Not sure I agree with the author. Old technologies hang on for the simple reason that they may not be actually inferior.
For example, the side valve has been long-gone in internal combustion for decades. We use overhead valves now. Why? Because they are better in just about every way. No-one except collectors use side valves.
The LP is different. The era of least production was 1992-1993 and its been on the rise ever since. You don't have to know anything technical to understand why: the market simply wants it. I suspect that part of the reason is that the LP has more bandwidth (30KHz is no worries, which means you get less phase shift, even if you don't use that bandwidth) and they don't have to be as compressed as CDs because there is no expectation that they will be used in a car. Here in the Twin Cities the local music scene has been such for the last 20 years that if you don't put out an LP, your band hasn't really arrived on the scene. So oddly, you can find LPs of local stuff and its actually been harder until the last couple of years to find LPs by national or international acts. Kids drive the market, not us audiophiles. If they want vinyl and they do, its going to be around.
Exactly. Old horns, valves, vinyl...this is a good post from DIY audio on old tech
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi...ml#post2948616
"I thought I'd elaborate on why the top sixties HiFi was better than most junk you buy today. But this is not for discussion. I will simply state 6 good reasons, and you can stuff them in your pipe and smoke them.
1) Engineers were older, had lived through WW2 and had a much broader background in Radio and antennas and high frequencies and would even make their own components like coils and oiled paper capacitors. They had far better mental arithmetic ability than most of you, and could use a Smith chart for matching impedance and a slide rule for calculation much faster than you can with computers:
2) I have no particular axe to grind on transistors versus valves, and in fact classic performers like the Radford STA25 had a single rail transistor preamplifier driving a valve output stage with a defined source impedance. But they were Class A designs with all the lovely cancellation of common-mode that makes them sound so good. The power supply for instance had only to drive a constant current and all electrolytic capacitors had the proper bias which keeps them linear.
3) Record pickups were wide bandwidth and low source inductance moving coil designs. These avoided trying to jump out of the groove due to LC resonances which plagued later moving magnet designs and LP crackle and pop was less obtrusive.
4) Bass speakers would often be 10" paper cones in huge solid closed boxes mounted literally as bookshelves against a wall. Tweeters would often be simple 3" paper cones with a single capacitor crossover. It didn't much matter how good the speaker surround was, because acoustic suspension essentially kept the speaker linear. Frequency response was probably not the last word, but rolled off gently. In fact the reputable WLM La Scala speakers rather recreate these babies.
5) Components like transistors were doubtless not as fast, but then feedback was kept much lower too, so gross distortions like slewing tended to be avoided in favour of gentle rolloff of frequency response.
6) Recording engineers really knew their equipment like the backs of their hands. They set up levels to avoid overload and at their peak would record straight to the record-cutting lathe via a mere couple of microphones with no recording console worth mentioning. The result was breathtakingly direct recordings like Count Basie with Frank Sinatra, which if you've never heard them on Vinyl with it's 70dB signal to noise ratio, well you haven't lived, my friends! "
