You admit to playing Kenny Rogers ??...Pfffft.
What condition is your condition in?
YouTube - Kenny Rogers & The First Edition - Just Dropped In
This one needs smoke and water.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-kVFfKezVo&feature=related
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When you evaluate sound reproduction gear by the way it measures only, especially by those measurements published by the manufacturers, without accompanying listening tests – you have no clue about the sound quality of sound reproduction gear.
Evidently, you think you know more than many, because of you were taught certain theories. Now, most audio designers learned the same theories, however, despite those theories, out of the very many audio designers out there, only few are really successful, people like John Curl, Nelson Pass and Charles Hansen. So, it looks like it takes more than knowing those basic theories in order to design really good sounding, State Of The Art, sound reproduction gear.
The proof of the pudding is by eating. If you actually know more than others about sound reproduction gear design, or not, will be proved if and when you will design such gear that will get high acclaims by audiophiles and the best audio critics.
As long as you have no proof to your claims, it may serve you better to adopt some measure of modesty before attacking entire industry. Right now all I hear from you are empty words, words which are not substantiated by actual and proven practice.
Horses For Courses....
Smoke and water won't fix those recordings....the belong in Salvation Army stores, never to be seen again.
Eric.
Ok, You correct me on KR - I thought he was only about C&W.
Smoke and water won't fix those recordings....the belong in Salvation Army stores, never to be seen again.
Eric.
The proven facts are simple enough to understand. After more than 100 years of evolution of the technology for recording and reproducing sound, in an era where the most remarkable transformation in human knowledge, understanding, and applying that knowledge to solve everything from practical everyday problems to the most impossible tasks has been accomplished to change civilization far beyond anything humans have ever experienced in so brief a period of time, they do not have the knowledge to convincingly reproduce the sound of musical instruments or singing voices used as musical instruments within the realm of their knowledge. Neither the theories nor the hardware are nearly adequate to the task. This is why the measurements are of such limited value, the theories they are based on are not nearlhy up to it. In fact, even advertising copy doesn't make the claim that it is very frequently anymore. It isn't merely the outrageous prices charged for some of this equipment that is all out of proportion to the reality of what it is, it is the pretentiousness of thouse who make it, sell it, and worship it like it was some sort of technical nirvana that is so laughable to someone who can see it clearly with perspective.
Hydrodynamic Lubrication
Ha Ha!! You have a way with words Mr. Wurcer...
Unfortunately for those who like terse prose, I have some experience with the physics of a liquid/solid interface. If there is any liquid film in a moving interface between two solid objects, the film thickness is directly proportional to the viscosity of the liquid and the speed of the interface. For anyone interested in this subject I would point you to the following document, which I wrote a few years ago for classic car enthusiasts, but which could be germaine to this discussion:
http://www.zddplus.com/TechBrief11 - Internal Combustion Engine Lubrication.pdf
I have tried distilled water wet playback and thought that it made the imaging waver and become indistinct, although some of the surface noise did drop in amplitude and HF content. Due to resulting mineral deposits, mud, or what have you, these discs never sounded the same afterward played dry, so I will not repeat the experiment. I also worry about water wicking into hollow cantilevers and depositing debris.
Due to the hydrodynamic wedge nature of the water when introduced into the needle/groove system, I can now understand why it is not a great idea: the only way to keep a contact-displacing wedge of water from building up would be to stay as close as possible to a mono-layer of liquid bound to the vinyl. This would be nearly, if not totally impossible with a substance as volatile at STP as H2O.
Interesting discussion!
Howard Hoyt
CE - WXYC-FM 89.3
UNC Chapel Hill
www.wxyc.org
1st on the Internet
Ha Ha!! You have a way with words Mr. Wurcer...
Unfortunately for those who like terse prose, I have some experience with the physics of a liquid/solid interface. If there is any liquid film in a moving interface between two solid objects, the film thickness is directly proportional to the viscosity of the liquid and the speed of the interface. For anyone interested in this subject I would point you to the following document, which I wrote a few years ago for classic car enthusiasts, but which could be germaine to this discussion:
http://www.zddplus.com/TechBrief11 - Internal Combustion Engine Lubrication.pdf
I have tried distilled water wet playback and thought that it made the imaging waver and become indistinct, although some of the surface noise did drop in amplitude and HF content. Due to resulting mineral deposits, mud, or what have you, these discs never sounded the same afterward played dry, so I will not repeat the experiment. I also worry about water wicking into hollow cantilevers and depositing debris.
Due to the hydrodynamic wedge nature of the water when introduced into the needle/groove system, I can now understand why it is not a great idea: the only way to keep a contact-displacing wedge of water from building up would be to stay as close as possible to a mono-layer of liquid bound to the vinyl. This would be nearly, if not totally impossible with a substance as volatile at STP as H2O.
Interesting discussion!
Howard Hoyt
CE - WXYC-FM 89.3
UNC Chapel Hill
www.wxyc.org
1st on the Internet
Guys, It's All About The Music...
This quote I have pinched the below quote from a blog uploaded by one of my customers.
This fellow has owned, enjoyed and passed on a list of gear longer than most here have ever heard of, so his words come from long experience.
Who really cares about what performance figures are written on paper, it's all about enjoying music.
Where JC and his ilk succeed is that while he uses measuring science, in the end he manufactures what sounds good to the ear and gives long term musical enjoyment.
Eloquently said and that last paragraph is sage advice.
Eric.
This quote I have pinched the below quote from a blog uploaded by one of my customers.
This fellow has owned, enjoyed and passed on a list of gear longer than most here have ever heard of, so his words come from long experience.
Who really cares about what performance figures are written on paper, it's all about enjoying music.
Where JC and his ilk succeed is that while he uses measuring science, in the end he manufactures what sounds good to the ear and gives long term musical enjoyment.
Eloquently said and that last paragraph is sage advice.
Eric.
My problem with that hypothesis is that wet cleaning doesn't cause the same effect, wet cleaning doesn't fix or even reduce the noise, and the solutions used have ridiculously low mineral content (this isn't tap water- usually, it's distilled water, a surfactant, and possibly a lower volatility alcohol or ester). Plasticizer extraction, followed by deposit on the surface is more plausible, but no evidence yet. I'm skeptical about that possibility- I would guess that the migration of the fatty plasticizers into a highly polar medium (even with the additives) is going to be pretty darn low.
I still have a nagging feeling that if we look at the vinyl surface microscopically, we'll see something that reminds me of driving in Chicago and admiring a quantity and variety of potholes not seen anywhere else on Earth.
Well, presumably, you end up with an equilibrium thickness, which could readily be calculated as a function of shear rate. That thickness undoubtedly varies with the signal (since the shear rate would be), adding a coloration that many (including me) were seduced by, to our ruin. Or that of our records.
The Lenco patent says:
"The wetting liquid can be distilled water, distilled water mixed with traces of a detergent, or a mixture of about 60% ethyl alcohol and 40% distilled water."
rgds
jms
"The wetting liquid can be distilled water, distilled water mixed with traces of a detergent, or a mixture of about 60% ethyl alcohol and 40% distilled water."
rgds
jms
Wet Cleaning vs. Playback
Good call, Sy! It can't be just the presence of the H2O or substances it dissolves, it must be due to the differences between wet playback and wet cleaning (which I have used to great advantage with dirty LPs, although I agree there is no difference in the actual groove noise itself):
1. The muck developed during cleaning is vacuumed off.
2. There is no attempted tracing of the vinyl with a pretty hard probe (diamond) while wet/dirty/whatever, which could potentially damage the groove itself.
I am tempted to repeat my ill-fated experience of wet playing and take some photomicrographs. Of course, today is warm and I have a few tons of horse manure to spread outside (literally), as opposed to the horse manure I spread here...
Enjoy the day, all...
Howard Hoyt
CE - WXYC-FM 89.3
UNC Chapel Hill
www.wxyc.org
1st on the Internet
Good call, Sy! It can't be just the presence of the H2O or substances it dissolves, it must be due to the differences between wet playback and wet cleaning (which I have used to great advantage with dirty LPs, although I agree there is no difference in the actual groove noise itself):
1. The muck developed during cleaning is vacuumed off.
2. There is no attempted tracing of the vinyl with a pretty hard probe (diamond) while wet/dirty/whatever, which could potentially damage the groove itself.
I am tempted to repeat my ill-fated experience of wet playing and take some photomicrographs. Of course, today is warm and I have a few tons of horse manure to spread outside (literally), as opposed to the horse manure I spread here...
Enjoy the day, all...
Howard Hoyt
CE - WXYC-FM 89.3
UNC Chapel Hill
www.wxyc.org
1st on the Internet
Ok, You correct me on KR - I thought he was only about C&W.
Smoke and water won't fix those recordings....the belong in Salvation Army stores, never to be seen again.
Eric.
Having briefly worked with a few of Nashville's top recording engineers I can tell you first hand they have the recording skills and hearing ability that is strikingly impressive. You may not like ballads about losing, your truck, job, wife or spending time in jail, but don't dismiss the skill!
As to wet cleaning records, let's take a brief look at how you stamp a record. After the original master is cut it is used to make a stamping master (or negative) by several different methods, most of which involve covering the surface with graphite or some other compound to make it conductive and then doing an electroplate to copy the grooves.
Even if that were perfect the master is now mounted on a heated platen, sprayed with a thin film of Polyvinyl Alcohol to keep the hopefully virgin (meaning containing all new material and no reground stuff or other filler) vinyl from sticking too hard to the master. This is pressed into the vinyl, where the vinyl gets the impression.
You take it home and wash of the Polyvinyl film that actually was in contact with the master stamper and wonder why the sound has changed?
Gee, no wonder once you play it wet you keep having to play it that way. So the issue is not how vinyl deforms under pressure but how the PVA coating does!
ES
As I wrote above, you believe you see things in perspective, while to me, before you'll demonstrate your theories in practice, your words are empty.
Ed, that one has me scratching my head. PVOH washes off. So does nearly every other mold release (they're applied as suspensions in water; the most common is a silicone emulsion). Do a wet wash and the record is quieter. That's well-known.
If wet playing was removing the mold release, the record would be perfectly quiet afterward. Exactly the opposite happens AND it isn't ameliorated by washing.
If wet playing was removing the mold release, the record would be perfectly quiet afterward. Exactly the opposite happens AND it isn't ameliorated by washing.
Sy,
You are assuming the coating is uniform thickness. On the older mold releases that did not dry to form a film that is not a bad assumption. But for a long time the polyvinyl was sprayed with alcohol as a solvent and to a very small extent "Orange Peeled" so the surface released from the stamper would be a good copy, removing the polyvinyl would actually leave a rougher surface. My memory says silicone lubricants came in around the 70's and it would have taken a bit for them be get into this use.
A quick cleaning would remove the electrostatic entrapped dirt, but it would take a bit more to get to the mold release. The older oils would come out with a say a soap, solvent or sulfate based cleaner. Polyvinyl is usually removed with a forced hot water spray. It does dissolve in water, but at room temperature you probably would not get a lot off. Playing wet with a broom (stylus) would be much more effective.
I have removed PVA from molds and it did not come off as easily as I would have liked or expected. Smelled good going on though.
So I guess the double check would be to try wet playing 78's that probably use a mineral oil mold release, comparing that to a 60-70's disc and then trying a modern pressing.
Of course we could also talk about the reverse "grooved" stylus that was used to play stampers to check how they sounded. If you got a pop from entrapped dirt you could rock the stamper back and forth under the stylus and polish out the noise!
Oh yeah I did ruin a couple of records trying the wet playing, but had the chance to ask questions about audio to a very interesting fellow, a former U-Boat "Captain" who at the end of "The War" ended up with his boat in South America, went to work for RCA and eventually made it north to the States when he was chief engineer at a local company. He had his own studio with movable wall panels to adjust the reverb time. Oh yeah it also was all Studer gear!
So the explanation could be wrong, I have not personally tested it.
Scott,
The interesting unasked or unanswered question always was, "Was anything or anyone else aboard his submarine?"
ES
SY,
Well to increase noise strongly indicates the surface has become rougher. So you could have been adding deposits which further cleaning should have removed. Or you could have removed material that had smoothed the walls.
Logically raising the issues:
Does wet cleaning improve all records?
Is normal wet cleaning enough to remove the polyvinyl or other release agents?
And of course I have always seen it called PVA and you refer to it as PVOH so are we talking about the same stuff?
Finally are we sure we belong on this thread as we have failed to insult or even misunderstand each other?
ES
Well, Ed, disagreeing with you is always a pleasure. Best case, I learn something new. Worst case, you learn something new.
"PVA" is an ambiguous term- it can mean "polyvinyl acetate" (which is a component of the record fomulation and not used as a release- it's a glue) or "polyvinyl alcohol." The acronym "PVOH" has no such ambiguity, which is why we polymer geeks use it in this context. The "OH" indicates "alcohol," since the hydroxyl group is the defining feature.
PVOH is absolutely soluble in water, and absolutely will wash off. The high solubility is one reason why its use in food contact packaging is restricted to inner layers in a multilayer system.
If the hypothesis of a bumpy record with PVOH as Bondo is correct, then wet washing will make records noisy. It doesn't. End of hypothesis.
"PVA" is an ambiguous term- it can mean "polyvinyl acetate" (which is a component of the record fomulation and not used as a release- it's a glue) or "polyvinyl alcohol." The acronym "PVOH" has no such ambiguity, which is why we polymer geeks use it in this context. The "OH" indicates "alcohol," since the hydroxyl group is the defining feature.
PVOH is absolutely soluble in water, and absolutely will wash off. The high solubility is one reason why its use in food contact packaging is restricted to inner layers in a multilayer system.
If the hypothesis of a bumpy record with PVOH as Bondo is correct, then wet washing will make records noisy. It doesn't. End of hypothesis.
I would think by the time pressing took place, the thickness of the release agent film would be negligible - practically nothing. Removing a silicon-based release agent serves mostly to prevent a gummy build-up of very fine dust particles inside the groove. I would imagine that a PVOH release agent would evaporate quickly leaving a very thin residue that removing would have an inaudible effect.
It's not a secret that removing currently-used mold release agents has a positive effect.
John
It's not a secret that removing currently-used mold release agents has a positive effect.
John
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