So just how many playbacks did Vinyl records last anyways?

herm0016

Diamond Member
Feb 26, 2005
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if the tracking force is set correctly and the stylus is in good shape you should get years and years of service out of a record.
 

0roo0roo

No Lifer
Sep 21, 2002
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over 9000.

Cracky.jpg
 

Modelworks

Lifer
Feb 22, 2007
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I know I played some records a couple hundred times without problems. Just because something is rubbing against something else doesn't mean it will wear down. Rub a feather against a sheet of paper and you can do probably for years without wearing out the paper.
 

mmntech

Lifer
Sep 20, 2007
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Vinyl degrades pretty quickly but it's not like CED where the recording surface is much more sensitive. You're throwing away a lot more data with wear on that technology. We're talking 5mhz bandwidth on CED vs maybe 40khz on LP.

Vinyl records can last a while if you can put up with the pops and clicks.
 

thomsbrain

Lifer
Dec 4, 2001
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My dad wore out his copy of Quicksilver Messenger Service's "Happy Trails," (got it almost completely smooth), but he'd had it for like 25 years. Finally bought a CD version.
 

mmntech

Lifer
Sep 20, 2007
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Is that even possible? Reading it with a laser, how exactly do they keep it analog?

Easy. Laserdisc was an analogue format. Instead of reading pits (bits) in the disc, it reads an FM signal.

The laser turntables are expensive because they're surprisingly complex. According to Wikipedia, they use five different lasers. One on each channel to track the sides of the groove, one on each channel to pick up the sound (just below the tracking beams), and a fifth to track the surface of the record and keep the pickup at a constant height, which allows for record thickness and warping.

Digitizing is still better for the average consumer if you've got a decent sound card. I generally copy my albums to 96khz, 24-bit WAV files.
 
Mar 11, 2004
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Easy. Laserdisc was an analogue format. Instead of reading pits (bits) in the disc, it reads an FM signal.

The laser turntables are expensive because they're surprisingly complex. According to Wikipedia, they use five different lasers. One on each channel to track the sides of the groove, one on each channel to pick up the sound (just below the tracking beams), and a fifth to track the surface of the record and keep the pickup at a constant height, which allows for record thickness and warping.

Digitizing is still better for the average consumer if you've got a decent sound card. I generally copy my albums to 96khz, 24-bit WAV files.

Hmm, interesting. I'm reading up, and still can't figure out how exactly its remaining analog.
 

NutBucket

Lifer
Aug 30, 2000
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Digitizing is still better for the average consumer if you've got a decent sound card. I generally copy my albums to 96khz, 24-bit WAV files.
If you digitize then what's the point of having albums unless they're not available in other formats?
 

0roo0roo

No Lifer
Sep 21, 2002
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he essentially bakes in the "vinyl" sound into the digital files. Thats the point.
 

NutBucket

Lifer
Aug 30, 2000
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Meh, not the same. While a 96KHz MP3 may provide the same sound "quality" as an LP, you're losing too much to "bake in the vinyl sound".

Just my opinion.
 

0roo0roo

No Lifer
Sep 21, 2002
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i bet a double blind sound test would have vinyl afficinados fail to distinguish the two though.
 

MagickMan

Diamond Member
Aug 11, 2008
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i bet a double blind sound test would have vinyl afficinados fail to distinguish the two though.

Depends on the system and the listener. I'm not a true audiophile, but with my Prelude MTS setup I can do a pretty good job of distinguishing sources.
 

Billb2

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2005
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Vinyl and valves will live forever. There's sound there that's too enticing.
 
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Mar 11, 2004
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i bet a double blind sound test would have vinyl afficinados fail to distinguish the two though.

Possibly, but keep in mind one of the drawbacks of vinyl (clicks and pops) actually would make it easy to discern in a typical setup. Of course some people actually love the clicks and pops.

I've listened to one at an audition. It not only works, it works very well. :eek:

Oh, I don't question that it works, I'm just trying to figure out how it stays analog. I think I'll PM rubycon and see if she can offer some help in understanding this.

Vinyl and valves will live forever. There's sound there that's too enticing.

Sad thing is, digital audio could have killed off analog, but the music industry screwed things up so badly (a high quality digital source which DVD-A/SACD should have offered). It never likely would have had the resurgence, well the hipster one probably would have happened, but I think even most sound quality focused people would have moved on (actually even most of them have a good digital system as well) had digital audio actually taken advantage of its strengths. I think sound quality wise, we'll be able to eventually make it a moot point (if its not already, although its definitely debatable and ultimately there's too many factors to make it an even comparison). Nostalgia and other psychological factors also play a part, such as putting an album on and letting it play all the way through.

Of course sound quality is moot if we're stuck with crap before we even have a chance to really influence things (in other words, high quality equipment is mostly wasted when we're stuck with compression, autotune vocals, and all the other junk).
 

sdifox

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Sep 30, 2005
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high fidelity sound died when the napster generation became the majority. They had a slight chance with DVD, but the fuckers playing around with the watermark took too long so the format did not ship complete as one package. And Sony with its fucktard insistence on owning every format they put out, went with DSD, which is a shitty format.

I doubt they'll even bother to put out BRD music format.
 
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mmntech

Lifer
Sep 20, 2007
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high fidelity sound died when the napster generation became the majority. They had a slight chance with DVD, but the fuckers playing around with the watermark took too long so the format did not ship complete as one package. And Sony with it's fucktard insistence on owning every format they put out, went with DSD, which is a shitty format.

I doubt they'll even bother to put out BRD music format.

Blu-ray Profile 3.0 is a BD-Audio standard. I also doubt it will ever be released. Next to nothing supports DVD-A. PS3 (the fat models anyway) is the only major consumer device that I know of that supports SACD.
 

Nikita79

Junior Member
Dec 7, 2012
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I know I played some records a couple hundred times without problems. Just because something is rubbing against something else doesn't mean it will wear down. Rub a feather against a sheet of paper and you can do probably for years without wearing out the paper.

That's what she said!