The Vinylizer
On 7/29/2010 4:43 PM, Audio Empire wrote:
Wouldn't the fact that this "Vinylizer" introduces wow, flutter, tracking
distortion, ticks and pops automatically disqualify it from serious
consideration by ANY music lover? People who listen to vinyl, at least in my
considerable experience, still listen to it because of two distinct and
different reasons. One faction holds that LP sounds "better" than digital,
and the other faction sees LP as just another source of music (that's the
faction to which I, mostly, belong), like CD, FM radio, tape, downloads from
the internet, etc. Neither like warp wow, eccentric records, ticks or pops,
mis-tracking, Inner-groove distortion, or any of the other ills that can
plague vinyl playback, and most, if not all vinyl listeners strive to avoid
those things. The fact that this "Vinylizer seems to re-introduce these
unwanted artifacts to digital playback is missing the point. Now if it made
digital SOUND like a well recorded, well pressed vinyl record WITHOUT those
unwanted artifacts, then he'd have something.
You mention wow and flutter:
One of the strangest and neurotic quirks of the "high-end" are the many
expensive turntables that have come out in the last 25 years or so with
fancy bearings, very heavy platters and various elaborate and exotic
drive systems, of which one of the goals at least is to supposedly
reduce wow and flutter to the vanishing point, and indeed they usually
do to some extent.
Then what happens is that end users play their records that have
off-center spindle holes that swamps out in actual real world use by
very large and very audible amounts, any residual wow and flutter that
the fancy table has.
Whenever I mention this, and I've brought it up several times here in
this noisegroup, there are always the litany of replies that the
off-center holes can be fixed with a little trial and error. This is
true, although it's very difficult to get really accurate to insure the
eccentricity (and thus the highly audible effect) is eliminated. Yet to
this day, I have yet to know (other than myself, and I've been around a
LOT) anyone in "high-end" that actually goes to this trouble and they
end up listening to wow and flutter, usually seeming oblivious that it's
really happening. The effect bothers the hell out of me.
The only turntables that have addressed this in the design are the two
Nakamichi tables made in the 80's, and they never sold very well. If I
recall correctly, one reviewer called one of the models a "turkey"
despite the fact that it effectively solved one of the very worst
problems with vinyl playback.
"High-end" is obsessed with tiny "differences" to the point where there
is a lot of controversy about even the existence of some of the claimed
"differences." At the same time, there is a lot of ignoring and
ignorance of what are dramatic and highly audible faults such as this
off-center hole issue, but also something arguably more important: room
acoustics and the difficulties of getting speakers to couple to rooms
properly. To illustrate this latter point, all one has to do is go to
Audiogon in the speaker ads for private users (not dealers, although it
can often be seen in those ads too) and notice pictures of systems with
no room treatment whatsoever, or if there is some, very little of it.
I think this phenomenon is really WEIRD, and reminiscent (in a different
way of course) of the contradictions one finds in religious cults.
- John
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