Why Vinyl Can't Survive

Good article on the Apollo Masters fire: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2020-02-14/apollo-masters-fire-vinyl-lacquer

Damn, that sounds ominous.

So I thought the vinyl industry was doomed. Seems to be chugging along like nothing happened from the consumer standpoint. Maybe I’m asking this too early still? On mobile and didn’t bother to look back to see when we are supposed to start seeing effects.

The article (from a year ago) says:

In the short term, consumers and labels will be OK, he says. (...) Many of the established companies and mastering engineers buy their lacquer stock annually and have backups warehoused.

The concern is that a shortage will threaten new releases and boutique reissues in 2021 and beyond, after the stock has been depleted. At that point, Hashimoto says, “It’s going to affect the whole industry until somebody comes up with an alternative.”

Would be interesting to have an update I guess.

I've been wondering about this as well!

lord are we probably celebrating 10 years of "the vinyl bubble won't last"?

I'm not sure if it's much of a bubble. It's still pretty much a niche market and there are no expectations for it to grow that much more in the grand scheme of things. I can see the demand eventually fading, but it would be pretty gradual.

fremer says a japanese lacquer firm has stepped up and is filling the demand, early on in the video.

https://www.analogplanet.com/content/nothing-can-stop-vinyl-resurgence-analogplanets-making-vinyl-video-opener

get your tape deck fixed up and ready to go just in case

a friend of mine theorizes there's going to be a Great Tape Deck Shortage coming up and i'm inclined to agree with him. it's almost never cost effective to repair them when they eventually give out.

I can see that. Not too long ago, someone I know looked for a good, working VCR to borrow, and it became clear that nobody we knew had one. You can always find someone on ebay selling, but there's always the issue of price, condition (i.e. how long it'll last), etc.

xp Certainly no one's producing good mechanisms

I just realized I haven’t had a CD drive on anything in my house for about 6 years

generally best that CDs not get behind the wheel in general, least of all in your home

otm

I was starting to even get worried about CD players disappearing by the time I need a new one.. but optical disc players will survive because of cinephiles eh?

most high-end audio companies still sell CD players, but yeah... if you've got a good DAC any old DVD or Blu-Ray player will serve for playing CDs

i had to replace my dvd player recently and it came without line level out, or a display. was also half the size of the previous one. and they all looked like this, unless you wanted to spend twice as much.

my friend gifted me a 1970's BSR-style dansette for xmas... it's a sub-par turntable (though way better than any crosley junk) but the amp and speaker in it have these projecting forward mids and it just makes you wanna dance. i feel like fonzie punching the jukebox or something. it's been loads of fun to play 45s, 78s and older LPs, but it won't track a modern pressing for shit. i was excited to buy a cardigans LP but after months of tracking adjustments and a new stylus it just skips every song. i guess a lot of new pressings are very loud and weird... maybe something to do with horizontal grooves, too.

it's nice to not be so precious about vinyl and fret over perfect sound forever. i'm having fun just heading to the thrift store and picking up a couple of 45s every weekend. i guess i plan to augmenting my digital collection with records... there's no way i could replace everything in my library and navigating the crapshoot of modern pressings quality control is nothing short of a headache.

if you really really don't care to be precious, put a nickle on the head while you try that cardigans

weirdly i have found that relief of tracking force rather than applying more helped it to skip less... though i read lighter force is way worse for LPs than heavy. weird.

it's nice to not be so precious about vinyl and fret over perfect sound forever. i'm having fun just heading to the thrift store and picking up a couple of 45s every weekend.

I think you have the right idea. I have a pretty nice Rega and every time I pick up a cheap LP I have a crisis about whether I should play it or not and risk messing up the needle (which is an ordeal and a half to replace, by the way, unless you have the eyes and unshaking hands of a jeweler). I usually just say fuck it and play the record, but your current setup sounds less stressful

? I have a Rega for years and I just play whatever never even worried about it and have had no problems

you need to appreciate the zen of cartridge replacement (or get one where the stylus snaps in and out).

I have an Audio Technica VM540-ML, they have easily replaceable cartridges (amazing cart btw)

I'm assuming Paul has a moving coil (vs moving magnet) cartridge? Those are much harder to deal with....I still mourn by old Denon MC cart (now discontinued) that was broken by a certain small child who is near and dear to my heart

this is why I have two turntables, the nice MMF-5 for ripping vinyl and the Technics 1700 for playing whatever I want

Do records hurt a stylus? I've honestly never even thought about it

well styli are supposed to be good for about 1000 hours of play assuming you keep the records & stylus clean. i suppose if it hits something that knocks it out of alignment that would be bad. not sure if that can happen.

every time you play a record everything involved dies a little, the record, the stylus, you, etc.

mmmm entropy

conversely, every time you play a CD, your lifespan increases by .003549 seconds and the sun emits more heavy elements that can be used to manufacture 40th anniversary CD box set editions of all your 80s favorites

lmao. honestly. records are way hardier than people make them out to be. perhaps old ones more than new, though. i wood glued a couple the other week, after the gold rush, parsley sage rosemary... they came up great, and they've been treat like shit and ran through a blunt stylus a bunch and still sound fine. years ago, i remember waiting a few months for an LP to ship from US to UK to me - something i was so excited to hear on wax - and immediately after, i got a tiny nick in it and it skipped forever through track three from then.

going to HMV here is a laugh. ABBA reissues for like £30-40. what? the proper ones are all in your nan's sideboard!

maelin you've given the courage to try the wood glue thing finally

got a copy of dark side of the moon (really nice orig harvest pressing) from my gf's dad but it's so dirty, might as well try it

the wood glue trick looks like it would be an extremely satisfying meditative exercise

I have a Rega turntable but I am probably going to get something else at some point. Not a fan of Rega's "internal ground" that literally no other manufacturer uses. To many random hums and buzzes for my taste. Anyone else have issues?

to = too

I have a Rega turntable but I am probably going to get something else at some point. Not a fan of Rega's "internal ground" that literally no other manufacturer uses. To many random hums and buzzes for my taste. Anyone else have issues?

― Rocky Thee Stallion (PBKR), Thursday, 11 February 2021 16:47 (thirty-eight minutes ago) link

It is the only thing I don't like about my Rega (and is it all of them? I feel like it was only the P1s or P2s?) and sometimes it really annoys me but I've generally learned to live with it. Though a lot times I would try to point it out to people when we used be able to occupy the same physical space to listen to records and most people didn't notice unless I said something and sometimes not even then.

I've had the table for 15 yrs now and I'm unlikely to change it anytime soon.

just make sure you use unibond titebond II i think it's called, i have heard bad things about others.

i had problems a few years ago, but not for a while, i think it might be when i got a new cartridge, i think it might be related to the wires in the headshell

overall it seems like a solution in search of a problem and at odd with their really stripped down and functional design

Exactly, sort of a galaxy brain move.

My preamp is in the shop and it was buzzing as well so I am curious what I think when I get it back. I am hoping it resolves most of the issues and improves the sound as well.

posted on a different thread but I went on a fun journey from "hmmm, something's a bit off with the sound" to "you should get a decent cartridge" to "maybe yours is just not aligned properly" to "you actually *can't* properly align a cartridge on your turntable because it's a straight underhanging arm that's meant for scratching and not really for listening", so yup got a new one coming in the mail, this hobby is so fun

i ordered a pretty expensive record and the vinyl was sealed in this stuff called 'Last', a sort of protective coating. never seen it before and can't find any info about it online, (it's a french record from the 70s). does this negatively affect the value of the record at all? the vinyl is pristine and sounds amazing, so i personally have no problem with it, but vinyl fetishists can be very weird

xp What did you get?

I've got tubes in my amp and preamp, so there are hums and buzzes coming and going from time to time. I've gotten pretty good about diagnosing the source.

Last may be a record cleaning solution as there was a company with that name that had a CD cleaning solution.

whaaaat

https://thelastfactory.com/vinyl-record-care-preservation/

thanks! it was a tricky google search. looks like this, was defunct for a time and now produced again

https://thelastfactory.com/product/heritage-last-record-preservative-purpose-record-cleaner-kit/

The 30-second treatment affects the vinyl to a depth of about ten molecular layers and becomes part of the groove wall. There are no surface residues for the stylus to pick up. In fact, overuse is harmless.

not sure how legit this is tho

“overuse is harmless” was the name of my rave night in 1997 iirc

PBKR - I got the AT-LP120X with Bluetooth. figured it might be nice to have that so I can use headphones since I sit about 15 feet away. I've heard a lot of good things about that turntable, pretty much everyone says it's a great entry/midlevel one for those who don't want to break the bank

those cleaning products drive me crazy, there are just so fucking many of them. I have the D4+ discwasher system which doesn't do much (just kinda pushes the dirt around), plus one of those brushses that's pretty decent at removing debris. for cleaning the stylus I just do the Magic Eraser thing, though I'm kind of confused, do you just tap the surface or does it actually have to penetrate the surface? (I've seen YT videos showing both)

I use the Magic Eraser on my stylus too; I just drop the needle on the eraser for maybe a second once or twice, and then lift it off. Can't remember where I read about that method, but it seems to work, and a few times I've seen dirt from the stylus left on the Eraser.