Hi-Def Vinyl Coming Out?

[Captain Bacardi]

Saw an interesting article about a patent for High Definition Vinyl. That could be interesting.

High Definition Vinyl Will Soon Become a Market Reality »

 

[Rudy]

Oh lawdy...

Thanks for posting that. All it apparently is, is a way to digitally cut a master with a laser vs. cutting it the good old fashioned pure analog way. There's nothing "high def" about this.

I will say this, however. Vinyl cut via an analog signal chain is technically the highest definition, truest-to-the-analog-source music source available today, short of stealing the original master tape, or making a 30ips copy of it. At least, when the original source is analog. Digital...there is no telling what the end result could be, although there is a lot of good-sounding vinyl cut from digital sources. But as for their "HD" claim, I don't see how digitizing the analog signal, sculpting it, then cutting it to production parts with a laser is "high def." Digital in its very basic premise is chopping apart an analog signal and sampling it at various points in time (aka "decimating").

Wait until Mikey Fremer gets ahold of this. (I did forward it to him just now.) I'm seriously interested to see what he can dig around and find out.

 

[Rudy]

I re-read it again last night. Allegedly, they are looking to get 30% more information (meaning, time) onto the record, along with 30% greater volume (loudness?). Simple physics dictate that if you cut a groove louder, you get less time on the disc, since the groove has to be cut wider. And if you cut to get more time onto a record you have to reduce the volume to make the grooves narrower.

I have the album by Harry Connick Jr. Trio, Lofty's Roach Souffle. Rather than cut a couple of tracks or spread it over two discs, Columbia chose to cut it to one disc. I wondered why the record played back so noisy--they had to cut it at a very low volume level. It's sort of an anemic cut.

On the flip side, I have some 12-inch singles that will feature a six or eight minute track that covers an entire side of the vinyl. Needless to say, they sound fantasic!

The one thing this reminds me of? RCA's "brilliant" invention called Dynagroo_Ve. RCA engineers found they could compress, screw with the EQ and add distortion to make the record play "better" on the consoles of the day. (In effect, they added sort of a "negative" distortion to cancel out tracing distortion caused by the 0.7 mil spherical stylus that was common back then.) It took J. Gordon Holt to put into words what many felt were shortcomings of Dynagroo_Ve processing.

A good synopsis is here: Article: Dynagroove: The Sound of Tomorrow »

JGH's original disseration here: Down with Dynagroove! »

Why do I mention it? The article for this patent mentions:

“We adjust the distance of the grooves, we correct the radial/tangential errors, and we optimize the frequencies,”​

So they're doing some screwy EQ to cram more into a record groove? And by "30% more volume," one might also guess they might "brickwall" the signal to make it sound louder.

DynagrooVe, 21st Century reboot? Guess we'll find out more in coming weeks...

 

[Harry]

My copy of BEATLES 20 GREATEST HITS is all on one disc, so ten tracks per side. As it is, they had to cut out a good portion of "Hey Jude" to fit all of the grooves on one disc, and the whole thing is at reduced volume, and doesn't sound very good. (I know, there's only one long groove on a record side!)

Harry

 

[Captain Bacardi]

This reminds me of when I first met Randy Alpert in 2004 and we were talking about the "Rise" session. Originally they played the bridge again after the first break, but realized it would be too long for a side without removing another song on the LP due to the grooves. I had never thought of that before we talked about it. So I have the same concerns/questions about this as well.

 

[Rudy]

My copy of Past Masters has as many as nine tracks per side (it is a two-LP set). But if you consider that the average song in those earlier years was maybe 2½ minutes long, if that, it would amount to 22-23 minutes, which really isn't stretching the capacity that much. When they use DMM (Direct Metal Mastering, where they cut into a metal part vs. into lacquer), they are often able to cut more stable long sides than they could in the past. I have a couple of Pat Metheny records (Letter From Home being one) that were DMM cuts and exceed 25 minutes on one or both sides, and still sound good, maybe a little lower in volume but it doesn't stand out like Lofty's Roach Souffle, where you can even see that the grooves look almost silent. 25 minutes really is about as far as it can go without really getting crammed.

Many of the Genesis records up through Duke were 50-55 minutes long. The UK pressings fared better, but I've heard a couple of US-pressed Atco versions that were atrocious. If you've ever heard the treble get reduced and hear a "pinched" sound at the end of a record, that is an old cutting trick to fit those grooves in so they would not play back distorted on a phonograph. Yet my 80s era Mobile Fidelity manages to cut A Trick of the Tail not so close to the center, still fit in well over 20 minutes per side, and have them play back cleanly.

On the flip side, and adding to what Harry mentions, I've heard a couple of K-Tel records that were total crap. And, there was also a Kenny Rogers Greatest Hits that notoriously cut 10 tracks per side as well.

I believe I might have heard of the DynagrooVe issue back in the mid 90s (as I was reading Stereophile many years prior), but at that time I was playing a big band jazz recording, "Chelsea Bridge" from Uniquely Mancini, and could not figure out why every copy I had was distorted on the trombone part. (I was trying to determine which early pressing copy to keep.) It was similar to mistracking, but not with the cartridge I had a the time. Groove wear? Well, maybe again, but the track after it ("C Jam Blues") would have been more distorted, and it wasn't. It was a couple of years ago that I finally made the connection--they were distorting that trombone part so that it would play back with less distortion on the old consoles! These records also have a "brighter" sound due to the treble boost, and used a compressed bass so that it played back fuller at lower volumes.

I don't even know if I have any DynagrooVe classical records here or not.