More in vinyl news

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Vinyl is a fad. Back today, gone tomorrow. I'm holding on to a bunch of tube TVs to cash on on the next big retro entertainment gear fad. And they actually look better, even though they don't measure well.

Don't be so fast, I walked into Costco yesterday and the new TV's are getting even more extreme with their fake color gamuts, I mean really the UHD4K sets look like shite. I agree on the current vinyl thing, the millennials will tire of it and it will again fade when the add and movie companies stop placing over the top LP setups in their work.
 
My impression growing up was that the majority of record sales were always to lo-fi owners.

Maybe I'm a few years older, but when I was young there were few choices. Mono AM radio for pop music, usually played through a cheap plastic radio. FM radio was often limited by the phone line Studio to Transmitter Link and several stations had not yet adopted stereo, vinyl records (some of my old ones are mono), cassette tape, reel to reel tape (very little music was actually sold on pre-recorded tape), and that wonderful new format the 8 track tape (the 4 track didn't sell to well).

So which of these formats was the ONLY choice for "HiFi" in the 60's? That's right the vinyl record was ALL Fi. They went to people with the record re-grooving Magnavox consoles with 5 pound tone arms sporting "ceramic crystal pickups" as well as us "HiFi" guys with Garrard or Dual turntables and DIY audio systems.

that show proper playback does not degrade vinyl, even after 100 plays.

Many of my records purchased in the 60's still sound excellent, while some that were played by my room mates on their "stereos" while I was at work are trash.

I have been using the same Technics turntable since about 1980. It doesn't seem to harm records.

You still get an MP3 or FLAC copy of the vinyl to download.....vinyl for say 300 plays before it degrades AND you get a digital copy which will outlast the vinyl.

As I stated, I still have some 50 year old records that perform better than my 65 year old ears can hear, and yes those digital downloads have the potential to last 50 years, but will any hardware exist 50 years from now to play them on, and will you still have the data files in 50 years? The PC as we know it will be long gone. What will replace it?

Either way, I am hanging on to both. I still throw a record on the turntable from time to time, but when I do, I save a 24/96 digital copy of it just so I can be lazy the next time, if I so choose, and play it right off the hard drive. CD's, I have ripped most of mine, and will have them all on the hard drive sooner or later. I have found some 35 year old CD's that are failing, or have failed. They were the ones that spent a lot of time in a hot car. Hold them up to light and you can see light spots and tiny holes in the aluminum coating. Most of my old CD-R's have died too.
 
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Most of my old CD-R's have died too.

I'm sure you know this but I'm going to say it anyway.

That is actually a genuine concern and is explained by the fact that the common easily available CD-R's use a dye which loses the original pitting when it was first burnt. If you have any important stuff backed up to CD-R's the best you can get out of them is 3 years, 5 years tops before they are unreadable. If you are going to archive stuff to CD-R/DVD-R you've gotta use archival grade discs.

CD Media World - CD Dye
 
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don't try to tread too lightly with the tracking force.

There was a short lived quadraphonic format for vinyl records called CD-4. It used a high frequency subcarrier to encode the 2 additional channels in a manner similar to FM stereo. I still have one Doobie Brothers record from the early 70's that was CD-4 "quadradisc" encoded. My CD-4 demodulator is long gone.

The key to setting up a turntable is to wire the cartridge output directly up to an oscilloscope and adjust tracking and anti-skate for a clean high frequency carrier signal with equal amplitude balance from channel to channel. The carrier signal will not make it through most phono stages, hence the direct connection to the scope. I don't remember the frequency, but it's well beyond hearing.

The tracking force needed is a bit more than most people originally thought was needed. It turns out that a light force will cause the stylus to mistrack high frequencies due to rocking back and forth, also causing record wear. The old Technics is set at 1.7 grams, but I really haven't checked it in a while.
 
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That's like saying tires don't start to wear out till after the 100th drive. Are you also saying the stylus dosnt wear out?

To pre-empt where this is going. Yes a stylus will wear, but over the coarse of about 1000km covered and a very very small amount. Wear per mm of vinyl over that 1000km is miniscule and the pictures are posted on here to show it's a light polishing of the cutter marks.

Records do not wear out as long as basic hygiene of vinyl and stylus is carried out and the arm/cart is of a base quality.

None of the above is an endorsement to buy $30 releases cut of a digital master mind.
 
bill - you're apparently a font of arcana, or at least a more competent googler than I - would you, or any other members have any idea what the conversion of say, 1.5G with a "standard" elliptical stylus which most of us would have in our history converts to in PSI? I'd like to say I vaguely remember hearing decades ago a number in the magnitude of many hundreds or even thousands, but there was a lot of inhaling going on in those days, so .....
 
A good diamond stylus should last a long time.

On the other hand, I remember phonographs with steel stylus.

Today I run a Pickering X15/625E, but still have my Empire 2000Z and M-91E.

I have a Technics SL1200 MK2.

Not exactly Hi-Fi by some standards, but nice enough for me.

I hope to switch to a Denon DL-103 some day, but that will have to wait.
 
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I'm currently running a couple of 45yr old Panasonic strain gauge cartridges originally designed to play those CD-4 encoded records tubelab mentioned. I use them with a strain gauge pre-amp I designed that venusfly will be familiar with.. :) They can sound pretty good with a bit of work, unfortunately the cartridge body is pretty resonant and so a lot of care and some additional damping is needed to get them to sound good.

I used to own a lot of very expensive LOMC cartridges, but I have been reducing the stable over the past couple of years and that accelerated considerably once I got the first strain gauge pre-amp functional.

I never gave up totally on vinyl but I came close a couple times mostly due to mediocre performance from certain arm/cartridge combinations.

I currently have around 800 lps down from around twice that number (I was the dumping ground for a couple of library stashes, most of which were not worth the trouble)

I think the current trend is a fad and demand will drop substantially, hopefully though not enough to leave the latest entrepreneurs holding the bag.
 
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