Anyone else here remember when records used to skip on the radio?
Oh, yes. Quite the random observation there.
One of our local AM music stations (yes, it was that long ago) advertised themselves as the 'more music station'. This was not accomplished by running fewer commercials, no, they just sped up the turntable so they could play more songs per hour.
Quote from: Jardine on March 13, 2016, 10:13:49 PM
One of our local AM music stations (yes, it was that long ago) advertised themselves as the 'more music station'. This was not accomplished by running fewer commercials, no, they just sped up the turntable so they could play more songs per hour.
This is still somewhat common, but it's to squeeze in more commercials instead of more music.
Quote from: Jardine on March 13, 2016, 10:13:49 PM
One of our local AM music stations (yes, it was that long ago) advertised themselves as the 'more music station'. This was not accomplished by running fewer commercials, no, they just sped up the turntable so they could play more songs per hour.
I think WCLU accidentally sped up some of their music since one of their turntables wasn't properly calibrated. I remember someone on the Internet talking about this.
I remember buying records after hearing the song on the radio and thinking the record sounded slow. Actually it was because WCLU played some records too fast.
Same with CDs skipping or jumping because of a scratch.
One day, not long after stations started using CD's, a local station played "Shake Your Groove Thing" by Peaches & Herb during its retro lunch hour, and it began skipping. The DJ broke in and said it was because there was a booger on the CD.
Worse than skipping was when a record got stuck. I heard that more than a few times.
It happened a lot at the college station I DJ'ed at back in the early 70's. But what was a bigger problem was when the Collins cart machines would eat tapes. We had all our commercials and PSAs on these carts (similar format to the 8-track tape cart). We routinely would make two or three copies of everything since you never knew when the Tape Shredding God would strike. Fun times.
I remember my mom driving me to school in 5th grade and listening to WCLU in the car, and "Here Comes The Rain Again" by the Eurythmics getting stuck in the second verse. It was at the line "Raining in my head like a tragedy." For the next 2 or 3 minutes, it kept repeating, "Raining in...Raining in...Raining in...Raining in..."
Apparently the station never replaced their record for this song. About 2 or 3 years later, I heard this same song on this same station, and it started getting stuck right at the same point in the song.
Reminds me of the skipping record in Up in Smoke that kept playing "Star****er"
My favorite was when the tape monster struck and caused a flip in one of my cassettes so that halfway through the side of a cassette, the tape would flip over and you'd be listening to backmasking from the other side of the tape (and trying to pick up those hidden messages)
I'm not old enough to know records, but I remember CD's. I had a funny moment when I loaded in a video game CD and what happened is that the game was mirrored. So what happened is that everyone looked like mutants or suddenly disappeared and reappeared.
This is what I mean:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL7W-6NOjyg
Quote from: noelbotevera on March 14, 2016, 07:38:21 PM
I'm not old enough to know records
Maybe not, but unless the hipster phenomenon dies out in the next 10 years, you'll be young enough to know them.
Quote from: bandit957 on March 14, 2016, 11:30:05 AM
One day, not long after stations started using CD's, a local station played "Shake Your Groove Thing" by Peaches & Herb during its retro lunch hour, and it began skipping. The DJ broke in and said it was because there was a booger on the CD.
Ah...WKRP humor.
Yes and what more I remember is that it would screw up my mix tape recordings. That and the fact the DJ would usually talk over the last 5-10 seconds of a good song when I was trying to get a good version.
I actually speed up some of my music on purpose, as it gives it more energy, for lack of a better word.
The albums I do that to are those of The Seekers, Feeney Winthrop, and any other album on which the songs seem artificially slow.
Kind of like driving down an bypassed section of a US Highway at the county speed limit of 35, when you know darn well the road was designed for 65-70. :-)
Quote from: vdeane on March 15, 2016, 01:17:21 PM
Quote from: noelbotevera on March 14, 2016, 07:38:21 PM
I'm not old enough to know records
Maybe not, but unless the hipster phenomenon dies out in the next 10 years, you'll be young enough to know them.
Eh,
maybe. While this is true:
(https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LfvG-q3rLICCMhGPE6u2Da_ubXs=/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2906112/vinyl_two.0.png)
So is this:
(https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/LPvinylsales1973-2014.jpg)
I listen to excellent local radio stations here where DJs dig up tracks you've never heard before because they have vast record libraries at the stations. So this happens occasionally, though it doesn't go on for long.
Larry King has told a story of being a young DJ in Atlanta, working the overnight shift, and getting a call from a woman who claimed to be in love with his voice and begged for him to come down right that moment for a rendezvous. So, the story went, he put on some kind of long album side and booked it down there. He arrived at her house, she opened the door, and he heard the radio on, the record skipping over and over and over and over...
I'm sure a hundred other present and former DJs have told the same apocryphal story about themselves, because if there's anything more lonely than a roadgeek, it's an overnight DJ.
And really–in love with Larry King's voice? Please.
Quote from: noelbotevera on March 14, 2016, 07:38:21 PM
I'm not old enough to know records, but I remember CD's....
"Remember"? You make a CD sound like some kind of historical artifact.
Quote from: brycecordry on March 16, 2016, 11:53:03 PM
I actually speed up some of my music on purpose, as it gives it more energy, for lack of a better word.
....
I'm sure I'm not the only one here who, as a kid, "made my own Chipmunks records" by speeding up 45s to 78 rpm or LPs to 45 rpm (the latter never worked quite as well). Can't easily do that now since my current Rega turntable requires removing the platter and adjusting the belt drive if I want to change the speed (so I never change the speed; if I want to play a 45, which is very rare, I pull out my old Yamaha turntable and connect it).
Quote from: 1995hoo on March 17, 2016, 07:03:47 AM
Quote from: noelbotevera on March 14, 2016, 07:38:21 PM
I'm not old enough to know records, but I remember CD's....
"Remember"? You make a CD sound like some kind of historical artifact.
Quote from: brycecordry on March 16, 2016, 11:53:03 PM
I actually speed up some of my music on purpose, as it gives it more energy, for lack of a better word.
....
I'm sure I'm not the only one here who, as a kid, "made my own Chipmunks records" by speeding up 45s to 78 rpm or LPs to 45 rpm (the latter never worked quite as well). Can't easily do that now since my current Rega turntable requires removing the platter and adjusting the belt drive if I want to change the speed (so I never change the speed; if I want to play a 45, which is very rare, I pull out my old Yamaha turntable and connect it).
They pretty much are a historical artifact these days, I can't even think of who carries music CDs anymore. Ironically ran across a batch of CDs a couple weeks ago, I have them sitting in my garage with a bunch of old VHS tapes, my VCR/13 inch TV combo and a Beta player. There is a couple older PCs with the school giant floppy boot disk not to mention what I have for old game systems. Record players and records not so much....they all fell victim to me and my brother trying replicate the scratching noise we kept hearing in MTV music videos. There was some classic stuff in there too, all obliterated at the whim of a couple kids. I'm sure the collectors crowd would be mortified to know we blew up all the original Star Wars in addition to Transformers toys with various types of bottle rockets and/or fireworks as well. :-D
I play CDs or DVD-Audio discs in the car almost every day.
Quote from: 1995hoo on March 17, 2016, 10:04:25 AM
I play CDs or DVD-Audio discs in the car almost every day.
These days it's all MP3 downloads, I haven't bought a car since 2010 that has offered a CD player. Ironically I still use the AUX jack simply because I find it easier to manually operate my MP3 player rather than through the touch screens. Oddly I've seen some of those cassette player AUX jacks that you can play CD player music off of lately while making the rounds in the last month or so.
I still don't understand people's love for the .MP3 format. Lossy compression might have been necessary 15 years ago when data speeds were slow and storage was still expensive. There's no reason for it nowadays. Unless the music is poorly-produced, a CD will always sound better than .MP3. A high-rez .FLAC download is, of course, another story, but most people have no way to play those without a computer. You're always better off getting the .FLAC download if you have a choice, though, because it's easy enough to use software to transcode it to another format while keeping the original .FLAC. Put differently, there might be some reason why you want or need a lossy-compressed file at the moment, but if you download the .MP3, you're stuck with it in the future because most places won't let you re-download in a different format at no cost when you want a higher-quality file later. If you download the .FLAC, that's not an issue.
I still find it mildly amusing and mildly pathetic how many people incorrectly refer to devices like the iPod as ".MP3 players." Part of what made the iPod a good device for its time was that it didn't force any single standard upon the user.
(With all that said, an .MP3 is better than nothing when it comes to things like a concert bootleg.)
Quote from: 1995hoo on March 17, 2016, 10:25:25 AM
I still don't understand people's love for the .MP3 format. Lossy compression might have been necessary 15 years ago when data speeds were slow and storage was still expensive. There's no reason for it nowadays. Unless the music is poorly-produced, a CD will always sound better than .MP3. A high-rez .FLAC download is, of course, another story, but most people have no way to play those without a computer. You're always better off getting the .FLAC download if you have a choice, though, because it's easy enough to use software to transcode it to another format while keeping the original .FLAC. Put differently, there might be some reason why you want or need a lossy-compressed file at the moment, but if you download the .MP3, you're stuck with it in the future because most places won't let you re-download in a different format at no cost when you want a higher-quality file later. If you download the .FLAC, that's not an issue.
I still find it mildly amusing and mildly pathetic how many people incorrectly refer to devices like the iPod as ".MP3 players." Part of what made the iPod a good device for its time was that it didn't force any single standard upon the user.
(With all that said, an .MP3 is better than nothing when it comes to things like a concert bootleg.)
You basically just hit it on the head. It's a lot easier to convert my older stuff to MP3 format off of older media that I own. I see zero reason to repurchase something that I already own especially if I'm making a copy for personal use on a newer media. The secondary problem is that the availability for MP3 is so much greater than anything else out on the market if I want something new that I didn't own previously. Personally I don't use apple products aside from my phone that was just a gift of circumstances, I don't even use it for music.
Let's be realistic–the average listener doesn't concern themselves particularly with the finer points of sound quality. .mp3 is a near-ubiquitous standard. There's not the consumer pressure to upend that entrenched situation.
It did bring back a limited market for vinyl though. Someone mentioned it as a hipster trend...I'm not quite sure that encompasses the entire demographic though. If I could find some reproduction high quality vinyl records for a lot of my 80s stuff I would be interested in it for at home purposes. I don't consider myself part of the "hipster" crowd...doesn't that require drinking lots of Starbucks, wearing glasses you don't need, driving an alternative fuel vehicle and living in some sort of loft apartment in some far flung megalopolis? The only things I've ever bought at Starbucks were a couple gift cards, a diet Pepsi and a breakfast sandwich once...
Quote from: Pete from Boston on March 17, 2016, 11:05:53 AM
Let's be realistic—the average listener doesn't concern themselves particularly with the finer points of sound quality. .mp3 is a near-ubiquitous standard. There's not the consumer pressure to upend that entrenched situation.
Unless they have Bose headphones & speakers, little earbuds aren't exactly performance listening devices either, so the sound quality of an mp3 is just fine for most listeners.
Lots of places still carry audio CDs. Walmart is one.
I'd much rather buy a physical copy of the music and then rip it and upload it to my iPod. The only music downloads I've ever bought were either digital-only releases (like Chicago's "Nashville Sessions" re-recordings of their Terry Kath/Peter Cetera classics) or something I had trouble finding on CD and wanted immediately. I also tend to make a CD-R copy of CDs and play those in the car and keep the original at home. Of course I haven't bought any new music in a couple of years.
Back in the day, I acquired a lot of MP3s of music I already owned on 8-track, vinyl or cassette via Napster and Usenet newsgroups. Unfortunately I had to let my Newsguy subscription lapse so I can't download tunes anymore. I used to record all my vinyl onto cassettes to play in the car. The problem with that -- and is also a problem if you try to digitize vinyl -- is that the same pops and cracks that plague vinyl get transferred to the CD or the MP3.
As for lossy compression, it doesn't make a lot of difference if you're driving and you have to deal with road noise.