Old 12-29-2021, 06:30 AM   #41
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I've actually made one. No need to google it.
https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f9472...8921859227649/

Not the solution I think we need. We need a change in people's mind.
Not to force them to value digital stuff. It's to make them WANT to value digital stuff.
And, unless you're taking about NFTs, digital is cleaner than vinyl. And we have to be able to do art. Of course we ruin the the planet by just existing lol. Just don't make it so bad.
What you say about cimema is not accurate either, it's an experience, that's what people buy, not ownership.
Of course here nobody is going to make this easy for me.
I'm arguing about having too much stuff with...
People who are going to fight for it a lot.
Of course my country contaminates too, but you can't seriously compare it to the central ones. I don't have the same attitud towards things than someone from there, sorry.
This thread is a continuation of the one about killing sacred cows.
I tried to talk about vinyl there, but I thought that it deserved it's own thread.
Listening to an album has very much, for me, been a revelatory experience. And I didnt own the music necessarily.

Digital isnt 'cleaner' than vinyl, per se. At all. Im not sure where you get that from when one takes into account the mass amount of tech involved, and the mountains of obsolete tech from upgrades. Its all involved. Its all part of the same chain.

Personally, I couldnt give a shit about ownership EDIT: I meant physical products. I dont own any vinyl but one album (which I bought purely to get the digital download), I dont have a turntable or any physical media.

There isnt really any 'this media is better than that' or more 'needed' by the world. To make enough money out of it, to make it worth a living, to shift enough units, means being part the cog of shit capitalism. You cant really have it both ways. You cant have inherent consumption limits and mass marketing. NFT's certainly dont help.

Its all shit, none of its needed, and what metric are we judging each choice of medias 'ethical' right to exist? Its a none starter argument, and a none starter way to change anyones mind.

But my point about cinema was, you dont need to change anyones minds, they already pay billions for experiences, you just need to offer something they want. Without that, all this is moot.

Anyway, now I realise where you're coming from...

Vinyl, no, it isnt worth it EDIT: But then neither was that NFT you made and thats sucking up resources as we speak

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Old 12-29-2021, 06:37 AM   #42
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Of course here nobody is going to make this easy for me.
I'm arguing about having too much stuff with...
People who are going to fight for it a lot.

////

This thread is a continuation of the one about killing sacred cows.
I tried to talk about vinyl there, but I thought that it deserved it's own thread.
I dont think this was clear to me from your opening post at all. Hence my previous answers, and you feeling like this is now a two sided argument. I didnt realise there was any argument.

I have no interest in arguing for the concept of having more stuff. If thats what you got out of what I was saying, you've misunderstood based on my misunderstanding
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Old 12-29-2021, 06:52 AM   #43
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I dont think this was clear to me from your opening post at all. Hence my previous answers, and you feeling like this is now a two sided argument. I didnt realise there was any argument.

I have no interest in arguing for the concept of having more stuff. If thats what you got out of what I was saying, you've misunderstood based on my misunderstanding
Fair enough, the argument about having more stuff is pointless.
What I'm trying to work out is why people are willing to play the whole vinyl game.
I don't think the money is that great, I could be wrong, but I don't think this is a real solution to the situation of the artists.
There's so much wrong stuff going on that's hard to know where to start.
I used to watch a lot of Jaron Lanier's talks. He talked about some very smart ways to fix the internet.
I don't know, maybe we are way past that point now.
I bet you'll be able to buy virtual vinyls in the metaverse lol but they will screw the artists somehow.
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Old 12-29-2021, 07:18 AM   #44
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I bet you'll be able to buy virtual vinyls in the metaverse lol but they will screw the artists somehow.
Hahah Some things are a constant

But yeah, its a conundrum. Quite a huge one. Like you, I do wonder if we're already beyond some tipping points. It is worth remembering that people will pay for an experience. People do want all manner of what art has to offer, its just finding them and having something thats wanted, whether digital or otherwise. The resurgence of vinyl seems a bit dumb to me but I also get it. Nostalgia, sound, large artwork, blah blah blah.

My own musings seem to nearly always land at the idea of finding other artists to make one off 'art' packaging with, give it a community 'support the artist' feel, with added collectability. It turns the first listen of the album in to a multi-sensory experience. And it means the choice of media is kinda irrelevant. In those terms, I'd be unlikely to do vinyl for any reason other than nostalgia. I cant really see a justification for it otherwise. Maybe some soy vinyl? Hemp vinyl this shit!

EDIT: The main thing big budget huge cinema has, the thing we cant really emulate, the thing record labels have over us, is 100's of millions spent on marketing. Finding and growing a loyal audience seems to be the only way around that one I think?

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Old 12-29-2021, 07:38 AM   #45
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Hahah Some things are a constant

But yeah, its a conundrum. Quite a huge one. Like you, I do wonder if we're already beyond some tipping points. It is worth remembering that people will pay for an experience. People do want all manner of what art has to offer, its just finding them and having something thats wanted, whether digital or otherwise. The resurgence of vinyl seems a bit dumb to me but I also get it. Nostalgia, sound, large artwork, blah blah blah.

My own musings seem to nearly always land at the idea of finding other artists to make one off 'art' packaging with, give it a community 'support the artist' feel, with added collectability. It turns the first listen of the album in to a multi-sensory experience. And it means the choice of media is kinda irrelevant. In those terms, I'd be unlikely to do vinyl for any reason other than nostalgia. I cant really see a justification for it otherwise. Maybe some soy vinyl? Hemp vinyl this shit!

EDIT: The main thing big budget huge cinema has, the thing we cant really emulate, the thing record labels have over us, is 100's of millions spent on marketing. Finding and growing a loyal audience seems to be the only way around that one I think?
Some bands here released cassettes, maybe to appeal to the pity of the audience lol
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Old 12-29-2021, 07:48 AM   #46
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Some bands here released cassettes, maybe to appeal to the pity of the audience lol
Cassette sales are also very much on the rise. Much like vinyl, its a niche interest that can become a nostalgia sales boon for the right companies.

It doesnt really seem like any sort of step forward to me but yeah, cassette sales are strong atm. I get it but I dont really see it as much of a good idea
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Old 12-29-2021, 07:53 AM   #47
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Cassette sales are also very much on the rise. Much like vinyl, its a niche interest that can become a nostalgia sales boon for the right companies.

It doesnt really seem like any sort of step forward to me but yeah, cassette sales are strong atm. I get it but I dont really see it as much of a good idea
I've seen a lot of movies hyping vinyl and cassette, and the 80s.
Like one of the Transformers movies set in the 80s. The girl of course had a walkman with a cassette of The Smiths lol
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Old 12-29-2021, 08:05 AM   #48
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I've seen a lot of movies hyping vinyl and cassette, and the 80s.
Like one of the Transformers movies set in the 80s. The girl of course had a walkman with a cassette of The Smiths lol
All things must pass...

And then come back around again.

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Old 12-29-2021, 09:34 AM   #49
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Listening to an album has very much, for me, been a revelatory experience. And I didnt own the music necessarily.

Digital isnt 'cleaner' than vinyl, per se. At all. Im not sure where you get that from when one takes into account the mass amount of tech involved, and the mountains of obsolete tech from upgrades. Its all involved. Its all part of the same chain.

Personally, I couldnt give a shit about ownership EDIT: I meant physical products. I dont own any vinyl but one album (which I bought purely to get the digital download), I dont have a turntable or any physical media.

There isnt really any 'this media is better than that' or more 'needed' by the world. To make enough money out of it, to make it worth a living, to shift enough units, means being part the cog of shit capitalism. You cant really have it both ways. You cant have inherent consumption limits and mass marketing. NFT's certainly dont help.

Its all shit, none of its needed, and what metric are we judging each choice of medias 'ethical' right to exist? Its a none starter argument, and a none starter way to change anyones mind.

But my point about cinema was, you dont need to change anyones minds, they already pay billions for experiences, you just need to offer something they want. Without that, all this is moot.

Anyway, now I realise where you're coming from...

Vinyl, no, it isnt worth it EDIT: But then neither was that NFT you made and thats sucking up resources as we speak
I can't believe I totally missed this post. You're right, phones aren't good for the Earth, and it's all f$%&d up.
When I made the NFT I didn't know about the power they take.
I went from being a musician, who has to pay for studio time and earn nothing from the records, to being a small studio owner who makes minimum wages money from making records for independent artists.
I wouldn't recommend them anything for selling their stuff. That's none of my business.
It's interesting that from this thread I got that vinyls can be made out of any digital master, so I won't worry about a different master for vinyl.
My masters are reasonable with levels and stereo stuff, so there.
EDIT: can NFT's be killed?

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Old 12-29-2021, 01:04 PM   #50
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OP: I don't understand your issues with NFTs... you don't seem to like them any better than vinyl. Seems like the clear next step to me and the opportunity for the artist to re-engage listeners and reclaim a viable space in the cycle. An NFT release can include all the nice extras than can engage listeners that were discussed like artwork, credits, and more more more, and the artist pockets the money so long as they own it.

And, as I understand it, it's downloaded once, by the buyer, rather than streamed on demand, which always seemed shockingly wasteful to me. Why should a Taylor Swift fan stream the same few songs over and over again, a constant trickle of bandwidth and electric power, times 100 million Swifties, becoming a huge waste, when they can just have them on their phone or w/e? An NFT with say, personalized artwork, or some other engagement feature would be an incentive to not rely on streaming.
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Old 12-29-2021, 01:12 PM   #51
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Is NFT the next money laundry thing?
What happened to crypto and computer games? Is it over?
I know mass sports, construction and charity foundations will always be around for this? But they require some work.

Virtual trending schemes are much faster and somehow untraceable (maybe?).
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Old 12-29-2021, 01:19 PM   #52
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What in the Sam hell does gambling with bitcoin/etc have to do with releasing music? Someone looking for a new DRM grift to corrupt music files with or something?
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Old 12-29-2021, 03:18 PM   #53
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At a point we have reached an incredible degree of progress through digital technology as well as our dependence upon it, it's possible the desire for recorded music on vinyl records again is another manifestation of how many people yearn for the world to go back to a time before there were groups of people out there with the right resources trying to make the world more complicated in order to better control it for themselves.
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Old 12-29-2021, 05:13 PM   #54
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NFTs are a straight up pyramid scheme. If you can find a buyer for your NFT, then it’s good for you. However, the chances of that person then reselling that same NFT is slim to none. The only people that win are the original sellers, so in that case I say: FLEECE THE SHEEP!!!
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Old 12-29-2021, 07:09 PM   #55
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Beside the question how much worse vinyl vs. digital formats is (and how big the nostalgia factor is), there are subgenres where vinyl never was gone and that for good reasons. Hiphop without turntables for scratching and mixing would not be the same in the 90/00th, same for Techno-Music. Meanwhile there are of course affordable digital solution for that but a lot of people still like the old way. In the 90th/00th for the DIY Punk and Hardcore scene vinyl was a cheaper way to bring out small edition of 200 or 300 pieces, and second hand record players were available all over the world for a few bucks. Vinyl could even be played with an old mechanical gramophone. Try that with your watersigned digial file in twenty years when your harddrive/cloudspace/brainconnector did not recognise your account anymore.

If you ask if vinyl is worth it, just check the discog prices for records of your favourite artist vs. the prices for CDs. And I would say YES it is. And that's why the music industry (formerly known as record industry) came back to vinyl. Collectors of music want to put something physical and nicely haptic in their shelf instead of storing just a token on their smartphone or the mostly ugly jewelcase CDs.
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Old 12-30-2021, 03:15 AM   #56
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So yes, NFTs are new, and there are elements of speculation and market-making going on. But why can't it just be simple value for money? As I understand it, an NFT is simply the blockchain equivalent of a receipt; there's nothing inherently dishonest about it, rather the opposite, proves you own something, most likely by honest purchase, though there's no reason you can't gift an NFT, or some might feel it was a foolish purchase.

Revisiting T. Swift, so she releases her next album. There's a set of tracks and artwork that are released through the usual sources. There is also a NFT edition, of 10,000, whatever, with special artwork, behind the scenes pics and vids, bonus tracks not released for streaming, etc. ect., every one made unique and all watermarked to the buyer. $100 a pop or more, bet she'd sell as many as she liked. Now of course some buyers are going to share, or resell, but it's all good for Ms. Swift, raises her work's value and profile, and maybe next time there's -no- standard release, just different levels of NFT releases, and Spoutify can f off.

From more of a bootstrap perspective, so you're a struggling artist. You have maybe a hundred fans. Send 'em all a -free- NFT release, with a track, a nice note, dick pics, whatever. Go to the trouble of making them nice, and all unique. Bet you could charge for the next round, and bet you'd have more fans then, because people like free stuff and the new hotness and now -you're- doing the market-making.

And so obviously these are the most obvious facile ideas for using NFTs as a value add... there's gotta be a hundred clever ones. Go find one and get rich!
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Old 12-30-2021, 03:23 AM   #57
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Beside the question how much worse vinyl vs. digital formats is (and how big the nostalgia factor is), there are subgenres where vinyl never was gone and that for good reasons. Hiphop without turntables for scratching and mixing would not be the same in the 90/00th, same for Techno-Music. Meanwhile there are of course affordable digital solution for that but a lot of people still like the old way. In the 90th/00th for the DIY Punk and Hardcore scene vinyl was a cheaper way to bring out small edition of 200 or 300 pieces, and second hand record players were available all over the world for a few bucks. Vinyl could even be played with an old mechanical gramophone. Try that with your watersigned digial file in twenty years when your harddrive/cloudspace/brainconnector did not recognise your account anymore.

If you ask if vinyl is worth it, just check the discog prices for records of your favourite artist vs. the prices for CDs. And I would say YES it is. And that's why the music industry (formerly known as record industry) came back to vinyl. Collectors of music want to put something physical and nicely haptic in their shelf instead of storing just a token on their smartphone or the mostly ugly jewelcase CDs.
That, yes. Accurately written.
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Old 12-30-2021, 03:37 AM   #58
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Masters really should have a loudness volume VU or average RMS at about -15dBfs on loudest parts (chorus).
It doesn't quite work like that. I also love to listen HDR records, but it really depends on the style/song. Nowadays loudness war makes no sense: you don't need to worry much about that because streaming services will lower your music anyway.

Vinyl sounds different because of its inherent limitations. I preffer to listen Pink Floyd on vinyl because it was a different mastering engineer, also different approach because of the medium, etc. But I'm sure Slipknot would sound quite lame on that medium.

Just aim your music to sound the best despite of the dynamic range. Problem solved.

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Old 12-30-2021, 04:53 AM   #59
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It doesn't quite work like that. Nowadays loudness war makes no sense: you don't need to worry much about that because streaming services will lower your music anyway.

But I'm sure Slipknot would sound quite lame on that medium.

Just aim your music to sound the best despite of the dynamic range. Problem solved.
Yes, I mentioned above about the genres as well.
What I meant with this reference value for VU\RMS is for calibration purposes when mixing\mastering.

Just the other day had a conversation with a producer of modern EDM\Dubstep\Glitchcore and he said he got kick + snare (extremely heavily compressed and clipped) and two synths: one sub-bass and the other to fill the mid and highs (sawtooth, wavetable, etc.)

And that is it.

Without mastering his average RMS was about -6dBfs. Loudness was about -7dBlufs. Technically the sound was 90% square wave with saturation most of the time.

Printing this on a vinyl will be insanity.

So he said, he would've had to bring the Master about 12dBfs down...

So at the end of the day you make your own loud compensation with the Volume knob on your sound emitting device.

No need to make your music squashed to -6dBfs, when on average -12dBfs should be calibrated as if the sound emitting device hits you with 85dBA (for such heavy bass genres maybe SPL should be more appropriate because if you have ~100dB SPL at 125Hz you will be deaf in a couple few hours or at least your hearing will be severely damaged).

Of course we could say that the 0dBfs should be around 110~120dB SPL, thus -6dBfs would be at about 95dB SPL (extremely loud).

In those genres the body (of bass and kick) 50 to 250Hz is requested, thus the sound gets extremely compressed to bring up the RMS level (VU). This is a must.

Bringing up noise from vinyl is not going top hurt the perception of that quite noisy style anyway.

So the volume knob on the sound emitting device should be used if the listener would like to challenge their cochlea.
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Old 12-30-2021, 05:38 AM   #60
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second hand record players were available all over the world for a few bucks. Vinyl could even be played with an old mechanical gramophone. Try that with your watersigned digial file in twenty years when your harddrive/cloudspace/brainconnector did not recognise your account anymore.
You're Steve Albini-ing me lol
I have MIDI files that are 30 years old, and audio files that are 25 years old.
CD's are files too, and I have a few old ones.
The files play fine, and they will be like that for decades more. The remaining CD's will be ripped soon.
If digital becomes this weird monster that everyone is scared of, it's our fault, sorry.
Albini talks about the technology of tape being open.
Duh, we have digital open standards too.

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Old 12-30-2021, 08:35 AM   #61
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Just the other day had a conversation with a producer of modern EDM\Dubstep\Glitchcore and he said he got kick + snare (extremely heavily compressed and clipped) and two synths: one sub-bass and the other to fill the mid and highs (sawtooth, wavetable, etc.)

And that is it.

Without mastering his average RMS was about -6dBfs. Loudness was about -7dBlufs. Technically the sound was 90% square wave with saturation most of the time.

Printing this on a vinyl will be insanity.
The elements of the music (square waves, saturation) might cause trouble when cutting. I've cut ~200 similar sides with no issues.

Again, the digital RMS level is irrelevant as far as cutting goes.
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Old 12-30-2021, 05:54 PM   #62
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Again, the digital RMS level is irrelevant as far as cutting goes.


Quote from a vinyl printing\cutting press (company) specifications and recommendations:

Quote:
Please look for headroom on your recordings. If not strictly artistically important, don‘t go higher than -12 dB RMS in loudness. On every master above this mark we cannot guarantee a proper cut, pressing and playback to result without distortions.

Nevertheless, we highly recommend not to leave frequencies under 40 Hz and above 15 000 Hz at hot levels, because they can lead to unwanted distortions and artefacts due to tracing failures.

We recommend to use de-essers on vocal tracks and cymbals with a lot of sibilance, because they may produce bursts of high frequencies leading to distortions both while cutting the master vinyl and when the needle runs through the grooves of the copied vinyl.

It is not recommended to work with any stereo information signals below 200 Hz. Stereo information also should be around 6 to 9dB lower than the respective mono information from Mid\Side reference point.

For this reason, we don‘t recommend to exceed the 24 minutes of full spectrum music\audio information per side.
Vinyl is on par with some mp3 actually.
Go figure.
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Old 12-30-2021, 06:18 PM   #63
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Quote from a vinyl printing\cutting press (company) specifications and recommendations:



Vinyl is on par with some mp3 actually.
Go figure.
To be fair, Vinyl CAN go down to 10hz and up to 80,000hz on virgin 200gram vinyl. However, not with modern loudness standards. Vinyl is a different beast and not compatible with “modern” music
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Old 12-30-2021, 06:32 PM   #64
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The whole problem with vinyl for me, and the mixes I like, is that I don't want the limitations.
I want the mix and the master to be what they need to be sonically, without thinking about limitations.
That said, I don't do stereo bass and crazy stereo enhancement on the mix, but I do like to have saturation if needed, and big low end, etc.
De-essers are a good idea no matter the format, and not smashing the mix without purpose is good also.
I think I like digital because I'm not young but I grew up near digital technology (MIDI, samplers) and it's like a dream come true in many ways for me.
I'd love it if some of the young people reading this could experience audio the way I do in my studio/house (more studio than house)
I have all the levels of the different sources all properly set, I can compare my mixes to any mix in the world (almost lol) and enjoy the music.
Mastering with this setup works out fairly easy. For that I rely mostly on my headphones, but I can check the audio for vibe on the monitors and the PA in the tracking room.
All level matched very closely.
Anyway, in the 10 years I had this studio open, none of my clients made vinyl.

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Old 12-30-2021, 09:39 PM   #65
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going back to vinyl and cassettes is a clever move as it means kids have to actually BUY something rather than rip it off youtube for nix. AND the loss of quality when making copies or converting to mp3 might put some off from bootlegging albums
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Old 12-30-2021, 10:09 PM   #66
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going back to vinyl and cassettes is a clever move as it means kids have to actually BUY something rather than rip it off youtube for nix. AND the loss of quality when making copies or converting to mp3 might put some off from bootlegging albums
Yes, but it should be the only outlet. No Spotify, or anything.
Also, when I was a (real) kid there was no other way to get the music. No internet.
Now it's more like a gimmick, I don't know.
You can record and upload a vinyl easily, so...
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Old 12-31-2021, 02:41 AM   #67
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To be fair, Vinyl CAN go down to 10hz and up to 80,000hz on virgin 200gram vinyl. However, not with modern loudness standards. Vinyl is a different beast and not compatible with “modern” music
Yes, the magnets maybe can. But the resistance of the materials and inertia will shrink that number.

Yes, I mentioned already that vinyl came when music had only occasional loud parts, mostly in big bands and orchestral crescendo.

Today most of the music is loud (and quite distorted\compressored) by intention. Hence, vinyl is not so suitable.

Time changed. Vinyl and tapes had their times.
CDs are ok, but can not hold much minutes for modern music lovers. Especially not in high quality 24\96. Ok, dual layers and such but that is on the expensive side.

The mere thought that a stylus will have to scratch in grooves on a plastic surfaces to produce audio, gives me shivers. It is just awful.
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Old 12-31-2021, 09:01 AM   #68
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Quote from a vinyl printing\cutting press (company) specifications and recommendations:
I'm sure this particular company's recommendations make their lives a lot easier, but after cutting about 800 LPs over the last decade, I can tell you from experience none of this stuff matters to most professional cutting engineers.

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Vinyl is on par with some mp3 actually.
Go figure.
Uhh, no. The medium has plenty of limitations but there's no meaningful comparison between a lossy digital codec and vinyl records.
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Old 12-31-2021, 09:03 AM   #69
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The whole problem with vinyl for me, and the mixes I like, is that I don't want the limitations.
I want the mix and the master to be what they need to be sonically, without thinking about limitations.
That said, I don't do stereo bass and crazy stereo enhancement on the mix, but I do like to have saturation if needed, and big low end, etc.
De-essers are a good idea no matter the format, and not smashing the mix without purpose is good also.
A good-sounding digital master will sound good on vinyl, no qualifications needed.
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Old 12-31-2021, 09:07 AM   #70
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To be fair, Vinyl CAN go down to 10hz and up to 80,000hz on virgin 200gram vinyl. However, not with modern loudness standards. Vinyl is a different beast and not compatible with “modern” music
The weight of the vinyl pressing has no bearing on the sound quality -- all you get with a heavier weight is more resistance to warping.

There are differences in quality of pressing plants, for sure, but I cut the same quality lacquer whether it's being pressed on 180g vinyl at QRP (America's best pressing plant) or on recycled garbage at the worst facilities.

The only real problems we have cutting "modern" digital masters are those that are clipping and distorted. In that case, we have tools to make our jobs easier. (I just cut a record that was absolutely destroyed by a famous mastering engineer. It took a while and would sound better on both vinyl and digital formats with a less-distorted master, but that's not my call.)
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Old 01-01-2022, 12:55 AM   #71
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The weight of the vinyl pressing has no bearing on the sound quality -- all you get with a heavier weight is more resistance to warping.
[…]
(I just cut a record that was absolutely destroyed by a famous mastering engineer. It took a while and would sound better on both vinyl and digital formats with a less-distorted master, but that's not my call.)
Fair point, and yea I can imagine trying to cut a record from many of these “modern” recordings sitting at -4 LUFS and 1.7 LU has got to be quite frustrating!
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Old 01-01-2022, 01:57 AM   #72
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I'd be interested to know what you guys think about that one :
https://youtu.be/aZ2czFuIYmQ

I'm not ultra fluent in english and my chemichal knowledge is very poor, but it seems to demonstrate that vynils start to be toxic the moment you get them out of the box...
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Old 01-01-2022, 03:58 AM   #73
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I'd be interested to know what you guys think about that one :
https://youtu.be/aZ2czFuIYmQ

I'm not ultra fluent in english and my chemichal knowledge is very poor, but it seems to demonstrate that vynils start to be toxic the moment you get them out of the box...
The vinyl propaganda is toxic too.
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Old 01-01-2022, 07:34 AM   #74
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Uhh, no. The medium has plenty of limitations but there's no meaningful comparison between a lossy digital codec and vinyl records.
It is on par with mp3. Vinyl players also have tilt curve compensation for high-freq, the same high freq. that .mp3 (high bitrate) trims but artificially you can "get them back".

Also I can swear in my early 20s I could hear up to 19kHz.
Now I can barely register the 15kHz mark with my ears.

Go figure.
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Old 01-01-2022, 07:58 AM   #75
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A good-sounding digital master will sound good on vinyl, no qualifications needed.
Great to know that!
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Old 01-01-2022, 08:01 AM   #76
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It is on par with mp3. Vinyl players also have tilt curve compensation for high-freq, the same high freq. that .mp3 (high bitrate) trims but artificially you can "get them back".
The RIAA EQ curve has nothing to do with the lossy compression used in MP3 encoding. You're comparing apples and orangutans.

I am trying to help you understand how vinyl actually works, while you keep misinterpreting stuff you've read on the internet. It confuses people reading this thread. Please stop.
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Old 01-01-2022, 08:08 AM   #77
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Great to know that!
My pleasure!

Often clients are surprised to learn that we (generally) use the same master for digital and vinyl formats. People read a lot of nonsense on the internet about vinyl's limitations and think they need to do a lot of extra work, when that's simply not the case.

I'll sometimes remove any digital peak limiting (as it's unnecessary in the analog world) so long as it doesn't fundamentally change the audio, but that's pretty much it.

In particular, I'm continually frustrated by mastering engineers who charge their clients extra for "vinyl premastering", which usually amounts to mono-ing the low frequencies (almost always unnecessary) and doing some additional de-essing (which should done for the digital master as well -- any sibilance annoying enough to cause cutting problems will be very annoying to listen to in the digital realm).

Usually I'll write the engineer directly and ask for unadulterated source, as to not make waves with their clients.
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Old 01-01-2022, 08:13 AM   #78
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Fair point, and yea I can imagine trying to cut a record from many of these “modern” recordings sitting at -4 LUFS and 1.7 LU has got to be quite frustrating!
Yes, clipping distortion and excessive high frequencies/sibilance create the biggest problems in cutting.

For some genres, that's just part of the sound now. I personally love a lot of fucked-up sounding music, but I'm under no illusions that those records will be easy to translate to vinyl!

To sum up this thread: there's nothing special, in audio terms, about vinyl. It has a lot of limitations, and frankly, it's a wonder it works as well as it does. I'm glad people still make it and I still buy and listen to a lot of records, but if you're just looking for the best end-user listening experience, 16-bit, 44.1kHz PCM audio (through a quality converter) sounds awesome.
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Old 01-01-2022, 10:30 AM   #79
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The RIAA EQ curve has nothing to do with the lossy compression used in MP3 encoding. You're comparing apples and orangutans.

I am trying to help you understand how vinyl actually works, while you keep misinterpreting stuff you've read on the internet. It confuses people reading this thread. Please stop.
It is about recording on the master in low levels with tilt on the low end to get good grooves. In playback the mirro tilt occurs as a post-processing.
It all a form of saturation and thus distortion.
The smaller the amplitude the more high freqs. you can get printed.
But then you have to boost them (by eq compensation) during playback.
This is old as my grandfather.
I think everyone knows that quirk about vinyl.
Same with .mp3 files. You get rid of high freqs. but in digital it is a trade off of samples.
The sample rate does not know what is a sound frequency.

If you need accurate high-freq. you get too many (unnecessary excessive resolution) samples which represent the lower and usefully audible broad mid range.


It is like "distorted" high freqs.

Similar with vinyl. To get accurate high freq. you need low amplitude and compensation curve.

But keep in mind, most people won't even be able to hear anything above 16kHz. So boosting them "in post" just saturates the mid range and hipsters get eargasm, swearing to God, "nothing sounds as good as a good old vinyl". Seriously.

It does not mean we should embrace .mp3 (because digital compression in bitrate actually distorts the bitrate source data).
Best quality mp3 is ≈1/4 of that of a standard 16/44.1 CD in bitrate.

In vinyl it is similar. It gets boosted to compensate for the low levels, where needle reacts more accurate to the magnets.
Just a physical limitation (rather a consideration), which gets compensated with EQ boost (it is a tilt) and is a form of saturation (distortion).

Hipsters call it "vinyl warmth" but they have no idea it is actually a form of post-processing.

You can do the respective "post-processing" with an .mp3 if you wanted.
99% of the people won't be able to tell the difference on the same output setup.

Last edited by Pashkuli; 01-01-2022 at 10:44 AM.
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Old 01-01-2022, 11:36 AM   #80
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To sum up this thread: there's nothing special, in audio terms, about vinyl. It has a lot of limitations, and frankly, it's a wonder it works as well as it does. I'm glad people still make it and I still buy and listen to a lot of records, but if you're just looking for the best end-user listening experience, 16-bit, 44.1kHz PCM audio (through a quality converter) sounds awesome.
I'm impressed with the higher levels of achievement with vinyl too!

When analog was the only recording container option, the struggles with vinyl made sense. The ones that were produced at a very high level are impressive. Fast forward to the modern digital containers. We can do that now with with much less effort and the system doesn't have all the artifacts that are really hard to work around. Putting effort into trying to preserve a piece of music with an older more difficult system prone to all kinds of altering artifacts when a solution that serves the music better is available is ugly. This is sacrificing art for serving nostalgia and it's insulting to the music. That's how this comes across to me.

I realize that some people have only heard CDs that have lo-fi mastering. It's actually pretty easy to buy 100 CDs in a row that all have shrill volume war mastering. Then you conclude the format is the cause of the damage. It's shitty crude mastering, folks! Take your favorite 24 bit HD recording and convert it to 44.1k. Now reduce that to 16 bit. Not suddenly hearing loud and shrill, right?

If you compare lowest common denominator to lowest common denominator - a poor vinyl pressing on a Monkey Wards all-in-one turntable stereo box thingy to a harsh treble-y volume war CD, that CD sounds a little better. Those cheapness analog systems gone wrong were stunningly altering! This has led to laziness, I believe.

How about those analog encoded matrix formats for trying to encode multichannel surround sound into two channel formats. Even in the rare case of a reasonable vinyl pressing and a particularly nerdy consumer with their system calibrated and on point, there was a lot of loss and compromise. 99.9% of the time the recording was effectively fully lost. Now we have perfect sounding multichannel surround in an easy to download flac file. What on Earth is the appeal of the archaic systems in light of stuff like this?!

Last edited by serr; 01-01-2022 at 11:41 AM.
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