HD "HI-FI Vinyl Will Soon Be A Reality 3D Printing Technology

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by AcidPunk15, Feb 20, 2017.

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  1. Here are my thoughts on the so called hi definition vinyl and what I do and don't like about it:
    Pro's;
    It has the potential to improve the accuracy of the groove cut and extend the playing time or increase the amplitude.
    It could eliminate a lot of the problems in the matrix department of a record plant.
    Longer lasting stampers if made out of ceramic sounds plausible, meaning more consistent records.
    A simpler and more efficient manufacturing workflow could reduce costs.
    Con's;
    Unlikely to be fed from an analogue source. The laser will be driven from a computer's digital sound file converted to an analogue output. If this is done at a really high sampling and bit rate it will be similar to an analogue waveform but it still has to go through those DA converters.
    Many people will lose their jobs by this simplified production method, from the lathe cutters, matrix workers, suppliers, etc. This is where he thinks the cost savings will come from, redirected to his companies profits for suppling his cutting machine, no doubt.
    What I don't like is that Mr Loibl seems to be a marketing man. You can tell by the BS he speaks about scratching a groove in the lacquer and the toxic chemicals, which are not really so bad. He started his company in 2001 selling CD's and DVD's. Now that those markets are declining he's decided to jump on the Vinyl bandwagon.
    The magic of analogue vinyl records is about to be given the sterile treatment. Every record to sound perfect. No colouration from all the steps in the record making chain. That sounds boring to me.
     
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  2. Carrman

    Carrman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
  3. DPM

    DPM Senior Member

    Location:
    Nevada, USA
    I'm going to take a wait-and-see (er, hear) attitude. I think the result is going to depend a great deal on the implementation on a case-by-case basis.
     
  4. qwerty

    qwerty A resident of the SH_Forums.

    I see a parallel between these 3d-printed records to the turntables which read the music with a laser instead of a stylus (eg. the ELP).

    Yes, this technology may be revolutionary (no pun intended), and with future developments models may be further improved at lower cost. It has lots of potential. But outside rich audiophiles, is there the market size to sustain these products to give a return on investment? No matter how much we talk about the "vinyl revival" now, the demand for records are unlikely to exceed the demand for CDs (wait on, the demand for any physical media is decreasing now).
     
  5. AcidPunk15

    AcidPunk15 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    New Brunswick, NJ
    Couldnt have said it better myself your a 100% right man
     
  6. Thanks AcidPunk15,
    The record industry was kept alive by music enthusiasts, artists, manufacturers, and consumers. Now it appears the big money boys are moving in, even Sony Music.
    Well Sony was largely responsible for the death of the record industry in the first place.
    When they brought out their CD system they found it hard to get the record manufacturing companies interested in the CD. Those companies were making good money at the time and they saw no need to change to a new format. The solution for Sony came in the purchase of CBS Records and the signed artists and back catalogues that came with it. They then had a platform to launch their CD system to the public.
    Once the public had a taste of the CD format and could get a good selection of titles it was inevitable that the other record companies would have to follow. I won't go into some of the underhanded ways the vinyl record was deliberately killed off so CD's could be pushed.
    What I don't think these companies expected was the introduction of CD burners and later online music which ended up killing the music industry.
    I will be fair and say that it was hard for small and new artists to get into the scene at the time, as it was largely controlled by the big record companies. Now at least it's easier for new artists to be heard, but it's also true there are now less buyers than in the heyday of record sales.
    Maybe we should be happy that new players are entering the vinyl record business with new ideas. The hardest part of making a good record is the cutting and especially the electroforming process which needs knowledgeable people to make quality metal parts.
    The danger with this new simplified production method is that everyone and their dog will be setting up presses to try and make a buck. Too much product on the market could cause a price war, effecting the serious manufacturers.
    Then again it will take time to roll out these new laser cutters and the company has said they expect the records pressed with this system will be sold for more than a standard record.
     
  7. anorak2

    anorak2 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    Technical progress brought about a format change, if it wasn't Sony/Philips some other company would have invented a similar format. And they killed off nothing, on the contrary they helped the entire record industry to the highest profits they ever enjoyed. The same companies that used to make records and cassettes just went on with CD and fared off even better there, for a while.

    They were well aware that digital technology gave consumers the potential to create endless generations of lossless copies thus undermining the business model of the entire recording industry, which is why they killed of DAT and pushed lossy compression formats like DCC and Minidisk. In the long run they couldn't prevent its breakthrough in the form of CD burners and MP3. Then they decided to join the bandwagon in order to keep their profits afloat, and that seems to work.

    "HD vinyl" is not a game changer, just a footnote on what will likely remain a niche market. It's interesting from a technological angle, and maybe another justification for the increased prices they're currently asking. I don't think anyone is planning for a drop in prices.
     
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  8. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Exactly. The CD was the greatest thing to ever happen to the music business.
     
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  9. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Which already happens. So no change there.

    I don't see this necessarily happening. Right now there is a bottleneck even before you have plates to stick into presses. Getting those plates is part of the delay right now. So if this method help alleviate that bottleneck that would be good news not bad. In addition, by their own admission, they can't cut that many using this process per year anyway. If some jobs are shed under the traditional method, they will be replaced by this new method, assuming it becomes the method to use.

    As opposed to what we have now i.e. records cut from digital sources? What's so magical about them and not records pressed with stampers made under this new method? Right now we have no idea how these will sound. Could be better or worse, but if you were concerned about the magic of analogue records that horse has already bolted.

     
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  10. anarak2,
    I said in my post they killed off the LP. That is a fact.
    You might be right to say someone would have introduced a replacement technology to the vinyl record but that's a different issue to what I said.
    At the time customers were buying and wanted to continue buying LP's but they were denied that by dubious marketing methods from companies pushing the CD.
    Perhaps in the US the quality of vinyl pressings was poor and that could explain the attraction of CD's, but in Australia and Europe the quality was consistantly good so there was less need to change.
    And DAT died because it was a flawed format.Once users discovered the problems of data loss they abandoned the format for more reliable formats.
    Unless you were in the record industry, you would not know what was going on behind the scenes.
     
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  11. Much of the signature sound of analogue is a result of the flaws of the recording and reproducing chain. Those people that enjoy this analogue sound are not going to want a format that sounds perfect.
    At the moment each LP title that is made will have a certain sound effected by the whole production process. This in my opinion makes vinyl unique. If people want a perfect recording then SACD would be a better choice but it's boring when every recording is technically perfect.
    This is like the slick Hollywood movies where the production is so perfect, that the life of the movie has been stripped out of it.
    If I listen to artists and songs of the past I want to feel like I am taken back to that time and that means the recording shouldn't be remastered to sound like it was recorded yesterday. Leave the atmosphere intact.
    It's like seeing a colourized version of the Marx Bros movies. Doesn't work for me.
    This is my opinion of course so others may have a different idea.
     
  12. anorak2

    anorak2 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    You make it sound like an evil conspiracy.

    When and where would that have been? CD appeared in 1983, and for the first couple of years after that all albums appeared on LP, most also on cassette, but only a small selection on CD. Often the CD would appear a few weeks or months later. Only in the second half of the 1980s did it become common that an album appeared in all three of those formats at the same time. For a few years on they co-existed, and around 1992 most shops cleared LPs from the shelves only to leave CD and cassette.

    No it was actively stalled.
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2018
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  13. McLover

    McLover Senior Member

    CD-4 required Half Speed Mastering. It also demanded finicky setup, shibata styli, and impeccably high standards on plating and pressing. Those CD-4 records also were restricted to 15 Khz audio bandwidth. and had very short playing life. Just because it can be done under ideal conditions does not mean it can be done under real world conditions. Sorry,25 Khz is more like real world under good conditions. CD-4 was not a practical real world LP format for Quad under 1970's oil shortage era vinyl plating and pressing reality. And was not a viable format for everyman.
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2018
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  14. anarak2,
    Maybe not an evil conspiracy, more like dubious marketing to get people to buy the latest product.
    As you said the CD was introduced in 1983 and took 10 years till it won the market over.
    It really wasn't a sales success in the beginning because their was a lack of titles on the format. It was when Sony got their hands on CBS and their signed artists and back catalogue that the format had a chance. And by the way CD production had very high reject rates in the beginning and needed to be subsidised from the profits of vinyl and cassettes.
    The technical problems of DAT are well known but it was never intended to be used for mass replication of music.
     
  15. McLover,
    The 100 kHz claim is only on the outer diameter of the record. CD-4 records did not cut sound on the inner grooves due to limited frequency bandwidth in that area.
    The point was simply to state a laser has the ability to cut at very high frequencies but these would have to be at low amplitude.
    I do see the ability to eliminate tracking distortion by adjusting the timing of the left and right signal as a good idea with laser cutting and this would allow a higher frequency to be cut on the inner grooves. However, this could also be achieved with a laquer cutting lathe if the cutter head moved across the lathe in an arc.
     
  16. eddiel,
    Full analogue AAA mastering is gaining popularity.
    However I'm not totally against this new laser cutting idea. For much of the current music production it will be ideal. I do think some of the claims could exaggerated. For example 30% more playing time compared to what? Probably compared to lacquer disc but not to copper disc.
     
  17. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Huh? Consumers stopped buying LPs. They're inconvenient, degrade, require meticulous cleaning to sound good and are notoriously not portable. In an era dominated by the Walkman, they were anachronistic.

    CD didn't "kill" the LP by the way. That distinction belongs to cassette, as this graph reveals:

    [​IMG]

    The CD simply finished it off. If CD's hadn't come along, vinyl sales would have still been destroyed by the cassette. Especially once things like Dolby S and DCC rolled along.
     
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  18. anorak2

    anorak2 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    Compared to the conventional cutting method. It is not due to the material, but to the fact that the entire waveform is optimised by a computer beforehand. In conventional record cutting, some optimisation also takes place, but according to their claim(?) they can do it better.
     
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  19. What the chart shows is that cassette sales were relatively stable and it was the CD that took share from the LP. Thanks for confirming my earlier comment.
     
  20. Tartifless

    Tartifless Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    What is lacking is explanation of this chart... Source, scope (country/world?)...
    What does value mean ?
     
  21. McLover

    McLover Senior Member

    [Q
    Do we need 100 Khz frequency response on these? NO! What cartridge can reproduce that? 20-25,000 Hertz response matters. Analog sources matter, quality master sources from tape matter! Careful mastering in a tasteful way matters. If I want digital, there's other purer ways to get that. And we need LP discs cut at real world levels, and not BRICKWALLED or capable of being BRICKWALLED! Again, this new so called HD vinyl is a theory and not yet a reality. The processes we have for vinyl work just fine when done right, they're proven. They can deliver quality results. For me I am a results man! It is or it is not. The proof is in the listening. And right now, we don't have any samples to listen to. Lasers are not proven, it is not debugged. Neumann is proven, Scully is proven, Ortofon is proven, Vinyl's limitations keep it a good sounding medium, you can't go too far from wrong without issues. Let's keep vinyl sounding honest. Get me and folks here something to evaluate and listen to. That we can hear on our systems with our own ears. I want to hear results, not theory which so far hasn't cut one record by anybody. Then I can live with the new method and see for myself if it has potential.
     
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  22. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Nope. Cassette sales continued to grow after the CD was introduced, for several years, before they plateaued. And prior to that cassette had been skyrocketing and vinyl was already in steep decline, having peaked around '80-'81. A trend which would have continued if CD had never come along.

    [​IMG]

    Billions of inflation-adjusted dollars, US sales, RIAA.

    https://blog.thecurrent.org/2014/02/40-years-of-album-sales-data-in-one-handy-chart/
     
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  23. anorak2

    anorak2 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    For comparison, here is a similar chart for Germany

    [​IMG]
     
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  24. husafreak

    husafreak Great F'n music that's difficult to listen to!

    Location:
    NorCal, Bay Area
    I think the main reason we are where we are today regarding playback medium is portability. The cassette and the ability to own the digital file from a CD killed vinyl in the mainstream. Of course cassettes were portable from the get go and digital files from CD's came a little later. But portability of the jewel box CD's and their promise of "perfect sound forever" seemed real enough at the time. It was a while before some of us realized our vinyl sounded pretty damn good compared to our CD's. I remember being disappointed with my first batch of CD's. I made a list and bought like, 20 of my favorite albums on CD. Yeah, I did not ever get rid of those records even after buying the CD's.
    Back on topic I am skeptical about the "HD" vinyl. Gotta hear it. Then we'll know. I don't mind a different way to make records that is less time consuming and toxic, that sounds fine. But why would anyone care that they play louder? Besides a record company salesman. And why does it have to be so hyped? It is the same people again. Will they promise 'better sound' again and not deliver?
     
  25. DJ Johnny123

    DJ Johnny123 Active Member

    Location:
    Charleston, SC
    This is just another digital format not analog. Simple. Not interested in CDs, not interested in digital HD vinyl.
     
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