Phonograph (turntable)

[Progbear]

However many records from the 80's also suffer from a "digititus". The sound is flat, shrill, and crappy usually because they were recorded and mastered using early digital systems, which really weren't very good. Not much you can do about those. What you want in vinyl, optimally, are records that were recorded and mastered using tape and non-digital systems usually including tubes. That's where the magic lies.

80s vinyl pressings were frequently done poorly as well, on low quality vinyl and with low QC. I have yet to come across a copy of Utopia’s Oblivion or POV that didn’t have some sort of manufacturing defect.

[Blah_Blah_Woof_Woof]

In the 70's RCA had a product called Dynaflex making their records kinda flippy-floppy. They were crap. Some companies blamed the lack of/cost of oil (petroleum) for a vinyl shortage. Really?

[BobM]

I attribute much of the bad sound of 1980's recording (other than the crappy music produced in general) to the early adoption of digital technology ("perfect sound forever" - HAHAHAHA). The engineers just didn't know about jitter back then, and didn't have enough practical experience with the format to make it sound decent. They recorded the tracks in digital form, so no matter what medium you mastered and played them back in they just sounded bad - CD or vinyl or tape.

[Progbear]

In the 80's RCA had a product called Dynaflex making their records kinda flippy-floppy. They were crap. Some companies blamed the lack of/cost of oil (petroleum) for a vinyl shortage. Really?

That was actually in the early 70s. More tragically, that was also the era that they withdrew low-sellers to melt down and reuse to press more copies of, say, John Denver albums. This is why I highly prize my copies of Annette Peacock’s I’m the One and Labelle’s Pressure Cookin’ that were spared this indignity.

I’m told that some Dynaflex™ pressings suffered from bleed-through of the other side’s music during quiet passages, but I’ve never encountered this problem.

[JJ88]

Yes, you can just look at some of those 80s records and think 'oh, that's going to sound awful'.

[rcarlberg]

...vinyl lovers to discuss the things we have on LP which we never replaced with CD.
I have been revisiting my LP collection over the past few months, deciding to copy my LPs to digital.
... who have bought a CD recorder to make digital copies of those LPs?

Way back in the day it used to be real easy to pick up radio station copies of LPs soon after they were released. The local stations would listen to 'em once (if that...) then sell them to the used vinyl vendors in town. In this way I was able to build up a basic collection of jazz (a couple thousand LPs for a couple bucks apiece) and a basic classical collection (another ~2,000 LPs). When CDs first came out I replaced most of my rock LPs but never felt the need to re-do my jazz or classical collections.

However, a small number of each were such iconic and/or favorite albums that I either replaced them with CDs or, if they weren't available, made myself CD-Rs of them. I ran the tracks through cleanup software and chased & erased all the clicks & pops and did equalization and normalization and stuff to make them sound as close to a real CD as possible.

The rest, I'm perfectly happy to keep on LP for my listening pleasure. They were good enough in LP days, they're good enough now.

What I have difficulty understanding, though.... why would anyone go to the trouble of dubbing them to a CD recorder, without using a PC in between to clean up the noise, rumble, ticks and pops? Why not just keep the LP at that point?

[rcarlberg]

I’m told that some Dynaflex™ pressings suffered from bleed-through of the other side’s music during quiet passages, but I’ve never encountered this problem.

We're not using this thread to slag LPs, remember?

But what you describe is physically impossible.

[trurl]

The print-through phenomenon was a tape issue. I've never heard of a record's other side coming through.

[MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER]

why would anyone go to the trouble of dubbing them to a CD recorder, without using a PC in between to clean up the noise, rumble, ticks and pops? Why not just keep the LP at that point?

I will probably keep my LPs but speaking for myself only, I wouldn't trust connections from an LP to a PC (or Mac). I have a professional CD recorder (one that doesn't require those supidly expensive gimmick "CDR-music" discs) hooked up with pro-grade wires to my phonograph. I get extremely good results but then I put the digitized albums into my home recording studio software to do basically a full digital remastering job... takes hours per album, but the results are usually as good if not better than a commercially produced CD of the same album if I do say so myself (I've A/B compared a few) ... not a "Steven Wilson" level of remaster I'm sure, but phenomenal considering they are from LP master sources.

I'm just doing the final eval and tweaks on Eddie Henderson's first 4 albums and I'm really digging these album more than when they first came out! That dude was badass

[Blah_Blah_Woof_Woof]

My ex-wife used to have Eddie Henderson's Sunburst. She got a ton of fusion and funk from me when I worked in used record stores in the 70's and 80's. We were givin' em away because the music had fallen out of favor. Wish I could have them back! Fusion music (of any kind) does not become mainstream very often or for very long.

LP- What are your fav EH LP's?

[MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER]

I only have the first 4 but given the strength of the 4th how bad could the 5th one be? I need it!

The first (Realization) is perhaps the most ground-breaking and unique. The 2nd (Inside Out) gets into a bit much "Free Jazz" for my liking (I'm a Rock guy... tho EH doesn't Rock like Mahavishnu or RTF) but the 3rd (Sunburst) and 4th (Heritage) are great, with more composition than the first album and some nice odd time sigs with tasty Synth work and at least some Rock style drumming.

[hippypants]

[hippypants]

^^I finally got around to watching the above movie, Vinyl, on YT. It is somewhere between an indie movie, and an amateur-made film. It goes on a bit too long, but covered more topics that just vinyl record collecting, like relationships, OCD collecting as an illness, oddball personalities a la the Crumb film, and other odd segues. About 15 minutes into it, I was surprised by a cameo with the late Harvey Pekar, the jazz critic and comic writer from Cleveland. So I'm guessing he evidently knew this guy, and I'd think probably encouraged the guy to go ahead keep making the film--at least to me that seems like something Pekar would do. It's worth watching if you find the time.

[hippypants]

I also found another tangential film called Re-Vinylized. It was interesting too, and seemed to flow a bit quicker and better. It was about brick and mortar record/music stores, and how they've had to change due to the digital age. It was very interesting too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SGk76IqlSE