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.

Sound that is electronically pure is not necessarily a pleasant thing for our ears to receive. Digital players sending sound out to speakers with Kevlar cones may be relatively flawless, but the richness of the sound to the human-ear and the pleasing sensations we feel in our bones from analog machines channelled through paper cone speakers is most of the reason we could tolerate a crackle, pop and skip now and then. There is so much more resonance and fullness of sound that we enjoy as human receivers of sound signals than any digital medium can appreciate or successfully produce that I would go so far as to say that young folks today, who don't have the privilege of growing up around old-fashioned adults who expose them to vinyl and turntables and magnetic tape, have no idea of the power well produced music and will certainly never understand why we old-timers cling so dearly to all that raspy music from the good ol' stylus and groove days. I have a direct drive AR turntable with a wooden base and records that are more than 40 years old, played regularly in their time, and still in excellent condition. I play them once in a while just to remind myself that the digital age, though it allows a medium that makes sound extremely easy to create, record, capture, manipulate, mass produce, share, distribute and store, and may produce a machine's idea of pure sound, it doesn't measure up to analog and acoustic ear candy.

Kevlar cones? 99.999% are retail shite.

Seriously you do have a point, just not a good one. I have sold high end audio for decades and you are right in that the ears play a huge part in what a person needs. I have demo'd systems for people who can't hear the difference between a high end RBH or Totem speaker and a $499 big black box speaker. Often they feel somewhat embarrassed that they don't understand when I am describing sound stage or forward vs reversed presence, however I look at it like being a cheapo drunk, nothing wrong with that. If you can go to the pub and have a good time all night on two or three beers, all the power to you! If you can hear a slight difference but not enough to invest $12K in speakers compared to a pair of $500 speakers, that's great...I guess.
This doesn't detract from the fact that there are MASSIVE audible differences between cone types, basket design, cabinet density, even the type of capacitors in the crossovers makes a world of difference to me (I love foil wrapped capacitors over poly pro ones). I can hear two speakers side by side and tell you which uses the better capacitors.

Sometimes it's a bitch because I hear artifacts in recordings that kill it for me but others think it sounds great. It's just like how I spend more on drinks when I go out at night because I can't drink cheap scotch and even the beers I drink are the priciest in the bar and I drink more of them than the cheap drunk who has two draft.

But we all know there's a big difference between Johnny Walker Red and Glenmorangie Malaga Cask scotch. It's just a matter of your taste as to what you can get away with.

There are way too many of those things being sold for people to just be buying them just to digitize their LP's. I have one of them and while I have used to digitize music sometimes I also enjoy just listening to the old records.

and certainly no .MP3s.

I don't answer phones

Funny you should say that, my unified messaging system takes my vmail and sends it to me as an audio file I can listen to without going into my phone's VMail. When it was set up, I had it format as WAV instead of MP3. LOL, I don't care about server space, I work with a Tier2 network so space is irrelevant but it was the format that was important to me, even for a phone call. (Picky, quirky, audiophile prick that I am)

Although there are a FEW higher end models, most retailed USB turntables are pure shite, bollocks. plus they convert real audio into a crappy, over compressed format.

I do agree they are complete crap starting at the Tone Arm and working both ways from there.

Lousy Cartridges, way too much force on the needle cutting into the Vinyl way too much Wow & Flutter and that's all before it even gets to any sort of Signal Processing.

I personally wouldn't touch anything like that, but way too many people do and they have no idea of what it is that they are listening to.

Col [shakes head and walks away]

Remember when many folks thought a Magnavox was the absolute best money could buy?
We're still up against that crowd.

You are so right! Branding is such a fickle bich! Look at cars in the 80's, absolute pure rubbish from anyone in North America, Dodge K-Cars and LeBaron (same thing), Ford Pinto, Plymouth Tourismo, Chevy Chevette (70's&80's) with unbelievably solid mini tanks coming from from Japan.

For the last 8-10 years, Ford has walked all over others with amazing breakthroughs in engineering and performance with subcompacts now eating up competitors as far as performance, safety, styling, fit and finish materials, and the F series trucks, which never touched bottom in over 4 decades,

But because they made the Pinto in the 70's and the Escort, people STILL go around saying what crap Ford builds. In reality they are coming out with some of the best manufactured cars around, the Focus for example has beaten out $30K + BMW 3 series in more tests than they can muster. But a brand takes a slap and it leave a red bottoms for many years to come.

I've seen it in Audio too. Polk once made a high end, speaker, now they are the lowest quality Mexican built crap you can buy, but people still rave on OOOOH, Polk, how Exotic! or BOSE, which makes dollar store garbage and still sells at a premium audiophile price when entry level competitors beat them for 25% of the price. Branding and dull minds.

Car audio, everyone touts Kenwood and Alpine due to their heydays of the 80's, but they are not the brands they once were, in fact Alpine has become low end, mainstream now, but still at a premium price because of the brand. I was talking to a friend on the weekend who owns a car audio specialty store. I was asking him why he didn't carry JVC car audio, a VERY well made product with awesome sound. He said, ah, JVC is junk. Alpine and Kenwood lead. This is of course completely false, Alpine and Kenwood 'SELL' because of branding, they most definitely don't LEAD anything, other than sales. JVC builds 10X the product for both quality and sound but they don't have the car audio branding they did 30 years ago. At one time, JVC lead for VCRs, TV's, Cameras, car audio etc. Samsung took over as the preferred TV brand but they don't make car audio, otherwise their brand would dominate there too, with a richer feature set, nicer lights etc.

These days, technology IS a brand, THX is a Lucas brand, not a technology. BluRay is a Sony brand, not a technology. HDMI is even a brand, not a technology. New 3D HDMI cables use a 1.4 technology but can't be advertised as HDMI 1.4 because HDMI is a brand and so is the 1.4 technology/brand (from another company), so all they can advertise is Super HDMI (3D ready) now instead of HDMI 1.4, because '1.4' actually IS technology and HDMI is a brand unrelated to the HDMI brand.

As a result, the public is left stupid. They don't know the difference between a Future Shop/BestBuy product (or even worse WalMart's junk) and something you'd buy from a boutique store.

WalMart sells a 43" Samsung LCD TV for $499, FutureShop and BestBuy sell a 43" Samsung LCD TV for $499, the boutique store sells a 43" Samsung LCD TV for $599.

Now most people would agree, that the 43" LCD is more expensive at the boutique store, in reality Samsung makes several 43" models, the low end exclusively for big box stores and the better quality set for boutique stores.

Public is left unknowing, and the Internet allows them to perpetuate their ignorance in Review Forums, spreading the uneducated word to the masses, who follow suit like the sheeple they have been trained to be.

Lets look at Apple: Apple computers are VERY robust and efficient. They lead when it comes to graphic design and publishing tasks, though that gap has become MUCH narrower in recent years. Then their BRAND comes out with the iPod, which didn't do anything competitive players did. Limited file formats, poor sound quality, poor ear buds, poor battery and build and an awful, proprietary interface (iTunes).

The BRAND was sold, everyone else went bye bye. THEN there's the iPhones, iPhones that did a fraction of what competitive smartphones did. iPhones were pushed as "smart phones" but were anything BUT smart. They didn't allow a business user to copy and paste, wouldn't run multiple apps at the same time for easy switching between them, wouldn't recognize stylus input due to a shltty interface that they reBRANDED as their own multitouch interface. iPhones, until at least V4 were absolute crap, today they are becoming usable but are nowhere NEAR the devices that were out years before iPhone ever hit the market. It's actually nice to see that others are still strong and that iPhone only LOOKED like it would completely take over. Even the consumer market is being lost to Android now, iPhones have very limited capabilities and the apps are pretty sad despite how many they boast offering.

In conclusion, our consumer based society is easily mislead, lead down the wrong path, brainwashed or whatever you want to call it. I've seen it in the recording industry too, producers KNOW they can pass off substandard crap that would NEVER have flown in analogue/vinyl formats, but with today's dumbed down consumer and market hype, BRANDING takes over and people live in an industry controlled, consumer market, as opposed to a consumer controlled market where industry responds to consumer demands.

There are still plenty of audiophiles that are happy to fork out $10,000 or even significantly more for a good turntable, arm and cartridge.

I upgraded mine a few years back, and for me, it is noticeably better than even flac files. I've never actually owned a CD player outside a PC, so can't really compare.

The biggest issue is lack of product. My musical interests have always been slanted toward the latest rather than when I used to listen to in my youth, and few new releases are available on LP. The odd one that is can be a real "ear-opener" as recording technology has advanced so much in the last 30 years that I've been listening, when you get a good LP, it's astoundingly good.

More and more bands are releasing on vinyl as collector series. The industry I work in has seen bands re-release vinyl that they brought our up to 40 years ago, with much better productions from the original masters. It is a limited market, as you said, but it's there and getting stronger. a band I manage in UK has just released their new CD on vinyl as well, I was surprised to see it take on so well, in fact we will expand pressing now due to high demand, but I can't see that happening for their US sales.

They're called "Vinyl" because they used to be.

"LP" is short for "long play," and refers to the 33 rpm record. 45 rpm were developed around the same time. Prior to that we had 78 rpm. Go back far enough, you might even find 16 rpm. They're ALL "vinyl," but ONLY the 33 rpm can be referred to as "LP"

To tell the truth it is 33 1/3 rpm's.

I've seen the 78s, but I've also seen some very old records that were as solid as a rock...very thick...almost two millimeters.

Where mostly 78's. The Original Master Disc's which where released on Vinyl @ 33.33 are no where near as thick or Rigid as the Shellac disc's where.

On the Up side they are harder to break as well.

Col

were on a metal baseplate, which would bend quite easily. And the shellac would crack and peel just like any other paint. They would also wear out very fast, so they were never meant for heavy use.

...they were apparently an early attempt at "unbreakable" records.
I had them all in a cardboard box and allowed said box to bounce down the basement stairs.
Unbreakable my ass.

The 33-1/3 and 16-2/3 (pretty much for voice-only applications) records were originally produced for broadcast use, and some were even in 7 inch disks. The term "long play" came about when the automatically adjusted cutting technique ("Microgroove") records were marketed. Many 45 rpm 7 inch records were produced with two songs per side using the same process. they weren't called lp, but still they doubled the playing time of standard 45's.
And the original 78s, mostly 10 or 12 inch disks, weren't vinyl, but usually hard rubber and often acetate (for so-called instant records, used in radios stations and as proofs in early recording studios). Vinyl didn't become commonplace until the early 50's or so.

It is the Audio CD that has more distortion and lower bandwidth compared to the LP, not the other way around. SACDs and DVD-Audio discs are superior to LPs in those two specs, but not CDs.
CDs are definitely "good enough" fidelity unless you are a golden-eared audiophile (they're certainly good enough for me), and they are certainly better than MP3 files (which are "good enough" for most people). And they are in other ways superior to LPs. But you do have your facts reversed about the bandwidth and distortion of a CD vs. an LP.

The LP has the bandwidth to resolve extremely high sonic and even supersonic frequencies found as overtones on musical instruments such as triangles, frequencies some say we can feel or sense even though we can't hear them (frequencies which CDs cannot resolve at all and which have to be brick-wall filtered out to avoid aliasing them), and there is no inherent distortion in the LP medium (unlike CDs, where the higher the frequency of the original waveform the less the CD reproduction resembles the original).

Follow this link to see just how poorly an audio CD resolves a 10kHz audio signal with its 40.1kHz sample rate compared to SACD's 192kHz sample rate (and DVD-Audio can sample even higher!): http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question487.htm

The "sharp point" after many plays does slowly wear out the grooves in the LP and that is indeed a superiority of the CD. And the CD has superior dynamic range. But the LP has less distortion and higher bandwidth.

...is one reason good turntables ain't cheap. The tracking force of the stylus needs to be as light as possible, while holding its place in the groove. Many home HiFi and stereos had relatively heavy tracking force, resulting in heavy wear on the record. This in turn caused the noise which many assume is inherent in phonograph records.

Tracking noise has always been audible to me, even on a brand new disk.

If you can't hear it, might I suggest a hearing test to measure high frequency loss?

I'm almost 70, and painfully aware that my hf loss is increasing every year...but i do remember record hiss, almost wistfully. Now my complaint is down in the rumble range (or is that "grumble range"?).

I'm a decade behind you, and while I can still hear the horizontal oscillator in our old CRT television, it's not nearly as loud as it used to be...

I'm delighted that you researched this so well, resolving that question for most of us. I think the author should have titled the article "Tech gadgets I once loved, " causing a lot less heated disagreement.

But CD's have other advantages over vinyl, such as portability and ease of copying. So many of us have compromised by playing vinyl at home and CD's on the go. .

since my car won't play my 45s
of course it won't play MP3s either, but i'm not going to give up my off-brand ipod either. it's a matter of convenience. I cringe at the idea Ford had to put a record player in there cars. It pretty much sucked. Vinyl needs a fairly restricted environment with as little vibration as possible, whereas CDs and other digital formats are much less vulnerable, at least to external forces. This makes them far more convenient for me...but if i'm in the man-cave, i'm hearing vinyl or tape when i can.

You don't remember the record players in the 70's that played vertically? You could give them a good shake without skipping, better than most CD players actually. Of course crappo tone arms and cartridges but they played all the same.

I absolutely shudder at the whole concept of MP3's, no way I'd own an iPod for music. Work gave me an iToy phone but I don't use it fr tunes either, even 320 bit rates make me cringe and want to hear the real song instead. I don't mind FLAC of course, especially when ripped from my Thorens table, I've got a few old AC/DC LP's where people can't believe the audio quality, they never believe me when I say it was from an LP either. Bit rates in the 4000's, so dynamic and yet not too forward with great sound staging for a CD file.

They do put DVD players in cars too though, made for when you are stopped (of course you wouldn't be able to watch while driving), I always laugh at idiots who say they put a lockout bypass on their in-car DVD player, WHY?

It's for when you are parked, just like the Ford record player.

"No, I haven't gone digital. I'm still on vinyl."

Digital what's that? I use 1/4 Inch Tape on 3,600 Foot reels and get much better sound.

Though I still Miss my Pioneer Tape Deck that they couldn't repair when some Ampex Tape melted in the heat.

Col

I wouldn't normally have purchased an X-1000R, but it was on sale and I'd just gotten my re-enlistment bonus!

Doesn't stop me looking out for another Pioneer RT909 that works on 240 V though.

Col

It's a Dual CS-741 that was supposed to be dual-voltage, but was hard-wired for 220 VAC. To use it here in the States, I had to disassemble it and physically re-wire the input transformer.

Strangely, though, it came with the 50/60Hz sync switch...

I bought a nice Akai Reel-to-Reel on eBay this year for $50 (+ $40 shipping!). It works great, though not sure I trust its 40-year old electronics enough to leave it plugged in all time.

the 1 mil tape is much more forgiving.
(Uh, oh, i might have started a "Stereo Review"-type debate here...)

3600' on a 10-1/2" reel is still 1 mil tape.

i have only recently acquired a useable Tascam 32 and a handful of 10-1/2 inch reels...I'm still accustomed to 7 inch 1 mil acetate for its relative resilience.
Now my problem is my collection is mostly 1/4 track and my Tascam is 1/2 track...

My experience says you will need to obtain a quarter-track deck to transcribe your collection.

Now, let me ask y'all - Mac or PC, hmmm, maybe even Linux. It all comes down to whatever turns ya on. Digitizing LPs takes a lot of time. Then, sometimes, ya gotta clean them up and so on. Even semi-audiophiles (like me) who couldn't afford to rebuild their collections, still listen to LPs 'cause they're there. CDs are going out of style and it is hard to find stuff you might want in many many places. The good stuff is almost as much as vinyl. Some countries, it's hard to afford streaming music without paying a whole lot extra. I sometimes think folks spend more time on buying and setting up and adjusting the tech stuff than listening (or watching). For my tastes, TV is a relative waste of time. But then, everything justabout has been dumbed down so revolutions won't start because few can think anymore. LIke the ideas about ears being dumbed down too. But, Love Ya All just the same.

Many doctors still use pagers since they can give the doctor urgent info with out producing RF emission unlike cell phones. heck if you watch House you see they have pagers that go off like 10 times in an episode.

no cell phones in the hospital or on airplanes!
Most is just a myth.
Most of the medical equipment is designed to work with some degree of interference, not as bad as they claim, yes do not want to risk it of course but been in those areas with the signs that state no cell phones and the doctors and nurses are using them and when asked say sure go ahead no problem. I have been to some places seem more strict than other though, But really, may be possible but would have to get the cell phone right near the body-probe contact area for the pickups on the medical equipment.
At one point a lot of devices were being wireless connected using standard WIFI AP's and maybe could be a potential to clog those channels from all the WIFI ready devices but hardly interference. Today they are using special purpose wireless devices operating on a specific reserved frequencies in more places.


And Aircraft avionics is supposed to be hardened against such interference, should be against an EMF blast, I know ,military aircraft is. Today's digital cell phones unlike the analog predecessors, are very low power, The cell towers however operate at much larger wattage outputs and are not out of range of aircraft. How about this, those setback phones that were on most aircraft at one time, they used the same equipment as cell towers, sometimes sharing same or adjacent land cell frequencies and had to operate at much higher wattage. So if anything was going to interfere would be those towers, not the phones, and much higher power mega watt transmitters for other purposes has not brought down an aircraft yet, they all operate there avionics on different frequencies that other devices so there is no interference.

it isn't just the WiFi, but how about all those security guards and support staff that use 3 watt walkie talkies all the time? and what hospital doesn't rent space on their elevator penthouses to two-way companies and how about there own H.E.A.R. systems?

As any crime writer/detective knows, you have to follow the money. How could hospitals make money from renting a phone ($10 day) if you could bring your own cell phone. And for TV, how about $15 a day for an old mini-TV? No EMF? Ha. I imagine the same thing happens on planes. It's the cell service providers who'd have a problem with routing your calls or calling for 911 if folks like Mitt felt the need for oxygen and couldn't open the window. The lack of education among people never ceases to amaze me, nor the vulgarity. I don't really want to share the seatback program of the guy next to me or the use of the seatback phone either. But its a good argument that EMF'll be a problem. Scary even if someone were to use a 3 year old phone which might be a problem. They should just buy a new one or pay to use the "approved" one. As I say, follow the money.

I resent the "dork" comment, unless you mean those own and wear one by choice. They are still cheaper than cell phones, so companies still prefer them as an electronic leash for their employees. An added benefit, and one reason I'm pretty sure I've got one on my belt: they tend to work where cell phones won't. Simpler one-way signal means longer range and deeper penetration into buildings.

Very useful devices these pager thingys. When your iPad sets fire to the iPod and you have to use your iTouch to Skype the fire services, the volunteers will respond to their pagers beeping. Same with the Ambos (although they get more details on their truck screen) and other emergency services.

Should I leave my pager at your front door next call or you ok with fire fighting dorks? Oh, does your iPad (currently billowing smoke at 3am) allow you to reply you are turning out, even if there is no wireless/mobile signal? Hmmm Hmmm???

I too resent the "dork" comment. I look at myself as a pretty cool guy and look nothing like a dork. My "JOB" forces me to wear the leash. If you work at a company or the government that has sensitive data in the area, they flat out will not allow cell phones or other devices that transmit data. The pager is the way to go. Also, I don't care to look at every email that's delivered into my Companies email inbox at all hours of the day. I'll wait and come back to my desk or if its an emergency then I'll get paged.

I'll bet there were times (like me) when you would love to see how many times it would skip across the lake...

Glad to see all the pager comments out there. I resent the "dork" comment. In my company we share On-Call duties with multiple people so passing the pager is easier then expecting the people doing the call out to remember who to call any given week. 1 number - 1 solution...Pagers still the best way to go!

It must be that the author has no life!

Many restaurants that allow walk-in dining without a reservation have short-range private paging systems. They hand you a pager when you check in, and you give it back when your table is ready. Many hospitals have similar systems for surgical waiting rooms; the next-of-kin is given a pager that goes off when the surgery is complete or the staff has a message.

These systems are much nicer than "JOHN SMITH, PARTY OF 10, YOUR TABLE IS READY!" or "PLEASE COME TO THE DESK" announcements continually blaring over a public address system.

Pagers still have a niche; like all technology, the role has evolved.

looking desperately for your charger is not a problem...and one AA will last you a month on many pagers.
Thank God I'm retired and have retired my old Motoroller alphanumeric to the antique collection in my man-cave, but if my code were still active, i'll bet a fresh battery would prove it still works very well...and the news and weather messages were handy, too

The POS paging service is an entirely different animal to a regional, national pager.
POS paging is local, not carried by land lines to towers (as in a local pager) or sat to tower as in a National paging service. But coaster pagers, which you are referring to, are a good, viable technology that is still making it's foothold in the industry.

You blame the decline of the slide rule on the PC, then follow the slide rule with the true cause of its decline, the pocket calculator.

As for modems, they're still out there, but possibly not for much longer. Every major retailer I've supported over the past years still has at least one 56K modem, either as the backup connection during network outages (although some are starting to use 3G or 4G for the backup) or for remote access by net ops.

I needed to send a signed contract out to a new client.
I said I was going to the Post Office to fax it.
Client responds: "Ok, but do it this week - we're moving next week, and after that we don't have fax machines."

Went to the Post Office, "Hi I need to fax a document"... "Sorry, we don't have a fax machine".
"Any idea who does?"
"Um... not really".

I decided to get a scanner.

Except the only scanner available was an industrial-strength one which could scan 250 pages a minute. For just as many Euros.

So I got a "multipurpose device", even though I already had a printer and rarely needed a photocopier.

Just a big clash of obsolescence all round.

The new avatar caught me by surprise.

Your mistake was in printing the contract for signature. A 'stamped' signature is just as acceptable legally. You could have embedded your signature in the electronic document, converted to .PDF, and e-mailed it to the client.

so, well, I guess it had to be scanned.
That was the instruction, anyway.

Maybe a digital photo would have sufficed... anyway, back to the point, does anyone have faxes anymore? And is it me, or is the sudden faxlessness of the world sort of non-publicized?

Believe it or not I still get requests to either snail mail a document or fax it back to the government agency, they are funny that way. Gotta have proof positive in the file that it was signed by me. Some business still ask if I can fax it rather than snail mail because they want that document, like yesterday. I know all about the pdf signature on doc's but alot of business don't accept them, I guess they feel they are to easy to forge a signature that way.

Do they accept that? After all, it's as good or better security as the faxed copy (not to mention, has better resolution)...

but if it's sent to a fax machine, it still is transmitted at the standard 9600 baud 1200/800 rate and printed on their fax machine, so your improved resolution will probably make very little difference on the rx end.

I had to look in the closet to find it but it does the job.

Last time I had to fax something was in 2009. I scanned the document into my computer, printed the scanned pictrure to the Microsoft Fax printer driver that asked me for a phone number and faxed it off. Fax capability was added into some dial up modems back in the 9600bps days but became a standard feature in most of the 14.4kbps and higher models. Its amazing how many people did not know their computers could send a fax using their dial up modem. As a good percentage of the old dial up modems also have voice capabilities, I found them very handy with the right software installed to have my old computer act as my answering machine while I was out.

We still get faxes on my job. They're sometimes like adware...popping in all the time when you don't want them (daily specials at the restaurant we never go to comes to mind). But in my line of work (auto parts sales) we use them for rapid image transmission to and from auto manufacturers for system illustrations and such. Actually much faster than snapping a pic on the phone, formatting with important notes, and sending to the recipient (after you call them to find out the appropriate email/number to send it to). 8)

I travel the world to countries where sometimes even electricity is a luxury. My boss still insists on getting scanned receipts at the end of the month and it use to drive me nuts because I could never find a scanner ... until I realize a digital picture of the document works just as well

Scan the document into a word processor on your computer and email the docs.

...not to mention UPS and FEDEX shops still offer "faques" service for a very small fee...i just sent some legal documents with my signature to my bank at their request...
so just because it's not so common anymore doesn't mean it's going away soon (remember when it was called "telefacimile" and used a rotating drum for scanning?).
and as for the pots modem, many small stores still use them, they are much cheaper than dsl or satellite links, albeit painfully slow...
Oh, yeah, the Publix store near me just got a brand new phaques machine, so apparently somebody is still making them.

But there are many-many that make the MFP systems: Océ, Konica, Ricoh, Xerox, Lexmark, HP, etc.

I would like to see "Tech gadgets we once loved", but even in this day and age not everybody has super fast and unlimited Internet. We live out in the country, and it is either modem or satellite - no DSL. It is REALLY frustrating to try and read an article such as this, only to find that every picture has a new page with a new video (or videos) on each page to download. Each video has to download before the (small) picture for the article appears. I realize whoever designs these sits in an office with unlimited everything, but please try and remember not all readers have that luxury. I also realize each page allows new or more advertising, but they don't have to be videos!

of having to load all those pages, only to find the last one is ... the dial-up modem.

I'm surprised the Floppy Disk and its drive is not on the list. For a while I replaced them with CD-RW Disks but just use cheap 4GB USB sticks for storing data on these days. Year before last I was using 1GB and 2GB USB sticks and as the price of 8GB USB sticks is starting to drop soon I will be using more of them. I still have a draw full of old floppy disks but have hardly opened that draw in years. I only opened it the other day as I wanted a book I had sitting on top of the Disks.

but none of them are 5-1/4's.

My wife used to think the 5-1/4's were floppy disks and the plastics ones were the 3-1/2's were "hard disks"

"...the slide rule's longevity came to an abrupt end when personal computers became popular in the 1980s."

No, it came to an end when pocket calculators became affordable in the mid-70s. I had to use a slide rule in Trig my sophomore year; in Physics the next year ('76) we were allowed calculators.

Why is vinyl on here twice? Since some new recordings are being released on vinyl, some would question its obsolescence.

I wish fax machines were on this list.

I once self-made a light pen but it failed to work in the Apple II era. I wonder if a light pen would be useful nowadays as an alternative to touch screen.

I had a light pen on my Amiga computer but found it hard to use for to long having to raise it to the screen all the time. The Microsoft Kinect is being released for use on the home computer soon, and will apparently be supported by Windows 8 natively to allow you to control a computer just by waving your hand or hands around in the air.

I once had the displeasure of working with a modem that you strapped to the 'phone handest. It worked at a massive 300 baud (note, there's no k in that). You could see the characters appearing one by one on the 7 inch screen of my Compaq luggable, interspersed by the inevitable random corruption.

There's another technology we once loved. A portable computer the size and weight of loaded suitcase. Try carrying that one on the flight, kids.

And if you dig deep enough in history, the first "Compaq" luggable during its "beta" stage was named something like "Amqute". When they went retail production, they became "Compaq".

It had an amazing 20MB hard drive, an internal 1200 baud modem. Just the thing for running DOS 5 and PFS First Choice. Oh the thrill of connecting to CompuServe or the sound of the Epson dot matrix printer at work...

They would put a handle on top and call it "portable" although they weighed 60 pounds.

I used to get my service calls through dial up using a hand held device, it had an accoustic modem to use with a pay phone and it also had a phone connector to connect directly. It did not have straps to hold the phone hand set in place on the rubber accoustical couplings, I had to hold the hand set until the session completed.

The accoustical modem was only good for 180 baud. I was amused to watch the movie "War Games" when the young hacker found a friendly military computer that was able to compress computerized voice and respond to voices through an accoustical modem.

to circumvent the AT&T/FCC prohibition against any kind of customer-connected equipment to the "national telephone system" without written approval thru their engineering and the use of a "customer-supplied coupling device" for which you would pay a monthly fee. This lasted until the breakup ot AT&T by the Supreme Court.

I still remember my first modem that was 300bps I got near the end of the 80's but was the type that plugged into a telephone socket. It also had the option of doing a 1200/75bps split speed but no BBS computer around here at the time supported that. It was about the size of two CD-Rom drives placed side by side and was the budget model that did not have the optional dialing unit installed. I got it second hand as the seller was upgrading to a 1200/1200bps modem. I had to manually dial the local BBS computer I wanted to connect to and once I heard the other modem start its handshake screech, I had to flip a switch on the unit and quickly hang up the phone receiver. My computer at the time was an Amiga 500.

As a teen with my hot new Commodore 64 computer, I REALLY wanted one of those suction cup-looking speed demons! Could not CONCEIVE how anything could move so fast! And while I was dreaming...should I get the 300baud or save up forever and get the 1200baud?
I also remember being all doe-eyed over a magazine ad for the Compaq touting how it was conceived on a napkin. 8)
> Where is the VCR on this list? Almost but not quite dead yet. Betamax maybe?
> The 8-track? Oh, yeah. Nobody loved those.
> Video discs? (The BIG pizza-sized ones!)
> I like old sci-fi but even I feel like a dork when I realize the hero is figuring out an orbit burn around Jupiter with a slide rule hee hee!
> My kids (ages 16 and 19) have never been in the same room with a rotary phone.
> Payphones? Maybe this isn't true everywhere, but in my home town all you can find now are the backing plates where those things USED to be.
> While we're talking phones, what about phone booths? Not technical enough I guess.

Betamax home units lost out to the cheaper VHS tape systems but as the recording quality on Betamax was better they lived on as the Betacam system used by a lot of TV stations for news gathering. VHS only won the war for the home user, it lost the war to Betamax in the professional arena!

as a format, but the Sony machines were far more reliable, and that is what broadcasters really wanted.

Beta had great audio quality! Even over and above HiFi VHS and DAT (yes, DAT is STILL used in many engineering rooms)

Jeff Goldblum hacked the ship's mainframe a la Independence Day with his Apple? Then the hero would have no choice but to use a slide rule! Personally I believe the slide rule story more ...

Know what was cool about the big old 12 inch laser discs? You could play them backwards. Man we watched the Death Star come together over and over watching one on a stoned afternoon. We couldn't get enough of it.

You can probably still find Betamax machines in commercial studios. They never used VHS.

digital formats were making inroads about that time, too, and we all know who won that race.

Yes, the music formats of the past have been supplanted by digitized, soulless, utilitarian, reduced to a bunch of 0's and 1's, tick-tock recordings that can never compete with high quality analog (read as capturing the whole performance without chopping it into little pieces similar to the smooth transit of the second hand on an analog watch compared to the tick tick of a digital) recordings. I predict that when someone finally invents a analog format that is as compressible as digital there will be another music revolution.

But then, i could be wrong, just ask my wife.

CD Quality recordings are digitised at 44,100 samples per second, and high-quality master DAT is sampled at 48000 samples. One could just as easily sample at a million bits per second - and store it on an audio casette - but there would be no point as the human ear cant move fast enough to transition the extra information into a usable signal. The membrane only moves so fast and so far in one cycle, and that limits the amount of information it can receive.

The reason why CDs have an 'empty' sound compared to tape or vinyl is NOT because of the digitisation, its because of the noise generated by the medium itself. Its completely absent in a digital recording, and provides a bass rumble and treble hiss that is attenuated by the audio signal.

Compare a CD to a live performance and its is more faithfully reproduced than any vinyl or analog tape copy. Thats not to say that the sound of a good quality amplifier driven by a smooth deck isnt superior in listening pleasure, but it isnt a faithful recording of the original.

Even with the best recording digital or analog there is always "noise". The best playback equipment still generates noise during the playback (see aliasing, jitter and quantization noise) not to mention noise generated by the speakers. Even high end amps and players come with distortion canceling circuits, BEE clamps in the power supply, tone control circuits, short path PCB layouts etc. to help reduce noise and distortion.
There is a certain "warmth" with analog that somehow falls through the holes (small as they are) in digital recordings. Some things just can't be measured.

...is noise, and compression on a tape or vinyl. It can indeed be measured and is absent from CD recording.

All analog tape was recorded using RIAA compensation. Because a tape cannot store the entire bandwidth of say, a music recording, cheap systems simply chop off the upper and lower frequencies that lay just within our hearing range. More expensive systems boost the extremes and filter out the noise, but still only record a portion of the sound on the tape.

CDs store a wider range of frequencies than RIAA includes, so the sound is crisper and more bassy than a tape, plus there is no transport noise.
Even if you are using a Class A amp, which an audiophile would have, you would not be able to distinguish between a CD recording of a tape, and the tape itself.

Vinyl also has scratches, muffle, and mechanical limitations on the frequencies it stores, and in fact is truly awful as true reproduction goes.

I will agree with you on one thing though. Listening to analog recordings is a more pleasant thing, simply from nostalgia. Hifi equipment is no longer chosen for the tone it has, but for its fidelity instead, and thats part of the pleasure gone. All of the mechanical noises, and the response of the amp used to be part of musical experience and digital has done for it.

of the combined frequency response and equalization which the signal encounters throughout the recording/playback chain, not noise and compression.
And not all recordings were mastered using RIAA/EAI eq, a great deal was done with AME (Ampex Master Equalization) which produced a much heavier low freq. balance, at the expense of overcoming the tape hiss. AME was used mostly on full track mono machines where much ot the tape noise averaged out and saturation levels weren't so critical.
And as for your mention of "tone" and "fidelity", while it's true that most systems had "tone" controls, usually bass and treble, you will find that higher and higher *fidelity* was pursued by most music lovers long before even stereo recordings became available. The was a constant search for the widest and flattest frequency response curves and the lowest distortion possible. Signal-to-noise ratios where constantly being improved, as well as dynamic range. Mechanical noise was simply not tolerated.
Your implication that people only wanted "pleasing tone" is apparently some you heard from grandme talking about her Zenith table radio with the various switches for different types of program material.
I find that mindset returning in mant surround systems marketed today, with settings for "heavy", "classical", "C&W", etc...so now it seems like some people are looking to find only "pleasing tone" in their sound systems.

The number of distortion generating stages in an analog recording and reproduction system is significantly larger than on a digital system. As for those who talk about jitter (analog equivalent wow and flutter) or quantization noise (are you telling me your speaker cones can reproduce frequencies in excess of 40KHz?) don't forget the granularity of the LP material which introduces tiny irregularities into the smooth wave of the recording. The analog myth is purely psychological. Yes, you may prefer an analog sound, but digital is closer to perfect reproduction.
And as for valve amplifiers (power wasting behemoths), the Field Effect Transistor (FET) has identical electrical characteristics to the valve ( I have a degree in electronics) so if you don't like the sound of an amplifier with bipolar transistor output stages - a justifiable dislike - try an amplifier with FET output stages and compare it with a valve amplifier. You may be surprised.

I think "identical" is a bit strong when comparing valves and fets. The do operate in a broadly similar way, but in terms of detailed behaviour like transfer curves and noise generation, they are a long way from "identical".

I agree 100% with SiO2's comments. I do not deny that some people prefer the sound of LPs or reel-to-reel tape to that of CDs but CDs give the most faithful reproduction of any popular format - no amplitude fluctuation over the frequency range, no hiss, crackles or pops, no tracking error distortion and, an important point, playing a CD doesn't damage it whereas playing an LP does damage it so the reproduction quality deteriorates with every playing. Having said all that, back in the early days of CDs (1987-ish), I took my CD player over to a friend who had a high quality turntable and an identical classical music recording on LP to one I had on CD. We started both simultaneously and switched between the two sources on the amplifier. I was astonished at how close the LP came to the CD sound - but the CD was definitely superior.

Even my almost 70 year old ears can still hear the brilliance of cymbals and strings, the light coming from glissando chimes, the fullness of gongs, the clarity of bass instruments that is completely absent in the "distortionless", "greater bandwidth", "greater dynamic range" of the CD.
I had placed all my vinyl in storage for years to enjoy the performance of CDs, but one day i stumblred across a mid-range B&O turntable at a thrift store and thaouht i would give it a try...suddenly i heard things in the music (which i also had on top-grade CDs) that i had forgotten ever existed...now half the recorded music i listen to is on vinyl, even the worn and scratched ones!

All Amplifiers and speakers add color to the sound that they produce so the actual equipment without any alteration to the base settings change the sound from the recording to what is heard by the ear.

Running the same recording on the same equipment is better but even still the differences between turntables and CD Players vary drastically. A good Quality Turntable can be very faithful to the sound it produces where as a cheaper one can be downright nasty and add all sorts of frequencies that where not in the original sound.

The same applies to CD Players many of which color the sound that they produce to makeup for shortcomings in the recordings that they are being used to play. Even then unless you use the same original source without alteration as the Master that all Media is made from you can get massive differences between the way supposedly the same recording on different media sounds.

I have listened to Cd's of music that was taken exactly from what was used to make a Vinyl Disc and they are terrible. If they are not Remastered they many introduce a lot of noise that simply wasn't present when listened to on the Vinyl and add lots of Tape Hiss and other sounds from the actual Process of recording the same piece of music.

However when it's all said and done both have their place and depending on the equipment used to reproduce the sounds both can sound better than the other depending on what the listener expects and believes. I've watched some people compare really high end Audio Equipment in the form of a B&O Turntable a Medium Power Amp only around 300 W per channel and really good speakers to what is effectively a Mass produced Boom Box that adds lots of Bass and they insist that the CD played on the Boom Box is the better sound.

To their ears it very well may be as that is what they expect to sound better and what they have been educated to believe sounds better just the same as the people who prefer Vinyl may believe sounds better to their ears.

Here it all depends on what the listener expects to hear and short of introducing lots of Noise into a Recording either can sound better to different people who have been educated in what Good Sound is in different ears.

Col

from this conversation (which we must admit has drifted a long way from the article witch spawned it) is that device at the from of the recording chain, and i believe it has made more improvement to the result than any other technology: the microphones that were used. While i love the sound of a good ribbon velocity mike, the condenser mikes available now have done far more to improve the definition and overall accuracy of the recordings.

I poked into the speaker side of things, meaning that no matter what you prefer, ALL speakers colour audio, even those said to be the most transparent. The ribbon mikes were awesome but they are far too revealing for today's mediums, thus I agree wholly with your accuracy comment.

With a focus on source clarity and not a mention of how such source quality is absolutely destroyed without speakers almost nobody would enjoy listening to. Speakers are designed to colour sound in order to make up for their own deficiencies. Even the match between capacitors, crossover frequency, roll off will colour sound. So WHO CARES if you have a CD player that reproduces the MASTER sound immaculately, especially when the engineer had monitors that coloured the original sound and then it was coloured to suit HIS ears on HIS studio monitors.

I look for slightly forward, spacial sound stage, with tube warmth. Something you just won't find in a digital format.

We can aurgue all day on the merits of the formats but you gentlemen missed the point of my posting. I quote: " I predict that when someone finally invents a analog format that is as compressible as digital there will be another music revolution." When an analog recording format is available that can perfectly capture a live performance, digital won't be able to compete.

Someday a variable state chip will be invented and digital computers, recordings, photographs etc will become obsolete. Imagine a computer that can actually represent 1/3 as an absolute value rather than 0.33333...

You obviously never heard of analog and hybrid computers that use variable voltages to represent real (as in non-integer) values.
You obviously also dont know what interpolation is. This is where a mathematical formula is used to produce a curve on a scope from a series of steps by averaging the voltage between two points. With a sample frequency twice as fast as the fastest signal needed, the curve reproduced from the samples is close enough to the original waveform as to be identical to the ear.
You obviously never heard of Fourier Transforms either, that can be used to predict the exact voltage present in a signal at any point using reference points within it, regardless of their position.

And finally, you obviously arent aware that human speech uses frequencies that average around 15,000 cycles per second, mostly sine waves, with the top frequencies being 'pink noise'. Computer processors operate on frequencies in the 3,000,000 cycle per second range. If you think samples of that speed dont approximate real signals with an error so small as to be unmeasurable, then you really are truly uneducated on the subject.

I'm a musician, computer programmer and hardware engineer, and Mr Foggit has an education too - and you havent listened to either of us.

It is your right to be wrong if you want of course.

I am also a musician, I have advanced degrees in both mathematics (including Fourier Transforms, studied those in beginning Calculus) and computer science, I have worked on every kind of computer since IBM 360 as a programmer and system engineer and I helped design the first production scanning system for the US Patent Office. I am quite aware of analog computers and how they work. I built my first one when I was sixteen. I couldn't care less about, how did you put it, "an error so small as to be unmeasurable", I want no error at all not just in music but computing in general. Our scientific advances will someday not be content with approximations. A lack of vision does not make you right.

A fork built to nanometer specifications feeds me no better than the flatware presently in my kitchen. So try to live in today with the rest of us rather than in your fantasy someday. A gentleman of yesterday said this:

"Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything." --Eugene Delacroix

We'll see how many quote you in 200 years. Well, we won't but someone will. Rather more likely no one. Not unless you learn the errors of your own ways, then adjust accordingly.

As my final comment on this thread:
Citing ridiculous examples of attempts at perfection do not make good arguments. If by trying to be a visionary and looking towards the future separates me from those who can't see past today, sign me up. Where do you think all the modern technology came from? Certainly from visionaries.

???Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.???
- Lord Chesterfield

" It is foolish to make anything higher toerance than it needs to be"
The human voice is perfectly understandable in a band of 300 to 3000 cycles ('scuse me, Hertz). So you're saying that all the top-line condenser mikes used for vocals in the those studios and on stage are wasted effort and expense?

Two paper cups with a string is all you need.

in my free time I am a nuclear physicist (just a side gig). My dad was both a King and the Pope, my mother was also known as Sister Theresa, my uncle Ghandi. WHO GIVES A CRAP? It's not an interview, you don't need to post your resume here, nobody cares, it does not qualify your opinion on sound in any way at all. Sound is subjective, not scientific.

Man, talk about a mindless, pissing contest.

I engineer and sell music worldwide, today's production and CD quality is so low that having such conversations is ridiculous.

What's best is what sells, end of story. Music reproduction is a multi-billion dollar industry, not in the reproduction but in the resale. CD's sell because today's audience is all but tone deaf, due to the perpetuation of crappy recordings and cheap reproduction.

I personally prefer vinyl for most recordings, especially classical and hard rock but, for pop music, CD's will sound superior mainly because of the crappy, mainstream systems the are played on.

I have to disagree with the Phonograph, there is a surge in retro going around, LP records seem to be all the rage again with collectors. Second hand stores sell LP's as fast as they get them in (Not including Herb Alpert, which seems to multiply like rabbits!) I have a USB Phonograph and transfer the LP when I get it to MP3 and then store the LP. Vinyl records are a big seller again but you have to know where to buy them. Besides hundreds of online stores selling new releases again on Vinyl you can pick some up at Best Buy and Hot Topic stores.

As someone else said, the calculator killed the slide rule, long before the PC. Also, a slide rule was not a tech "gadget", but the most important tool an engineer had. True, for most people, a slide rule was an evil of calc class, but look up in the air, see the airplanes? The slide rule was as important as the rivets for most of the planes in the air today. Think NASA is cool? We put a man on the moon on the back of slide rule.

Technically obsolete, yes. Gadget, no.

The calc is just a computer with a limited function range. It does math & does it better and faster than manual methods, but it is still a computer, though how personal you want to call it is up to you.

It wasn't the personal computer that brought about the demise of the slide rule but the pocket calculator. I was in engineering school during the transition and could use either. Pocket RPN scientific calculators were expensive then and I remember renting one from the university bookstore to use on a mid-term exam. I completed the exam in half the alotted time because of all the time saved with the calculator and was sold on them! I cashed in a couple savings bonds and bought a new Hewlett-Packard HP-21, which I still have. I also still have my K&E slide rule, which is now considered a collector's item and I also have a yellow 6 foot Pickett classroom instructional sliderule.

Seems you forgot one of the best ever designed item!

The Psion 5 mx was a small laptop in a pocket. Far more practical than any netbook, it got the job done ...on 2 AA batteries for a month. I used one extensively while I was in the military and I wish they could do a similar product today. Sure 16 MB would not amount to much today and everybody wants a color screen but it was so practical. I cannot stop thinking of the look of my neighbor when I would pull it out in a plane and start working on my reports. The keyboard design was the best. I miss it! Sure in today's world it could use a little upgrade memory-wise but what a great piece of equipment!

Well, at least when I am on-call, the company I work for call's THEIR pager and NOT my cell phone. This company will not pay any amount on my cell phone therefore, they do not get my home phone and especially not my cell phone. Excuse me for looking like a dork!

It's funny because I've mentioned them a few times to my kids. Mostly because we now have Sony Walkman MP3 players (they bought me one for my b-day )

I also told them about the Sony Walkman TV. I loooved that! It was my brother's but I got a hold of it when he was away at college. I used to stay up late at night under my covers and watch TV. (oh yea - in black and white, lol) heh heh

I had one of those old age moments. I was watching Malcom in the Middle with my son and the boys had taped the news and put it on a loop so their parents wouldn't catch them on the real news. I laughed and explained that to my 7 year old. He also laughed and then had this perplexed look. "Wait, how do you 'tape' the news?"

Me and my wife just looked at each other and shook our heads.

I have a couple of hundred AOL CDs pinned to the computer room wall. One of my co-workers brought his 16-year-old son to work today. We had to explain what AOL was, along with dial-up and modems.

>>What with Kodak's inability to fend of stepped-up competition from rivals with better digital cameras

SHOULD BE:
What with Kodak's inability to fend OFF stepped-up competition from rivals with better digital cameras

Kodak might be crap compared to fleet-footed rivals like Fuji, but they did a lot better than the former Polaroid Corporation.

Cameras were just a small part of Kodak's business. Koday overall was killed because digital cameras don't need film.

Polaroid's big advantage was their film didn't need to be developed. Photos taken with digital cameras not only don't need to be developed, they don't even have to be printed to enjoy.

Either way, obsolescence is the cause of death.

This is why we don't need to give companies tax cuts for research: they do it if they wanna stay in business.
IBM could've kept making typewriters, and Nokia could've kept making wellingtons - but Nokian rubber boots are in fact still being made and sold, and I guess they're not going to be obsolete anytime soon, either.

Where are the typewriters on this list? (The Telex doesn't count!) I mean the old IBM Selectric I took typing on in high school, and then worked with in the Army!
My kids cannot imagine MECHANICAL word processing! HA!

i used to fill out with a typewriter i now have to fill out bu hand...and then even _I_ can't read it...

They were called castetina's or something like that. You'd slap an original in and hand crank the drum to make copies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestetner

I have one downstairs with enough supplies to keep a sensible person going for about a decade if you want one.

Col

Makes a fistfull and a half from their tires too.

Polaroid's claim was "instant." Fast as digitals are they still require an additional device to generate a print. And small as some printers get, it's still awkward to take them, say, out with a horse-drawn carriage to give passengers souvenir pictures.

Ah yes, that dial-up modem connection handshake sound. It was so irksome, yet I would imitate it every time I logged on.

"Once a must-have accessory of the early adopter - or anyone who was part of the cool set. Nowadays, if you see someone still wearing a pager on their hip, odds are high that he or she is a complete dork."

- or a doctor.

Spent many an hour programming at a computer terminal. Can't say I've seen one in decades...

I still use one every day as a Fan engineer. Nothing to beat it!!!

Hi folks ... I resonate with the comments above for various reasons ... I am a nobody, but I had the good fortune to know and 'take advantage' of several of the forgotten guys and gals who formed the foundation of this industry ... Ward Christensen (X-Modem fame and eventually one of my Itty bitty SEs) and my old friend Gene Plantz, and many the others I only know by BBS rep ... I am not at all trying to denigrate the contributions of folks like Bob Metcalf or Vint Cerf here ... I am not a telecomm or cable guy, but I know for sure that those industries were built on the backs of folks like them despite the 'copper wire' dominance of the comm industry leader

Please add to this list the HP Tape Cartridge Backup system. It was fine for 20MB HDDs but quickly became obsolete as hard disk capacity grew beyond its capabilities.

Talking about nostalgic noises, what about the dot matrix printer, and the daisy wheel printer, also unique sounds I will never forget.
Theres also the floppy disk drive in all its different sizes.
I'm sure there are many others that could go on the list.

...what's the resolution of your Laser Printer?? 300...600DPI? Sounds like a "matrix of dots" to me!! I know what you mean though, my mom was a payroll book keeper and I used to dread that day that she had to print pay checks...on 3 copy NCR paper...3 impact printers in a closet they built in her office, tractor feed jumping a line at a time, and even the double glazed sliding patio door couldn't keep the grinding whine of the 24 pin print heads from filling that end of the building. So let's take inventory here...how many technologies did I mention which have gone the way of the buggy whip? Hehehehe

spray little dots of ink on the page, so are also "dot-matrix" printers.

can be much, much faster and cheaper to operate than inkjet or laser printers, 30 inch-wide triple copy spreadsheets flying out of the machines so fast it required a worker to unload printed burst and lad a new one and he would stay busy

Impact printers are still used in most banks as they can imprint the back of a cheque (banks). Fast food restaurants use them as the paper doesn't go black from heat of the food.

Because they can print out several copies and the Original at the same time. Very important for those Medical Legal Documents.

Col

I'll give you the daisy wheel, but, FYI: dot-matrix are alive and kicking. TigerDirect, foe example, has 43 models, including both 9 and 24-pin heads.

But dot matrix printers are still printing receipts and endorsing checks in the retail environment, and are alive and kicking wherever multi-part printing is required or impact printing is more economical.

And I still have a stock of floppy disks and copies of the images required for my retail customers.

I bought a Smith-Corona 'word processor' typewriter in 1980 for $500. I needed to submit typed papers for college but couldn't afford a 286/386 computer plus a printer (~$1,000). I'd also include dot matrix printers as well: almost all businesses decide to print multiple pages using laser rather than impacting on multi-part forms. And ditto on the calculator replacing the slide rule, not the PC.

A pocket calculator with an ATT wireless network connection? Um, mine was not that advanced.

I hate to say it but calculators still litter the desks of many of my colleagues and are in use regularly by them on a daily basis. As for the death of vinyl and turntables, they are doing very nicely through the musical puritans who reject digital recording, those with big vinyl collections and the DJ crowd. I notice that while the slide rule was on the list, the typewriter was not and the increasingly pressurised floppy disk didn't make the list. I still like floppies but they have a niche role in my life. As for the slide rule, I still have my flight 'computer', which is in all essence a rotary slide rule and still very fast and accurate, without any battery problems.

As to pagers, there are those still using them in environmentally sensitive (hospitals, oil & gas, hotels) areas.

Modems, don't write them off either. I live in a developing country and not only are they useful for internet connections they are also a great way to send faxes without needing a fax machine. They might be old but they still have a role.

I was cleaning out the warehouse and came across a case of form feed computer paper. One of the younger guys asked what the holes were for! I told them it was a bad batch of paper because all of the pages were connected.

If you are a machinist you still use this. (At least I know quite a few who do.)

you show the tape express from Ion. this one should not be on the list, it's being used to digitize cassette tapes. in fact i recently bought one to do just this.

I am thinking of getting rid of my internet because if I can have it on my phone for 50 bucks less(my internet bill) then I don't mind. I'll get back my internet when my contract expires, though, becuase I don't really care about carrying the internet in my pocket, might as well get my neck embedded with a dog chip so they can tell where I'm at ALL times if they can't already.

> odds are high that he or she is a complete dork.

Wouldn't tell them that though.

Good chance they work for a three letter agency that either needs to notify a lot of people simultaneously and without delay...and/or they work in secured information facilities that cellphones are not physically allowed in and wouldn't work if you risked espionage charges by sneaking one in.

Or they work for a hospital in a position that allows them to stick needles into you.

I'm compelled to clarify pagers work in SCIFs when cellphones don't because they specifically setup one-way radio relays to repeat pager frequencies inside the SCIF. The SCIF itself is built incorporating a Farraday cage into the structure around it to prevent spurious radio signals from computers, or deliberate ones from Blackberries, from leaving.

My instructors and professors would never forgive me if I didn't.

There is only one 'r' in Faraday.

...are still worn by doctors for some odd reason, but then again, they are always on call...

That is not an obsolete device. That is a cell phone showing the calculator app. Very much used.

Having spent the first seven or eight years of my life in the computing industry with a light pen practically welded to my hand, I can vouch for its utility, and I mourn its decline in use. A tablet is just not the same ..

Hi folks.

Many of the photos are very low quality. If you reach out for retro-enthusiast community, you'd be able to easily get better pictures and, perhaps, a broader selection.

I'm not a dork. My company won't splurge on a smart phone, so they make me wear an $11/month pager.

The slide rule always reminds me of a professional boat builder I knew. I walked into his shop one day as he was installing a traditional magnetic compass on a boat. At the time I worked for a manufacturer of digital compasses, so I asked him why he was not installing one of ours. Paraphrased, his reply was, "What happens to my ability to navigate when I am half-way across the Pacific and the batteries in your compass die?" The advantage of a slide rule over a handheld calculator is that it will always operate, as long as the user is alive and moving...no batteries.

Agreed cbeckers! My house is full of legacy read-only information storage and retrieval devices called "books." No batteries required ever, can be used to squash bugs and level up tables with broken legs, and to a visitor's eye shelves full of "books" make me look a lot smarter than I really am.

That's the best vote for real, tangible, exquisitely odoriferous books I've ever heard!

How would you camouflage your jewelry safe?
What would you hide your pistol in?
How would you press your four-leaf clovers?
How would you feed your bookworms?
What would TV networks use for a background during an interview with a person who can read?
What would you slam shut to scare the s**t out of your little sister?
One should never underestimate the value of paper bricks, especially the ones whose batteries seem to last forever.

'Wow, that is some nice pic of an old fashioned calculator! Especially cool to show the AT&T logo and the reception bars. Brings back so many old memories. I bet this antique even had one of those old built in mini nukes to power it in case the user ran out of dilithium crystals

"Long before Napster, cassette tapes were the go-to product for music swapping. Best of all, the RIAA couldn't get on your case because they couldn't track you."
Ahhh, but the RIAA did lobby Congress who imposed a tax on all blank cassette tapes to go into a fund to replace lost revenue to Musicians. I wonder if any Musicians ever got the money? The tax kept blank tape prices artificially high because it was a fixed amount per-tape. It was even applied to the special "digital" versions, which were not well suited for analog music recording, as well.

1) Dumb little things like, the cell-phone calculator. If you're going to show a pic of a calc that's become 'outdated', surely you could do better than one that you likely took of your phone just five minutes before posting the article.

2) Separate entries for walkman, cassette tapes and boomboxes. The first and third both relied on the 2nd. group them,

3) Same as above, for the phonograph and vinyl record. Without the record, the record player aka phonograph wouldn't work anyway. Though they do still do well for many DJ's.

4) Honestly, I don't even remember what the 'Flip' was, or did. Guessing pictures from the image shown. If so, guess what, should have been in with the Kodak one for handheld cameras probably.

Not really well laid our, or thought out article. Extra pay for more images/words?

People are starting to get cranky on here. I agree way too much audio and some could have been condensed, but not going to rip the writer a new one. And the Flip is greatest thing EVER

?

and now they tell us you're gone...

Come to think of it I heard Flips being mentioned (as if something new) around the time of the second TR LIVE event... short way to obsolescence, I guess.

Even though no longer used, I still have a few of these items
But how did a calculator make the list? It will never go away!

The slide ruler died because of the scientific calculator in the 70's NOT the PC in the 80's ... come on!

If you need a calculator to add 1000 + 337, as shown in the picture, then your school teachers were right, and you did not learn your maths...

about the reason for 1000+337, then you need to turn in your geek-card.

'nuf said.

Apparently you did not learn your Englishes.

in many European countries. I am from the United States, but on a website with an international audience, we must broaden beyond our American perspective. It took me quite long time before I could convince my brain that it wasn't a "mistake" I was seeing/hearing.

is the real reason the rest of the world is laughing at the US...

By 'perspective' he means ass.
Although, it's pretty broad already... he must be going for the World Record.

What reason for example. If you cannot I can only assume they're all grinning fools. Because the last I checked we're still #1 everywhere where it counts.

Firearms per capita? Quite possibly. Percentage of citizens incarcerated? Yep. Number of firearms deaths per capita? Yep. Health care spending? Yep.

But we aren't number one in:
- life expectancy.
- infant mortality.
- per capita income.
- individual health.
- personal healthcare.

Not quite sure what you think counts, but the United States is not number one in any of the categories I think counts.

What the rest of the world is laughing at is the uniquely American idea that we are the best simply because we exist...and the amount of ignorance that idea exposes when expressed.

So what's that, the gas station at the end of the street? The crick by the fishin hole, where the coon dawg keeps a swimming before hopping on y'alls bed?

Mr. Rockefeller did not see fit to put a gasoline filling station at either end of my street. I do have a river branch close by my house but I've cat, not a dog. Enjoy living in the modern world that my great country has so graciously provided the rest of the planet. You ungrateful cur.

Do you really believe the US is the only country that has contributed to all the wonderful things throughout the world? If so, you are very narrow minded.

Still chuckling

You're right, in England, where your slang tongue was dragged up from, they call it maths, as in mathematics.
Would you say you went to mathetmatic class or mathematics class? Funny , even on a US based website sees a U in colour and thinks it's a typo, the word mathematic is also a typo. The suggested spelling provided is mathematics.
So I guess you do pluralize in full form but see it as a singular activity in short. I suppose it would be a quick class if you only had to learn a single mathematic.

English is not an abbreviation, nor does it end in "s". Math is short for Mathematic. Maths is short for Mathematics and is universally used in England where English originated! 'nuf said?

Then no one make fun of me if I ever use y'all!

Not that I ever will.
I will broaden my view now.

NT:>)