Interesting Quote from RIAA re Vinyl Longevity:

Lifted from an interesting thread on head-fi.org:

From wikipedia

So, anyone have anything to say about this? IMO the wear and loss of fidelity seems quite enormous, if this quote is to be believed. Do modern carts really cause this much damage?

Tempted to shave a little off the tracking weight myself after seeing this

DT

 

Personally I doubt some of this. It's true that some polymeric materials have a "memory" effect, but the vinyl acetate/vinyl chloride polymer from which records are made isn't one AFAIK. Groove walls are indeed subjected to intense pressure and heat, but this happens only for tiny fractions of a second,so the amount of pemanent distortion of the briefly melted polymer is minute. However, it will get worse with subsequent playing, and that is an unavoidable part of having vinyl. The only way to avoid it is not to play them.

I once knew a guy who only played his records once, recording them when he did. He then played the recording!

 

I have heard that some great classical composers and conductors cannot bear the imperfections implicit in any actual performance and prefer instead to read the scores and 'hear' the performance in their minds. Maybe we will see a new breed of vinyl audiophile bent over their records with a large magnifying glass to read the grooves and avoid both wear and any need for expensive equipment...

 

I have many LP's pressed in the 50's and they still sound more than ok when compared to their CD counterpart.

 

DT hears the faint sound of nails being hit squarely on the head.....

 

What about this as a solution?

A different technology altogether - one which has no mechanical contact between the 'cartridge' and the disc? Maybe with the information behind an additional protective layer? Even smaller perhaps? Without pops and crackles? And definitely no change in the music quality-well, maybe not!

Could catch on!

 

Hmmm. I'd suggest its a load of rubbish. If after 35 plays the top frequency was down to 10Hz, that would affect a large porportion of my music collection. I think I might have noticed.

The RIAA? Recording Industry Association of America? Now then, they wouldn't happen to have had any vested interest at any point in persuading you that you don't need that old rubbishy vinyl would they?

PS - it might be true if you play your records with a rusty nail.

 

Another factor would be the size of the vinyl collection. Even if there were appreciable wear, if this were spread evenly across a few hundred records, the wear factor would be much reduced.

Uncle Ants raises an interesting point. How much degradation before it becomes noticeable? I agree that a drop to 10kHz from 20+ seems a lot, but if you were habituated to it gradually over time (and of course there are the facts that our aural memories are poor and our high frequency hearing declines steadily from our early twenties onwards), would you notice? I don't know. You'd really have to play a pristine example against a 35 times-played example to hear if there is a difference.

 

Well. I have a reasonably sizeable vinyl collection. Probably knocking on for 1000 LPs. Many of them rarely get played, but a small subset (probably around 20 or 30) of them get an outing at least once a fortnight and in many cases once a week.

I doubt there has been a week go by in the past 3 or 4 years when I haven't played Nashville Skyline for example, often twice. So that's probably in the region of a couple of hundred times that I've played it (I bought it new many moons ago, but only discovered it about 3 or 4 years ago). Aural memory may be poor, but it ain't that poor, and my hearing may be poor, but again, not that poor and its sounds exactly the same as it ever has, barring improvements as a result of better equipment.

Besides if everything above 10Hz disappeared ... it would be replaced with what exactly? ... it can't just disappear into inky black silence. If its "worn" away, it'd be replaced with crud, and I'm pretty sure I'd be able to hear that.

PS. I shouldn't be at all surprised to hear that RIAA's suggestion dates to the mid 80s.

 

I've also heard the claim that you shouldn't play the same LP more than once a day, however I can't hear the difference if I do.

Also if the top-end is 'erased' over time, I would definitely have noticed as I've played some LPs more than 200 times, guaranteed. Also my test-LPs should sound and measure different over time e.g. HFNRR, but they don't.

However, decreasing VTF is not recommended as that might increase wear (smaller contact areas between stylus and groove and worse tracking). Better a bit on the high side. Proper adjustment of modern styli (extended profile) is however important to avoid wear.

I'm more worried about CD's possibly disintegrating after 15-20 years.

 

or CD-R's disintegrating after 6 months

Oh how I lament the passing of my Bittorrent "french" mpeg collection :JPS:

DT

 

You left them on the window sill, didn't you

 

Aye, it was a long hot summer