Så stygt lyder lp'er før RIAA-afpudsning

Lyden pladespillerens pick-up'en suger op af vinylpladens riller er forholdsvis styg.

Lyden i rillerne er forholdsvis styg pga. teknologiske begrænsninger.

Man bøder dog på det med en RIAA-forstærkning/filtrering ⟲.

Her kan du høre hvordan vinyl lyder før og efter RIAA-forstærkning.

Af det kan vi lære, at man i den grad har brug for

• en gammel forstærker med pladespiller-indgang og -forforstærker (billig)
• en ny forstærker med pladespiller-indgang og -forforstærker (dyrere) eller
• en pladespiller-forforstærker i løs vægt (ex. 400 kr. i El-G ⟲)

for at vinyl lyder godt.

Man kan også om Flac sige at de "0101001010101000100111101010", der hentes fra hukommelseskortet, lyder virkelig grimt og også skal repareres/efterbehandles. Men ikke med helt samme ret.

Vinyl har en hoben tekniske begrænsninger som det kræver dygtige håndværkere at styre uden om.

Lær mere om det hos de meget sympatiske og vidende eksperter:

• Scott Hull fra Masterdisk skriver om vinyl set i mikroskop ⟲, hvor meget musik, man kan proppe på en lp ⟲ og RIAA-kurven ⟲. (artikel knækket på andre måder hos Sessionville ⟲ og The Vinyl District ⟲). Han kender tydeligvis sit fagområde til bunds og oversælger ikke vinyl på lydkvalitet. Entusiaster vil glædes over en time eller to med hans store viden og pædagogiske evner.
• Ian Sheperd fra Production Advice byder på Vinyl ⟲, Kejserens nye ører ⟲, Hi-res audio ⟲ og er også hele tidsinvesteringen værd for nørder og entusiaster. Åh, selv interviewet med Steve Lillywhite ⟲  er godt (og indeholder hans hundefløjte på vinyl ⟲-anekdote).

Ceremonien, andagten, omslagene, fællesskabet: vinyl har mange gode sider og her er en længere hyldest.

AES-guldmedaljevinder ⟲ og en af verdens første og største højttalerguruer Floyd Toole siger det sådan:

"It all starts with a master tape, of course, which we created with some help from the recording engineers at McGill University's tonmeister program. We knew exactly what went into the master tape. The problem was that it was impossible to get the same program out of an LP. When you have the master tape and can switch instantly to the LP playback it is not difficult to hear the differences. We used a highly regarded mastering lab; the same one that did the CBS test records.

All of the known problems were there and audible: tracing distortion (the playback stylus does not follow the same course as the chisel shaped cutter), modulation limiting (the cutter itself cannot render short recorded wavelengths), mistracking (the moving mass of the stylus cannot stay in contact with the groove walls during loud passages, especially near the center of the disc, where wavelengths are short. Then there was the inevitable mono bass, necessary to keep the stylus from being thrown out of the groove, the dynamic range compression, necessary to avoid the worst distortions in the inner grooves, and the high-frequency rolloff to minimize tracing distortion, again in the inner grooves. All of these manipulations were done during mastering and are part of the considerable skill of a good mastering engineer. However, it all means that what comes out of an LP is not what was on the master tape.

It is a sad fact, as I was told by Phil Ramone - a renowned engineer - that it one of the great crimes of the audio industry that the music archives are full of LP cutting-master tapes not the original master tapes. So for a lot of our historical music we have lost the art that was created, and are left with manipulated, in effect predistorted, master tapes intended to be used to drive cutter heads on lathes making LPs. When CDs came along there were technical problems in the early days, but hidden, unmentioned, is the reality that a lot of the archival music that was put on CDs was inappropriate for CD playback - it could not sound as good as the original master tape because that was long gone. When one compares a master tape with what comes out of a modern CD player, or any of the wider bandwidth options, it is a struggle to hear any difference at all.

For me this meant that testing loudspeakers from that point on meant using one-from-master analog tape, and, later, digital recordings. LPs contained a lot of good music, but they were, and still are, incapable of delivering the art as it was created. Much enjoyment is still possible, which is the good thing."
- fra Audioholics Forum ⟲.