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HD Vinyl is coming soon!!!

Flint

Prodigal Son
Superstar
https://consequenceofsound.net/2018...-real-thing-and-could-be-in-stores-next-year/

So, this looks promising, though the claims might be a tad iffy.

Using a laser to directly etch ceramic masters to press vinyl LPs, this company claims to produce more consistent disks, achieve longer playing times, and get more amplitude into the LPs we buy. I am not sure what is meant by "more amplitude", but it seems that could be utilized to reduce noise and get more silence between tracks and in the music... maybe. We tend to track a bit heavier than in my youth where a good Telarc pressing of the 1812 Overture would shoot the needle clear out of the grove when it came across the canon blasts, so maybe this will work.

But the consistent pressings (I've experienced firsthand the difference between two identical LPs pressed on the same stamper, one early in the run and one at the end of the run, and it was obvious the latter pressing suffered in direct comparison to the prior pressing. That is a huge improvement. Longer playing times are nice if you want to get the full 80 minutes from a CD into an LP, but I don't consider that critical.

We'll see.
 
While the ability of the stamper to hold on to its ability to make later stampings sound nearer in quality to the early ones is a very interesting development, there is one very, very big problem the article doesn't address. That is trackability on the consumer end - that is the ability of the user's cartridge to track the grooves without undue distortion, especially at high cutting velocities.

Conventional cutting lathes can already cram more density of grooves and "amplitude" than any real-world cartridge (even extremely high end ones) can successfully track. The ability to cram more density into the grooves seems like a solution which doesn't hold up in the real world, not to mention the cartridges in use by the vast majority of people.

So yes, you can cut a record which nobody will be able to track. Great going guys.....

Now you could always argue that you can use laser turntables to get around the tracking issue yada, yada, yada. At that point though, the whole point of using vinyl (for its euphonic colorations, let's be frank) is entirely lost, and you might as well just listen to a CD. We don't need "HD Vinyl". The point of vinyl isn't "HD" because vinyl is not a high definition medium in the first place. It just sounds good to many people because of its shortcomings.
 
Another very real problem related to the tracking issue is that of pre-echo. Whenever a heavily modulated groove is cut, the adjacent grooves get deformed because of the fact that vinyl is a soft plastic, and you will hear a pre-echo of the music before it starts. I'm sure almost everyone here has heard this; in fact this effect was the inspiration for Led Zeppelin's use on vocals on their early albums.

If the people who came up with the "more playing time and more amplitude" scheme actually do that, the pre-echo issue will get even worse.

Like I mentioned before, current cutter technology can already cut grooves beyond the ability of cartridges to track them, and I have plenty of records on which I hear distortion, especially on the inner grooves. This would only get worse if groove modulation is increased, no matter how "computer optimized" they might be.

Sometimes "new" ideas are just monumentally stupid.
 
Another very real problem related to the tracking issue is that of pre-echo. Whenever a heavily modulated groove is cut, the adjacent grooves get deformed because of the fact that vinyl is a soft plastic, and you will hear a pre-echo of the music before it starts. I'm sure almost everyone here has heard this; in fact this effect was the inspiration for Led Zeppelin's use on vocals on their early albums.

If the people who came up with the "more playing time and more amplitude" scheme actually do that, the pre-echo issue will get even worse.

Like I mentioned before, current cutter technology can already cut grooves beyond the ability of cartridges to track them, and I have plenty of records on which I hear distortion, especially on the inner grooves. This would only get worse if groove modulation is increased, no matter how "computer optimized" they might be.

Sometimes "new" ideas are just monumentally stupid.
All your points seem to make perfect sense. The only point I'd like to raise wouldn't the people working on this HD vinyl have thought of all this and figured it out? Can they be so ignorant as to ignore all these issues?
 
All your points seem to make perfect sense. The only point I'd like to raise wouldn't the people working on this HD vinyl have thought of all this and figured it out? Can they be so ignorant as to ignore all these issues?

They don't really have to if they're counting on the consumer to ignore the issues. Let's face it, anybody still into vinyl is already ignoring these shortcomings. If they weren't, they wouldn't be into vinyl.
 
WOW I can now listen to HD vinyl while wearing my HD sunglasses.

Never underestimate the gullibility of those that need the latest thing.
 
All your points seem to make perfect sense. The only point I'd like to raise wouldn't the people working on this HD vinyl have thought of all this and figured it out? Can they be so ignorant as to ignore all these issues?
I think that they are really that stupid. What's probably going on is that they don't have any depth of experience with this technology and in their ignorance think they can "solve" some perceived problem.

The problems I'm referring to are on the consumer end; absolutely nothing they can do on the manufacturing or mastering end will be able to change or overcome the limitations of the turntables and cartridges that people actually own. Its a un-solvable physics problem. In fact, in the 1970s RCA tried to "fix" the tracking problem with their Dynagroove discs. It was a disaster, and the sound quality of the discs was roundly damned. It essentially drove RCA out of the market and they never recovered.

Now, I don't have an issue with trying to use a ceramic stamper - that might work although (A) it might be too expensive for such a limited market and (B) it might change the sound of the medium, which would probably turn off the people who are supporting the market.

Remember the "new" Coke fiasco? Coca Cola had all the market research and hubris to believe that they could "improve" the original Coke formula. Turns out that people hated the resulting product, so Coca Cola threw in the towel and went back to the old formula, and life was good again.
 
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Playing the advocate for the inventors, they may have intended to solve the wearing down of the stamper issue and the use of noxious chemicals in the stamping production process but needed a more compelling argument for investors and future customers to get the funds and support to move forward with the business. So, by selling their new tech with the term "HD" and making claims about the technology which most novice users can appreciate, they get more press and thus attention from the pseudo-science audiophile community who might buy into the whole promised land marketing lingo when the real goal is a better modern way to make stampers but which requires some significant initial investment to make real.

But otherwise I agree with everything you have said, Rammis.
 
I've got a great investment idea. Let's make an exoskeleton gizmo which attaches to horses to enable them to run at 60 miles per hour. Then all the people who ride horses for recreation who have been complaining about the fact that horses are "slow" will have their dreams answered. Not to mention that horses will then be able to use the freeways, with "autonomous" horses soon to follow. Anybody here want to invest?
 
I have no idea why you wrote that, but it appears to be insulting. If it was meant to be insulting, you've succeeded.
 
I have no idea why you wrote that, but it appears to be insulting. If it was meant to be insulting, you've succeeded.
Huh???? It was meant as satire on the whole investment mentality going on these days, and nothing more. It just seems to me at least that there is an increase in recent years in people trying to to get money to fix problems which don't exist. Some of the recent iOT devices are a case in point; some seem useful, some seem silly.
 
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I've got a great investment idea. Let's make an exoskeleton gizmo which attaches to horses to enable them to run at 60 miles per hour. Then all the people who ride horses for recreation who have been complaining about the fact that horses are "slow" will have their dreams answered. Not to mention that horses will then be able to use the freeways, with "autonomous" horses soon to follow. Anybody here want to invest?

I have a great product for these horses. I call them High Definition Oats. They will help your 60mph horse meet his true potential.
 
Huh???? It was meant as satire on the whole investment mentality going on these days, and nothing more. It just seems to me at least that there is an increase in recent years in people trying to to get money to fix problems which don't exist.

Okay, well that's now how I read it. I get your point, but I also know how hard it is to get funding for really good ideas when the those ideas are not simple to understand to the typical early round investor (which most investors are idiots anyway because they tend to be gambling on the hope of finding the next Facebook). Trying to simplify the benefits to the average investor or consumer can be difficult.
 
In fact, in the 1970s RCA tried to "fix" the tracking problem with their Dynagroove discs. It was a disaster, and the sound quality of the discs was roundly damned. It essentially drove RCA out of the market and they never recovered.
Actually it was a decade before that. I only know because I inherited the remainder of my Dad's record collection and recall seeing "Dynagroove" on a few of them, including this one, released in 1963.

R-8421947-1461289347-7588_jpeg.jpg

I have no idea how it sounds - but I'm about to give it a spin. Like all of Dad's albums it's in visually near-perfect condition, but I can guarantee that it was played on the record player (with ceramic cartridge) in his Electrohome stereo console - which probably wasn't as gentle on the groves as the Stanton 681EEE that I'm about to use.

Interestingly, the album came with a full-page technical description of the Dynagroove system, along with a "Professional Listening Test" and "Quick Test" demonstration for anyone to try. I'll see if I can scan and post it - purely for history sake.

Jeff
 
Yeah, looking at the Wikipedia page for Dynagroove does give 1963 as its origin, and more detail on how the process worked. I actually have a number of Dynagroove discs which don't really sound all that bad, but what do I know....

Could you post that full page description from the album?
 
So SIDE A sounded pretty good. (Full disclosure: I am, of course, bringing my full suite of tech gadgets to the task: SAE-5000 Impulse Noise Reduction, Pioneer RG-1 Dynamic Range Expander, and dbx-100 Subharmonic Synthesizer.) No mistracking noticed. Surface noise only noticeable on between-tracks grooves. If Dynagroove is somehow making this sound worse than any other vinyl, I'm not hearing it. (Disclaimer: I don't claim to own Golden Ears!)

Really good stereo recording / soundstage. Full orchestra with lots of brass and percussion. Recognizable tunes (for someone of my vintage with parents who listened to a lot of this music.)

Looked up Sid Ramin and see he was quite accomplished (if Academy and Grammy awards are any such indication). He also wrote the song "Music To Watch Girls By" which was recorded by The Bob Crewe Generation, and which I have in my collection. Love that tune! Here it is.


I was able to scan the Dynagroove sheet. Here it is, in two parts.

Dynagroove 1 (Small).JPG

Dynagroove 2 (Small).JPG

Sorry for any eyestrain caused!

Jeff
 
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