State of the industry - Roy Gregory Editorial

[DasguteOhr]

That also makes sense Tim, yet it also means that aiming for such pin point imaging is a treacherous path. The method used to record the 'omnipresent' sound in a room IMO has a major impact on the ability to recreate the recording using 2 speaker. I'm not sure that the individual components in an orchestra are a single broad source, it's more like a broad source consisting of multiple smaller sources, for electronic music or electric instruments all of this is different since the recording is mostly tinkered together to form 'stereo' anyway.
To me the recordings that sound most natural are usually older ones, and I suspect (yet only suspect) that this is an effect of inserting less gear and less microphones than nowadays is often the case. I assume that at some point consumers liked the more close up zoom-in effect of multi microphone recordings and the industry followed. I'd love a chat with some of the famous recording engineers of the 50-ies and 60-ies to hear how they percieved progress.

this article is mostly about the rise of CD, but it gives some insight; https://www.gramophone.co.uk/featur...lager-the-balance-engineer-on-life-at-philips

you have nailed the point. old decca records for example here is a nice link . born of the famous decca tree(microphon arrangement)

The Decca Sound: Secrets Of The Engineers

In 1984, Mike Gray helped assemble a discography of Decca’s classical releases, giving him access to their engineers and recording logs, and a valuable insight into how their records were made. He reveals the truth about the famous Decca tree and the creation of the label’s unique sound.

polymathperspective.com

photo today abbey road studios where musicians and sound engineers can learn their profession.still the decca tree of course but a lot more microphones.

 

[MarcelNL]

great article, thanks for sharing! I think what I read in it tracks perfectly with my desire to go mono for older recordings!

 

[Mike Lavigne]

but what does an audiophile consider a catch?

This…

Day one catch, day two dawn, day two catch

 

[MarcelNL]

Enjoy!

 

[spiritofmusic]

Mike, they're lined up almost like your carts collection.

 

[DasguteOhr]

great article, thanks for sharing! I think what I read in it tracks perfectly with my desire to go mono for older recordings!

you must not forget that old lps are cut with a 15 degree angle. But modern pickups have an angle of 20-22 degrees. So rather use an old cartridge from the time.
Cutting head angle changed arround 1968? Use a ortofon sl 15mc for that my tip.
there is a japanese site because all cartridges vta/ sra are listed. unfortunately I forgot the name

 

[MarcelNL]

you must not forget that old lps are cut with a 15 degree angle. But modern pickups have an angle of 20 degrees. So rather use an old cartridge from the time.
Cutting head angle changed arround 1968? Use a ortofon sl 15mc for that my tip.
there is a japanese site because all cartridges vta/ sra are listed. unfortunately I forgot the name

thanks, I'll have a chat with my vinyl guru! I assumed that from 'microgroove' 33rpm onwards mono was using one cutter, and not until stereo the cutter changed.
(just bought a Miyaima zero for mono, to go with the RCA70A)

 

[richardk]

BruceD
I'm a new member here and have just seen your kind words about the K3 project. Thank you for that.
It was a massive task incorporating all that I have learnt over 40 years of modifying and building TTs where this time I had the luxury of a substantial R&D budget.
Someone else speculated about the provenance of the motor. It is not sourced from Technics. We buy pieces of a motor and assemble then into a working unit, machining the cast iron chassis as the motor housing.
Also, the self-diagnostic tuning program function only gets us into the ballpark. From then on, we used a listening group who met every week sometimes multiple times, to fine tune the program. These tests were blind; the person making the program changes would key away on the laptop and then press enter. He would ask the same question every time. Better, worse, same? This because sometimes he did not make any changes, just pretended to. After the conclusion of listening tests, we would use the controller to measure W&F. In the early stages, every time we concluded that there was an audible improvement there was a companion improvement in W&F. (BTW we always measured W&F while playing the same track of a record. IOW under dynamic loading. Static loading W&F measurements, say using a test tone, aren't in my opinion relevant). This fine-tuning process lasted 18 months!