Ask a music scene micro celebrity

[electrical]

[ QUOTE ]
My turntable died about 3+ years ago and I haven't listened to vinyl since (hey, I've been busy).

[/ QUOTE ]
Hifi turntables are currently being made by Rega, Sota, Music Hall, VPI and many others. You should be able to get a good belt drive turntable for less than $500, and a good tonearm and cartridge for less than $300. You can sometimes get a whole system for less than $500, and with maintenance and new belts and needles, it will last you the rest of your life. You can also get a nice second-hand Thorens or other old school setup for about the same.

[ QUOTE ]
BTW, I bought 3 copies of the Marmoset/Hated Chinee 7" when it came out after I was told it would be an exciting collectible and make me rich when I sold it. First, am I a douche and second, what'lya gimme for it?

[/ QUOTE ]
I could use one or two of those, honestly. Make me an offer by PM.

[electrical]

[ QUOTE ]
If you didn't have EA and 'Albini' wasn't a buzz word, would you start from the ground up?

[/ QUOTE ]
When I started, it was from the ground up. I didn't have Electrical, and 'Albini' wasn't a buzz word. So, yes, that's how I would do it. Exactly the way I did do it.

[ QUOTE ]
2) Quantegy shut it's doors. Not new news. New production analog tape is going kaput.

[/ QUOTE ]
There is current tape production being run by RMG in the Netherlands, and ATR Magnetics has a whole plant built in Pennsylvania that has yet to come on line, but ought to. While I see tape becoming a boutique item, I don't imagine it will disappear entirely in my lifetime.

[ QUOTE ]
3) Along those lines - the 'vintage' gear made and designed in the 50's - 80's is getting older, and parts are getting scarcer, year by year. Personally, I haven't seen many replacements or substitutes that do the job.

[/ QUOTE ]
The reason those things (old microphones and tape machines) are valuable is that they are reliable, year in/year out, and can be readily repaired by us, the end user, or a modest technical service shop. They are all pretty simple machines, and parts can be made if necessary by almost any competent machinist. The tape machines we use here have been in almost constant use since the 1980s, and they are still in fighting fit. They are hard to kill.

[ QUOTE ]
4) How often do you just get sick of hearing music, or audio? Working around it, all the time, do you ever regret that it has, in any way, ruined your musical enjoyment because of your constant analysis of the technical side of things?

[/ QUOTE ]
Not really. I mentioned it earlier, but while I'm in the studio, I am listening to music, but not really listening to it as a music fan, so I don't really get tired of it the way I got tired of hearing a hit song permeate the culture or what have you.

[strongguy]

Do you know the band 'modest mouse'? What do you think of them?

[uauaEEE]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you know the band 'modest mouse'? What do you think of them?

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't think I've ever thought of modest mouse.

[partycrasher]

Hope this question isn't too broad, but I was wondering if you've noticed any attitude/perspective shifts among bands over the years. Something akin to how teachers who've been at it a while will say, "kids these days..."

Any noticeable differences in the way bands today think about their music, their label, the music business, the recording process itself, what success means, their odds of achieving that success, how they view their fans, ect?

[uauaEEE]

What's that [noise] on the first track of Neurosis' Eye of Every Storm:
You lie in the snow [noise] cold but not dead
Stare in the sun [noise] long since its last heat

[squashed]

[ QUOTE ]
Cds have a per-unit lifespan of 20 years or so, if you're lucky. Many fail in as little as 5 years. Other than physically breaking or gouging it, there's no reason a vinyl record won't last several hundred years. Purely-digital data (downloads and other sound files) are infinitely more fragile, since they exist only resident on a drive (which is itself vulnerable to failure) and dependent on software to make any sound at all, and that software is beholden to the software maker for all its functionality, and that software is beholden to the computer industry as a whole. This is more of a problem with proprietary file formats for professional use, but it is true nonetheless.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hi Steve,

I hate to be disagreeable in first contact with people I greatly admire. But here I am.

I think there is truth that PVC is for practical some purposes are undestructable, but for recording material it is highly questionable theory.

Physical property of PVC. (as you notice, it has tensile strength and young modulus lower than metal)

that alone put into question vinyl ability to maintain its perfect physical shape (groove/valley) when played against LP styles for several thousand times. Of course this is just a bit silly, since people rarely play a record several thousands time in its life time. So I won't argue that.

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

I think my biggest argument against vinyls are: [I am sure you haven't heard this one since, I am not an audio engineer and won't go that route]

- It has very high noise floor. This is okay for rock/casual room listening, but as more and more people uses high quality headphones, creating their own digital music and exploring different texture and music style, the noise is very noticeable. Plus, over time, vinyl's grove also collect dust. Wear and tear.

- dynamic range. digital is better long term. Beyond current CD limitation, digital really only limited by actual players ability to come closer to theoritical limit of electronics. music file will simply carry more and more information for more accurate sound representation. We haven't even begun exploring the possibility of high fidelity consumer electronics. Vinyl however is pretty much it.

- Cost. Not only cost of printing and distributing, but also storage, maintenance and environment (disposing vinyl.) It is true a lot of hardcore collectors takes good care of their records. But you have to admit, majority of those item are stamped, distributed, played and disposed at great cost. This compared to download/erase.

- Vinyl is not for everybody. It is very luxurious item. The player is big, it cost a lot to maintain. Storage of discs, etc, etc. Compare this to ever cheaper mp3 player. I am sure the price of 4GB player will approach pennies in less than 5 years.

- A digital file is infinitely reproducible. All current CD/.wav are reproducible and it is not locked. Popular lossy compression (.mp3) patent will expire in 2010. I am sure it won't go away anytime soon. Then there are more than enough lossless compression available online including Open source (FLAC). So all in all, the idea that a digital file will become unreadable is bunk, because the "data" itself is reproducible. It only take one person in the world to post a raw .wav file online and that file is immortal. As cost of storage and bandwith plummet, this will be truer. The best audio codec has yet to be written. DRM/closed standard will die, as it is rejected by user.

- Digital will win because. It is dirt cheap, infinitely reproducible, quality as information carrier only limited by bandwith and storage cost, Moore's Law, quality is theoritically infinite. People are going to want to be able to carry 20-30,000 high quality songs in their pocket, and vinyl is not going to be able to provide that.

- I think ultimately digital is about changing everything about recorded music, ultimately the structure of modern recording industry. And that I am pretty sure you think is an interesting situation, albeit uncertain.


[ QUOTE ]

Regarding sales, CD's only real advantage (not perceived, but real) over vinyl is convenience, and that is how they won their market share. Ipods et al trump that step in convenience by a mile, and so I expect that CDs will lose the convenience-first battle to downloads. That will be the end of them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Total sale of LP is hardly worth arguing in term of mass entertainment medium. It's undetectable compared to recorded download transaction every day. The situation wont' change anytime soon. I might as well believe in second coming rather than waiting for LP's return. So discussing LP will be forever tied to hardcore audiophile. A silly elitism. Palm reading and mystics sort of elitism. A little bit like discussing hand made 1934 Bugatti vs. 2007 Honda accord. Yeah the Bugatti won '34 grand Prix, but I need something that can survive NJ turnpike.



http://www.blackmailr.com/smr/2007/0...lunge-sharply/

[squashed]

just a small addendum, cause I feel rather guilty with that lengthy post.

in term of digital, the most seductive element that you can't possibly pass as a musician and engineer is the possibility of controlling listener's player audio characteristic. Precisely as you wish it rather than fitting your work to some generic device profile. (the audio file, afteral is just a piece of software + data)

That I think is powerful and opens up a lot of possibility.

[Ah Leah]

Dave Riley's backing vocals on Kerosene were spectacular. Did he gargle with honey before live shows?

[electrical]

[ QUOTE ]
I hate to be disagreeable...

[/ QUOTE ]
I hear this all the time. I guess I bring it out in people.

[ QUOTE ]
- (vinyl) has very high noise floor. This is okay for rock/casual room listening, but as more and more people uses high quality headphones, creating their own digital music and exploring different texture and music style, the noise is very noticeable. Plus, over time, vinyl's grove also collect dust. Wear and tear.

[/ QUOTE ]
I guess I disagree. A properly maintained record should not be objectionably noisy. If the sound of the silences between the songs is the most important part of the record for you, then I guess you shouldn't listen to vinyl records.

[ QUOTE ]
- dynamic range. digital is better long term. Beyond current CD limitation, digital really only limited by actual players ability to come closer to theoritical limit of electronics. music file will simply carry more and more information for more accurate sound representation. We haven't even begun exploring the possibility of high fidelity consumer electronics. Vinyl however is pretty much it.

[/ QUOTE ]
Again, you're talking about the sound quality at the noise floor, which is not where I do the majority of my listening.

I'm going to skip over the points I concede regarding cost and convenience. Of course manufacturing nothing is less expensive than manufacturing something.

[ QUOTE ]
- A digital file is infinitely reproducible. All current CD/.wav are reproducible and it is not locked. Popular lossy compression (.mp3) patent will expire in 2010. I am sure it won't go away anytime soon. Then there are more than enough lossless compression available online including Open source (FLAC). So all in all, the idea that a digital file will become unreadable is bunk, because the "data" itself is reproducible. It only take one person in the world to post a raw .wav file online and that file is immortal. As cost of storage and bandwith plummet, this will be truer. The best audio codec has yet to be written. DRM/closed standard will die, as it is rejected by user.

[/ QUOTE ]
That digital data are reproducible in no way ensures that they will be copied, and the nature of digital files is they inevitably will disappear unless they are perpetually copied and migrated onto new storage media as the old ones become obsolete (a regimen that absolutely no one is undertaking). Analog recordings just sit on a shelf until you need to play them, and then they play just like always.

I can give you a short (incomplete) list of digital audio formats that are now unrecoverable, despite that they could have been migrated onto other formats: DAT, ADAT, ADAM, DTRS, DCC, 1610 (also 1630), F1 (also 601-901), DBX, JVC Soundstream, Mitsubishi X80, X850, ProDigi, DASH, 3M... You get the idea. What would you do if you found a nine-track tape of some SD1 files, or a U-matic tape with Soundstream data? You sure wouldn't be able to play them.

On the other hand, if you bring me any (yes, any) analog audio recording made in the last 100 years, I'll be able to play it. The more obscure formats might require me to jerry-rig a player, but I'll be able to do it. Anything. Soundmats, anything.

[ QUOTE ]
Total sale of LP is hardly worth arguing in term of mass entertainment medium. It's undetectable compared to recorded download transaction every day. The situation wont' change anytime soon. I might as well believe in second coming rather than waiting for LP's return. So discussing LP will be forever tied to hardcore audiophile.

[/ QUOTE ]
Serious hi-fi listeners and their equipment are a billion-dollar+ industry (or so said a friend of mine who ran a hi-fi magazine). Independent labels sell a modest but valuable percentage in vinyl, and there are vinyl specialty labels that sell nothing but. A new disc-cutting lab opened in Chicago a month ago, and they have had regular work. Vinyl records are not going away any time soon. They are not a mass market item, but then neither is anything of superlative quality.
[ QUOTE ]
A silly elitism. Palm reading and mystics sort of elitism.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm sorry you don't like vinyl records, but you're talking like an idiot here.

[ QUOTE ]
A little bit like discussing hand made 1934 Bugatti vs. 2007 Honda accord. Yeah the Bugatti won '34 grand Prix, but I need something that can survive NJ turnpike.

[/ QUOTE ]
I wouldn't suggest that vinyl records are a good replacement for convenience-listening items like Ipods. A wedge isn't a universal replacement for a putter either, but it has its place.