Awesome Audiophile Snake Oil

ums otm

any even halfway serious record collector knows that some pressings are good and some are bad, and that there's variation between the various batches off of the stampers based on how early in the process they were stamped, which can SOMETIMES but not always indicate a better sounding press.

as far as CD versions of things that were originally on LP, that gets into remastering territory and I'd say that at least 60% of the CDs that I own from this era are at least a little bit inferior to the proper vinyl versions, making a good-sounding CD is jus gas hard as making a good-sounding LP

imo starting in the 90's, this calculation flipped because vinyl pressings became increasingly crap (ofc some older things like Sun Ra Saturn presses and ESP Discs were always crap as well) and these days I've really gotta get a google/discogs quality check before I shell out for vinyl on most serious purchases. whereas the Bandcamp downloads all sounds awesome.

I mean, I specifically seek out older German and UK pressings of Creedence Clearwater Revival LPs for this very reason

same with those Beatles LPs, cannot beat the 70's UK Parlophone reissues for overall sound imho, 60's purists can suck it

Here comes the hot stamper

thread took shockingly long to get here. thank you, milo.

*just as hard as

guy smokes weed before listening to a record and then enjoys it

I will always think of Hot Doug Stamper, thanks to whoever had that as their display name a few years ago.

some pressings are good and some are bad, and that there's variation between the various batches off of the stampers based on how early in the process they were stamped, which can SOMETIMES but not always indicate a better sounding press.

as far as CD versions of things that were originally on LP, that gets into remastering territory and I'd say that at least 60% of the CDs that I own from this era are at least a little bit inferior to the proper vinyl versions

Manufacturing factors aside, records issued in different regions and at different times are already in "remastering territory" as they are typically (certainly were in the heyday of multinational labels) cut* locally by a different engineer from different tapes than the "original". Which of course is not to say there's a simple 1st pressings are always best correlation (cf my 80s Italian copy of "Heroes"), but there is a likelihood a home country 1st edition will have been cut from low generation master tapes.

* (the original meaning of mastering being to cut the lacquer master)

thread took shockingly long to get here. thank you, milo.

― andrew m., Friday, August 27, 2021

Shady scams and other silly business ideas to take advantage of earnest new vinyl collectors

Hot scampers.

*spends 500 dollars on an Elvis Presley record or whatever lame shit*

*plays record a single time*

oops the friction of my stylus against the vinyl during a single spin has ruined the record's fidelity, it's burnt to shit now, too bad i couldn't rip it to a digital format because digital is Bad.

*buys another $500 copy* i guess this is my life now

that's one of the dumbest things of the whole vinyl thing, this idea that every time you play a record the needle is doing so much damage and you have to protect these fragile things, esp if you have a good record player and cartridge it's nothing to worry about, i have jazz records from the 40s and 50s that still sound great, tons of scratched records i cleaned up and still have a pretty minimal amount of surface noise

like just play them, people that hold these things for some theoretical future sale value is just depressing to me

nooo u can't play them they will be ruined noooooooooooo

vinyl is a store of investment value like bitcoin, NEVER play your records

That "collector" mentality seems to plague ever hobby. Like you shouldn't enjoy what you buy, ideally it should remain vacuum-sealed and untouched by human hand - putting it to the very use it was designed for will only devalue it.

Cleaning vinyl's fine, but honestly that's another reason I stuck with optical discs. Just pop it in and play. No maintenance and nothing to worry about as long as you handle it by the edges, though I suppose that can look kind of funny to some.

at least you don't send records off to a professional grading service and have them slab them in plastic like comic books and trading card.

s

the record store i go to will throw them on the VPI machine for a buck a pop, so if it's something worth it i'll do that occasionally

pretty much all the new vinyl i've ever bought is basically like new though, it's remarkably easy to take care of records! they are actually a remarkably durable medium. there are 78s from forever ago that are still playable, i don't think my CDs will last that long

XP i keep my vinyl in a vacuum chamber at absolute zero, thank you very much

XPS sort of surprised vinyl grading services haven't become a thing yet.

I think you mostly see consignment/auction services, like Carolina Soul

jokes aside i agree with UMS that vinyl is a more durable medium

i like all the media anyway, each of them is special in their own unique ways

like just play them, people that hold these things for some theoretical future sale value is just depressing to me

i stopped buying records at estate sales for just that reason - it started to be really depressing to be in the homes of dead people had what were clearly painstakingly cared-for & all-consuming collections, carefully polybagged & untouched copies of 30 different import pressings of some Elvis EP, and people rooting through it all (myself included) who just did not give a fuuuck. spend your whole life accumulating the perfect shelf of crispy-clean sealed Synchronicity pressings and before your bodys cold some guy who doesnt know a hot stamper from a shakti stone is buying em for 4 bucks each

that carolina soul guy gets amazing results with his auctions. i once saw that other guy shopping in a local record store. what's his name, you know, the guy who says "GOOD LUCK FINDING ANOTHER SEALED COPY OF THIS RECORD!" when he left the store the proprietor said "yep, that's the guy everyone wants to be."

the VPI machine

pretty much all the new vinyl i've ever bought is basically like new though, it's remarkably easy to take care of records! they are actually a remarkably durable medium. there are 78s from forever ago that are still playable, i don't think my CDs will last that long

I know it! Most CD's I have of vintage music pre-dating analogue tape is mastered from surviving 78's. Unfortunately those original 78's are pretty expensive so buying them isn't practical. I don't mind, it's kind of nice having all of Louis Armstrong's Hot 5's & 7's in a nice cubish set of four CD's rather than shelves and shelves of 78's. I don't know how people can stand changing or flipping a record after every 3-minute song unless they grew up with that.

i stopped buying records at estate sales for just that reason

A slight tangent, but I've noticed in recent years that most "still sealed" out-of-print items I've found on eBay came from estate sales. I'm sure some of them were collectors, which makes your point especially sad because whoever inherited them was basically trying to clear them out, but most of them were apparently from former label execs or owners. I'm not sure if it was just unsold product or (in the case of major label releases) they just got a copy on something they worked on.

oh i have no interest in collecting 78s...i made a vow to stop buying 45s for that reason as well, i never listen to them

just saying that there's a lot more reason to believe that digital media is more "fragile" in a lot of senses (especially streaming and digital formats like mp3s etc in the sense of companies going under, formats changing, etc) in the future than records (or magnetic tape)'

but CDs are cool. however since i subscribed to Qobuz and got a setup with an outboard DAC and Chromecast audio, it just feels like putting a CD in is an unnecessary step when i could stream hi-rez, records at least do sound pretty different than digital

yeah I collect everything format-wise except 8-tracks and reels basically. pluses and minuses all around as noted. went to a cool estate sale recently that was like 5,000 45s, all meticulously cataloged on dot matrix printed sheets in front of every bin.

it's kind of nice having all of Louis Armstrong's Hot 5's & 7's in a nice cubish set of four CD's

there was a great "digital remaster" series of these as LPs in maybe the 80s, that's how I have that stuff. so good.

but just to get back to the revive, this hot stamper stuff is such a scam

seriously what a load of horesshit

I won't argue against streaming - it's pretty awesome we have that now, that's something people would've dreamed about decades ago. But I don't want to rely on a service's catalog, or their how their music is mastered. (Even hi-res becomes worthless if something isn't mastered well or brickwalled to shit.) And I don't want to rely on an internet signal either - that's probably less of an issue for most, but for whatever reason, we have had quite a few outages around here (I want my Fios, dammit!)

CDs and digital suit me, that's what I buy for myself. But sometimes I really appreciate the sound of a record and can understand the feeling that analogue (I'm talking pre-80s vinyl) is "closer to the music". I know that technically it's distorted, lower dynamic range, higher noise floor etc., but then I'm hearing definition and presence and... whatever, just enjoy it. That a whole chain of very skilled artists and artisan engineers were necessarily involved in making that thing probably doesn't hurt.

I once heard vinyl playback described as a "series of happy accidents" which rings true for me

I actually find anti-vinyl sentiment (in terms of digital scientifically being "better") much the same as a lot of audiophilia, like trust your ears not some readout of digital statistics

The appeal of vinyl (no skipping, listen to a full side) to me now is the exact reason I hated cassettes when I was a kid and got a CD player as soon as I could save enough.

But I don't want to rely on a service's catalog, or their how their music is mastered.

cue Jon Not Jon's detailed screed re: Universal and their audio watermarking that ruins everything

Yeah, getting back into vinyl has given me a "healthier" relationship to music. When streaming was my sole medium, I became so focused on the "best tracks" that I had a hard time listening to entire albums. With vinyl, I rarely ever listen to less than a full side of music and don't find myself worrying as much about what I am going to play *next*.

To be clear, I do get the appeal of vinyl, though it's tied too much to just the format. Past the quality of the pressing and the vinyl itself, digital vs analog mastering is a huge difference, and so is tubes vs solid state. If money wasn't an issue, I'd get any virgin vinyl record cut prior to the '70s - all tubes, all analog. The closest equivalent I can think of is watching a vintage IB Tech print of an old Hollywood movie. No reissue, not later film prints and not digital, can capture what you're seeing. But I also accept it's a luxury for people like myself, so I settle for optical discs (SACD's and UHD's on the high end) and that's more than fine with me.

If you really want to descend into the madness of new digital oriented "objective" audio component reviews, AudioScienceReview is a real madhouse, there seems to be a bit of a war between these guys and the old school audio magazine "subjective" reviews

*keep in mind that nearly all these graphs, etc, are basically showing tenths of a percentage point differences on distortion at frequencies well outside the range of human hearing*

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/topping-d30pro-review-balanced-dac.20259/

there is something compelling about the argument that cd-quality digital suffers from "time-smearing" -- a distortion or "ringing" in the time domain brought about by the filtering necessary to keep bad stuff out. for whatever reason, cds sound great for little while but then i lose focus. vinyl seems to better reward close listening, for me anyway. both formats have their uses. vinyl is definitely finicky and can send you down hobbyist rabbit holes. one day i will have a setup where anita o'day's 'incomparable!' plays through without any sibilance.

yes, and how does the cassette revival factor into all of that?

one day i will have a setup where anita o'day's 'incomparable!' plays through without any sibilance.

^^New borad description?

heh

there is something compelling about the argument that cd-quality digital suffers from "time-smearing" -- a distortion or "ringing" in the time domain brought about by the filtering necessary to keep bad stuff out.

this is one of those toxic topics that it is impossible to discus on the web. plus i am not an expert. but...there are experts who disagree with you.

Recent hearing research provides support for the long-standing notion that the time-domain performance of anti-alias and reconstruction filters—most especially steep digital linear-phase filters—is responsible for perceptible degradation of sound quality. Recently, direct evidence for the audibility of low-pass filters used in digital audio has been published. [18]

[18] Jackson, H. M., Capp, M. D. and Stuart, J. R., 'The audibility of typical digital audio filters in a high-fidelity playback system', 9174, 137th AES Convention, (2014).

https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-questions-and-answers

^^ I would argue that this also ties in to the well-documented example of Glenn Gould being able to distinguish with 100% accuracy between different digital playbacks on systems with the same specs, as per his (excellent) biography. It might not be audible to everyone, but it's audible to some people.

xp I'm a little sceptical of a "paper" which is just a conference presentation ... by people from Meridian Audio who tout the "Meridian Apodising Filter" as a selling point for their gear. Not saying it couldn't be true, just that there's no peer review and a screamingly obvious conflict of interest.

I find it hard to concentrate on LPs because I get tense waiting for the inner groove distortion to show

yes!!! and when it does i curse myself for getting sucked back into vinyl after a very happy few decades listening to CDs.

there are plenty of instances when i do feel that 'closer to the music' vibe with LPs - however irrational - but there are just as many 'pining for the CD' experiences.

happily the CD is on hand, as is the streaming option.

Nothing MQA related or derived -- especially "research" -- can be trusted. Their so-called technology is absolute hocus-bullshit.