Vacuum Tube Price Shocker

[par4ken]

I sold all my tube and vinyl gear back in 1999 and have never looked back. Beyond that, my 40 year collection of vinyl had been stored in the basement for over another 10 years before that. Unless you have some quad recordings from "back in the day" I can think of no other reason to hold onto the forever technically crippled medium. There's so little recordings that aren't available in Redbook and at the tips of your fingers from streamers to make the torture of listening to rice krispies unimaginable.

The main reason to keep the vinyl is that although CD's have the potential for great sound, most are crippled by their producers to sound like complete crap. I can't listen to many of them, most are brick walled and even clipped. Vinyl through a moving coil cartridge and a vacuum tube preamp trounces the sound of most CD's. Not everything released on vinyl is on CD or other digital medium yet. If your vinyl sounds like rice krispies it's time to look for a better copy!
I do make digital copies of my vinyl (maybe 10% done), so no worries about wearing records out like I used to back in the day. People who aren't collectors will never understand why one would keep a vinyl collection if it's been digitised or replaced by CD's, or yuck, if you can just steam it off YouTube.

 

[Sal1950]

The main reason to keep the vinyl is that although CD's have the potential for great sound, most are crippled by their producers to sound like complete crap. I can't listen to many of them, most are brick walled and even clipped. Vinyl through a moving coil cartridge and a vacuum tube preamp trounces the sound of most CD's. Not everything released on vinyl is on CD or other digital medium yet. If your vinyl sounds like rice krispies it's time to look for a better copy!
I do make digital copies of my vinyl (maybe 10% done), so no worries about wearing records out like I used to back in the day. People who aren't collectors will never understand why one would keep a vinyl collection if it's been digitised or replaced by CD's, or yuck, if you can just steam it off YouTube.

Totally disagree. You may distort the sound of the original source tape using vinyl, tubes, and various inaccurate gear to mold the sound off the LP into something you like, but that sound has no resembleence to the master tape. Your vinyl audio path includes the distortions of wow & flutter, off-set center holes, the change in resolution as the needle travels from outer grooves to inner groves, mono'd bass, and all the rest. Read the below.
https://www.gottagrooverecords.com/vinyl-mastering/
I have all my original LP's on high res digital needle drop recordings using my Harman ST8 TT with linear tracking arm and a Dynavector Ruby cantilevered moving coil cartridge. A few of the files I started to upgrade with various CDs or download purchases but now since the introduction of Redbook or better streamers, I haven't listened to any of the needledrops in years.
YMMV

 

[kap'n krunch]

No CD will sound as sweet as my Technics SL-QL1 with the Ortofon OMP30 stylus... I mean, don´t get me wrong, I ENJOY CDs too...(the ONLY album I have found that sounds the SAME on CD as on LP is Mr Mister's "Welcome to the real world", which is an analog recording AND mix! go figure)

 

[gene_stl]

Sal , Rice Krispies is a good one.

"Worn out records" has turned into , for me, another audiophile myth. I have a famous rock and roll two record set, which I bought when it came out in 1969. I liked it so well that I bought a second copy as an archive copy. I have never opened that and it may be worth a little since it is the original deal.

But the first copy got the bejeebers played out of it. It STILL gets played every five years or so. (I do have the CD which sounds fine to me) But back in the day I really played it a lot. I did always use a Preener or DiscWasher on it. And the worst tone arm cartridge combo it ever experienced was something like an AR -XA with a Shure or Audio Technica higer grade college stoont compliant cartridge. Every time I play it I think to myself, why aren't the groove walls completely worn off. ( Even tho I am an old geez, hearing test still go pretty well.)

 

[Soundfield]

 

[Marcsten]

I sold all my tube and vinyl gear back in 1999 and have never looked back. Beyond that, my 40 year collection of vinyl had been stored in the basement for over another 10 years before that. Unless you have some quad recordings from "back in the day" I can think of no other reason to hold onto the forever technically crippled medium. There's so little recordings that aren't available in Redbook and at the tips of your fingers from streamers to make the torture of listening to rice krispies unimaginable.

If you care for your vinyl, it need not sound like rice crisps, except some CD 4s. (Couldn't resist). Streaming is certainly the most convenient medium and why it is probably the future as society casts aside quality for convenience. I have never been happy with the sound coming through the streaming services that I have heard. Its great for the car. I have sat radio on my cell phone for that. But at home? Still waiting for a decent sounding platform.

 

[scifi]

How about a tubed dynamic range expander?

 

[Sonik Wiz]

How about a tubed dynamic range expander?

That could actually be a very good design. Triodes were so capable of this. But talk to Robert Grodinsky who did this for his own label & Pioneer. Solid state RCA 3080 not triodes. So hard to do in digital, so good in analog.

 

[gene_stl]

@Marcsten
I have to disagree about the rice kripsees. During the heyday nobody was more OCD about record care. One of my first audio buddies was completely nuts about record care (and "DON'T TOUCH THE PANEL!!! You're PANELING!! " which we all, then did to annoy him) and instructed and instilled proper habits in me as a neophyte. I have been laundering records since the early seventies.

One of my favorite records is a Pepe Romero album called "Flamenco"(Philips 9500 512) which is a suite written by his father. It was released by Phillips and was the quietest record surface I ever had.(and I have lots of so called premium releases too) It will be one of the first that I rip. But it really needs click and pop removal software. I have not been able to find a CD of it although some selections appear on a totally different CD of the same name.

My favorite album of all of them. When it was new it was as quiet as a CD. Not anymore. And I really babied it because I loved the music on it.


Unless you live in a clean room the noise increase on an LP will be a function of how often you handle it.

Local audio friends of mine get gallons of ultrapure water which I get at work while flushing "water polishers" The best for rinsing LPs after washing and sonicating them.



dBx had the 3Bx three channel dynamic range expander. I always was interested in trying one of those but it never happened.

 

[scifi]

Good discussion about tubed dynamic range expanders.
https://web.archive.org/web/2014071...chforce.com/~eforum/index.php?showtopic=41150
http://antiquesci.50webs.com/CompExp.htm
https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/dynamic-range-expanders.13420/

 

[gene_stl]

Doesn't Audyssey have a dynamic range expander built into it?
Multi EQ XT , Dynamic EQ , (digital loudness correction) and Dynamic Volume which has four settings.
There may be even more in Audyssey XT32.

 

[Marcsten]

@Marcsten
I have to disagree about the rice kripsees. During the heyday nobody was more OCD about record care. One of my first audio buddies was completely nuts about record care (and "DON'T TOUCH THE PANEL!!! You're PANELING!! " which we all, then did to annoy him) and instructed and instilled proper habits in me as a neophyte. I have been laundering records since the early seventies.

One of my favorite records is a Pepe Romero album called "Flamenco"(Philips 9500 512) which is a suite written by his father. It was released by Phillips and was the quietest record surface I ever had.(and I have lots of so called premium releases too) It will be one of the first that I rip. But it really needs click and pop removal software. I have not been able to find a CD of it although some selections appear on a totally different CD of the same name.

View attachment 59816
My favorite album of all of them. When it was new it was as quiet as a CD. Not anymore. And I really babied it because I loved the music on it.


Unless you live in a clean room the noise increase on an LP will be a function of how often you handle it.

Local audio friends of mine get gallons of ultrapure water which I get at work while flushing "water polishers" The best for rinsing LPs after washing and sonicating them.



dBx had the 3Bx three channel dynamic range expander. I always was interested in trying one of those but it never happened.

Time wounds all heels. I can't tell you how many CDs over the years I have put into my car CD player only to hear something like GA/GA/GA/GA/GA/. Oh crap. Skip to the next track. That's better. MA/MA/MA/MA/MA/MA/MA/. Damn it. Must have something on the disk. Pop it out. Take it home. Clean it. Same. Maybe it got scratched? Or something invisible that won't come off? Well, this one's trash. Won't play. Is that better than the odd pop?

 

[par4ken]

When CD's first came out it was thought that they could play through scratches, error correction works perfect they thought, perfect sound forever they thought. What a load of crap!!!!

 

[Sonik Wiz]

Amazingly that 212E tube has 29 watchers! I think the auction runs till Dec 21st so it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

And also amazingly, the most horrendous case of bait & switch I've ever seen on ebay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1956-Vinta...stern+Electric&_trksid=p2047675.c100010.m2109

 

[Marcsten]

Amazingly that 212E tube has 29 watchers! I think the auction runs till Dec 21st so it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

And also amazingly, the most horrendous case of bait & switch I've ever seen on ebay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1956-Vinta...stern+Electric&_trksid=p2047675.c100010.m2109

I am a dedicated tube guy, but it takes real courage to buy a tube on Ebay!! With all the weird incest that took place amongst tube manufacturers, the box, even if original, is pretty meaningless. So what are you actually buying??? It pays to go with a dealer you trust who has the info to back up claims about what they are selling, and a guarantee if something goes wrong. But then I guess people buy used cars on Ebay...

 

[gene_stl]

The only CDs I have ever had headaches with , were copies. I have seen some oxidized one at half price books but I even bought one since they garauntee them to play and it did. Some copies don't play well on various players especially in cars.

A lot of my LPs are things that are my favs and they have been played a lot. They almost all have rice kripsees.

If you see something you like , ebay has gotten very buyer oriented and you can almost always get your money back. Of course caution is always advisable. That seller has a lot of other naughty pictures too.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

Good discussion about tubed dynamic range expanders.
https://web.archive.org/web/2014071...chforce.com/~eforum/index.php?showtopic=41150
http://antiquesci.50webs.com/CompExp.htm
https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/dynamic-range-expanders.13420/

Thanks for the links. I wasn't aware that a previous discussion of DR Expanders had been touched on in the forum. And the topic on tube Expanders was also pretty interesting.

In days when the analog LP was dominant there was so much grousing about the rather limited ~60dB dynamic range. It was mentioned that full orchestral crescendos reach well over 100 dB SPL & records could never reproduce that. Well they were confusing maximum SPL with dynamic range, which room & audience noise ate into the low end. Must play the soft parts loud enough to cover the noise! At any rate no sooner did we get 16 bit CD quality that they figured out how to destroy dynamic range by brick wall compression. So we've gone from about 60 dB range to 1/10 that on some titles.

At one time I had two Pioneer RG-1 DR Expanders for the front & back chs. It used the RCA 3080 OTA that was pretty good if you kept input levels low. The RG2 used FET's as gain control element. The linear ohmic range of an FET is pretty small but it has some advantages over an OTA of that time.

Also the RG1 had level sensing for each ch but with a blend resistor that made the gain control somewhat more common to about 6dB IIRC. So I clipped the blend resistor & had 4 independent chs of peak level expansion. And I gotta say it sounded really good to my ears & we could use something like that today. The RG2 blended the inputs to mono and used that for gain control voltages. So overall I prefereed the RG1 to newer spiffier looking Pioneer RG2.

 

[Sal1950]

LOL,, I got a number of claims of members having "no rice krispies" but no one tried to deny having (off center records, wow & flutter, warped records, records that change resolution from outer to inner grooves cause every single one ever made does, mono bass, and all the rest.
Guys, feel free to enjoy playing your records as much as you like, they can be fun to experience along with a black and white movie. Just please snap out of these claims of vinyl & tubes sounding "better". Better would always be closer to the sound of the master tape. For any number of reasons you may enjoy listening to these obsolete technologies, but they are vastly inferior to modern digital and solid state reproduction.
It's almost Christmas and I used to enjoy going to downtown Chicago and taking a horse and carriage ride around Michigan Ave and the sales district, but I wouldn't want to give up having a new C8 Corvette for it. LOL.

As to DR Expanders, Back in the day I ran a Phase Linear 1000 Autocorrelator Noise Reduction System. Although not useful for rice krispies it did an excellent job of improving DR, removing surface noise and low freq rumble.
I understand there are some modern designs that offer much improved performance.

 

[Marcsten]

LOL,, I got a number of claims of members having "no rice krispies" but no one tried to deny having (off center records, wow & flutter, warped records, records that change resolution from outer to inner grooves cause every single one ever made does, mono bass, and all the rest.
Guys, feel free to enjoy playing your records as much as you like, they can be fun to experience along with a black and white movie. Just please snap out of these claims of vinyl & tubes sounding "better". Better would always be closer to the sound of the master tape. For any number of reasons you may enjoy listening to these obsolete technologies, but they are vastly inferior to modern digital and solid state reproduction.
It's almost Christmas and I used to enjoy going to downtown Chicago and taking a horse and carriage ride around Michigan Ave and the sales district, but I wouldn't want to give up having a new C8 Corvette for it. LOL.

As to DR Expanders, Back in the day I ran a Phase Linear 1000 Autocorrelator Noise Reduction System. Although not useful for rice krispies it did an excellent job of improving DR, removing surface noise and low freq rumble.
I understand there are some modern designs that offer much improved performance.

YOu're right! I did forget to respond on the other analogue issues. Off center p[ressi g is horrible and in tolerable. I have gotten several of these over the years. I always returned them to the store a negotiated a replacement since you realized the issue the first time you played it. So that was little more than a minor annoyance. Wow and flutter inherent in having a motor turning a platter is reduced to where it is really a non-issue on a high(sit) quality table like my Rega 25. Warps fall into the same category. If it comes that way I've returned it. If I did it by leaving it next to a heat source (I can't recall ever actually doing this) that will be a problem for CDs too. Again a tiny issue if at all. Issues of simple geometry are real as the arm pivots toward the center of the record since the angle will be slightly different at different parts of the record. Can you hear it? I'd like to see you try, but I will defer to others on that.
As for your Corvette, there's a reason that not everyone drives a 'Vette, besides money. I'll take my '64 E Type over any 'vette. Its a way better car to drive in almost every way (except maybe the defroster!). LOL. But a Chevy guy will never drive an English car and so on for reasons of preference and taste.
Regardless, I expect I will live to see a time when the sources of recorded music to choose from are online/streaming, etc. and vinyl. No CD. I expect vinyl to outlive the CD which is crashing in application. But then, just popularity doesn't mean better, but if it leaves the market then the question becomes moot. So enjoy CDs while you can. And if you really like one, buy two so when it starts skipping so you can't play it any more, you can have a backup (pun intended).

 

[par4ken]

Thanks for the links. I wasn't aware that a previous discussion of DR Expanders had been touched on in the forum. And the topic on tube Expanders was also pretty interesting.

In days when the analog LP was dominant there was so much grousing about the rather limited ~60dB dynamic range. It was mentioned that full orchestral crescendos reach well over 100 dB SPL & records could never reproduce that. Well they were confusing maximum SPL with dynamic range, which room & audience noise ate into the low end. Must play the soft parts loud enough to cover the noise! At any rate no sooner did we get 16 bit CD quality that they figured out how to destroy dynamic range by brick wall compression. So we've gone from about 60 dB range to 1/10 that on some titles.

At one time I had two Pioneer RG-1 DR Expanders for the front & back chs. It used the RCA 3080 OTA that was pretty good if you kept input levels low. The RG2 used FET's as gain control element. The linear ohmic range of an FET is pretty small but it has some advantages over an OTA of that time.

Also the RG1 had level sensing for each ch but with a blend resistor that made the gain control somewhat more common to about 6dB IIRC. So I clipped the blend resistor & had 4 independent chs of peak level expansion. And I gotta say it sounded really good to my ears & we could use something like that today. The RG2 blended the inputs to mono and used that for gain control voltages. So overall I prefereed the RG1 to newer spiffier looking Pioneer RG2.

Sadly with the way CD's are being mastered now there is no dynamic range left, no form of dramatic range expansion will work to improve the sound. The main original benefit of CD's is completely lost. Even a scratchy record sounds better on my system than an overly compressed CD!