We talk about vinyl: Myths, opinions and current situation

Rega RP40 Vinyl Player

In the 18th release of the Sound podcast, we talk about the situation with turntables and accessories and discuss various myths related to the topic of vinyl.
')
[ Read more about the Sound podcast ] [ Listen to this release ]


Dmitry Kabanov: I think it would be interesting to talk about the myths associated with vinyl. Understand who else is doing this, who cares where to buy it all.

Timofey Shikolenkov: There are now a large number of all opinions around the vinyl, based on both reality and speculation. Speculation is a serious problem in our society, not just our audio system. Someone somewhere said, and it seems to be true, is taken as a basis and went on and on. In the field of audio, this is common, because not everyone has the opportunity to touch the beautiful - to hear and see how everything works, acts, sounds.

Take the same forums - there people have some titles assigned automatically: “academician”, “expert”. Titles are given based on the number of posts that the person wrote. In fact, he never studied, heard nothing, did not see, he just has time to sit and try on the network.

The vinyl theme is now not just alive; it is experiencing a second renaissance, if not for the first time. There are waves of rising interest in vinyl. Over the past 4 months, television has come to us five or six times. We wanted to make a report about good sound, about vinyl.

Why all of a sudden? The media in the field of audio have not shown interest for more than a decade, and here they have asked many questions. This suggests that there is an interest of people, and the media just satisfy the hunger for information.

Last year we started selling vinyl records and did not lose, now their turnover is millions - not by the number of copies sold, but by revenue. Demand is growing constantly, do not have time to buy records.

But at the same time, when you meet with people far from the topic, you hear the opinion that vinyl is for DJs. Classic.

I want to say that most DJs do not play vinyl records that have music on them. How so? There is a player, a DJ is spinning something, and he is spinning records with the so-called time code, according to which a special program on a computer can understand where the record is a needle. Based on this, she [the program] can understand how fast the plate is spinning. This is necessary so that you can play music on the vinyl that was never published on vinyl in the club. The computer is playing, and the vinyl player is just an indicator of the speed and place where the playback is going.

D: You know all this firsthand, and you yourself play it.

T: Yes, but I don't play vinyl, not even on digital. The experience was. Very interesting, but hard, especially with you to wear. If there are turntables in the club, two disks are easy to bring. The problem is the reconnection: you need to disconnect something, connect, not everywhere it reacts normally. They say: "We have the equipment, bring your CDs and play."

D: Back to the audience, who are these buyers? It often seems that the audience of vinyl fans is the very people who have been listening to the same old records on old record players for a long time. In fact, everything is not so.

T: There are some. It is worth understanding that those players who stand with grandparents, have served their time. The technologies have gone far ahead, and those players were not even domestic ones - they were mainly intended to reproduce fairy tales well. This is not what the mainstream is doing now - vinyl is released for those who are very fond of music.

"Love music very much" on the player "Electronics 3.2.3" will not work, because the quality of playback will be appropriate. This is the lowest level of domestic player, it is suitable for the museum. The same can be said about the [old] plate. The records of the company "Melody" were made for the same players and have the appropriate quality.

Now they sometimes say: "Melody" released [new] records. "Yes, but they were produced at a factory in Germany, and there is only a sign from Melody. They say there is a label - a company that owns the rights to the material, and the factory which belongs to someone. Not necessarily the label that produces the records. From the "Melody" left only the name and rights.

D: We can say that now there is a weak trend in the growth of the total volume of release of records.

T: Not weak, but very strong. Why are we talking about “Melody”? She even produces old tales at a factory in Germany: the “Bremen Musicians” and “Old Man Hottabych”, which generations of children grew up in, especially in the 80s. Now those who grew up on them, buy records for their children, put on good equipment with good quality and open up to themselves a lot of new things in those records because they have not heard much.

D: It is interesting to dive into the subject of equipment and understand the level at which the cost of these systems, kits, components begins. It is clear that there are various categories, but where to start a simple man in the street? Then we turn to the question of what is the "lampiness" of sound.

T: Let's talk about lamplight in another issue, because this topic has nothing to do with vinyl. A tube amplifier is not necessary to use for vinyl, and vinyl is not necessary to be used with a tube amplifier. There is an expression: “warm tube sound”, and it went not from those trolls who talk about it, but from music lovers, from audiophiles. This expression is so ingrained in the people that now it applies to everything.



Sale of vinyl records in Audiomania

D: What about the equipment?

T: There are beautiful retro design players with built-in speakers, etc. It seems that this is what is needed, but it is not. This is a player, but it solves a more visual problem, there are a lot of such now.

D: In clubs, cafes.

T: No, this is a homely thing, but more for the interior. How to distinguish a vinyl player for a DJ from a vinyl player for music? On a vinyl player for a DJ there is a long slider for half, or even more, the depth of the body of the player. This is a speed regulator, so two records can be played, two tracks can be launched at the same time at the same speed, thus reducing them so that one track can transfer to another seamlessly and accurately.

On players designed to play music, these controls are not. If there is such a regulator, this does not mean that the player is bad, although, as a rule, its tasks are already different - “Hi-Fi themes” on the DJ player are not “solved”. If the task is not to learn how to scratch or record records in the club, then this player can not be considered. Not an option.

D: In this niche there is the task of visual device design. Maybe it is more important than in other niches of acoustic systems, and people resort to retro-looking solutions. How justified is this?

T: If you like, then justified. When we choose something in appearance, we compromise quality. Rarely there is an inexpensive solution that looks good at the same time and sounds good. Therefore, there are very good, beautiful players, which are very, very expensive.

What is inexpensive? The average level of a domestic player that you can buy and then not be very upset is about twenty-five thousand rubles. This is a reasonable minimum. There are players cheaper, but there are already their difficulties.

There are some models that have a head of a specific size and fasteners. Then you will need to buy only the same. Basically, all modern turntables have the same head fasteners. We must understand that the head of the player is a consumable material, the needle is not eternal. Despite what material it is made of, with time it becomes unusable, and you need to buy a new one.

When you buy a player, you need to clarify how it has a standard head mount. Those players whose price starts from 25 thousand rubles have no problems with a standard mount.

D: The main thing to remember is that you cannot just buy a player, put a record on it, and it will start playing.



How to choose the components of stereos for the home: help our interface and consultants

T: Well, if you move your ear very close to the needle, the music will be heard. Here you need to tell what the player consists of, and what it connects to, and why.

There is a table, there is a disk that rotates, we put a plate on it. Now there are two technologies of rotation of this disk, two ways.

Where is the motor and how? In professional vinyl players (this is a club DJ version) direct drive, that is, a disc is put on the motor. There are advantages, for example, you can unwind the plate to the desired speed almost instantly. There are downsides, the motor can give low-frequency interference. This is typical of any vinyl player.

In Hi-Fi players, this is pasik, strap, and next to it is a stand-alone motor, but these are very expensive players. It looks very good. Or is it a small motor built into the body - from it comes Pasik, which turns the disk. The question arises about unstable, unstable speed. Super-expensive Hi-End options can have two motors, two pasika, and they support each other. You can put ten motors. But this is already a simulated problem.

D: There is a table, there is a disk. Go ahead - from the bottom up.

T: There is a tonearm - the head holder, which moves with it, turns, when necessary, rises, falls. The tonics are different, but at the initial stage you don’t need to think about it, because those players that are within reasonable limits for the average person have a built-in tone arm and the sound doesn’t depend on the tone shift.

An important element is the pickup head, where the needle is located, which extracts sound. Needles come in two types: MM or MC. Briefly about technology. MM is Moving Magnet - a moving magnet. The magnet is attached directly to the needle and moves relative to the inductors that are nearby. As is known from the course of physics, when a magnet moves relative to inductors, an electric current arises. Thus, the sound is removed from the plate.

In the heads of MC all the same, just the opposite. Moving coil coil is moving relative to the magnet. The principle is the same: one is moving relative to another, different technologies are simply applied. There are pros and cons. MM-heads have slightly higher sensitivity, the output signal is louder, there are technological features. MC-heads benefit in quality, in performance, in detail. But they have a minus - a very, very weak output, on average, an order of magnitude less than that of MM heads.

D: I wonder how replaceable the head and needle are? We consider the case when we immediately forget about the changeability of the tone arm. It is also interesting to find out their resource.

T: Resources are different. Interchangeability is high. One head can be changed for another, but the next structural element arises - phono preamp or phono equalizer. What is he for? He has two destinations. First, reinforce that very weak signal.

Any modern amplifier at the input wants to receive a signal of at least 150 mV. Since MM-heads give an average of 5 mV - this is a very big difference. MC-heads and even less - tenths of mV. It turns out a very weak signal for the amplifier. Therefore, an intermediate link is necessary - the phono stage, which is also the equalizer.

The word "corrector" or "equalizer" appears. Why is an amplifier called equalizer or equalizer? On a vinyl record, sound is recorded with an uneven frequency response — a low frequency is underestimated in amplitude, and high frequencies are overestimated to reduce the level of interference, the level of high-frequency noise. Low frequencies underestimate, so that there is no too large amplitude. Otherwise, bumps that are read from the plate can be very large, and the head will jump.

D: This is done in order to make a sound in the form in which it was intended, based on the properties of the material.

T: Yes, these are the technical features of the material of the plate itself and the recording technology needed to get the wide frequency range we are used to. So you have to get out of the situation. A phono equalizer or phono preamp corrects the frequency response to a normal, even curve to get what you need at the output.



Phono corrector Rega Aria

D: We end up with a box called “player” and move on to the next element, which will allow you to output a sound somewhere.

T: As I said before, we are connecting to an amplifier or a preamplifier, which is already connected to a power amplifier - as you like. Then the speaker system turns on.

There is no digital device here, unless some kind of digital processor is built into the amplifier. For this love vinyl. He is loved for the fact that he is completely from start to finish analog. But on what components are used, the sound depends on the assembly technology. As we said in one of the previous podcasts, any speaker system distorts the sound and distorts it in different ways. Vinyl also distorts it.

Natural sound from the equipment, in principle, never get. Each set, a combination of head, phono stage, table, engine interferes with the path. Even movement near the equipment will interfere, since the head is a very sensitive element. Otherwise, how do we get the sound?

The player is recommended to put on anti-vibration stand, hang on the brackets. There are many decisions. Previously, music lovers players were, as a rule, suspended from brackets to the wall, and the rest of the equipment was on the rack. A good option. Now more anti-vibration supports are used, which are untied, and the player is hanging in the air, as it were. Everything that happens around it affects him, but to a lesser extent.

D: About the wheels. How easy is it to find? And where to find them? Is it a shortage?

T: Yes, there is a shortage. I will say about two camps: old and new disks. There are people who believe that you can only buy discs of the type “first presses”. That is, those discs that have been published for the first time are the most “correct”. Others believe that there are some specific publications, and they are the best. Everything is very individual and based on someone's particular taste.

D: Probably. Old editions are exchanges and resale “from hand to hand”, and new discs are more accessible, they are published, reissued. Collectible collections are published, and all old performers are available in new editions. But how easy is it to buy, order in the store?

T: There is a lot of this on the net. There are small shops, and they are concentrated around one of the topics. It may be vintage, when the old record lay on the shelf, in the warehouse, and it was mined. If she is not "listened" - this is a miracle, a rarity. The second theme is a replica - these are records made recently, there are a lot of them.

Sometimes it happens that poor-quality material is taken as the basis, and it is released on vinyl simply because vinyl attracts a certain category of people. But here the risk is less than if you download high-resolution files from some torrent tracker.

What can you check? Where the record is taken from. In the case of a torrent tracker, you can only believe the comment to this file when downloading. If we are talking about records, then there is a guarantee from the plant that the recording is of good quality, and its source corresponds to the required level.

D: If I understand correctly, the production itself is an expensive process in terms of equipment, therefore such activities are launched in large volumes. Only then the manufacturer will be able to recapture the costs that he invested in the equipment for the plant.

T: The plant in the modern sense of vinyl is usually a small room. Those circulations that are being done now, compared to what was done in the 80s, are completely different scales. It may be that some kind of disc comes out in a circulation of one hundred copies. Today it is the norm.

The consumption level is different from the one in the 80s, when there was a vinyl boom. Now a boom of a different scale, niche. That is, there are many records - tens, hundreds of thousands, but the circulation is small. There are, of course, bestsellers, for example, Pink Floyd, which have been reprinted many times and continue to buy them. Those who like it could hear the record that they bought last time, the disc also has its expiration date, like the needle. The process of friction: one rubs against the other, and sooner or later the disc will have to be thrown or hung on the wall, as you like, and buy a new one. There are things that are published in huge editions.

D: I am saying that the plant is interested in keeping the brand and maintaining the quality.

T: There is a problem. It is not always clear which factory made the record. There is a myth that there is a factory in the Czech Republic, and it does everything badly. In fact, in the Czech Republic there are different manufacturers, and from there come records of very different quality. It is necessary to understand that vinyl itself does not guarantee any result, the fact of recording on vinyl does not mean that it is very good.

There was a case when our installers set up a large kit for demonstration to the client. It had both a turntable and a CD player. The client brought a disk and a vinyl record, set to play one by one. He wanted to compare how everything turned out right. It turned out so correctly that it was not always possible to determine what was playing. You can achieve perfect sound when you have a good player and a good recording.

Why do you like vinyl? Vinyl like its distortions. Perfectly clean CD sound to people who listen to it seems unreal. Unless, of course, you listen to any "tynts-tynts" in which there is no melody, instruments, voice. But if this is all there is, then there is the desire to get a live sound, real.

What does it mean? In reality, we hear a huge amount of noise around us. And when we hear a clear, verified, cleaned sound, from which everything that can be removed is removed, it seems that this is something unnatural and unreal. I want the same warm and dear.

D: It is worth saying that there is no competition, as it seems to many, between the vinyl sound and the CD sound. It is impossible to understand what is better, because they are different things.

T: Yes, I agree. It is like comparing a concert in a small club with a concert at a stadium. Both are gigs. People are here and there. And even the same group can play. But everything will be different. Impressions will be different, and they depend not only on the sound, but also on the situation.

In the case of vinyl, there are still some tactile sensations. It is one thing to download a file, press a button and listen to it, another is to take an envelope from the shelf, remove a record from it, gently wipe the dust with a brush, put it on the player, turn on, enjoying the process itself.

There are people who have never experienced this, and they don’t understand what I’m talking about. It is necessary to come to our showroom and try it once. Maybe like, maybe not. The sound that vinyl gives is unusual, special. He does not like him, he always likes and almost everyone.

Another question is related features: consumable material in the form of a head, non-eternal plates, an expensive strapping. It stops quite a few people. What for? When you can download and listen for free in your headphones. But there are certain emotional feelings in vinyl.



A shot from the series Suits on USANetwork - the office of the Manhattan law firm Pearson Hardman

D: This is especially important when you realize that you don't listen to music very often, not every day. Just sitting in front of some kind of speaker system, even if it's beautiful, is not so interesting - it's still a box. It does not move, there are not all these elements there, and it is impossible to get that attractive aesthetics.

In modern films, TV shows, we see that big bosses, directors of companies in beautiful offices have expensive vinyl players. And that is what attracts us.

T: There are two ways to listen to music. Passive when the music is playing in the background. There are people who love background music. And there are people who love silence, as a rule, they are accountants. I do not know why. In our office, music plays in every room, and in accounting there is complete silence. You can hear the rustle of paper, the buttons are pressed, but the music never plays there.

Let's go back, you can listen to music as a background for fun, or you can sit down and listen for pleasure. There are probably people who do not understand what it is, maybe they have never tried. But there are those who listen to music in a relaxed way, not just for pleasure - for the pleasure of listening to the sound in detail.

Such people cheap household equipment sold in chain stores is contraindicated. To do this, you must once come to Audimania, sit in a chair in the showroom and listen, not necessarily vinyl. Vinyl - these are additional emotions that are not extracted from the music, which are preserved on the disc, and they can not be described, it is impossible to understand how we hear them, but you can feel it with your body and soul. When the soul listens to music, it means everything worked out.

PS Our holiday sales end very soon - January 10th. We strive to provide you with as many opportunities as possible to please yourself and your loved ones with good gifts, and your budget with decent savings. By the way, we discussed our New Year's sales in the 28th issue of the podcast “Sound”.