A Brief History of Vinyl Records
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- čas přidán 15. 07. 2020
- Have you ever wondered about the history behind that vinyl record spinning on your turntable? Well, today you are in for a treat. That’s what we’re here to look at - the history of vinyl records and the so-called “vinyl revival” we are looking at today.
Written & Produced by: Rick Coste
Music: Tim Bickford & Rick Coste
For more vinyl memories & tips please visit : JoyOfVinyl.com - Hudba
With all due respect, don't be knocking Disco. That genre holds some truly great productions.
You are right, Russell. Looking back, I regret saying that. I watched a video recently of KC & the Sunshine Band and it brought back great memories,
I loved lying on the floor and listening to music while staring at cover art. (There are probably some bands I liked, in part, because the art complemented the music so well.)
Exactly. There are even some albums which might have actually sounded better given better thought to the artwork on the cover.
@@TheJoyofVinylRecords Every Roger Dean Yes cover, for sure. Iron Maiden's Powerslave, with all the hieroglyphics. So many...
@@ChristopherGronlund yes
GREAT video! Exactly what I was looking for.
Thank you!
Wonderful video mate, thank you.
Thank you!
My late uncle was a collector of Edison phonographs. They were all in working order and I recall listening to the strange looking cylinder shaped recordings. I believe they are still in his family, hopefully for posterity,
That’s amazing @Mike Adam. I really hope they still exist in the family and have been safely kept. What an heirloom to pass down.
Fantastic history lesson. I’ve been into HiFi and collecting records for like 30 yrs and didn’t know of all those details, especially a few of the early ones. . Many thanks to you.
Really appreciate the video.
@7:30 -- Compact Disks.
"It was cheaper to make, and virtually flawless"
"Flawless" depends on what is being evaluated.
As in, every compact disc that is made from the same source will sound identical... then "Yes", flawless is representative of the storage medium.
However, if the focus is on the sound quality from playing those disks, then there was a lot to be desired.
When CD players first hit the market, they were very expensive (today, you can still spend $10,000+ on a state-of-the-art CD player -- but it will sound way, way better than anything at the time CD players first became available).
Stereophile and The Absolute Sound routinely gave the sound from CD players bad reviews -- even though the marketing convinced the public that CD players were the holy grail of music reproduction. That was then. Today's CD players are far better sounding (not all, but most).
The issues that plagued early CD players took decades to resolve, and still plague many entry level players -- and, to some degree, all CD players (such a jitter).
And the analog-to-digital converters back then, that the recording studios used, were also new technology, and suffered from issues, such as time smearing.
But for $100, today, you could probably get a better sounding CD player than an early model that cost $5,000 (just a guess, because I cannot do an actual listening test between two such CD players -- but from what I recall reading at the time, those early CD players were not good sounding, at any price).
By the way, for some folks that might not know:
All CD players do not sound the same. There are folks that believe that because it is digital, then its sound quality is perfect. That is a misnomer.
Great video!
I listen to a lot of classical music. I have discs from the 50's, 60's and 70's. I have cassette tapes from the 80's and the early part of the 90's. From the 80's on, I have a few CD's. Somehow, the CD'S, especially the strings, sound fake. I liken it to eating a real orange versus eating an orange Lifesaver.
@@stanleycostello9610 I do not know your gear, so that could be a factor? However, the studios simply have virtually no quality control, when it comes to sound quality.
So those fake sounding instruments are very likely the fault of the studio.
Play your CDs in your home, car, and elsewhere. If all have that same "fakeness" to their sound, then it is the studio doing what the studio does -- screwing up the hard work and talent of the artists.
I believe that many of the studio's engineers are incompetent, by way of not knowing what quality sound is -- which is maddening, because it is their job to mix and master music.
I believe that most of them never heard a professionally set-up, high-end stereo.
They probably grew up with mass produced, department store quality stereos, and that is how they expect music to sound, and so that is what they do.
There is nothing wrong with such stereos. The problem is when someone gets a job at the studio and ruins our music, because that is all they know about sound quality.
I also believe that they are enamored with their expensive studio gear, with endless knobs, buttons, levers, and software options. They love to sit their like it is a video game. They love to put the sound through one box after another, with no regard to the coloration and the distortion that each box adds to the signal chain.
And we all suffer with the compressed, equalized, over-processed junk that they release.
Octave Records supposedly is aware of all of the above issues, and their recently built (and still being built) studio supposedly avoids all of the above issues.
I have not yet purchased any of their albums. But after I get around to demo-ing their offerings, I will make a purchase to hear for myself. But it is not just the sound quality that matters -- it is also the melody, which is where I need time to go through their catalog.
www.psaudio.com/product-category/octave-artist-masters/
By the way, your "orange Lifesaver" is apt and made me chuckle. :-)
Howdy I have been collecting final records for a long time myself and I have a very fine collection for a time I was in the rock and roll and I had a whole bunch of records by the Beatles I sold them because my interest changed to country music I'm a cowboy at heart and I was in the country music when I was a kid I lost interest for a while but it's back and thanks to the show hee Haw I now have a giant record collection of country records by different people I also put together playlists of country singers and cowboy singers on CZcams but there is nothing like hearing an old fashioned vinyl record on a record player I also have a fine collection of train recordings think about maybe 30 or 40 records for 10 bucks from a train show and they are all great final records have quite a history I was impressed thank you and God bless
Thank you for the great feedback and for the comment! I hope all is well on your end :)
Well done. Only thing I would have added was that those original Edison diamond disc albums were weird and made of some even weirder stuff. ;)
Thank you!
Welcome!
@@TheJoyofVinylRecords And now I'm ridiculously motivated to video some of my kiddie records and put them on my channel (it's not as elaborate as your channel; and I think I have 5 followers....)
... enjoy this video very much indeed 😊
Thank you!
Colored vinyl has been
around for a long time.
Good video. Just a couple minor notes. The cassette tape as we know it from the 80s and today is officially called a “compact cassette” a product of the Phillips corporation. I don’t know if you are aware but there was a format war in those early cassette days. In 1976 Sony, Panasonic, and Teac came out with their competing format the Elcaset that was designed to us 1/4” tape and run at 3.75 ips. Both of these are twice the same specs in a compact cassette and were aimed at eliminating the issues that make the compact cassettte a poor choice for music. Up until that point the cassette was marketed for voice or low fidelity audio recording. But what killed the competition (other than it’s much larger size and this less portability) was the new tape formulation, specifically cobalt and chromium dioxide known as Type II, and better processes for producing the tape to higher standard. With these invocations and the use of Dolby B noise reduction (as well as dbx to a lesser extent) the compact cassette’s frequency response was as good as the larger Elcaset especially when using in a high end deck like those from Nakamichi. The Elcaset was dead before it even got a chance and only lasted less than 10 years before it completely folded. Check out Techmoan’s channel for interesting videos on these and other essorteic audio formats.
The compact cassette as well has never really gone away and since 2016 has seen a minor resurgence in popularity. A few companies started making type I tape again and I just heard recently (Jan 2022) that Tascam is producing type II tape again. I prefer vinyl, but for the nostalgia and fun I’ve bought a couple recently released albums on cassette and have made mix tapes. When Covid first hit I sent my Covid-19 mix tape to all my friends that still owned working cassette decks. A fun way to connect when we were all locked in our houses.
Thank you for all of this @Tripp Moore. This is great info! I actually have a video in progress about cassettes coming out soon. Although I have to be honest, it's not my favorite format so don't hate me when it comes out, but I am thrilled that they are there and have an audience. Please keep in touch!
Rick
The tape-format war was not just between one or two companies - it involved DOZENS. The scramble was more-or-less touched off by the Muntz Stereo-Pak (direct ancestor of the 8-Track), and by 1970, there had been many, MANY efforts by many companies to develop the new one and only 'standard'.
Of the two, the most prominent survivors were the Philips cassette and the Lear 8-Track. Once the technical issues with the cassette were resolved, it became a juggernaut, quickly surpassing cassette and rendering the upstart Elcasette effectively pointless. Even in the face of the Compact Disc, cassette was still king... until it became possible for the home audio enthusiast to master his own CDs.
Thank you for another great video, Rick. I truly learned a lot, and really enjoyed your presentation. One thing it didn’t answer for me though, is why those speeds were chosen? It just recently dawned on me that early 78 records ran at 45 + 33 rpm. But why? By that I mean, what were the circumstances that dictated the resulting 3 phono speeds of today? Just curious.
Good question. I hadn't really thought about that. I should check that out. Thanks for the suggestion!
I found a British CZcams video after I commented, and the presenter explained the history of the “Format Wars” between Columbia Records and RCA after WWII. As I suspected, it was about fitting more music time onto a disc. I get that. But what wasn’t explained was the magic number of 78 rpm. Why 78? Why not 100? Why not 60? Did it have something to do with AC frequency? Or was it just an arbitrary number? It’s not important, I just wonder the logic behind the choices.
I currently have 49 Shellac records, 19 Vinyl records.
49 shellac. Wow. How old are they?
One reason why I went to digital so fast was dynamic range. When classical music came out uncompressed, the severe limitations LPs inflicted were too evident. I was overjoyed when a DDD mastered CD recording revealed detail and loudness I had never heard on Vinyl. Vinyl can really suck when a long large musical work is compressed into smaller grooves to get it to fit on a single side of a 33 rpm record.
And I’m really glad you took the time to comment. That means a lot. You could have easily shrugged and moved in. Thank you for commenting. I will never discount someone’s else’s enjoyment - especially with music. And neither did you. You’re welcome here anytime Michael!
How does vinyl differ from shellac and other material records?
Shellac is very brittle. If you've ever seen a clip of someone shattering a record, it's most likely shellac (I'm thinking of Mary breaking the record in "It's a Wonderful Life"). Shellac also wasn;t the most quiet of mediums. Vinyl changed the game somewhat in providing a more durable and malleable material. Great question! Maybe someday we'll see a new synthetic material replace vinyl. There are folks working on it.
When was the conversion from the cylinder to flat vinyl disc done and by whom, if you know?
Hi there! There was no exact date. After Edison's cylinders came out Emile Berliner captured sound on flat, hard rubber discs. These discs were created using a master disc to stamp out copies, similar to how vinyl records are made today. That gave way to shellac discs and eventually vinyl. Edison's cylinders were in use by some until the 50s and faded out.
@@TheJoyofVinylRecords
In 1886, Berliner began experimenting with methods of sound recording and reproduction. He was granted his first patent for what he called the "Gramophone" in 1887. The patent described recording sound using horizontal modulation of a stylus as it traced a line on a rotating cylindrical surface coated with an unresisting opaque material such as lampblack, subsequently fixed with varnish and used to photoengrave a corresponding groove into the surface of a metal playback cylinder. In practice, Berliner opted for the disc format, which made the photoengraving step much less difficult and offered the prospect of making multiple copies of the result by some simpler process such as electrotyping, molding, or stamping. In 1888, Berliner was using a more direct recording method, in which the stylus traced a line through a very thin coating of wax on a zinc disc, which was then etched in acid to convert the line of bared metal into a playable groove.
By 1890, a Berliner licensee in Germany was manufacturing a toy Gramophone and five-inch hard rubber discs (stamped-out replicas of etched zinc master discs), but because key U.S. patents were still pending they were sold only in Europe. Berliner meant his Gramophone to be more than a mere toy, and in 1894 he persuaded a group of businessmen to invest $25,000, with which he started the United States Gramophone Company.[1] He began marketing seven-inch records and a more substantial Gramophone, which was, however, still hand-propelled like the smaller toy machine.[citation needed]
The difficulty in using early hand-driven Gramophones was getting the turntable to rotate at an acceptably steady speed. Engineer Eldridge R. Johnson, the owner of a small machine shop in Camden, New Jersey, helped Berliner develop a suitable low-cost wind-up spring motor for the Gramophone, then to manufacture it. Berliner gave Frank Seaman the exclusive sales rights in the U.S., but after disagreements Seaman began selling his own version of the Gramophone, as well as unauthorized copies of Berliner's records; ultimately, Berliner was legally barred from selling his own products. The U.S. Berliner Gramophone Company shut down in mid-1900 and Berliner moved to Canada. Following various legal maneuvers, Johnson founded the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1901 and the trade name "Gramophone" was soon abandoned in the U.S., although its use continued in the UK and elsewhere. The Berliner Gramophone Co. of Canada was chartered on 8 April 1904 and reorganized as the Berliner Gramophone Co. in 1909 in Montreal's Saint Henri district.
(Thanks for your answer)
Dope video, minus the disco comment✌
I actually regret that comment given that I just listened to KC & The Sunshine Band the other night and it brought back many good memories of those days.
Love my Hendrix on vinyl cranked to 10 thanks ps im deaf from my Marshall guitar amps im a collector but please wear ear plugs 😊
Great advice Jerry. I blame my tinnitus on my ill-advised youth of standing next to blazing speakers.
@TheJoyofVinylRecords yes my old marshalls really did me in while in AxeHammer for years I used ear plugs for the last decade of my playing days but it was to late ! Great show .!
@@jerrywatt6813 Thanks Jerry!
Cassettes are obsolete and dead! As are VHS tapes and tape/VHS players! I got rid of ALL my old cassettes and CDs years ago! Took up too much space and i had no means to listen to any of em! All my music and films i love are on my digital cloud connected tp my email account forever n ever! No actual phisical copies of anything now which is sll good as long as i dnt lose my ONLY means of accessing em! My beloved phone! N then thst all relies on my data and battery which atm are touch n go! I got NO TV either! So EVERYTHING DEPENDS on my one n only device! 😐
Oh boy. Don't lose that device !
good short documentary, except disco does NOT suck 😒😒
Wellllll 😢
Sorry I have to give a dislike for dissing disco.
I can certainly respect that @Xaver Lustig