2. analog
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Who uses high end TT setup for vintage records ?

Many of us are into Vinyls because we listen to lots old vintage music along with the new ones. Digital sounded nasty with all those oldish recordings. Analog on the contrary is much more like music but as we move up the analog chain we start segregating vintage from modern recordings simply because our $$$ MC cartridge doesnt favour old records. It can sound noisy, lean, unforgiving. All that classic vintage warmth which is embedded in those old vinyls somehow do not get conveyed.

I always knew a lot of the turntables and cartridges are clearly voiced to favour a certain era of music/recordings. But it seems even tonearms have such favouritisms. Lot of these new age tonearms dont play old records with grace.

I am trying to meet members here who have successfully been able to use their high end TT/tonearm/cartridge combination to play any kind of music from any era with its desired grace, warmth and musicality. What combination did you arrive at ?

I understand one can always use a second tonearm/cartridge combination to play old records but that is not the point, cant we have a nice high end combination doing everything well ?
pani
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,341 posts
 
SAlectric.

That's an interesting theory.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the hifi industry was still new and a novelty back then and leading studios invested to be on the cutting edge. There was a greater attention to technical details along the lines of modern Mapleshade recordings, which is an anomaly these days. I suspect most studios use tried and true "proven" technical gear and approaches in teh interest of cost efficiencies these days in that it is not as hard to deliver a decent quality recording though delivering the best of anything is always a challenge.
ths364
181 posts
 
I wonder if some of the new/old LP sound comes down to the expertise of mastering engineers and new vs old methods. In the 50's,60's and 70's I suspect that there were large numbers of mastering engineers all of whom were mastering for vinyl. Between the advent of the CD and the near loss of the LP as a viable format, I suspect that we lost many of the engineers that had developed mastering stereo vinyl to/for lp's (some of whom I understand would make adjustments "on-the-fly" to compensate for frequency/dynamic changes at the beginning /end of a side.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,861 posts
 
some of whom I understand would make adjustments "on-the-fly" to compensate for frequency/dynamic changes at the beginning /end of a side.

If they did, it must be an unusual thing to do- there is nothing about that showing up in RCA's studio manual or any of the manuals on the cutterheads of the day.
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