Total Fuckdown for Vinyl Nerds

[Captain Z]

Great stuff. As someone that bought a lot of vinyl (mainly singles, occasional LPs) in the early 2000s, the 'vinyl revival' has been a massive disappointment in all aspects.

Every once in a while I drop in on the Random Access Memories Discogs page to amuse myself with the 80% of reviews that wank on about the pressing quality and mastering that must have been performed by God himself, compared to the 20% of reviews that point out the actual tunes are fucking rubbish.

[Ferris]

I've only just clocked what a "two-pin DIN plug" (sort of) means. I thought it was just a mad non-sequitur.

[buzby]

I've only just clocked what a "two-pin DIN plug" (sort of) means. I thought it was just a mad non-sequitur.

Ye olde speaker connector:

[thugler]

The latter, though it's also helped in Naim's case due to them retaining the archaic DIN connector standard for interconnects between their components, long after everybody else settled on RCA/Cinch/Phono jack connectors (there are obviously companies selling extortionately priced versions of those too)
It's not the cables that corrode or tarnish, it's the connectors, as they are exposed to the environment, and the current flowing through them attracts dust and dirt electrostatically (which is a real phenomenon, the same way ionisers attract smoke, dust and pollen particles, but they work at much higher voltages).

Yes. And I've never had issues with that ever in my entire life.

[Goldentony]

I've had an elderly member of family corner me at a Christmas do and explain the leap forward in quality from HD TV to 4K. They are legally blind.

my mate has one of these and every time we've watched something in 4K they've joked about how you need to be about 4 feet away from the TV to see the benefit, and Ilove him but you can hear when they say it the sort of need for me to believe it and I just want to tell them it's OK

[Sebastian Cobb]

There's 3 things stopping me entertaining 4k

• It appears the main films big enough to see uhd releases are bollocks cgi fests that still look like someone's tipped a box of lego on the floor
• A lot of the boutique restorations look alright but I've seen and enjoyed them in both VHS quality and HD
• If I went 4k I reckon I'd need a bigger set than my 40" and it sits perfectly in the middle of the wall but a bigger set wouldn't

[purlieu]

Every once in a while I drop in on the Random Access Memories Discogs page to amuse myself with the 80% of reviews that wank on about the pressing quality and mastering that must have been performed by God himself, compared to the 20% of reviews that point out the actual tunes are fucking rubbish.

Yes, I remember when Discogs was a great site with people discussing the actual music, memories attached to it, interesting trivia, even artists popping up occasionally to talk about their releases. Now the comments sections are just person after person saying "shit quality, lots of surface noise even after 17 hours hand-cleaning, can't believe I spent £72 on this crap" followed by "mine sounds great, superb pressing, flat and quiet, deep bass, tactile slime and the singer popped out of the surface and gave me a Frenchy, don't know what everyone's complaining about". Or "THIS DESERVES TO BE ON VINYL!!!!" about a 65 minute album recorded, mixed and mastered digitally with two 25 minute tracks on it that only existed in 1,000 copies even on its first release and has been forgotten about even by the artist who made it. "Who the fuck would press CDs in 2019?!" read one comment I saw recently, which is remarkably stupid given that in 2019 CDs outsold vinyl by about 8:1. I'm not sure exactly when it turned into a vinyl fetishists site, it certainly never used to be.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Been listening to this a bit recently


Not sure 44/16 can adequately capture tape perfectly but it does a perfect job of capturing the essence of tape, dropouts and all.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Ye olde speaker connector:

My first hand-me-down amp had those, and din connectors for the in/tape out. I think it was based on some open-sourced RCA design. It was a decent amp for a homebrew job, with inbuilt protection, could put up with the speaker outs being shorted. It's only weak-point was a lack of mains filtering, so would output clicks/pops if you flicked a light-switch etc. It also had those two-pin mains outputs for daisy-chaining a tuner, and I got bitten by mains more than once trying to feel that in.

What do you use for speaker cable? I've always just used decently thick black and red LT cable, the kind used for 12v transmitters etc.

[sardines]

Been listening to this a bit recently


Not sure 44/16 can adequately capture tape perfectly but it does a perfect job of capturing the essence of tape, dropouts and all.

Not sure if you are aware but Welch is a complete vinyl head but wouldn't allow her music to be on vinyl until a few years ago when she could control the entire process herself and do it in analogue. Hope she didn't use Mobile Fidelity!

[Sebastian Cobb]

Not sure if you are aware but Welch is a complete vinyl head but wouldn't allow her music to be on vinyl until a few years ago when she could control the entire process herself and do it in analogue. Hope she didn't use Mobile Fidelity!

I wasn't aware, cheers. I had noticed that most of her stuff was CD only, but definitely sounded like it was recorded on tape.

[purlieu]

They're being sued.
https://completemusicupdate.com/article/audiophile-label-sued-over-misleading-statements-regarding-its-mastering-process/

[DJ Bob Hoskins]

I wonder if this case stands up given that MoFi seem to have misled their customers by omission rather than outright misstating the facts. In any event, it sounds like a load of opportunistic bullshit to me.*

I'm not saying the plaintiff doesn't have a point but he makes it sound like MoFi stole his pension. The actual quality of the goods has not changed as a result of the revelations, merely their perceived value on the second-hand market. That's something which can happen with pretty much any collectible at any time. It's not quite the same as, say, buying a ridiculously expensive painting which has been authenticated by Christie's, only to find out afterwards that it's a forgery.

I'll bet anything that the plaintiff's Mobile Fidelity collection is still worth a fair bit more than the original retail prices. So if he wants a straightforward refund, that's probably fair enough. But if he's trying to sue over loss of potential future earnings then that seems ridiculous.

* much like the majority of expensive vinyl reissues.

[Famous Mortimer]

If you're saying "we do all this with X process, every bit of it, beginning to end" and then don't, and people use X as their main reason for buying from you, then I think it's a bit more than misleading by omission.

I haven't read deeply so I could well be talking out of my arse, but I would have thought he's suing because he'd never have bought them in the first place if they'd said "yup, we use this digital process".

[QDRPHNC]

That's the crux of it really - the sound quality of their releases has never been disputed, people just didn't get what they thought they'd paid for.

Those booklet scans I posted back on page one are kind of the smoking gun for me, it's clear they were trying to hide the DSD step from consumers.