Major Labels Are Working on a New Vinyl Records Specification

Fremer has spoken well of some digitally sourced remasters such as the Stones mono box.

 

I seriously LOL’d.

 

If they could come up with a smaller vinyl record I could play in
my car, I'm in.

 

There’s also the goal of minimizing counterfeit vinyl, according to the group.

Bingo! There's your answer! Copyright management.

 

Does anyone know exactly what the RIAA updated in 1978, anyway? That was after the Quadraphonic fad had pretty much ended.

 

Can’t wait for the “Don’t fake vinyl” speech at the Grammys.

 

I spend a lot of time in record stores trying to identify counterfeit records so I can avoid them. I bought a few counterfeit records in the past thinking they were original.

 

I was in a Best Buy recently. With what they charge for vinyl, I'll bet their vinyl sales are ice cold.

 

When they were considering a new format that eventually became the CD, they did consider using a variation of the 12 inch laserdisc (LD) as an audio format. It was rejected because you could fit 12 hours of analog audio on one side of an LD, which would likely be enough to fit the entire Beatles Catalog on one disc, but few people would be able to afford the disc.

Other issues with that would likely caused it to be rejected are:

• The weight of the LD - Although they are the same size as the LP, they are much heavier which would mandate a much stronger transport for handling the disc in the player. Also, with the speed that an LP spins (CAV discs spin at 3,600 RPM, with each spin of the disc containing one frame of video), this can result in a potentially dangerous situation if the player malfunctions. Once, I was playing an LD and hit the eject button to take the disc out but the player didn't stop spinning the disc (as it should have before opening) and when the drawer opened the disc was spinning at full speed in the tray (it is likely that it was as CLV disc so it might not have been spinning at full speed). Fortunately, it stayed in the tray but if it had leapt out I would likely have received a serious cut if the disc had hit me (I took the player in for repair as soon as I could).
• The size of the LD - At 12 inches, the LD wouldn't be practical for personal portable use which I'm sure was an important consideration for establishing a new format.
• Expense - It is likely that an LD would cost much more than an LP, consider that you would usually pay between $20 and $40 for a movie on LD (with a movie like Akira I refused to buy the movie on LD because it cost about $120).

Although LD started with two analog sound tracks (they allowed you to listen to the right channel, the left channel, or both), per Wikipedia the audio is stored in the form of two FM signals. Later, higher-quality digital tracks were added to LD while the analog audio tracks were also maintained. For me, this was an advantage when watching anime since many anime LD allowed you to listen to Japanese or English dialog (depending on which soundtrack you chose).

I went with LD as a successor to VHS because the video quality was much better, the sound quality was much better (especially with the digital audio tracks), the discs didn't wear out from playing, you could jump around the disc just like with a CD, and (with CAV discs) you could get crystal-clear freeze frames (I have a catalog on an 8-inch LD where it contains hundreds of LD titles with a still frame for each LD title containing information on each disc).

 

Analog, not digital!

 

Re-reading the above and then checking Wikipedia, I realized I made an error in the speed that CAV LDs spin. It should have been 1,800 RPM (which is 30 frames a second) rather than 3,600 RPM. I apologize for the error.

 

In other words, the lowest common denominator. No thanks.

There is a market for $2500 cartridges and $10,000 tonearms. There surely is a market for a 45 rpm high precision, high dynamic range LP that costs $60-75. I'd buy them.

 

It's an announcement at a conference. Industry conferences are a unique thing - expensive admission to see your peers talking about stuff you already know. The agenda for the annual conference is at this link. No mention of a panelist that aligns with the alleged email contents. There will be a demo of the first quadraphonic record in 30 years, by new-age electronic musician Suzanne Ciani.

The RIAA doesn't (rather-didn't) set a lot of standards for vinyl. Physical specs, like the run-out groove speed and position (to trip auto mechanisms), are instead IEC or DIN specifications.

There is nothing that could be done to vinyl that wouldn't make it incompatible or at least degrade its performance on 60 years worth of equipment. You could do dumb things like cut it with Stephenson alignment, or encode some stupid "HD vinyl" code in the audio that turns on a blue light.

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What vinyl needs is constant linear velocity (like CD). The biggest problem with vinyl is the low tangential speed of the inner radius, 10.5cm/s vs 25.5cm/s, leading to wasteful use of outer vinyl, and poor audio quality on the inner tracks. Therefore, we need a system that goes from 30RPM to 70RPM or more on the inner tracks, for constant quality and noise, constant drag and skate force, and tracking phase error minimization.

I've already brain-engineered a system that nominally uses a 25cm/s SP mode, and 12.5cm/s LP mode with constant tangential speed, that has a default spin rate increase per revolution and extrapolatable positional speed (for tonearm optical position sensor), but the disc also has a 38kHz phase shift time code signal that allows exact speed lock with a random needle-drop and more encoded information such as time and track data. As inner groove compromises and alignment issues are reduced, we can even cut into the dead wax and label area.

Or we can just use CD, which is superior.

 

I wish this would apply to pressing plants, forcing them to adhere to some sort of quality control standards.

 

I wish people would stop talking about "summing bass to mono" as a bad thing, it isnt! Unless your listening to some out there techno or some such.
I do it all the time on my recordings that are NOT going to end up on vinyl. Adds MUCH punch to the bass. I usually sum to mono around 100 or a bit higher. Its a good thing in my book!

 

AP female vocals compilation and Hard Day's Night stereo remaster too.

 

Yeah , when I saw that........I just started shaking my head.

 

The starting point would be to ask what is the existing specification, to see what needs improving. Does anyone know what it is? Years ago I found the article below which gives a comparison of international standards but it only refers to an RIAA 1963 standard, not a 1978 one:

Comparative table of standards for a 30 cm LP

 

We really don't have that problem up here in the stores in the U.S., but there are still people selling pirate CDs out of their car trunk or in outside markets.

Vinyl? I'm guessing that the labels are working on some kind of watermark that can be encoded into the vinyl (like they have tried many times before).

 

Me personally, would love to see lighter gram records, but made with 100% pure, virgin vinyl. And especially less warped and off center records, so many new records I own suffer from one or both of these flaws, and even unusually loud surface noise. Quieter cut records would be nice as well. Vinyl LPs have been around for decades. Flaws that they haven't had since the 70s oil crisis or the downfall of vinyl are showing up, stronger than ever. There's no reason for it.

 

I've been in Boston recently and counterfeit records was not a problem there. I found A LOT in Europe. Lisbon, Athens and Berlin just to name three cities.

 

Maybe they'll price vinyl back to where it's affordable for most people once again before the boom came back....
as if!

 

Somehow I seriously doubt that this move was motivated by the wish to save us money.

 

Maybe they haven't updated the RIAA standards since 1978 because within a decade people largely stopped buying records?

Now there is interest in the format again, so the industry is again willing to invest in some new research.