Subj : Vinyl vs CD
To   : Greenlfc
From : Ogg
Date : Sun Feb 20 2022 14:17:00

Hello Greenlfc!

** On Thursday 17.02.22 - 06:31, Greenlfc wrote to Ogg:

 Og>> But.. will the rubberbands for the turntables and will the
 Og>> cartridges/needles still be around after so many years?  :/

 G> Well, new belts are still manufactured, and direct drive turntables exist.
 G>  While styluses wear over time, there's still a good stock and new
 G> production in 2022.

That is reassuring, and somewhat astonishing actually. With LPs  
(and vinyl in general) being such a much smaller market than  
streaming services, I have to wonder what the justification  
might be for companies to continue to invest in producing the  
auxiliary supplies (cartridges/needles/tonearms/belts, etc) for  
the turntable crowd.

I think it was just less than 5 years ago when a fire destroyed  
a major factory that produced the special discs that are used  
for mastering. At that point, there were only 2 such remaining  
plants in the world.  The vinyl pressing plants were doomed -  
or something like that.

 G> At the end of the day, though, I'd see recreating the early 1900s
 G> technology of turntables to be somewhat easier than recreating something
 G> that can play MP3s.

Did you mean to say CDs instead of MP3s?  "Playing" mp3s is  
just a software process.  Playing CDs might require far too  
many integrated circuits and electronics.


 G> I've lost enough data over time that I'm paranoid of
 G> anything digital just *poof* disappearing (and I'm in IT, not just a
 G> user).  Heck, when I was a kid, I played a record by gluing a pushpin onto
 G> the end of a cone made of a rolled up manila folder and spinning the
 G> turntable by hand.

I dabbled in pressing a pin into the grooves of a record as it  
spun around a platter and listening to something "quietly" (in  
the same room where other people wanted to watch TV) since I  
didn't have a set of headphones yet.   :(   It didn't occur to  
me (then as a 7-8 yr old) to create something akin to a cone  
for listening. I could still hear "something".  Feeling the  
vibes was kinda cool too.


 G> Even if a record is *broken*, you could still stand a chance of recovering
 G> the data from it, albeit difficultly.

Have you heard of the project that was poised to digitize LPs  
by passing a laser around the grooves?

 G> Permanence in an age of digital ephemera is an invaluable
 G> attribute.

I'd say longetivity over permanence.  Permanence is valueless  
at one's grave.  :/


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