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Grex > Music2 > #167: Recorded Music Delivery Formats Past & Present |  |
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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 126 responses total. |
krj
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response 8 of 126:
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Jan 2 01:17 UTC 1999 |
I was fond of the Elcasette, which basically stood for "Large Cassette;"
it was a large tape cassette, maybe twice or three times the size of the
Phillips cassette we know and love. Like the 8-track it was designed to
run at a higher speed, but it eliminated the tape-loop constrution which
caused so much grief for the 8-track system. It didn't fly in the
market, of course, because the problems with Philips cassette were
being dealt with.
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hhsrat
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response 9 of 126:
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Jan 2 01:48 UTC 1999 |
Does anyone have one of those new Sony Mini-Disc systems?
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steve
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response 10 of 126:
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Jan 2 02:11 UTC 1999 |
Neat list, David!
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krj
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response 11 of 126:
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Jan 2 05:47 UTC 1999 |
My wife has a mini-disc recorder which she uses primarily for recording
her singing lessons.
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mcnally
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response 12 of 126:
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Jan 2 06:34 UTC 1999 |
I think your list omits the never-quite-made it "DCC" (or "Digital
Compact Cassette" format, a digital tape format that fit into the
same form-factor player as a traditional cassette (the idea being
that you could build a player that was backwards compatible with
existing cassettes.) Its primary attraction, or lack thereof
(depending on your perspective) was that its sound quality was
better than traditional cassette tape but not as good as DAT --
for the latter reason the record companies were not as panic-stricken
over it..
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scott
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response 13 of 126:
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Jan 2 14:02 UTC 1999 |
Same thing for MiniDisc.... a lossy compression scheme.
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cyklone
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response 14 of 126:
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Jan 2 15:06 UTC 1999 |
I think that the "answer" is linked to either the mini-CD or the digital
cassette. Weren't those Sony developments? ("Who is Sony?").
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tpryan
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response 15 of 126:
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Jan 2 16:13 UTC 1999 |
regarding 12" record-o-mats: they where naked..no sleeve. A sleeve, such
as used for floopy floopies, would have greatly helped this format. Easy
enough to introduce error by mechanical means (head allignment and such)
but leave the disk open to fingerprints, pizza grease smudges, whatnot,
and whatever that it had to be a good idea, not well implemented.
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polygon
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response 16 of 126:
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Jan 2 16:59 UTC 1999 |
Re 3. I hesitate to ask, but what is "come country" music?
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drew
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response 17 of 126:
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Jan 2 19:12 UTC 1999 |
Probably country music that 'turns you on' so to speak.
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djf
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response 18 of 126:
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Jan 2 19:38 UTC 1999 |
re 12: Cool, I sat there and thought for a while about the tape formats
thinking I was missing something.
Regarding digital sound quality, the audiophile in me is hoping that
someone will use the new capacity of DVD to introduce a non-lossy
audio format using a higher sampling rate (say 88-132Khz) and 24 or 32
bit quantization. Probably not likely too soon as the real market for
such recordings would be fairly small until the DVD transports become
commonplace.
At the least it would be interesting to compare such recordings with
current CD audio quality, which clears the "good enough" bar but not
by too terribly much. Basically CDDA was introduced just as soon as
affordable technology could support passable sound and the format
itself has not advanced one bit from there. Obviously the mastering
and playback hardware has gotten quite sophisticated, but mostly as a
reaction to the marginal quality of the format itself.
[How's that for bait... :]
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steve
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response 19 of 126:
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Jan 2 23:13 UTC 1999 |
David, it might be interesting on the technical level to see
a faster sampling system, but would human ears be able to pick
it up? I remember an engineer from Phillips saying that the only
recording they'd done that was better on a record was the last part
of the 1812 Overture, where the cannons went off. CD's have about
a 90 or 96dB dynamic range, and records can do better in that regard.
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i
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response 20 of 126:
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Jan 3 01:50 UTC 1999 |
My impression is that the top-flight human ear's limit is around 20-24
bits (depending on desired dynamic range) and 60KHz. However, each
piece of a long signal processing chain (like the one between the guy
singing to a mic in Studio 37B and someone listening to the final
product at home) may have to be built to a much more demanding spec
for the whole chain to perform at the sounds-perfect-to-humans level.
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scg
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response 21 of 126:
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Jan 3 01:59 UTC 1999 |
A lot of people at work are downloading stuff in MP3 files, which has the
advantage that you don't actually have to go out to a store and get the music
on some physical medium. I saw a writeup at one point on an MP3 player for
cars that somebody was developing, which I think may have involved having a
Linux system in the trunk.
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shf
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response 22 of 126:
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Jan 3 04:29 UTC 1999 |
Diamond Rio fits in your pocket and plays mp3s
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tpryan
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response 23 of 126:
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Jan 3 04:37 UTC 1999 |
I think with a vinyl 45rpm record of Anne Murray's "Snowbird"
you hear or feel the overtone presence of the triangle; but it seems
missing something on CD.
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albaugh
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response 24 of 126:
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Jan 3 07:10 UTC 1999 |
Not to be confused with a Diamond Reo, which they don't make any more, and
would never have fit in your pocket! :-)
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shf
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response 25 of 126:
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Jan 3 09:30 UTC 1999 |
which is no doubt why they changed the spelling, lest some hapless confused
consumer purchase a Diamond Reo and maim himself trying to listen to mp3s
with it.
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keesan
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response 26 of 126:
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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?
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steve
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response 27 of 126:
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Jan 3 22:03 UTC 1999 |
Wow! That was the format that RCA bet the farm on, against laser
disks. After a hundred playings or so, they start to get noticeably
worse. If thats connected with Pioneer or RCA I'm just about certain
that there is physical contact with the media.
16PRM vinyl? I've never heard of that. How old is that?
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keesan
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response 28 of 126:
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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.
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scott
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response 29 of 126:
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Jan 3 23:33 UTC 1999 |
Instructional records were often 16RPM. Remember those ones that went with
film stripts?
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gull
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response 30 of 126:
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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...
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scott
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response 31 of 126:
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Jan 4 02:04 UTC 1999 |
A lot of reissue CDs are/were made with non-master tapes, hence worse sound
quality.
The nyquist limit is how high you can reproduce a sine wave. A lot depends
on having a good low-pass filter, though, and that was the weakest point of
many early CD players.
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danr
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response 32 of 126:
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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.
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