Cool. Used to have a ball at the AES conferences. Neotek built a lot of foley consoles. Lots of the sound effects for film is recorded on them. Owner ended up selling neotek to Sony film
Cool. Used to have a ball at the AES conferences. Neotek built a lot of foley consoles. Lots of the sound effects for film is recorded on them. Owner ended up selling neotek to Sony film
Dr. Hess wrote: Like oldtin sez, it's all about signal to noise, and the weakest link in the chain is the limiting factor. The old stuff was recorded on analog tape, some of which wasn't all that good quality-wise. On a digital version, you can hear the tape hiss, if it hasn't been cleaned up. Cleaning up the tape hiss can affect the dynamic range, depending on the technique used. Something has to give to get rid of the hiss. When ya'll biatch about "digital isn't as good" it is probably because what you are listening to with digital was stepped on at some point to try to clean up the old analog tapes, and that stepping-on process removed some of the highs or dynamic range along with the hiss. I won't even mention MP3's. Hint: Lossey compression. When I was digitizing my vinyl, I could do about as good a job, if not a tad better, than what was being released as non-"remastered" CD's. I didn't have the masters to work off of, so that was my limitation. I used a Techniques SL-23 belt drive turn table.
Then there's that added bit of DR cut out just to make it sound louder. I generally just settle for lossless vinyl rips in torrent form, they're typically done on high end gear that I couldn't dream of owning.
Funny thus thread popped up. I am in the middle of a entertaimnet room upgrade and one of the must have's was my old turntable and tube amp. I made both of them from kits about forty years ago. I will also have a modern NAD / Cambridge sound works system. But there is just something about tube amps and a turn table.
Your argument is invalid (mine, too) Well crap, I can't seem to link SONY's new cassette tape thingamagigger. Look it up.
Meh, I remember my former boss(been DJ'ing since the 80's) used to nearly kill himself with loading vinyls to take to a show....once the switch to CD's, then the subsequent ripping of all those to mpeg4 format on untold numbers of external hard drives, and the advent of better hard drives has been a massive help for him. It allowed him to start taking bigger sound systems, intelligent lighting, etc to shows instead of half a 26ft trailer worth of vinyls.
This is my 1959 Curtis Mathes console. 9 ft long and sounds incredible. My uncle gave it to me after I've wanted it for years. It was the first thing he bought when he started working a GM and made a little extra money.
One of my favorite possessions. Awesome craftsmanship, all American, built to last and still works dammit.
In reply to crankwalk:
My grandma has one of those, still sounds decent.
In reply to David S. Wallens:
I have to get a turntable at some point. A good friend who is an audiophile and fellow musician has a pretty sick home stereo setup and that's what made me see the light of the vinyl experience.
I still want to hear The Zombies "Odessey and Oracle" on vinyl on that setup. 
I remember my parents playing the hell out of "Tapestry." My dad put it on cassette, too, so we could listen in the car. I always though it was funny that he put Queen on the other side. Not sure if he meant to do that or not.
gamby wrote: In reply to David S. Wallens: I have to get a turntable at some point. A good friend who is an audiophile and fellow musician has a pretty sick home stereo setup and that's what made me see the light of the vinyl experience. I still want to hear The Zombies "Odessey and Oracle" on vinyl on that setup.
I think our ears have been retuned, too, by modern technology and conveniences. Right now I'm listening to Rush via the little speakers on my laptop. For most of us, that's pretty much the standard.
I'm with the Good Doctor Hess on this one. I grew up in the '70s and '80s, and I had a pretty good sound system, including a very nice B&O turntable (which I still have in storage). Stuff sounded good on vinyl, but moving to CD was a revelation for me. Not only was it quieter and clearer, but it would keep sounding that way forever. I don't miss vinyl at all.
If that makes me an audio phillistine, so be it. I do dislike mp3s and any other non-lossless compressed digital format.
Digital-to-analog conversion is everything with CDs. Most modern audio devices use a $5.00 chip for D/A conversion which does not reveal everything encoded on the CD. Some people pay four figures for good D/A conversion. A few hundred will buy something with discrete devices that will sound great. That is, if everything else in the audio chain is good enough. By the way, this is the amp I use currently. Found it built into a wall and not working. Found the direct short, fixed it, cleaned it up and there you are. This amp is revealing enough to make good D/A conversion worthwhile.
David S. Wallens wrote:gamby wrote: In reply to David S. Wallens: I have to get a turntable at some point. A good friend who is an audiophile and fellow musician has a pretty sick home stereo setup and that's what made me see the light of the vinyl experience. I still want to hear The Zombies "Odessey and Oracle" on vinyl on that setup.I think our ears have been retuned, too, by modern technology and conveniences. Right now I'm listening to Rush via the little speakers on my laptop. For most of us, that's pretty much the standard.
Totally true. I listen to Sirius in my car. When I put a CD on in my wife's Fit (that comes with a halfway decent stereo), the music has so much more depth/breadth. Even that is an entirely different listening experience.
I listen to vinyl almost exclusively when I'm at home. To me, it sounds deeper, and you can hear parts of the recording that get squashed out of MP3's.
When it comes to CDs, it's all in how the music was mastered. Something like Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms" sounds fantastically clean on CD, where others don't.
When I'm on an airplane, or in a car--- mp3s are fine, as it's handy to have 1000 songs on you at once. If I really want to study the music, and listen carefully though---- there is no substitute (for me) for vinyl.
I also miss the process of listening to vinyl. The cover artwork was sometimes fantastic (and large enough to appreciate) and some of the liner notes, and posters that used to be included in the records was really cool. (I have a kickass Stones poster from Goat's Head Soup I believe, and a nice Beatles poster from the White Album) It was almost like reading a book. You'd take out the record, put it on, and check out the artwork, and liner notes while listening. You weren't doing a million other things while the music was on......you were listening, it was an event.
These days the continuity of the album is gone. People download their favorite song from an album, and forget the rest. Hipsters annoy the Hell out of me, but if they have helped to bring vinyl back, it's worth dealing with their goofy lumberjack beards and skinny jeans.
I am definitely a fan of vinyl. One of the best parts is that you can view cover art in the medium in which it was intended.
I have slowly been building a library of essential Classic Rock, Hard Rock, 80's Hair Metal, and other more recent Metal/Hardcore/Punk album releases. There's something almost magical about listening to music on this format, especially the older stuff, as it was intended.
My current setup is a Gemini DJQ-1200 running through an old late 70's Technics receiver with a pair of Mirage bookshelf speakers. Here's a bit more info on the table:
http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/geminidjc_direct_drive_semi_automatic_turntable_djq_1200.html
I picked up the turntable on Craigslist locally a few years ago for a whopping $20. It works awesome. It's a direct drive unit, and apparently one of the earlier DJ tables. Very solid, and apparently rare, unit. The receiver was given to me back when I was a kid by a neighbor who was moving, and the speakers came from a buddy back in middle school that were kicking around in his basement.
The receiver might be on its last legs, though. All the knobs crackle when using them, and the speakers randomly cut out unless you sit there and fidget with the input selector or balance for about 5 minutes. I've tried cleaning the pots, but they still do it. 
Joe Gearin wrote: I listen to vinyl almost exclusively when I'm at home. To me, it sounds deeper, and you can hear parts of the recording that get squashed out of MP3's. When it comes to CDs, it's all in how the music was mastered. Something like Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms" sounds fantastically clean on CD, where others don't. When I'm on an airplane, or in a car--- mp3s are fine, as it's handy to have 1000 songs on you at once. If I really want to study the music, and listen carefully though---- there is no substitute (for me) for vinyl. I also miss the process of listening to vinyl. The cover artwork was sometimes fantastic (and large enough to appreciate) and some of the liner notes, and posters that used to be included in the records was really cool. (I have a kickass Stones poster from Goat's Head Soup I believe, and a nice Beatles poster from the White Album) It was almost like reading a book. You'd take out the record, put it on, and check out the artwork, and liner notes while listening. You weren't doing a million other things while the music was on......you were listening, it was an event. These days the continuity of the album is gone. People download their favorite song from an album, and forget the rest. Hipsters annoy the Hell out of me, but if they have helped to bring vinyl back, it's worth dealing with their goofy lumberjack beards and skinny jeans.
It bums me out that "listening to records" is no longer an activity for young people. In college, a lot of time was spent listening to music with friends (with a liberal dose of beer). Pre-internet, so we'd listen and discuss.
Even with iTunes and iEverything, I'm still a fan of the album concept: side A followed by side B. And if it's something on my iDevice, I just start with the first song and let it play through.
Another neat thing about records is the hidden treasures. I've been an Agent Orange fan since high school, and I just broke out my copy of "This Is the Voice." Inside I found all of their merch info. T-shirts were just $8.98 plus $1.02 for postage and handling. An Agent Orange Vision skateboard went for $119.98. Now they fetch way more on eBay and, no, mine's not for sale.
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