Awesome Audiophile Snake Oil

horse ghosts. with just an abominable soundstage.

I don't want to bump one of the real vinyl threads but as a self-soothing enterprise for not getting a job I bought some hifi shit and a turntable, which all works fine, but then I bought one (1) record which I evidently immediately warped before even opening it by inadvertently resting it next to a heater vent on the bus ride home. It seems to play mostly fine but I'm mildly bummed out that I've now learned that you have to be careful not to let your records get wibbly on the bus.

Anyway can I damage my turntable by playing a wibbly record on it?

It might have been warped already...QC at pressing plants these days is real hit & miss.

I think you can press it between a couple of big books and leave it in a warm place and it will de-warp, to some extent. I don't think playing a warped record can hurt your turntable at all.

thank u

yeah I leave 'em between two big art books on my balcony during the summer, does the trick for mildly warped LPs... of course it gets up to like 100 here. the oven is also an option but riskier... too hot and it ruins them pretty fast.

wikihow suggested the oven option and I was all o_O

I will try not to worry about it too hard and enjoy my new audiophile phase

anyone got any hot tips on an unguent to rub onto my speaker cables

you COULD pay top dollar for cable treatment if you hate having money! OR you could simply whip up a batch yourself using equal parts thermally stable machine oil (i prefer LSA's [Lubricant Specialists Australia] Heat Transfer Oil 32, which to my ears produces a more musical flow with near zero thermal cracking) and tea tree oil. if you can't stand the smell of tea tree, or if you are allergic, try neem or even lavender.

You should be putting it on your ears, not the cable itself, otherwise you risk voiding the warranty

Sounds like a harrowing bus ride!

It was a 10 minute bus trip at most and I’m not convinced that exposing my record in the sleeve in a paper bag to the heat vent is the cause of this but it seems possible

oh the entire HiFi was a separate trip?

my phone keyboard knows to write HiFi like this.. damn, fancy

No that came via fedex lol

I mean couriered from the B&H warehouse by white-gloved eunuchs

It might have been warped already...QC at pressing plants these days is real hit & miss.

― a large tuna called “Justice” (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, March 8, 2019 12:22 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I suspect this is it not something you did

A record clamp might help....

I'll probably try the book thing. I'm not gonna start buying tweaks in my first week of being a hifi owner

Welcome to audiophilia, and just so you know, it's pronounced "hiffy". It's shocking how many HiFi enthusiasts get that wrong.

Covhiffy

one great part about a turntable is you can adjust the tracking force, antiskate, etc. and convince yourself that it sounds much better afterward

hiffy? isn't that the stuff that ruined DJ Shadow?

It's like bitcoin mining, except for those who want to signal the rarefied nature of their music taste.
https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/05/13/1557720021000/High-resolution-music-is-a-solution-looking-for-a-problem/

Free login required

can somebody please explain to me what a "blake sleeve" is ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCOD_37DA44

Looks like Blake Sleeves are what I was taught were called "J-Bags," the adhesive-flap mylar sleeves where I assumed the "J" was for "Japanese," but might not be. Anyway, if they're the same, they are indeed what the paranoids use.

^ this sounds right to me but i'm curious if anybody has any other info

i'm not paranoid

can somebody please explain to me what a "blake sleeve" is ?

I worked in a record store for nine years, ordered every different kinda inner and outer sleeve including "Japanese rice paper inners," and have never once heard this term or seen it in a catalog. If someone said it to me I would think they meant "blank sleeve" like an all white jacket.

a little creative googling got me here: https://www.clearbags.com/12-3-4-x-12-3-4-flap-crystal-clear-album-sleeve-protective-closure-100-pieces-blpd2.html

I fully expected to find nothing, since audiophiles are probably coming up with their own names for common household objects

can somebody please explain to me what a "blake sleeve" is ?

The explanation is right in that video, no? A record collector by the name of Blake is unhappy with the oversized, cloudy plastic record sleeves you often find; has clearbags.com do a run of crystal clear, snug-fitting sleeves; the sleeves prove popular and clearbags.com decides to add them to their product line, referring to them as Blake sleeves in reference to the man who ordered the initial run. Per the video the product line has now been expanded to include sleeves with and without flaps and sized to accommodate single LPs, doubles, and 7 inches.

I can see the appeal actually. I have a lot of those loose-fitting cloudy sleeves and they're kind of annoying. I have a few sleeves that are pretty similar to what's being described here (most of my Sisters of Mercy 12"s came in them IIRC) but they all have adhesive flaps which I could do without. If I was worried about preserving my jackets I'd probably want them in in a flapless Blake.

On a side note I love how he starts off with "I wanted to do a short video..." and then spends 11 minutes giving us about 37 seconds worth of information.

effortlessly defining the spirit of youtube.com

I like the crystal clear bags with the resealable flap. The loose poly bags can end up accounting for a lot of shelf space.

A record collector by the name of Blake is unhappy with the oversized, cloudy plastic record sleeves you often find; has clearbags.com do a run of crystal clear, snug-fitting sleeves; the sleeves prove popular and clearbags.com decides to add them to their product line, referring to them as Blake sleeves in reference to the man who ordered the initial run.

i watched the video, was aware that he kept referring to somebody called blake, but i never came to this conclusion, which makes perfect sense. thanks.

audiophiles are probably coming up with their own names for common household objects

i think what is going on is that some guy "invented" something that already exists and then had it named after himself. in my world these are called mylar sleeves or japanese archival sleeves.

the only appeal i could see would be if clear bags was selling them for dramatically less than other manufacturers -- which of course the video doesn't even come close to talking about.

and i agree that they are very nice sleeves indeed

i have no idea where else to post this stuff, but i've been seeing some real gems on discogs recently. sometimes it's the exact sort of obessive and pedantic kind of comments you'd normally associate with audiophile culture. but sometimes the lengths that people go to just to criticize the quality of some vinyl pressings is just funny. case in point:

I use lp60xbt, which is fully automatic.
on side D after the last track; Lullaby For My Insomniac a needle spins on run out groove endlessly making a ring on surface and doesn't come back to a tone arm rest.
I enquired audio technica support team and got the reliable answer;

If this is only happening on the one side of just that particular record, the issue is not within the turntable but rather the cutting of that particular side of the record. It is likely they did not cut the locked groove at the end of the record in the standard position.

does anybody have the same issue as me?
mine is European dark green edition. I'm into its colour but this is a pretty irritating experience when using a fully automatic turntable.

did you honestly put in a service request to the manufacterer of your turntable over this? does this turntable not have "return" button? ARE YOU NOT ABLE TO LIFT THE NEEDLE OFF THE RECORD YOURSELF?

also, nice: totally not worried about the lesser fidelity of colored vinyl because yr "into its color." fucking lol

hey I payed for fully automatic!! clearly this is not FULLY!

that is really funny cuz audiophile turntable discussions I've seen won't even entertain an automatic table. Anything in there not essential to playing well just frig up the sound, man.

it was then I realized I was reading too much about turntables.

That guys obv no audiophile, but the amount of anguish and frustration that vinyl causes for some “vinyl enthusiasts” is really something else. Maybe they all live in really dusty homes or something.

I don't know about "awesome", but this sure seems like a prime example of audiophile snake oil to me:

https://www.musicdirect.com/record-cleaning/last-record-preservative

Keep Your New Vinyl LPs Looking and Sounding Brand-New for Decades to Come with Last Record Preservative: Prevents Wear, Ticks, and Pops for Hundreds of Plays by Enhancing Molecular Stability

Only $26 per ounce!

Enhancing Molecular Stability since 2019!

I've noticed one or two of my friends who 20 years ago would obsess about their perfect listening position at the tip of an equilateral triangle between their stereo speakers, but now enthuse about their v. expensive single Bluetooth speakers.

you haven't lived til you've heard the Beatles in mono..... on a single speaker, as God intended

mono on two speakers in bad for the molecules

is bad. very bad.

xxxp “Last” has been around for years, it’s pretty well established (I guess that doesn’t keep it from being “snake oil,” though). Think I owned some at one point.

I am a chemist, this is how I break it down to an extent

shouldn't say "molecular stability" as that refers to whether molecules break into smaller pieces or not. in general the stylus does not break molecules into smaller groups of atoms.

what a stylus does do is break molecules apart from each other. i.e. it wears down the groove by tearing off tiny pieces of vinyl. the proper term for molecules sticking to each other is cohesion, so when they say they're improving cohesiveness they're actually using the right term.

how do you keep the stylus from tearing off bits of vinyl? put a layer of something else on top of it to protect it. so my assumption is that the LAST record preservative is a thin lacquer that is applied over the grooves. so on the other hand, you're not really improving the cohesiveness of the molecules, you're just putting new molecules over the old molecules so the new molecules get worn off instead of the old one.

TLDR - it's just a thin lacquer that you apply over the surface of the record to protect the grooves.

personally I wouldn't lacquer my records unless they were super scratchy as applying lacquer will obviously leave a waxy residue on the grooves that will change the sound quality.

xpost

It would have to be awfully thin not to muffle the sound, wouldn't it? One could certainly make the argument that it did so. (I mean, we'd be talking about an incredibly fine degree of muffling, but we'd also be talking about audiophiles, who are basically dwelling in a world of fantasy regarding what the human ear can actually perceive, anyway.)

I've applied the lacquer to Dark Side of the Moon and now I'm listening to it 100 times in a row to bring it to it's *ideal* sound quality at which point I will store it away forever

yeah from what I've read on forums and so on people say it definitely changes the sound quality to a noticeable extent. a term I've heard a lot is "warmer" which i generally interpret to mean muffling the extreme high-end frequencies.

it could be less of a lacquer than a lubricant, creating an oily sheen that makes the needle glide over more

they make a lot of claims about it not being, but I'm guessing it's not what people would traditionally consider a lubricant so they're dissembling a little