HD Vinyl?

7 Reasons Why HD Vinyl Won’t Take Offhttp://www.emusician.com/...yl-wont-take-off/57216

Maybe they can also be played with the laser turntable:
 
http://www.cultofmac.com/...our-vinyl-what-a-deal/

ampfixer
It makes perfect sense to me, in fact I was discussing this with friends recently. Engineering has come a long way since record pressing had its big moment. Instead of a cutting lathe using a stylus to scratch out the master disks, It could be a precision controlled lazer cutting head. That method would be far more precise than traditional methods and that could allow more grooves to be cut.
 
I can see how they could add more time. A better idea would be to go back and start making 40 minute albums again. The 14 track CD with 70 - 80 minutes is too long for my attention span.

I agree and this sound's good! LPs were never as much about music quality and certainly not ease of use. A CD or MP3 is certainly easier but it is the whole experience. Taking off the shrink wrap. Pulling out, looking at, and reading the insert or better yet an LP cover that folds out with all the pictures, the lyrics, notes... the whole vinyl package experience is far above any other. Playing vinyl is a bit of a ritual with anti static, cleaning, laying it on the platter, putting the needle in the groove... it is satisfying. At least to me. If they could make some sort of optical needle that neither wears or scratches (if you bump it). That would be awesome but would it still be analog? IDK.

craigb

Moshkito
However, in 10 years time, digital will get past their limitations and surpass the LP ... quickly enough.
 

10 years?  Digital already surpasses ANY vinyl LP.  There has even been some videos posted here that prove this.

The weird thing is that people do not actually believe the difference between the two pressings, and quality of the materials used. It gives the music industry a completely different view, and one that should have been nailed in the courts for defrauding the public. 
 
Digital, will overcome some of the details and issues that supposedly make the vinyl "warmer" and whatever other excuses Neil Young uses, before he leaves us ... bless his guitar! We will miss him, though!

Waves comes with restoration plugins to remove all of the issues that come with vinyl, and now people want the opposite - go figure!

For your speaker repair, I've taken several things to All Service Musical Electronics Repair on Morrison (near the 5) and been very happy with their work.

I need to find a 3D printer that will make gold for me.
(Unfortunately, it will probably want gold resin to start with...)

bitflipper
Today, you can 3D-print records that play on normal turntables...
 
Sure, they're still primitive, have a fraction of vinyl's capacity and sound really awful. Still, this is technologically version 0.1b, but still sounds better than the first wax cylinders.

Can hardly wait for a 3D printed CD.

ston
I honestly don't understand people who think that dragging a weighted rock across lumpy plastic is in any way 'high fidelity'.  Mind you, these same people probably buy cables from AudioQuest.
... 
 

Trust me ... bring in your cheapie FRY's turntable to my setup and I will show you the difference, after I play you on my biggie turntable.
 
It's probably the stylus and its quality that is the biggest difference, but if the wiring inside does not have it, and it simplifies, then I don't think that the quality can be there at all. Again, you have to hear it to believe it, but this is not discernible on the digital stuff as it was in the actual turntables back in the day.
 
I had to play a Rolling Stones album to show some folks the difference fro what they were used to listen to it. Massive quality difference in the ear when listening to it. Even cheap speakers hurt the quality, compared to speakers that can separate properly. 
 
The biggest thing in some of the mp3's and stuff, is that a lot of these are being simplified into one track, that kinda equates to "mono" in my ears ... instead of a clean, clear and totally beautiful stereo. And you really do not know/understand stereo until you hear a Tangerine Dream in these things, or Sgt Peppers, or Dark Side of the Moon in these environments.

I have been lucky enough to have been involved with a group of serious hi fi users and building extraordinary turntables was one of our main passions.
 
I still have a turntable from that era. (which was the 70's by the way so it goes to show how amazing things were as far back as then)
 
I have a serious turntable fitted with a serious arm, head-shell and cartridge. (Shure V15 type III, probably the finest cartridge ever made, period!) Everything effects the sound. The platter, arm, (The best arm was the SME made by the Brits. I can balance my arm so it is floating and blow a puff of air from across the room and 5 seconds later the arm will swing slowly into the centre! Most arms would not even respond. The Brits got the bearing resistance down to the lowest of levels) the head-shell and the pickup of course. To top that off I have an RIAA preamp which cost $1000 back then. So we are probably looking at 4 to 5K in turntable expense (back then) (Note a $1000 RIAA equaliser sounds like nothing on earth!)
 
The finest vinyl ever produced are the records that Sheffield lab made in the 80's where the output from the mixer fed the cutting lathe direct. So this means total live performances direct to the lathe. So the whole tape recording system that is normally in between the musicians and the lathe is gone! (when you hear this you realise how bad tape actually is. It compromises the signal just so much it is hard to believe. But many musicians would have a problem with it though. It means perfect takes in one go! Just like the very old days.)
 
How does it all sound. Well ridiculous is a word that comes to mind. Many of you would have never heard this or ever will for that matter. It is so good you would just not believe it. Jaw dropping comes to mind as well. And I have done this listening on the very finest amps and speakers ever made as well. And in very controlled environments. One of the albums is a Dave Grusin album with Ron Carter on bass and Harvey Mason on drums. The drums sound so transient and fast it is unbelievable.  The bass is earth shattering so saying that bass cannot be captured on vinyl is rubbish. So yes when the finest vinyl is played on the finest turntable money can buy it is quite a different experience. Trust me on that. It is just unfortunate that no one gets to hear it very often.
 
Drew is also right in one sense there are still some limitations with even the best vinyl playback setup but up at this level it is quite a different story though.
 
Dark Side of the Moon also sounds incredible on my system as well. Even with the tape being used it is still jaw dropping. With a turntable like this too on Dark Side for example even today on my copy there is no noise and not one click or plop! There will always be the groove wall noise but Shure got it well down with its ellipitial stylus.

Well craig a great question and I was going to say something about digital.
 
Firstly I have done an experiment where we compared that turntable setup to that same signal being bottlenecked through a 16 bit/44.1K conversion (eg A to D and D to A again) and no one could tell the difference!
 
I feel that the best digital recordings even on a standard CD can go better than this again! The transient performance of digital is better again and there is no noise. Plus we get all the multi tracking possibilities as well which is great.

Jeff Evans
The finest vinyl ever produced are the records that Sheffield lab made in the 80's where the output from the mixer fed the cutting lathe direct. So this means total live performances direct to the lathe. So the whole tape recording system that is normally in between the musicians and the lathe is gone! (when you hear this you realise how bad tape actually is. It compromises the signal just so much it is hard to believe. But many musicians would have a problem with it though. It means perfect takes in one go! Just like the very old days.)
 
How does it all sound. Well ridiculous is a word that comes to mind. Many of you would have never heard this or ever will for that matter. It is so good you would just not believe it. Jaw dropping comes to mind as well. And I have done this listening on the very finest amps and speakers ever made as well. And in very controlled environments. One of the albums is a Dave Grusin album with Ron Carter on bass and Harvey Mason on drums. The drums sound so transient and fast it is unbelievable.  The bass is earth shattering so saying that bass cannot be captured on vinyl is rubbish. So yes when the finest vinyl is played on the finest turntable money can buy it is quite a different experience. Trust me on that. It is just unfortunate that no one gets to hear it very often.

A great nostalgia trigger Jeff. I still have the Master Disc Dave Grusin album, "Discovered Again" (also features Lee Ritenour on guitar). I had to dig it out. Mint shape! I got into these master recording back then. Can't say I had the ultimate audio system but it was decent. The master recordings were nice.  I still have my Philips 312 'touch sensitive' turntable, and it works. I really don't use the system at the moment, but my hopeful plan is to have a good audio listening room after we someday move, and lay it out for a better audiophile listening environment.
 
While digging out the Dave Grusin I also encountered Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab Master Recordings of "City To City" - Gerry Rafferty, "Crime Of The Century" - Supertramp, and "Year Of The Cat" - Al Stewart. Just holding these albums again is a treat. Man, I am glad I did not listen to my wife who has told me for years that albums are dead. They just take up space. Get rid of them. Granted, the 21st century is conducive to digital medium based on its convenience. But there sure was a joy going to record stores and flipping through albums looking for something new. And saving your money in the quest to upgrade to better components.    

craigb

What do you think is necessary to replicate a performance to levels beyond what a human can hear? 24/96? Better filters before (or after) the AD conversion?

As a playback format, 16/44.1kHz is already better than pathetic humans for the overwhelming majority of real world listening conditions. Unfortunately this is upsetting to those who wish to use audio as a means of separating themselves from the herd, but it is what it is.
 

Filters - you can look for yourself at the detailed filter responses of DAC chips on the spec sheets at any chip manufacturer's site. Typically they are excellent - almost ruler flat - below ~20 kHz. The anti-aliasing is generally designed to be good enough in the real world to put it below the noise floor caused by other factors (i.e. for noisier chips the anti-aliasing isn't as good).  So the filters are typically quite good up to ~20kHz, where they begin to roll off and allow more aliasing/imaging.

Some humans can indeed hear test tones as high as the mid 20 kHz's, but that's only for test tones played back at 100 dB SPL or more. There is also some evidence that filter ringing at high frequencies may be audible, but these are borderline cases involving steep filters and most chip makers make the filters' transition bands as wide as possible to minimize ringing. Otherwise, despite much discussion, many misunderstandings and much misinformation, there is little objective evidence that frequencies > 20kHz are audible to humans under real world listening conditions.


Bit depth -
a. How loud are you listening (in dB SPL)?
b. What's the average (RMS) level of your audio relative to 0dBFS*?
c. How far below 0dBFS is your quantization error plus dither**?

From this, you can calculate how loud the QE + dither is - in dB SPL - and compare it to your threshold of hearing, and if isn't below that you can then compare it to the noise in your listening environment.



If you don't want to do these calculations, you just need to understand that noise shaping curves are typically based in large part on the curves above for somewhere between the threshold of hearing and ~15 phon (the equal loudness contour that equals 15 dB SPL at 1kHZ) - because that's the level they expect the QE + dither to played back at in the real world. 


The shape of the noise matters, but the noise level for typical homes/offices is supposedly around 40dB SPL. A professionally soundproofed studio is supposedly around 20 dB SPL.

And if you do ABX testing, the results will match up what you'd expect from understanding the above.


*if you want to do it properly, you have to worry about weighting curves and the integration time of your dB meter, but it's only going to amount to a few dB of difference if you just want ballpark numbers here.

**you can ignore noise shaping, as the whole idea is for noise shaping to make things less audible. Based on this, you can just use -90 dBFS for the RMS level of unshaped 16 bit dither as a ballpark.

Jeff Evans
I have one of those little Ibanez contact pickups which is small and has some Blutack on it.  Small enough to fit right on there.  And in this case this diaphragm was exposed and was missing some sort of cover etc..
 
I nearly fell off my sat when I heard the signal.  It was magnificent.  OK not much above about 6 K or so for sure but from that point down it was perfect and I mean perfect.  Beautiful mids and lows, tons of detail, everything just sounded a million times better than the horn.

Would something like this work on an old Edison turntable circa 1920s?