Well, I seem to have touched a
nerve with my January column, "The
Decline of Vinyl and its Timely Death." Here are some reactions:
You are unquestionably either an untrained/unskilled
listener, simply tone deaf, or out to aid your own agenda. Regardless, your comments are
nothing less than mindless dribble.
...H. Duane Goldman, PhD
I can't think of a lot of journalists who have done more
critical, controlled listening over the past 30-plus years, but you're welcome to your
opinion -- it's always nice to receive a well-reasoned, moderate bit of criticism. My
agenda is to promote good sound and good science. You, on the other hand, run a Website
that markets phonograph accessories, so who's the one with an agenda?
The word is "drivel," by the way. Look it up.
…Ian G. Masters
Your ignorance should have precluded you from weighing in
on this subject. What twaddle. Columbia Records was fined the largest amount ever levied
by the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] at the time for using the oil embargo as an excuse
to jack up prices for LPs. Windfall profits to the record producers were astronomically
high.
…Stan Delles
I'm not quite sure what you're objecting to; I'm
certainly no apologist for the record companies. Yes, their profits were outrageously high
in the '70s, but my recollection was that it was due to debasing the product, rather than
boosting the prices. Years later, when defending themselves in the matter of high CD
prices, record-industry spokespeople were inclined to argue that the new format was priced
at what the LP should have been except they hadn't wanted to raise vinyl prices in
a declining market.
As for the FTC ruling, I don't recall it, even though I
was covering such matters at the time. I haven't been able to find mention of it in my own
copies of publications of the day, or on the Internet. But if you or any other readers can
give me a good historical reference to the incident, I'd be more than happy to discuss it
here.
…Ian G. Masters
I enjoyed your article. I recently have become interested
in vinyl and plan to set up a turntable in the future. There is a certain nostalgia with
vinyl that makes it cool. I feel that a majority of the music recorded from the ‘50s
and ‘60s will sound better on vinyl than on CD. Many recordings engineered in the old
days of audio were still well-engineered recordings. If the engineer did a good job with
mastering, then it should sound good on both formats. I think both formats are here to
stay. CD will just be the more popular.
…Taso Kastanis
In your article titled "The Big Hertz,"
you state, referring to a receiver's ability to tune to a particular station, "To do
this it uses a tuned circuit that is sensitive to one frequency and insensitive to
others."
This is not correct. Sensitivity refers to a receiver's
ability to pull in a weak, distant signal. The term you need here is selectivity: the
receiver's ability to select the correct signal and stay locked onto that signal. Other
than that, that is a very good article explaining the basics of radio.
Like the website, keep up the good work.
…Michael A. Barnwell, USAF Ground Radio Maintenance
Technician
You're right. I meant "sensitive" in the more
general sense of responding to something, but I was ignoring the fact that, when it comes
to radio, sensitivity has the very specific meaning of being able to pick up weaker
signals, while the ability to receive one frequency while rejecting others -- particularly
nearby ones on the dial -- is selectivity. Blame me for imprecise writing.
…Ian G. Masters
Currently in my home-theater setup, I have speakers on
shelves approximately 1.5’ from my television (it is a regular analog TV). I am
99-percent sure the speakers are not shielded. Is it true that non-shielded
speakers can permanently damage a TV if they are placed too close to it? If my TV were to
be damaged, how would I know? To be honest, I can't tell if there is any problem going on.
…Vince Casella
Speakers that are not magnetically shielded can cause
color impurities if placed too close to a regular CRT television, as the stray magnetic
field can misdirect the electron beam that "paints" the picture on the tube's
phosphors. It usually shows up as areas of wrong color at the side of the screen nearest
the offending speaker. In extreme cases, it can affect the whole picture. If you don't see
anything like that, there's likely no problem, but it can arise gradually over time.
The damage is not permanent, and the solution is to move
the speakers farther away. Many sets have degaussing features that correct the picture
when the set is turned on. But even in sets that don't do that, the impurities usually
disappear after a short while.
…Ian G. Masters
I was wondering if you could shed some insight into the
never-ending debate about interconnects. I know that speaker wire has never been shown in
blind testing to make an improvement in sound, but does the same hold true for analog and
digital interconnects? While most of the cables in my system are well made, I'm using a
generic throw-in digital coax cable from my DVD player to my receiver. Would an
inexpensive but better-made digital interconnect make an audible difference?
…Frank Warsh
I doubt it. One of the beauties of digital sound is its
all-or-nothing aspect: If the signal gets through at all, the receiving device locks on
and reproduces it perfectly. The cable would have to have intermittent breaks that
interrupted the bitstream before you would hear any degradation, and that would be in the
form of periodic muting.
…Ian G. Masters
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