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Turntable blind testing on the gadget show…

If you ever stop to wonder why the hi-fi industry has shrunk you just have to read some of the comments on here. An actual women could tell the difference, oh wow, they have the vote, careers etc now. Who knew?

My other half can always tell the difference between components, she also doesn’t give a shit. I’m afraid we are the sad sacks of the world.
 
If you ever stop to wonder why the hi-fi industry has shrunk you just have to read some of the comments on here. An actual women could tell the difference, oh wow, they have the vote, careers etc now. Who knew?

My other half can always tell the difference between components, she also doesn’t give a shit. I’m afraid we are the sad sacks of the world.

I didn't read any sexist comments?

Do you really think it's shrunk or just changed?

I'd agree that my better half can hear any changes in my system and while she doesn't have any real interest herself she quite happy for me to be interested.
 
Either way it's incorrect, unless she stocks a warehouse full of kitchen flooring for the first. The second is simply grammatically impossible and therefore complete bollards. What's wrong with good old 'LPs' or 'records'. By referring to them as vinyl(s), it's akin to saying that you have a lot of metal on your drive. :D

I've got thousands of sheep. Grammatically impossible sheep. ;-)
 
The second is simply grammatically impossible and therefore complete bollards.

No it isn't. A steel mill can be said to output steel despite the fact that the steel products are multiple. Similarly, an LP is entirely made of vinyl, so there is no grammatical issue with calling a pile of records a pile of vinyl because that is literally what it is.
 
No it isn't. A steel mill can be said to output steel despite the fact that the steel products are multiple. Similarly, an LP is entirely made of vinyl, so there is no grammatical issue with calling a pile of records a pile of vinyl because that is literally what it is.

It's not technically incorrect, but do you commonly refer to other things around your house by the names of their raw materials? Do you call the books "wood pulp"? "I've been reading this great wood pulp the past few nights." "Got a big stack of wood pulp at home to get through!"
 
What we (the nerds) really would have liked to see is a digital source thrown into that mix.

Using a digital version of the track from the exact same mastering, obviously.
 
It's not technically incorrect, but do you commonly refer to other things around your house by the names of their raw materials? Do you call the books "wood pulp"? "I've been reading this great wood pulp the past few nights." "Got a big stack of wood pulp at home to get through!"

I've got quite a lot of carpet, if that's the sort of thing you mean. Even seagrass. I also have towel, tape and toast. Not much family silver though.

I think the difficulty is that 'thousands' is an integral number rather than a unit quantity. 'A tonne of vinyl' would have gone unnoticed. Thousands of sheep is fine because the plural of sheep is sheep, but 'thousands of vinyls' is more awkward than 'thousands of vinyl [...records, implied and left out for brevity]'.

This is fun. Anyone for a cuppa?
 
.. do you commonly refer to other things around your house by the names of their raw materials?

The dog was stretched out in front of the fire as I switched on the light to read the paper, but I couldn't find it. Walking though to the kitchen, I found my wife had spread it over the table while she was polishing the silver! Throwing my glasses on the floor in a rage, I grabbed a glass of whisky and dropped into my chair to listen to some vinyl but the door bell rang. A spotty scout held out a tin but I said 'Bit short of brass, can you take plastic?' He left empty handed and I took the dog for a walk in the woods. Happy birthday Mr Pig.
 
It's not technically incorrect, but do you commonly refer to other things around your house by the names of their raw materials? Do you call the books "wood pulp"? "I've been reading this great wood pulp the past few nights." "Got a big stack of wood pulp at home to get through!"
‘Paperback’ is used a lot.
 
Back in the early 1970s a magazine did a subjective test of various direct drive and belt drive tables The LP12 won and no-one knew why!

I am fairly sure audiophile subjective reviews hadn't been adopted by the mainstream press in the early 70s and was more likely to have been mid to late 70s. The LP12 was a decent but ordinary turntable for a year or two after release until the marketing in some of the first audiophile subjective reviews turned it into a magic one at least in the eyes of people prepared to accept the dubious content of subjective reviews. At the time the reviewers hadn't quite worked out how to get away with subjective reviews and in the first few attempts there was a tendency to make one or two statements that could be checked. For example, I could hear this instrument on this track with the LP12 but not with Technics or whatever. I recall one of the first LP12 subjective reviews falling foul of this and would like to find it. Unless I am mixing it up with another review (a possiblity with my current recall) it talked about how scattering records on a carpet unsleeved didn't interfere with the magic and one of the tracks mentioned with some inaudible instruments was by Roberta Flack I think. Ring any bells with anyone?

Up to then turntables were judged by their speed correctness, wow, flutter and rumble. Little else mattered and arms were lightweight with an awful Shure V15 highest trackability cartridge, all conceits at the time.

Before the subjective audiophile thing took hold the industry was examining ways to increase the detail that could be extracted from a record groove. Lightweight cartridge assemblies were developed with significantly better performance but the problem was the records. Cartridges like those used these days couldn't successfully track the detail in the groove and so would tend to plough through it damaging the record even more than usual. One solution would have been to have standard records and high quality records for use with high performance cartridges but it appears to have been a bit too late and, as you suggest, the expensive end of the home audio market was developing in a rather different direction away from technical performance.

Things moved on fortunately for lovers of music:)

Indeed. CDs and beyond were a step forward in clarity in removing the low level audible mush and distortion contained in records. They were also more convenient and didn't degrade with use. Multi-channel was a step forward in both tidying up the imaging and increasing a sense of space. Active crossovers, DSP and the like significantly improved both the linearity of speakers and helped control the room response. Etc... This is of course genuine progress in music reproduction in the home which curiously doesn't seem to interest subjective audiophiles to any great extent. No problems. Each to their own.

I wonder if the woman in the video would hear these improvements in technical performance as improvements in subjective performance? Harman's work rather suggests she probably would. So how do we square that with subjective audiophiles and their preferences for things like records, valve amplifers, undersized speakers, exotic cables, exotic DACs, etc...?
 
No it isn't.

Yes it is. Thousands of vinyl' doesn't make sense; 'a pile of vinyl' is fine.

My polycarbonate collection is now quite large.

Never heard of anyone keeping salted parrots.o_O

Do you call the books "wood pulp"? "I've been reading this great wood pulp the past few nights." "Got a big stack of wood pulp at home to get through!"

What about magazines? I've a friend who can ONLY sleep on piles of magazines but he does have lots of back issues.
 
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Front top left hand edge of the plinth on the LP12 looks rough and splintery to me. I'd be seriously miffed if I ended up with that after spending £17+ k
 
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It's not technically incorrect, but do you commonly refer to other things around your house by the names of their raw materials? Do you call the books "wood pulp"? "I've been reading this great wood pulp the past few nights." "Got a big stack of wood pulp at home to get through!"

To me vinyl is something they in older days put on rooftops of lesser cars to make them look, well, less less. LP's where called LP's (singles where mainly bought by girls and didn't count).
 
"I went to get the red and white wine for the party but they didn't have enough so I bought what I could."
"How much did you get?"
"A few hundred white, thousands of red."

Thousands of red [wine bottles]
Thousands of vinyl [recordings]

It's not new or incorrect to imply the noun after a descriptor.
 


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