Sound and vision: The rise and fall of vinyl

That was an interesting article, and the reader comments that followed it got heated pretty quickly. Mikey Fremer predictably made an ass of himself. I wonder if he'd be less vocal in his support of vinyl if he realized that the main reason for the invention of the 33-1/3 RPM long-playing record was convenience, not sound quality. It solved two problems from the 78 era, the short playing time per record side and the storage space required for a large music collection. A typical symphony that required 4 or 5 12" 78s fit on a single LP.
 
Can't we all just get along?
I dig vinyl, CD's and streaming music as well. The more options available for people and their different needs,beliefs and financial resources the better IMHO.
It sometimes feels as if there is a war going on and we best pick a side or run the risk of being shot at from both camps!
 
Next time you guys frequent a record store, ask any millennial why they're buying vinyl to begin with. I have and the answers will astound you. Ask a vinyl junkie what they admire about the format. Ask a turntable or cartridge manufacturer about their latest efforts. Ken wrote based on assumptions, not research. That makes for poor journalism.

Ken's piece illustrates clearly that he's not a vinyl user, nor has he been since he abandoned it in the 80s. How on earth does that make the piece relevant? Hardware and software advancements in vinyl playback in the last ten years have really been astounding. Vinyl will always be a relevant format for enthusiasts for many reasons, one of the most significant being accessibility.

Here's the most ironic thing about the opinion some share with Ken - many naysayers find it easy to discredit vinyl when comparing the latest and greatest in digital audio to a mediocre 70s pressing played back via mediocre equipment of the same vintage. Even more ironic is that is exactly how many today are introduced to the format - how many stories have we heard right here on AK about the guy that snagged a TT at a yard sale along with a few records and he's blown away? Plenty. Now, that doesn't mean that setup is state of the art, it means that person heard potential in the format. It only gets better from there.

Ken, get your hands on some modern hardware (a VPI Prime fitted with a high end Dynavector with a front end to support it for example) and modern software (something on Quiex vinyl or from QRP maybe) and give it a subjective listen. And that folks was what had MF riled up ...
 
Can't we all just get along?
I dig vinyl, CD's and streaming music as well. The more options available for people and their different needs,beliefs and financial resources the better IMHO.

Amen all the way. And glad to see ya on the boards, Asterion.

Damacman said it perfectly. Another big hallelujah.
 
Mankind... Always ready to go to war over any slight difference of opinion, be it religion, resource ownership, territory, race, sex, parking spaces, and even the most trivial difference between the sound quality of the various music sources. As adanced as we are we're still figuratively carving arrowheads out of stone to kill our enemies with. The Terminator said something about "It's in your nature to destroy yourselves" or some such thing. I say let's just play some music and be happy!
 
Hey Alobar, you should watch this video.


Very entertaining, and touches on your post. Also, the video for Mastodon's "Sleeping Giant". Points out the weakness of hairless chimps with opposable thumbs, too-large adrenals, and too-small frontal lobes.
 
I've enjoyed Pohlmann's writing for years and get the feeling that he would be a fun guy to know.

I've also enjoyed Fremer's writing for years, but I don't know how pleasant it would be to interact with him in person. Just look at the comment section under the above linked article. He starts off sounding defensive and almost immediately turns shrill. Even if he has a good point to make, his delivery is such a turnoff that sometimes I catch myself disagreeing without considering the merits of his arguments.
 
Next time you guys frequent a record store, ask any millennial why they're buying vinyl to begin with. I have and the answers will astound you. Ask a vinyl junkie what they admire about the format. Ask a turntable or cartridge manufacturer about their latest efforts. Ken wrote based on assumptions, not research. That makes for poor journalism.

I'd love to ask a turntable or cartridge manufacturer about his latest efforts. Unfortunately the ranks of cartridge manufacturers are getting pretty thin, and a lot of turntable "manufacturers" are just slapping their logos on OEM products from China and kicking them out the door.

Ken's piece illustrates clearly that he's not a vinyl user, nor has he been since he abandoned it in the 80s. How on earth does that make the piece relevant? Hardware and software advancements in vinyl playback in the last ten years have really been astounding. Vinyl will always be a relevant format for enthusiasts for many reasons, one of the most significant being accessibility.

From where I sit, the hardware advancements in sub-$2000 turntables look a lot like one step forward, two steps back. The tonearms are generally better than they were in the 1970s, but too many of the drive systems are marginal at best.

Here's the most ironic thing about the opinion some share with Ken - many naysayers find it easy to discredit vinyl when comparing the latest and greatest in digital audio to a mediocre 70s pressing played back via mediocre equipment of the same vintage. Even more ironic is that is exactly how many today are introduced to the format - how many stories have we heard right here on AK about the guy that snagged a TT at a yard sale along with a few records and he's blown away? Plenty. Now, that doesn't mean that setup is state of the art, it means that person heard potential in the format. It only gets better from there.

Not all of those '70s pressings were mediocre. I have more than a few '70s audiophile LPs, most of them pressed in Europe, that can hold their own with the best new releases. I even have some U.S.-pressed RCA classical recordings that come dangerously close to the sound quality of the audiophile discs.

Ken, get your hands on some modern hardware (a VPI Prime fitted with a high end Dynavector with a front end to support it for example) and modern software (something on Quiex vinyl or from QRP maybe) and give it a subjective listen. And that folks was what had MF riled up ...

No, MF just gets riled up at any criticism of vinyl. He lives in his own little black-and-white fantasy world where analog is good and digital is bad and that's all there is to it. That's why I've stopped reading his drivel in Stereophile and am seriously considering letting my subscription lapse again.
 
I've enjoyed Pohlmann's writing for years and get the feeling that he would be a fun guy to know.

I've also enjoyed Fremer's writing for years, but I don't know how pleasant it would be to interact with him in person. Just look at the comment section under the above linked article. He starts off sounding defensive and almost immediately turns shrill. Even if he has a good point to make, his delivery is such a turnoff that sometimes I catch myself disagreeing without considering the merits of his arguments.

Fremer's not so bad in person. If you're ever gone to any audio club meetings, you've met plenty worse then him.
 
What's funny is when I choose a format to listen to and want to hear it how the artist wanted to hear it it's vinyl. I like Fremer personally, he and his site is high dollar stuff. He supports vinyl (analog) recordings, but man his stuff is light-years ahead of mine.
 
The human impulse to puff oneself up by putting others down is shown immediately by the very first commenter in that article. So I'll do the same to dommyloc from a safe distance. He may be old enough to have lived through the vinyl era, but was probably playing his Fischer Price turntable in his sandbox. There, I feel better. :)

Fremer needs to take some Troll-O (like Bean-O) before reading comments.

Chuck Fell Speck.
 
An interesting discussion of sample rate and time delay

https://books.google.com/books?id=eZtPwVBAfPoC&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq=48khz+microseconds&source=bl&ots=eWajkXyrS6&sig=ovC71gU8DWdfY_BPFe3Q4RuOSWY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiO8ozp0ZjMAhXMHh4KHdRlDfUQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=48khz microseconds&f=false

The speed of sound in air at STP from what I remember from physics is about 1000 feet per second or 330 meters per second. How far will the sound travel in 5, 10 or 20 microseconds? How will this affect imaging? How about stereo?
 
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