the same as a compact disk )and it stores a lot more than a compact disk - but not as much as my mp3 library.

I'll grant that quite a bit more "volume" can be stored in an MP3 music collection, but the audio quality isn't close to comparable. Whether by means of a needle "scratching a vinyl surface" or a magnetic head 'reading' a magnetically encoded tape, the resulting sound is analog, which proper playback of music should be. No matter how many times analog music is oversampled to produce a "clean" digital recording, such a recording lacks--to the human analog ear--the proper instrumental and vocal sound quality. That is one of the reasons there is a resurgence of interest in vinyl recordings and the equipment upon which to play them.

I was once exposed to the same recording in two different media: vinyl LP and CD. Listening to them both was an eye-opener: I couldn't hear the difference on high-grade equipment unless the volume was cranked high enough for me to hear the needle riding in the groove between tracks.

I still have my LPs and still occasionally break out one or two that haven't been released on CD, but for the most part, I listen to CDs and mp3.

But I do sample my audio rips at insanely high rates; my 32 GB mp3 can only hold about 1,700 tracks...

I'm inclined to disagree with your subject line. I trust that your comment is not meant to serve as you support for that statement. While some may be psychologically persuaded by sound quality, the actual perception and critical analysis of digital vs. analog sound to a real audiophile is keen enough to tell you, instantly, whether they are listening to an mp3, wav, aiff, etc format, or what type of turntable was playing the record, and weather they are listening to tape recorded sound from a record, or digitized sound from an analog master, etc. I don't think they would agree that it's psychological. I don't think I agree either. But whose keeping score?

In response to kawatkins62:

> sound to a real audiophile is keen enough to tell you,
> instantly, whether they are listening to an mp3, wav, aiff, etc
> format, or what type of turntable was playing the record, and
> weather they are listening to tape recorded sound from a
> record, or digitized sound from an analog master, etc. I don't
> think they would agree that it's psychological. I don't think I
> agree either.

You're making sh*t up. There's no such person.
It's been proven over and over again that even "audiophiles" can't distinguish high quality digital recordings from original masters. There comes a point where the human ear simply can't discern the harmonics, and the only way to REALLY tell the difference is to hook the waveform up to a spectrum analyzer.

I don't care how good a guy thinks he is or how "well-tuned" his ears are or how good his speakers are or how expensive his Technics SL-1200 series turntable is. With a high quality digital file, using the exact same speakers, the exact same cables, the exact same music, the odds of you guessing "which is the digital one and which is the analog one" are 50%. In other words, you have no clue.

I won't even touch on what you said about being able to differentiate between an MP3 vs. WAV vs. AIFF, because that was too asinine to even warrant a response.

of digital formats, but it seems to me that if you are ripping your cds at such high rates only to listen to them in mp3, aren't you wasting a lot of effort?

I'd be listening to the original CDs & LPs, but I spend my days driving around South Carolina and do most of my listening in the van, so I need something a little less bulky. I'd rather use a less lossy format than mp3 (with better compression), but the player I have only recognizes mp3 and wav formats.

I sample at the high rates because the dynamic range suffers at the lower rates, and I like hearing the louds & softs.

I've heard too many comparisons on too many pieces of hardware to agree with you. I've heard tracks played on hundred thousand dollar pro audio systems as well as cheapo Sears brand all in ones and the difference between even a 320kbps MP3 and vinyl jumps out of the speakers at me in a split second with no hint of similarity.

Seriously, MP3's are so intensely compressed it's laughable. A GOOD recording from a good vinyl pressing (yes vinyl quality makes a huge difference, just as it does with CD's) will run up in the 4000kbps bitrates. A high quality MP3 is 320kbps. A WAV or FLAC from a CD averages 1400kbps, which is close but the sound staging is entirely different, the sibilance of a CD is annoying as hell to me.

When I was younger I sold very high end tube amps and loudspeakers, the day CD's came out I couldn't even listen to them above a normal talking volume due to the sibilance that people seem to accept now.

I find that today's youth are so dumbed down with low end MP3's that even the production quality from studios has dropped immensely because they know nobody appreciates or can even HEAR decent audio anymore so they don't bother engineering it at the desk.
There are VERY few exceptions of course, Telark producese excellent quality disks (the physical disks themselves are better engineered as is the recording), Chesky, who is long famed for his vinyl recordings, also makes CD's now that are also very high end. but they STILL lack the true depth, clarity and accurate sound stage of a good LP.
Not even comparable.

Give your head a shake!

" MP3 vs. WAV "

One is 320kbps tops, the other 1400-4000kbps. The difference is night and day to an untrained ear. I have been teaching a friend how to hear nuances in music for a couple of years now. He usually can't hear small artifacts in music that I can, especially forward, reserved, sound staging etc.
Even he can INSTANTLY tell the difference between WAV and MP3 files, you'd have to be tone deaf and under 25 not to hear a difference. That's been my point for years though, dumbed down ears. I have had week long arguments with artists regarding production and engineering costs. they say, hell if people can't hear the difference why bother with another 40 hours in the studio engineering it? My answer is always, because "I KNOW". I don't put out crap.
So may do though, low quality CD's for pennies a piece, low quality engineering, poor compression leaving all kinds of crap in the mix etc. But kids buy it, rip it to an inaudible format and listen to it on thier iToys. The masses have be dimbed down so much they don't even know the difference when they hear it.

No difference between WAV and MP3? You may as well be completely deaf, you're most of the way there already. ANY sound engineer, speaker designer of audio buff can INSTANTLY tell such an obvious difference.

I'll just say that if there's a difference I couldn't hear it then, and 25 years later, I sure as h3ll can't hear the difference today.

As far as the difference between mp3 and wav, the corporate van's commercial vehicle audio system doesn't reproduce well enough for anybody to tell the difference between the original input format, whether it's CD, wav, FLAC, mp3, or whatever.

And what's a "tuba amp"?

Makes more sense now. I can actually hear the difference between MP3 and WAV on my crappy laptop though, even with tiny speakers (if they are actually speakers), with the volume way down. I think it's an allergic reaction or something I have toward low end audio. If I switch between the sam esong in MP3 or WAV, it's like the difference between B&W TV and a 3D LCD panel for me. Seriously, it just comes alive like someone pulled a heavy blanket off the speaker.

As for tuba amps, they didn't really take off because tuba's were found loud enough as it was, I think it was just a tuba diva trying to make himself stand out of the orchestra a bit more.

The VACUUM tuba amps were created by a lazy guy who figured he'd do half the work if he could suck as well as blow (HEY, stop it, I'm talking about a TUBA here!!!).

Typos, lol, some things never change.

type- s

My Akai reel-to-reel was capable of Quadrophonic sound with the right media. The matching reciever and turn table all produced great 'surround sound' for its day! They would place mic's around through-out the orchestra or band & record different angles of sound from the various positions for play back from a 4 speaker system. This gave you the feeling that you were in the middle of the performance instead of sitting out front of it in the audiance. For its time it was something else, but it never truely caught on due to the expense of making the recordings.

Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon quadraphonic LP....YEAH!
I still have an old Sanyo quadraphonic hi-fi and my "Floyd" epic bit of ear candy

I have master LP's Iron Maiden's Powerslave and Judas Priests British Steel (2 Minutes to Midnight followed by Living after Midnight a New Year tradition for decades now). I then chill out with my quadrophonic Dark Side played through my analogue mixing board (which was used by AC/DC at Little Mountain Studios when they made Thunderstruck), I got a nice deal on it, it's so warm and inviting it's like a hot chocolate with marshmallows and a cuddle from mum.

That is just some retro hype which does not have anything to do with the sound quality. OK, a poorly compiled mp3 is inferior to a vinyl disk, as were the first CDs that were not correctly mastered for CD Audio. But except for that, the sound quality is equal to better in digital music. Vinyl is for collectors and music freaks.

But as I'm still laughing hard I'll leave it.

Now where is the salt and Pepper to season the vinyl?

However having used Original Master Vinyl with a good pickup and what is supposed to be a High End CD Player through the same AR Speakers I have to say that the Vinyl still sounds better.

Col

Do you actually understand the important difference between digital and analogue? Actually it's pretty obvious you don't.

Retro hype? Just when you think you've heard the dumbest comments in life someone comes up with another,

How do You manage to walk without falling over?

True, but I prefer to call them Audiophiles, as most of them are. I am not concerned with the quality of the sound myself, although some of the earlier CDs that used to be on Vinyl never did get the right of mastering and sounded lower than the original. pretty bad that it happened, but eventually it all worked out. Then the MP3s came out and everybody stopped going to the local record store(except for the audiophiles)...I'm not looking to listen to a vinyl record just to have a discussion about the sound of it. I'm just listening to music, which is my only concern. Vinyl scratches easily as well as CDs...if I lose my MP3, I can just fid it online.

if you aren't a music freak, then this discussion shouldn't even attract your attention
and believe me, there is no mp3 recording out there equal to to a good analogue recording.

wrong wrong wrong wrong and wrong. My guess you are under 35 and wouldn't klow real audio if it was ingrained into your brain. Why would music freaks prefer something that was substandard? They don't,. When you can hear the tone signature of specific manufacturer's needles and cartridges, you can not listen to cheap CD's. I don't MIND Telarc or Chesky recordings on CD, but that's a pretty limited selection.