[Trevor]

On 9/08/2018 6:32 AM, PStamler wrote:
Don, Trevor, e know you don't like LPs. Guess what: Those of us who
collect music on LPs are as aware of their flaws as you are, maybe
more so. To put it simply: from a technical point of view LPs suck.
But, in many cases, *that's where the music is". An awful lot of LPs
were never reissued on more proficient media, or were reissued
badly.

We who lived through the vinyl era, and still have a couple of thousand
LP's are well aware of that.


What good turntables do is to retrieve the music with as little
effect from the disc's flaws as poaaible. Some of the expensive,
fancy tables do that well, some of them do it badly. My own
preference is to copy the LP into the computer, use iZotope RX to
eliminate the scratches, ticks and pops, do a little judicious
filtering to eliminate infrasonic crap (good power amps aren't
affected mu ch infrasonics, but radio station processing goes haywire
-- and the goal is to broadcast the music -- then divide up into
bands and burn a Cd, which is what gets played on the air. CDs are
way easier to cue, too.

Well I don't play on air, but transcribed most of my "never issued on
CD" LP's to digital years ago.


This is all a pain in the butt, but if, say, you're looking for music
by Rev. Pearly Brown, well, you're not going to find that except on
LP -- in our case, an LP that's in rough shape. His singing and
playing, though, make the work worthwhile, and a good turntable
helps. What do I mean by "good"? One that doesn't add significant
rumble to what comes from the cutting lathe. One with a cartridge/arm
system that doedn't resonate a typical warp frequencies. One without
significant wow & slutter (and, in the case of servo-controlled drive
systems, one without cogging). Et cetera, et cetera. Oh yeah, one
with a good clamping system to minimize warp. And a tone arm that
doesn't resonate.

Well my Thorens TD125/SME/Shure V15VMR still does that for me. I'd NEVER
pay that much money for a turntable now IF I didn't own it before CD
came along though.



Like I said, the more you work with LPs, the more you know just how
bad they can be. Digital recording has now gotten sufficiently
transparent that if a record gets played back well, you can make a
good digital recording of it and use software to clean up a lot of
the remaining flawsremaining flaws. And finally get to the music,
which is what it's really about.

I am not sure if you think you are telling us something we haven't been
well aware of for the last 2-3 decades?



Here's what still needs to be done: a variably off-center spindle to
compensate for the wow caused by off-center stampers. Nakamichi had a
system to deal with that in the 1970s, but it was kind of
cobbled-together at best, and it aoon disappeared from the market. I
can hear that wow, a lot, and short of reaming out the center hole,

Yep, I just reamed out the centre hole if it was really bad.