From Andrew Duke Cognition Sent Sat, Oct 24th 1998, 23:20
From Andrew Duke Cognition Sent Sat, Oct 24th 1998, 23:20
***You have to be **really** careful about playing your precious records elsewhere. For one summer a few years back I did a second radio show in addition to my regular one, but this was at a different station with super old equipment (where I still do the show has always had Technics 1200s). Their equipment was just crap, and the turntables were those kind you see in old schools: you know, where the turntable absolutely huge and is screwed down and looks more like an industrial tool than a turntable. Definitely not DJ or vinyl friendly. The needle on that thing was huge and I noticed that whenever I played a record there at this second station, the record would later (at home) sound like crap. Turned out that their crap turntables and the huge needles (tonearm didn't have any way to adjust the weight or anything to alleviate the pressure) were carving huge canyons in the grooves of my records. I had to quit the show (it was just an extra summer fill in thing) because of this :( Andrew Che wrote: > At 01:19 PM 10/21/98 -0400, xx wrote: > >> a question from the relative vinyl newbie that i am (child of the cd > era): how > >> many times can i expect to play through a record, given relatively good > care, > >> before i'll start to hear any actual degradation in the sound? > > > >depends largely on your turntable, your speakers, your ears, etc...a really > >good turntable with a nice cartridge will cause less degradation than a cheap > >consumer one. and degradation is more noticeable with higher quality > speakers. > >some records that i've had since '95 or '96 and played fairly often (like > >afx's "hab" for one) are noticeably duller than new ones...but that's analog > >media for you... > > If you have one of those laser pickup turtables, there is no wear, but > those are very hard to come by. > > Adjustment of the tonearm angle & weight are important too. The DJ > practice of taping pennies to the cartridge is a no no. > > It also depends on how often you play it. Vinyl has "memory", in other > words, the friction of the needle heats it up, so if you play it again in > less than 24 hours, it will stretch out, which I believe destroys the > smaller high frequency ridges in the groove. > > Temperature is also a factor. The lifespan of a record in shrinkwrap in > the backseat of a car in Arizona in summer is very short indeed. Keep > them in a cool dry basement & never play them & they'll probably last for > hundreds of years. > > My policy is, play once to get rid of the tiny bubbles in the vinyl, wait, > play it again to record it to harddisk for noise removal, then sell the > damn thing when its value peaks. > > Those that are familiar w/ my views on vinyl will be shocked to know I > have about 12 linear feet of the stuff in my basement. > > Che -- Andrew Duke Cognition Audioworks 1096 Queen St #123 Halifax NS Canada B3H 2R9 TEL 902-422-7132 FAX 902-422-1262 http://www.globalserve.net/~cognition (Cognition Audioworks/In The Mix: listen : read) In The Mix show 575: Richie Hawtin/Neil Landstrumm/Merrick Brown In The Mix show 576: John Tejada/Damon Wild/D.JeRome playing now: John Tejada:Little Green Lights And Four Inch Faders:A13 world premiere playing next: Low Res:Approximate Love Boat:Plug Research world premiere