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Ever wondered why you sometimes have to wait months after an album's launch to get the music on vinyl? It's not necessarily because the label hates vinyl — in many cases, it's because the decades-old manufacturing process can't keep up with the format's resurgence. Relief may be in sight for turntable fans, though. Viryl Technologies is producing a pressing machine system, WarmTone, that should drag vinyl production into the modern era.
Much of WarmTone's improvement rests in its use of modern engineering. It's more reliable when producing the "pucks" that become records, makes it easier to switch out stampers (the negatives that press records) and sports a trimming/stacking system that can better handle large-scale production. Also, there's a raft of sensors -- the machine checks everything from pressure to temperature to timing, so companies will immediately know if something goes wrong.
Logically, the interface has been spruced up as well. Touchscreens help control the pressing machine on-site, and workers can check on the state of the machine from their computer or phone.
Source:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/29/vinyl-record-production-tech-upgrade/
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Monday February 06 2017, @01:05PM
The best thing is that the presses from the 60s (e.g. HMV's in Hayes) *are* audiophile quality. Listen to some Trevor Pinnock on Deutsche grammaphon on an all-Linn system and close your eyes - you'll be transported into the room with the instruments, it's beautiful (if you like baroque music). Crank up some Karajan with full orchestra, and you'll be able to spread out the full stereo soundspace beautifully. The medium, virgin, was not the limitation to quality.
Of course, the age of these presses is a worry, because, like vinyl, as things wear, they become hard to replace. So it's good that there's interest in new kit, using better technology. I just hope they're going into the hands of people who know how to use them.
For reference, I'm not an audiophool, I simply grew up with vinyl; from an audio reproduction perspective, CDs are better than vinyl, transisters are better than valves, and blind tests are better than bullshit. (Which makes hi-fi magazines 99.99% bullshit, with an error bar of +/-0.01%.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday February 06 2017, @01:34PM
Yep. Mastering was the problem, not CDs. For electric guitar though, valves are better, because the *do* add colour. Emulations are getting quite good too though.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Monday February 06 2017, @02:15PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday February 06 2017, @04:29PM
Indeed. A lot of guitarists set a small tube (valve for the Brits) amp, and use a mic to pick up the distorted sound and then amplify it with solid state amps. The reason tubes at clipping levels sound so much better is that transistors cut off abruptly, giving it a true square wave, while a tube at distortion levels have the edges of the square wave rounded.
This stuff's a lot easier to understand and explain with an oscilloscope.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday February 06 2017, @07:58PM
That isn't true. It has to do with the harmonics. IIRC, transistors driven to clipping have odd-order harmonics, and tubes have even-order harmonics, plus the transformers used in tube amps have a lot to do with the harmonic distortion.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday February 06 2017, @08:50PM
Have a look at the waveforms on an oscilloscope.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @04:14AM
one way to describe a square wave is an infinite series of odd harmonics...
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Thursday February 09 2017, @10:32AM
It's certainly what I'd do were I performing again. I'm using a 30 watt Orange combo ATM though will probably downsize that further, assuming my arthritis doesn't stop me playing altogether; the Laney IronHeart series has a couple of 15-watt amps you can pull down to 0.5 and 1 watt, one of those having a USB out to record straight to your DAW. The attraction of lower wattage amps is that it's easier to get the output valves to distort without deafening everyone inside a 2 mile radius. As my hearing is not great anyway - a young and stupid guitarist did not believe in hearing protection and if I had a time machine I would kick him in the balls - then this would be a huge advantage in attempting to get the sound in my head to come out through the speaker. An overdriven valve amp pushing the output valves is the sound of a vengeful god.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday February 06 2017, @04:25PM
Mastering was only part of CD's problem. CDs are way too low a resolution for high fidelity. I've heard vinyl that sounded exactly like the musician was in the room, but have never heard a CD that could fool me into thinking it was live. Sampling rates should be tripled at the very least.
Back in the late '70s in college I had a physics class that was about sound. The instructor was hyping the new "quadraphonics" they had recently come out with (analog surround sound). I pointed out that a $500 stereo would sound better than a $500 quad system, because all the parts would have to be twice as cheap because there are twice as many of them. Also, who sits in the middle of the orchestra unless they're playing an instrument?
I had noticed that quad records played on a stereo didn't sound as good as the identical two channel stereo version. The reason was how they got four channels from one groove. The quad version had the rear channels modulated with a 40kHz tone. On playback it was mixed out of phase with the two channel signal, removing the front channels. But to do that, they had to clip the entire audible signal to 20kHz. Those quadraphonic records sounded like CDs!
a 20 kHz cutoff loses frequencies that you can't actually hear, but affect the sounds you can hear.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @05:18PM
No worries then. Just grab some FLACs that are meant for DJs at 24 bit / 196 khz.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday February 06 2017, @05:20PM
Every blind test I've ever seen done disagrees with your assertions. In some, people were also fooled into thinking CD was vinyl by the addition of distortion in some of them.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday February 06 2017, @09:01PM
The blind test I'd like to see is generate a pure 17kHz sine wave and a 17kHz sawtooth wave and see if teenagers can tell the difference.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday February 06 2017, @11:29PM
True enough. I think they probably could. My hearing has degraded a bit but I can still hear the difference between MP3 an FLAC ... I'd assume they could as well, they just don't care as the music and mastering renders it less important. I might be wrong of course.
I'm kind of a believer in "good enough", but really, MP3 is *not* good enough.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 07 2017, @01:11AM
However, I don't sell my CDs, so I can always play them through my real hi-fi pathway. The hi-fi's in the office. I visit the office only one or two days a month nowadays...
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:52PM
I keep CDs to play in my twelve year old car.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday February 06 2017, @07:05PM
Do you even nyquist [wikipedia.org]?
TL;DR: If your clock source is good enough, you can get perfect reproduction (assuming an infinite number of samples).
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday February 06 2017, @07:07PM
Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem [wikipedia.org]
Actual article I was trying to link to.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday February 06 2017, @08:56PM
The key there is "infinite number of samples." forty four samples per second is most certainly not infinite, or its Nyquist limit of 22kHz, the reason all harmonics above 20kHz are taken out. Above the Nyquist limit you get horrible, audible, loud noise. I posit that harmonics above a person's hearing affect the audible signal, making the sample sound dead, artificial.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday February 06 2017, @09:21PM
Harmonics above the nyquist frequency do affect the signal (causing aliasing). That is why you filter them out. With a higher sample rate, I will concede that you can move the audio filtering into the digital domain: allowing almost an almost ideal pass-band.
And yes, 44,000 samples per second can be infinite. The longer you record, the closer to an ideal approximation you will get. Clock error probably dominates after a million samples (23 seconds) or so though.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:46PM
Look at it on a graph. The cutoff of 20 kHz is because 44kHz is by no means infinite. A quintillion samples per second still isn't infinite. The only "infinite" sampling rate is analog.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday February 08 2017, @07:46PM
To use an analogy: there are infinite real numbers between 1 and 2. However, that does not imply that the sequence of integers is not infinite.
Analog sampling may not be as infinite [wikipedia.org] as you think. I am fairly sure the noise described in that article is caused by the random motion of electrons in matter making up the circuit.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday February 10 2017, @02:28AM
Actually, tape is certainly not infinite, no more than photographic film The oxide on the tape is made of tiny particles, just like the silver grains on film, and vinyl is recorded from either analog tape or a computer's a/d output.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @04:22AM
Sounds great but it contradicts about a century of experimental evidence. You wouldn't have any such evidence yourself, would you?
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday February 07 2017, @06:42AM
I remember listening to Dark Side of the Moon on a quad system, 8 track even. It sounded excellent.
8 track was a funny format, it was actually of sounding quite good but there was sure a shortage of music that managed to sound good on it, probably the record companies cheeping out.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:42PM
Yes, it was because the labels were and are stupid. The idiots illogically deemed eight track players for cars, and cassettes for the home, and since cars had shitty acoustics, eight track fidelity fifn't matter.
On a quad eight track or cassette, the quad would have sounded better than stereo (if you could afford paying twice as much for the equipment) because tape had discrete tracks, but vinyl had to multiplex, resulting in a far lower frequency range.
Stupid. Eight tracks had twice the transport speed of cassettes, so should have sounded better. Even more stupid is that cassettes are far more portable; one eight track is the same size as four cassettes, and you could buy longer playing cassettes.
I never had an eight track (although my ex-wife did when I married her). I was using cassettes since 1968, in the car since the early '70s. I always hated the way songs got cut off in the middle on an eight track, which everyone I knew had.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org