How we gonna play our discs in the next future?!

[jimfisheye]

I have no issues with needle drops either. Just forward thinking. It would be an analog to digital conversion of the image. There might be an argument in this but I think this would effectively eliminate the generational effects on playback. There's a lot of 'home mastering on the fly' creative approaches across different cartridges. That gets baked in in a traditional digital rip. Yeah, a tight system A/B's with it perfectly but any cartridge uniqueness is baked in for good or bad.

Artifact removal has to detect between program and scratch based clicks and dust based clicks in linear time with traditional digitizing. The image would give more data - scratches certainly - and allow for more matter of fact accurate artifact removal.

Seems like it could lead in those directions and be a pretty welcome thing. I can't be the first one to ponder that so there must still be something expensive about the resolution that would be needed to make it work.

Late 90s when I started buying studio gear. The quest at first was for accurate digital recording. The test was to record an album and then A/B against the turntable. Seemed like a tough enough test. Hi fi sound that also had some generational fragility. Apogee PSX-100 special edition 2 ch AD and DA unit was what finally hit that perfectly transparent mark. And it wasn't restricted to 96k with that. The SD rates sounded the same. The MOTU 896 I got a couple years later sounded not transparent like that and SD rates on it were another step down. Had it's charms in other ways. Nowadays a lowly Behringer/Midas UMC interface would make a solid audiophile unit for anyone. Apogee's are still working well though and they still will be 20 years from now. I had ADATs mid 90s. The Aardvark external sample rate clock was an upgrade on their sound at one point.

Speaking of formats and how long they stick around. How about ADAT lightpipe! 1991 to present. 8ch of 48k or 4ch of 96k or 2ch of 192k. Same cable used for TOSLINK.

 

[audiomaster]

This probably exists but has been suppressed by the record companies copyright police.
Personally I have good audio equipment in my theater but NO computer as my computer is in my office at the other end of the house! I do have a Zoom L12 mixer wired between my quad decoder and my Marantz surround preamp, so I could record quad to that if I wanted. It can record up to 12 channels and play back up yo 6 discreetly.

 

[barfle]

Why can't we have a scanning device, like a flat bed scanner, the uses a fine beam laser to record all the grooves on a record and then uses software to recover them as audio? No wear and could almost instantly degitise a disc.l

I’ve read that the Library of Congress was looking into such a device several years ago. Actually, that was at the time when I was trying to get a job there, which makes it around 15-16 years ago. And then I heard nothing.

 

[barfle]

No, I'm with you on all that. I just thought of it again and it occurs to me that an image system could be an end all if it worked. Not a laser pickup though, an image of the whole side of vinyl. High enough res to resolve anything etched in there. I don't know that math off the top of my head for how feasible and expensive. That would lead to being able to work around some kinds of damage elegantly too.

Of course, for stereo recordings or the old vertical 78s, the scan would have to be 3D. There are 3D scanners out there, used for duplicating objects with 3D printers, but I don’t know if they would heve the necessary resolution. I suspect not, but that might just be an engineering problem.