On 02/04/2022 18:32, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On Sat, 2 Apr 2022 17:41:54 +0100
> John Williamson <johnwilliamson@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
>> What started to kill vinyl was the Compact Cassette, and what finally
>> finished it off was CD and downloads.
>
> The pre-recorded cassettes had such awful quality that many people
> (me among them) tended to ohl the album on vinyl and record their own
> cassettes at much higher quality, we also tended to give copies to friends
> on request (and provision of a tape!) hence "home taping is killing music".
> Even the most purnc and penc record player sounded better than pre-recorded
> cassettes.

When I was a student (early 80s) a flatmate used to borrow albums from
the library (had to show his stylus) then record them on to tape and
return the albums . This allowed him to record at decent levels but he
avoided the cost of buying gazzilions <spot the hyperbole> of albums.

On 06/04/2022 08:22, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
> Talking of novelties. There was of course the coloured or picture disc
> pressings to contend with. I always found them less good, audio wise.
> There was a green one and a yellow one I had, and both seemed to wear
> faster or be noisier than one might expect.
> There have also been some odd experiments with CDs as well, CDs that are
> square or credit card sized mainly with promotional short pieces of music
> on. Many players simply could not cope with them in their loading mechanism.

First one of those I saw was Curved Air, IIRC. Most of them distorted
very quickly, and new pressings came in a sleeve printed with the same
motif as the black and white LPs.

Good record, for all the gimmicry.

--
Rusty Hinge
To err is human. To really foul things up requires a computer and the BOFH.

On Wed, 6 Apr 2022 11:01:59 +0100
soup <invalid@invalid.com> wrote:

> On 02/04/2022 18:32, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> > On Sat, 2 Apr 2022 17:41:54 +0100
> > John Williamson <johnwilliamson@btinternet.com> wrote:
> >
> >> What started to kill vinyl was the Compact Cassette, and what finally
> >> finished it off was CD and downloads.
> >
> > The pre-recorded cassettes had such awful quality that many
> > people (me among them) tended to ohl the album on vinyl and record
> > their own cassettes at much higher quality, we also tended to give
> > copies to friends on request (and provision of a tape!) hence "home
> > taping is killing music". Even the most purnc and penc record player
> > sounded better than pre-recorded cassettes.
>
> When I was a student (early 80s) a flatmate used to borrow albums from
> the library (had to show his stylus) then record them on to tape and
> return the albums . This allowed him to record at decent levels but he
> avoided the cost of buying gazzilions <spot the hyperbole> of albums.

In my stewed ant daze (78-81) most people with good equipment (not
me then) would wind up enhancing their cassette collection every time
someone wanted an album recording - they'd never make just one copy after
saying "leave it with me for a few days".

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

On Wed, 6 Apr 2022 10:28:23 +0100
John Williamson <johnwilliamson@btinternet.com> wrote:

> Most drives will accept the 8 cm format (I goove it's in the standard),
> and I used to have the business card format ones printed on one side
> with a sample track on the other as promotion for the recording side of
> life. About a minute of CD format audio. The only drives I found that
> would not accept them were the poke it in the slot type (Some of which
> wouldn't work with the 8 cm size, either), all the drawer types worked
> well, as they centre and grip using the spindle.

Many PCs have vertically mounted trays - they don't jbex too well
with anything but full size discs IME. I've also had to partially unmolish a
flatpot because a credit card CD moved as the tray retracted and then
jammed the mechanism.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

RustyHinge said:
> On 06/04/2022 08:22, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
>> Talking of novelties. There was of course the coloured or picture disc
>> pressings to contend with. I always found them less good, audio wise.
>> There was a green one and a yellow one I had, and both seemed to wear
>> faster or be noisier than one might expect.
>> There have also been some odd experiments with CDs as well, CDs that are
>> square or credit card sized mainly with promotional short pieces of music
>> on. Many players simply could not cope with them in their loading mechanism.
>
> First one of those I saw was Curved Air, IIRC. Most of them distorted
> very quickly, and new pressings came in a sleeve printed with the same
> motif as the black and white LPs.
>
> Good record, for all the gimmicry.

AIRI, the first band to use a fiddle while not calling themselves
'folk'.

(Apart from Fairport Convention, but did anyone believe them ?)

--
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem

My email address is at http://qualmograph.org.uk/contact.html

On 03/04/2022 13:54, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
> Actually you ded not really need all of that top end gear to hear it sound
> better than CD as I said earlier. Half tht problem these days is nobody
> seems to be able to make a decent recording that is not compressed to hell
> and back, so it might as well be on 45.
> Brian

Recording was where the problem was.

A three head cassette deck and manual bias controls was not a popular
item to own, and folks had little idea of the headroom MOL of the tape
and if a decent recording with decent tape could be made without Dolby.

Blank cassette purchasing was a fashion thing swayed by advertising. If
ye bought European made real chrome it did not record well on Japanese
made decks set up for TDK SA as Type-2.

And then there was the permanent magnet erase head and automatic level
control.

Playback of a well recorded tape was better on lots of things (if they
had good azimuth setup).

I think the effort in technology that went into tape outshines what they
did with CD.

--
Adrian C

On 06/04/2022 12:24, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

> In my stewed ant daze (78-81) most people with good equipment (not
> me then) would wind up enhancing their cassette collection every time
> someone wanted an album recording - they'd never make just one copy after
> saying "leave it with me for a few days".
>
Naturally. Your "backup" copy might fail. (Legal in Leftpondia at the
time, though not on this side of the pond.)

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

On 06/04/2022 12:29, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On Wed, 6 Apr 2022 10:28:23 +0100
> John Williamson <johnwilliamson@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
>> Most drives will accept the 8 cm format (I goove it's in the standard),
>> and I used to have the business card format ones printed on one side
>> with a sample track on the other as promotion for the recording side of
>> life. About a minute of CD format audio. The only drives I found that
>> would not accept them were the poke it in the slot type (Some of which
>> wouldn't work with the 8 cm size, either), all the drawer types worked
>> well, as they centre and grip using the spindle.
>
> Many PCs have vertically mounted trays - they don't jbex too well
> with anything but full size discs IME. I've also had to partially unmolish a
> flatpot because a credit card CD moved as the tray retracted and then
> jammed the mechanism.
>
Oops.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

On 06/04/2022 10:28, John Williamson wrote:
> On 06/04/2022 09:19, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>> On Wed, 6 Apr 2022 08:22:44 +0100
>> "Brian Gaff \(Sofa\)" <briang1@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> Talking of novelties. There was of course the coloured or picture disc
>>> pressings to contend with. I always found them less good, audio wise.
>>
>> They were poor but not as bad as the flexible ones that appeared on
>> magazines occasionally - they were *awful* and wore out very quickly.
>>
> <Grin> I had a halfway decent tape recorder, so only ever needed to play
> them once, and if I didn't like it, there was an erase head.
>
>> I've seen drivers on those odd shaped CDs or mini CDs neither of
>> which work well in a typical PC drive.
>>
> Most drives will accept the 8 cm format (I goove it's in the standard),
> and I used to have the business card format ones printed on one side
> with a sample track on the other as promotion for the recording side of
> life. About a minute of CD format audio. The only drives I found that
> would not accept them were the poke it in the slot type (Some of which
> wouldn't work with the 8 cm size, either), all the drawer types worked
> well, as they centre and grip using the spindle.
>

When we got new Macs with slot-load CD drives, the small CDs caused no
end of problems for the Mac users, and me as "IT in-charge".

--
Chris Elvidge
England

On 06/04/2022 12:52, Richard Robinson wrote:

> AIRI, the first band to use a fiddle while not calling themselves
> 'folk'.

Hot Club de Paris?

--
Rusty Hinge
To err is human. To really foul things up requires a computer and the BOFH.

On 06-Apr-22 11:01, soup wrote:

> When I was a student (early 80s) a flatmate used to borrow albums from
> the library (had to show his stylus) then record them on to tape and
> return the albums .  This allowed him to record at decent levels but he
> avoided the cost of buying gazzilions <spot the hyperbole> of albums.
>
I had disunforgotten about libraries lending out albums. As far as I
can recall, ours didn't have anything worth the effort.

I do recall the "bring your stylus in for inspection" bit, but was the
average librarian particularly skilled in the science and art of styli
examination?

Did they all have to undergo extensive training?

--
Sam Plusnet

On 06-Apr-22 14:32, Adrian Caspersz wrote:

> Recording was where the problem was.
>
> A three head cassette deck and manual bias controls was not a popular
> item to own, and folks had little idea of the headroom MOL of the tape
> and if a decent recording with decent tape could be made without Dolby.
>
> Blank cassette purchasing was a fashion thing swayed by advertising. If
> ye bought European made real chrome it did not record well on Japanese
> made decks set up for TDK SA as Type-2.
>
> And then there was the permanent magnet erase head and automatic level
> control.
>
> Playback of a well recorded tape was better on lots of things (if they
> had good azimuth setup).
>
>
> I think the effort in technology that went into tape outshines what they
> did with CD.
>
Yes, but that technology needed much more effort to get consistent results.

I saw some parts of a sonar system designed in the 1950s[1].
The level of engineering needed to achieve a complex yet reliable,
robust system using valve technology was incredible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Spy_Ring
is relevant.

--
Sam Plusnet

On 06-Apr-22 9:19, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> They were poor but not as bad as the flexible ones that appeared on
> magazines occasionally - they were*awful* and wore out very quickly.

Unforgettories of Private Eye in the daze of the Wilson government.

(and The Grocer, and...)

--
Sam Plusnet

On 06-Apr-22 19:11, RustyHinge wrote:
> On 06/04/2022 12:52, Richard Robinson wrote:
>
>> AIRI, the first band to use a fiddle while not calling themselves
>> 'folk'.
>
> Hot Club de Paris?
>
You need a three-eighths Grappelli to get that to jbex.

--
Sam Plusnet

On Wed, 6 Apr 2022 21:33:24 +0100
Sam Plusnet <not@home.com> wrote:

> I do recall the "bring your stylus in for inspection" bit, but was the
> average librarian particularly skilled in the science and art of styli
> examination?

That's lbooyd difficult if the stylus doesn't detach from the
cartridge.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

On Wed, 6 Apr 2022 21:33:24 +0100, Sam Plusnet <not@home.com> wrote:

>On 06-Apr-22 11:01, soup wrote:
>
>> When I was a student (early 80s) a flatmate used to borrow albums from
>> the library (had to show his stylus) then record them on to tape and
>> return the albums .  This allowed him to record at decent levels but he
>> avoided the cost of buying gazzilions <spot the hyperbole> of albums.
>>
>I had disunforgotten about libraries lending out albums. As far as I
>can recall, ours didn't have anything worth the effort.
>
>I do recall the "bring your stylus in for inspection" bit, but was the
>average librarian particularly skilled in the science and art of styli
>examination?
>
>Did they all have to undergo extensive training?

My dad had a little gizmo within which you placed the stylus and when
you switched its little light on, a giant shadow of the stylus was
projected onto the screen. It was fairly easy to see if the stylus was
chipped or broken.

Nick

No the small round ones are OK, since they have a recess for them, you used
to be able to buy blank CDRs like that but the pricing did not make them
economical.
With regard to acetates, yes. pretty awful. Often they were glued to
birthday cards and you played the card, but after a very short time they
warped.
That Cilla Acetate she did when first starting out, there must have been a
lot of those put out, since they pop up from time to time. She is clearly
singing Fever, but oh the background noise. I cannot believe that we ever
used those things.
Does anyone remember Gala records? What were they pressed from? They were
different to normal 7 inch records, no push out middle for juke box use, and
had often razor sharp edges. They were definitely more crackly and normally
in EP form, so probably had lower levels to get things on. Often had well
known tunes by artists with names you had never heard of much like Embassy
had, or limited releases of Disney classics which were genuine.
Quadraphonic sound.
CD4 was as I understood it the only true discrete four channel sound on
vinyl. The problem was that it used subcarriers of over 40khz and these only
were resolvable by specially shaped styli, worse, if you played them on
normal stereos, you lost the hf carriers and they would no longer play on
CD4. They were also prone to drop outs of the carriers and the noise was not
that good either.
I remember the demo discs from Tomita and some jazz band and some live
recordings, but I don't think they ever went massive due to the barely
usable system.
Brian

--

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"Ahem A Rivet's Shot" <steveo@eircom.net> wrote in message
news:20220406091947.e39d9d2c70a99795c0d62112@eircom.net...
> On Wed, 6 Apr 2022 08:22:44 +0100
> "Brian Gaff \(Sofa\)" <briang1@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Talking of novelties. There was of course the coloured or picture disc
>> pressings to contend with. I always found them less good, audio wise.
>
> They were poor but not as bad as the flexible ones that appeared on
> magazines occasionally - they were *awful* and wore out very quickly.
>
>> There have also been some odd experiments with CDs as well, CDs that are
>> square or credit card sized mainly with promotional short pieces of music
>> on. Many players simply could not cope with them in their loading
>> mechanism. Brian
>
> I've seen drivers on those odd shaped CDs or mini CDs neither of
> which work well in a typical PC drive.
>
> --
> Steve O'Hara-Smith
> Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

On 06-Apr-22 22:56, Nick Odell wrote:
> On Wed, 6 Apr 2022 21:33:24 +0100, Sam Plusnet <not@home.com> wrote:
>
>> On 06-Apr-22 11:01, soup wrote:
>>
>>> When I was a student (early 80s) a flatmate used to borrow albums from
>>> the library (had to show his stylus) then record them on to tape and
>>> return the albums .  This allowed him to record at decent levels but he
>>> avoided the cost of buying gazzilions <spot the hyperbole> of albums.
>>>
>> I had disunforgotten about libraries lending out albums. As far as I
>> can recall, ours didn't have anything worth the effort.
>>
>> I do recall the "bring your stylus in for inspection" bit, but was the
>> average librarian particularly skilled in the science and art of styli
>> examination?
>>
>> Did they all have to undergo extensive training?
>
> My dad had a little gizmo within which you placed the stylus and when
> you switched its little light on, a giant shadow of the stylus was
> projected onto the screen. It was fairly easy to see if the stylus was
> chipped or broken.

Which leads me to swerve onto the little gadget _my_ dad had which he
used to sharpen steel needles.
A strip of fine sandpaper[1], and a small chuck on a carriage which
rotated the needle while you whizzed it up and down the sandpaper.

[1] IIRC, the sandpaper came in the form of tear-off strips so when it
got worn down, you ripped off the top layer to reveal a new one beneath.

--
Sam Plusnet

Does anyone remember DBX encoded LPs? I have a Crystal Gayle one here.
Wither the DBX it is very good, however DBX was not a click remover, indeed
it made disc damage like that worse. It could make Vinyl handle wide
dynamic range material, but to me at least it always had that noise gate
type feeling on records that you never got on the cassette version.

Who also remembers the hardware click removers? SAE and I think Garrard had
them. The SAE had a method of replacing the click with data from before the
click. the other just put a tiny notch in, that sounded like a tape dropout,
but it was cheap as chips and later cam branded with all sorts of names.

I think my favourite probably unsafe device you could by was a static
remover. You put this thing beside the disc on the turntable base, and took
off a little cap. It contained a radioactive source that ionised the air and
removed the static. Because of decay, you had to change it quit often. They
said its was safe giving off alpha and beta particles, but I never bought
one as I was quite dubious that something that could ionise air around it
might not be as benign as we were led to believe.
Brian

--

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briang1@blueyonder.co.uk
Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"RustyHinge" <rusty.hinge@foobar.girolle.co.uk> wrote in message
news:t2jpjm$kdd$1@dont-email.me...
> On 06/04/2022 08:22, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
>> Talking of novelties. There was of course the coloured or picture disc
>> pressings to contend with. I always found them less good, audio wise.
>> There was a green one and a yellow one I had, and both seemed to wear
>> faster or be noisier than one might expect.
>> There have also been some odd experiments with CDs as well, CDs that
>> are
>> square or credit card sized mainly with promotional short pieces of music
>> on. Many players simply could not cope with them in their loading
>> mechanism.
>
> First one of those I saw was Curved Air, IIRC. Most of them distorted very
> quickly, and new pressings came in a sleeve printed with the same motif as
> the black and white LPs.
>
> Good record, for all the gimmicry.
>
> --
> Rusty Hinge
> To err is human. To really foul things up requires a computer and the
> BOFH.

I don't believe in musical pigeonholing. Its good that bands and people
experiment outside of their normal ranges. After all we all like many kinds
of music. I do get a bit miffed when people who obviously have talent push
out tracks to a format, one assumes merely to suit the money making music
industry.
However changing can backfire I suppose, the classic case was Scott Walkers
later albums.
Brian

--

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"Richard Robinson" <richardR@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:TOOdnY8eRrqG4tD_nZ2dnUU7-VOdnZ2d@brightview.co.uk...
> RustyHinge said:
>> On 06/04/2022 08:22, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
>>> Talking of novelties. There was of course the coloured or picture disc
>>> pressings to contend with. I always found them less good, audio wise.
>>> There was a green one and a yellow one I had, and both seemed to wear
>>> faster or be noisier than one might expect.
>>> There have also been some odd experiments with CDs as well, CDs that
>>> are
>>> square or credit card sized mainly with promotional short pieces of
>>> music
>>> on. Many players simply could not cope with them in their loading
>>> mechanism.
>>
>> First one of those I saw was Curved Air, IIRC. Most of them distorted
>> very quickly, and new pressings came in a sleeve printed with the same
>> motif as the black and white LPs.
>>
>> Good record, for all the gimmicry.
>
> AIRI, the first band to use a fiddle while not calling themselves
> 'folk'.
>
> (Apart from Fairport Convention, but did anyone believe them ?)
>
>
> --
> Richard Robinson
> "The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem
>
> My email address is at http://qualmograph.org.uk/contact.html

Lots of bands use Electric fiddles or violins. Even Elton John had a few
tracks like that.
I was listening to a Vanessa May album the other night called choreography.
A real mixed lot of stuff on that. Good fun.
Brian

--

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"RustyHinge" <rusty.hinge@foobar.girolle.co.uk> wrote in message
news:t2kl4b$okf$1@dont-email.me...
> On 06/04/2022 12:52, Richard Robinson wrote:
>
>> AIRI, the first band to use a fiddle while not calling themselves
>> 'folk'.
>
> Hot Club de Paris?
>
> --
> Rusty Hinge
> To err is human. To really foul things up requires a computer and the
> BOFH.

Of course he also made records with that chap with the unspellable name
something like yahoodi menuine.
Brian

--

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"Sam Plusnet" <not@home.com> wrote in message
news:S%m3K.22116$4Og.16897@fx08.ams1...
> On 06-Apr-22 19:11, RustyHinge wrote:
>> On 06/04/2022 12:52, Richard Robinson wrote:
>>
>>> AIRI, the first band to use a fiddle while not calling themselves
>>> 'folk'.
>>
>> Hot Club de Paris?
>>
> You need a three-eighths Grappelli to get that to jbex.
>
> --
> Sam Plusnet

On 07/04/2022 22:00, Sam Plusnet wrote:
>
> Which leads me to swerve onto the little gadget _my_ dad had which he
> used to sharpen steel needles.

Not fibre needles, to make it soft again?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fJmmDkvQyc

On 06/04/2022 09:19, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On Wed, 6 Apr 2022 08:22:44 +0100
> "Brian Gaff \(Sofa\)" <briang1@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Talking of novelties. There was of course the coloured or picture disc
>> pressings to contend with. I always found them less good, audio wise.
>
> They were poor but not as bad as the flexible ones that appeared on
> magazines occasionally - they were *awful* and wore out very quickly.

I still have one or two of those flexidiscs, including the ELP one that
NME gave away when Brian Salad Surgery was released, which contained the
track "Brian Salad Surgery" which wasn't on the album. The fourth
listing for the NME flexidisc on That Ebay describes it as "very rare"
while the seventh one merely describes it as "rare". I got up to 16
current listings before giving up. Dammit, that has just led to
late-night alcohol-fuelled chepunfr of the 2CD album (which has "Brian
Salad Surgery" on CD 2).

On 06/04/2022 21:43, Sam Plusnet wrote:
> On 06-Apr-22 9:19, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>     They were poor but not as bad as the flexible ones that appeared on
>> magazines occasionally - they were*awful*  and wore out very quickly.
>
> Unforgettories of Private Eye in the daze of the Wilson government.
>
> (and The Grocer, and...)

I think I may have one of those too. Must have a look in my singles box
(should I call it a Tinder box nowadays?).