Return of the Vinyl Album

bulled writes "NPR ran a story this morning about the comeback of vinyl. It seems that sales of new vinyl records are up about 10%; sales will approach a million this year (as against half a billion for CDs). NPR mentioned the popularity of a turntable with a USB interface — they didn't specify the brand; could be this one, or this — and speculated on other possible reasons for the resurgence. They mentioned sound quality and lack of DRM as possible causes. Sound quality can and will be debated, but DRM rates a resounding 'Duh.'"

Analogue vs Digital

[ShieldW0lf]

There's no debate. Analogue recordings are better. And they keep better too. If you make an analogue recording of something using top of the line equipment, 50 years from now, you'll be able to use superior tools to pull a more accurate representation of the sonic environment than anything we can do now. If you record digital, a bit is a bit is a bit.

Best method, use the highest quality analogue gear you can find to record, then sample it in the highest quality digital you can for editing and distribution, then throw the original analogue in the vault so you can re-sample it again in 5 years.

Re:Help

[Mr. Underbridge]

I can't relate to the opposite sex very well. I haven't had any real romantic relationship with a female and I'm 25 now. I don't feel comfortable approaching them, and I can't "strike up a conversation" as seems to be so easy for everyone else. What should I do?

You're not a double amputee are you? Do I have to draw you a picture?

Re:USB?

[setirw]

But it doesn't defeat the purpose of coolness.

Re:Not surprising.

[goombah99]

From a collector's stand point, vinyls never really faded from popularity. I still have all of my old vinyls and purchase new ones today by more current bands.

That's so last year. I'm going to digital Vinyl, I take my Vinyl records, convert them to MP3 then send this out over a modem which I then record as analog audio on the vinyl record. This way I don't encounter the dynamic range limitations of the vinyl.

DRM can be implemented in vinyl

[MillionthMonkey]

Surely you don't think they're going to put the raw analog signal right in the vinyl so you can copy it! They're not about to make that mistake again. A generation of USB-enabled record players will come out that will be able to play your vinyl records from the attic, and also some goofy "new and improved" vinyl hi-def format where you drop the needle on an encryption key instead of the first track.

Vinyl Records Do Have The One Downfall Of...

[morari]

Promoting DJs. Ew.

Re:Analogue vs Digital

[garcia]

I agree that high quality analog recordings are a good thing to keep around for posterity, but analog recordings certainly aren't better for home reproduction (they'll get a little worse every time you play them), unless you don't mind having to repurchase albums every so often.

Oh I get it! The RIAA wants these to come back so that they can get you to download and pay for a digital copy for your portable media player and have to keep repurchasing your physical medium as well!

This is the "new" "old" DRM. Vinyl, the gift that keeps on giving...to the RIAA.

Digital Vinyl DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

switch from MP3 to WMA so you can add DRM and I might be interested. But I'll have to wait for the Zune version so I can squirt my Vinyl. Chicks dig me.

Re:It's a fashion trend

[shinma]

Never had a girlfriend (or boyfriend) with a tongue piercing, huh?

There's more to them than shock value. Really.

Re:It's a fashion trend

[goombah99]

And sewer rat might taste like pumkin pie but I'm not eating one to find out.

Records with laser pickups are "Compact Discs"

[rhinoX]

Some crazy Japanese company (Sony I believe) released a product called a "Compact Disc" Player (CD Player for short) in the early 80's that implements a scheme vaguely like what you describe. A laser pickup ("needle" if you will) runs over tracks ("grooves"), looking for divots on the surface.

I wonder whatever happened to it..

Re:So let me get this straight...

[mblase]

What am I missing?

The brick wall, with your forehead. A little more damage to your frontal lobes will do wonders for your audiophile logic.

Re:Not surprising-Art for spaces sake.

[Anonymous Coward]

>More space for cover art.

And you can't roll a 'jazz cigarette' on an iPod.

Re:USB?

[ozbird]

record player with USB? doesn't that defeat the purpose of analog sound quality?

Relax - it's using a valve/tube-based ADC [electricstuff.co.uk].
(Not really - but it's a pretty cool gadget.)

Re:So let me get this straight...

[fuzz6y]

I just got done fixing my piano. those metal strings kept distorting the sound of the little swinging hammers.

You just know...

[Quiet_Desperation]

...Volvo will offer a 6 vinyl album in-dash changer.

Re:Not surprising-Art for spaces sake.

[JebusIsLord]

I just tried. Mission accomplished.

Re:Digital Vinyl data capacity blows CDs out of wa

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we just witnessed the nerd version of a bar brawl...

Re:Digital Vinyl data capacity blows CDs out of wa

[Nullav]

Lets compare this with a cd which is much much smaller than a record and can hold 700 MB per side (a two-sided one would hold ~1.4GB). Not quite up to the theoretical maximum that you claim your record could get, however consider the size, or the fact that a DVD, which is the same dimensions as the CD, and uses similar technology as it can hold up to 4.7GB on a single layer disc. This is far more data than the record can hold, and requires less sensitive electronics, and much less processing power to decode.

Obviously, this means the LaserDisc is going to make a comeback soon.

Re:Digital Vinyl DRM

[Gilmoure]

Didn't Squirt My Vinyl open for the Ramones in '78?

Giggle, you're sooo cute when your ears turn red

[goombah99]

First off, CD quality in 30-40k. Really? Then why the hell haven't we seen it anywhere? You don't think Apple would kill to have a more efficient format for storing and distributing music?

-1 point for reading comprehension. I said "near-cd" and I'm using the term that all the on-line radio simmulcasts use so go argue with them. my sole definition which I stated was "better than the original vinyl".

Also you seem to have no understanding of the problems of encoding to a broadband format.

Thank you for your tedious flame sir. I won't bother to point you to my papers and patents on heterodyne modulation.

For one, you can't stack your channels right on top of each other. You'll find that you have all kinds of problems. Look at any real broadband system, and you'll find out they've built in space between channels for just that reason.

This is not even wrong. Let's see where to begin?. 1) first in theory there is no reason at all one cannot virtually stack channels without a buffer between them. run them through a acausal anti-alias notch filter. 2) They have to have that buffer for TV channels because the modulation schema and detection schema in use do bleed outside their channels. 3) this is all moot anyhow. The analysis was (*obviously*) just a gendanken argument about channel capacity. Once could do better not making artificial channel boundaries but just using the whole range directly. It's just that by thinking of it as channels of a modulation scheme one already knows the data rate for, one can quickly suss out the expected data rate for the bandwidth without doing any complex maths

Next, you've got the problem of assuming that two stereo channels can be used separately. Errr, no. In any analogue system, two adjacent channels will have some amount of crosstalk. That is to say a signal on one channel will bleed over to the other to some degree...Not a big deal for stereo audio, it's highly correlated anyhow and we don't need a ton of separation to hear stereo, however it'll fuck with your encoding real bad.

BZZT. sorry no. all that is handled by the SNR term. cross talk sets a noise floor. What the noise floor is may depend on the modulation scheme. Now if you wanted to make a point here you should point out that that the plasticity of vinyl and needles may introduce non-linearities that can't support simultaneous use of the full audio spectrum. Granted. However that is only going to lower my argument by some fudge factor. And the argument is only an order of magnitude sketch to begin with so I that's not something to fret at this point. I'm not going to quibble over factors of 2, are you?

Then of course we get to things like error correction, assumptions that the SNR is equal with regards to frequency (it's not) and so on. I'm not going to go in to all the problems in detail since it ought to be apparent at this point that you didn't think this through.

Giggle. You are really taking this proposal seriously aren't you? The whole thing is a joke! if you really wanted to store more music on a cd just use Mp3s. good golly. However, the rather intriguing idea here is that if Mp3 had predated audio CDs Vinyl would have had a much larger storage capacity and signal to noise than we conventionally consider. It's very suprising how good vinyl really could have been.