I wouldn't hold my breath on the 8 track thing.

Roflmao! I still listen to 8 tracks and when they are really worn out or my 8 track player eats them...I throw them on top of my china cabinet...pull the tape out and stream it around the living room as a decorative memorial for a couple of days.

Best vinyl I own: Waiting for Columbus, Little Feat (live) halfspeed master superdisc.

Best CD I own: Aja, Steely Dan.

I own original vinyls of every Beatle album except Let It Be. There's a lot of variation in recording quality. They tended to stretch (abuse) production (ponging) to the breaking point. Then Capitol abused them further in mastering.

Best Beatle LPs I ever heard, German remasters (clear/colored vinyl) ca. 1982.

Best Beatle material--the one I pick the most cuts from--Beatles 65. Also the most intricate and at the same time least overproduced (of the complex stuff).

Worst-sounding Beatle album, Hard Day's Night soundtrack. The distortion is also present in the film. United Artists release, not Capitol, for what difference that might make.

Least-played (some might call this heresy): Sgt. Pepper, White Album, Abbey Road.

I believe I have one record -either a 45 or an EP 33 that size- that has some kind of interview with the Beatles.

O/W my wax is either "Doo Wop", R&B, Pop, or R&R, '51-'64, on 45's, 33's, reel-to-reel (recorded on AM radio in the '50's-'60's), 8-tracks, cassettes, DVD's, and MP3's.

Lotta country on 8 tracks. Tammy Wynette serenaded me a lot in years past.

Roflmao! I still listen to 8 tracks and when they are really worn out or my 8 track player eats them...I throw them on top of my china cabinet...pull the tape out and stream it around the living room as a decorative memorial for a couple of days. [/quote]


U-R funny. true American freedom

Darn I was wish they would make a come back just think 8 track could get a hip name say loop track that would help sell them. Also the old style store display. You know the ones with the holes in the plastic front where you can look at the tape. Or like most drop it and it lands on the bottom of the case.lol

I do wish Kmart or walmart would bring back there 45's and lp's racks. I think even thought people can not stand them stores it would help make records have a big come back fast.

I did see something odd ball with a new lp set I got forgot the name have to look. The disk are wrong as far as it goes to me. $ lp's but there marked side 1 2 3 4 not the old way for stacking should be side 1 3 2 4

24 minutes per side is fine for a mono LP, but it's too long to be optimum on a stereo LP for both sound quality and wear reasons.

Ken D.

Why do you think so? AFAIK the groove pitch for mono and stereo has always been the same. The horizontal stylus excursion is exactly the same, the only difference is the vertical motion component on the stereo disk which takes up no additional groove width.

Is my understanding wrong?

-David

As I understand it, the stereo groove needs more room. One example I know if is a Sinatra album. The two 10 inch albums "Swing Easy" and "Songs For Young Lovers" were re-issued on one 12 inch LP with 8 songs on each side. When the phony stereo version came out they had to remove some of the songs. Those songs were not put back on until the CD issue came out.

There are all kinds of reasons why songs disappear from certain releases. One reason that is far too common is legal issues that come up with the rights to some songs and prevent them from being released until resolved, which can take years.

I don't know of any technical reason why a stereo groove should be any larger than mono. I really think the pitch is the same.

-David

I've been contemplating what will replace CDs, so I guess it has to be records. Of course, the new name for records among the young-in's is VINYL.

I can't speak about re-issues, but I can tell you that in 1958, 33-1/3 LP's had the same number of songs in both the mono and stereo versions.

Vinyl, eh? That's not one thing. There is a spectrum of vinyl grades (the material itself). Another spectrum, how long it's pressed and cooled. The optimum is not conducive to mass production. Example, Eagles albums on Warner/Reprise/Asylum, some of the shoddiest pressings in the history of the medium.

Another spectrum, what the mastering engineer does to the master recording. Example, what Capitol did to original Beatles' releases. Take all the bass off so it sounded "louder" on the cheap phonos prevalent in the era that couldn't play bass anyway.

Then there's how many stampers are made from one mother, and how many retail units are made from one stamper.

Groove width is a standard. Groove PITCH is variable, at the behest of--among other things--marketing and manufacuring expediency, neither of which have any consideration for sonic quality.

They certainly didn't want to give mono LPs an edge at that time, they were trying to sell stereo. If you check the times you might be surprised to see that many 12" LPs from that time run only about 15 minutes per side.

Ken D.

No, I don't think so, to any extent. AM, mono, tube radios, and B/W TV sets were the mainstay...The bread and butter; FM, stereo records, Transistor radios and color TV were the new kids on the block, and priced higher accordingly.

They couldn't very well offer a stereo LP at a higher price and with fewer tracks, any more than offering a color TV set that received fewer channels than a B/W set could, or a Transistor radio with the same shortcoming. The new tech had to offer more, not less.

Perhaps I was not clear in my earlier posts.

When stereo records came out, and mono albums began being reissued in phony stereo, they often removed tracks from both the stereo AND mono pressings on longer albums.

And of course the record companies were trying to sell stereo, they made more money on them. The fact that FM stereo hadn't happend yet gave them a clear edge. Just look at how many stereo phonographs were sold in 1958/1959.

Ken D.

A September 26,1960 Billboard magazine article on page 3 states that only 23.3% of all LP sales were stereo and that was up 43.3% from 1959. 13% of all stereo sales were classical recordings. Mono record sales were up and better than ever. The money was in mono records.

All radios were mono so the only way the average consumer could hear stereo was by going for a demonstration at a dealer or a friend’s home. Someone that just paid $500 for a nice hi-fi console does not want to hear that his equipment and records are already obsolete. It was probably the kids buying cheap stereo portable record players that helped stereo record sales. It took the 45-rpm record 6 years to outsell the old shellac 78-rpm record and it was the kids that made that happen.

Just been reading about the special music store day, sales of records are on the up, one guy made a quote "CD is just a piece of plastic nothing exciting about it, stick it in a drawer its gone, Vinyl you interact with you can see it, sounds warmer too"
Not much else you can say
Welcome back records !!!

CDs are upper-rack dishwasher safe. And about as pleasant to listen to as a dishwasher. (Slight editorial exaggeration.)

CD's are getting a bad rap here, and I want to let you know that there is one thing they are far better than 45 or 33 records at.

I have a cable running from a satellite dish under an eve, upon which a bird would make his home daily and in the evening. Of course my pavement directly underneath became his toilet.

I hung a nice shiny reflective CD from a short piece of string off the cable, and voila, no more bird. His wings flapping as he approached what used to be his home would cause the lightweight CD to commence motion from side to side, in addition to reflecting, during daylight.

Now try that with a vinyl record!