response 26 of 126:

Jan 3 21:20 UTC 1999

16 RPM vinyl, we get old phonos that play it, has anyone ever heard one?
CED -  capacitive electronic disk.  Used for movies with sound.  Same size
disk as the large laser disks but no lasers involved.  Two styluses that read
the top and bottom capacitance of a spinning 12" disk, no physical contact?
We had two come through Kiwanis, and about 50 disks, from the seventies?

response 28 of 126:

Jan 3 22:52 UTC 1999

Common on the older phonos for 16 RPM, maybe 60's or 70s?  I don't think i
have ever played anything audio 100 times, video even less likely.
16 RMP might have been ok for voice, like the slower speeds on tapes.

response 30 of 126:

Jan 4 01:56 UTC 1999

Isn't it true that CDs get less and less accurate as you go up in frequency? 
It seems like it'd stand to reason that the closer you get to the Nyquist
limit at 22,050 Hz, the more all the waveforms would resemble a square wave
instead of their real character.

At any rate, the only album which I claim to be able to hear a difference on
is Boston's self-titled first album.  The reason isn't any inherent problem
wit the format; it's that the master tape apparently degraded between when
the LP was mastered and when it was digitized for CD.  There's some very
noticable dropouts on the CD release I have, the most obvious being one in
the cymbal track at about 00:39 on track one.

There's also, sadly, a lot of vinyl releases that never made it onto CD at
all...

response 32 of 126:

Jan 4 13:32 UTC 1999

As long as the sampling rate is at least 44kHz, all of the frequency content up
to 22 kHz will be preserved.  As Scott points out, however, just because the
information is on the CD it doesn't mean that the player can faithfully
reproduce it.

response 34 of 126:

Jan 4 20:15 UTC 1999

I vaguely recall that 16 RPM vinyl records were used for "talking books"
for the blind back in the 1960s and 1970s.
 
The MP3 format is sending the RIAA, the recorded music trade group, into 
hysterics because of the ease of shipping bootleg MP3 tracks around 
the internet.  The RIAA sued in an attempt to stop the Diamond Rio
portable MP3 player from being shipped to consumers; the RIAA won a 
preliminary temporary injunction but it was overturned after about a 
week.  The case turns on some tricky definitions of digital recording 
copyright law -- basically, when the RIAA agreed to the Home Recording 
Rights Act, they never foresaw that the PC would become a general purpose
digital copying machine.
 
News coverage of the case is summarized in the music conference item
titled "Changes In The Music Business."

response 36 of 126:

Jan 5 15:21 UTC 1999

Something that has never made sense to me: why are the smaller records (45's)
made to spin faster than the big ones (LP's at 33 1/3 RPM)? It would seem to
me that the opposite would make more sense: make the small records spin at
the same speed or slower so you can fit as much as possible in the limited
space. Is there some reason, other than just convention, that it doesn't work
that way?

response 38 of 126:

Jan 5 17:58 UTC 1999

The history, if I remember it properly, is that Columbia Records 
developed the 33 1/3 RPM Long Playing Record, and RCA countered with 
the 45 RPM 7" record, rather than going along with Columbia's format.
 
This isn't quite as wacky as it sounds.  In the 78 RPM era every 
disc was a single; if you had a collection of them, they came in a big 
book with record sleeves, which was called an "album."  The RCA 45 RPM
discs were more convenient to handle than the 78s.
 
But I don't know why those standard speeds were chosen.

response 40 of 126:

Jan 5 18:54 UTC 1999

s/each/equal

response 42 of 126:

Jan 5 19:30 UTC 1999

33 appeared on the market years later, after they found there was demand and
also after audio quality of the various compenents had godden good enough.

Faster speed == higher quality sound, so 33 rpm would not be as good as 45
rpm, unless you also figure in distance from the center like krj said.

(Neat story:  Les Paul [yes, therye was a guy named Les Paul] used to overdub
from one record lathe to another.  By using 18" disks at 78rpm, he had *great*
sound)

response 44 of 126:

Jan 5 21:21 UTC 1999

I have a 12" vinyl disk made to be played at 45 rpm.  It's a product
of the late 1970s, when the industry was trying to find a good way
to transfer digital recordings to vinyl.  Andre Previn conducting two
Gershwin numbers.  It's the only disk of that type I can remember
seeing.

response 46 of 126:

Jan 5 22:37 UTC 1999

I can't see how.  They are vastly different in terms of capacity, and that
would be a hard sell for the company selling the 45s with such limited time
capacity.  Maybe there were 10 or 12" 45rpm instead of the "single" size we
all know?

response 48 of 126:

Jan 6 00:20 UTC 1999

it was re #18: Yep, yep, yep.  The latest issue of Stereo Review reports the
possibility of a format war, since Audio DVD has a similar competitor-- forget
the name.  Check it out.