Does anyone still use or like vinyl?

[Dave2002]

Thank you, Gordon. I'll not try this.

I didn't try the green felt tip pen trick, either.

On the other hand, I've read that these make a remarkable difference to the sound from one's hifi.

I did try the green pen (not one of those "specially designed" - I' m not that stupid ...) "trick" just to convince myself it didn't do anything. I did try marker (washable board) pen on the CD playing surface - had no effect whatsoever, though that may be slightly different from drilling a hole through, as the laser can focus into the CD. However if I'd used very opaque marker (permanent) pen, then the effect should have been similar to drilling a hole.

I do have one commercial CD which has a very quiet "tick" at one point. On holding it up to the light it's possible to see some fine pinprick size holes in the metallic layer. There may be quite a few CDs with such fine holes - if you want to spend time checking for these - but generally the error corection and interpolation will counter the effects and users won't be aware of these.

If you want to experiment do it on freebies from the papers, or on cheap charity shop CDs. You might have to be careful drilling the hole, as CDs can shatter into thousands of bits. To check this try hitting one with a hammer in the garden over a few bricks - use eye protection of course! It's no good using a nail to make a hole because of the shattering. A hot pin might work - but may leave ridges - see next para.

if you do get a "good" hole in a CD, then the area around would also need to be smoothed off, otherwise you could wreck your CD player on rough edges or swarf. With a "good" hole, as Gordon suggests, a good CD player should still be able to play the CD perfectly.

For experimenters, might be best to start with small dots of opaque ink or paint on the CD surface rather than holes. I'm not sure how easy it would be to get ink to stick and dry though - Indian ink?
Perhaps also best to use an old and surplus to requirements CD player, rather than a cherished one.

All this in the interests of science and engineering!

PS: Health and Safety again

Drilling holes in CDs may cause them to break/shatter when rotated. If put into some modern drives, or computers which have drives with high rotational speeds this can be really quite serious. I think we had a computer at work written off because a CD or DVD shattered inside. Perhaps low probability, but only serious experimenters need try.

Then there are experimenters like this

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?desktop_uri=/watch?v=ctuoSYWn2xM&v=ctuoSYWn2xM&gl=GB

Oops, not that one. Try this

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dcmn5EExfbvY&v=cmn5EExfbvY&gl=GB

[MrGongGong]

Ah, the snake oil pipeline again.

Curiously raising some cables - e.g USB cables - off the floor can make a difference, .

Yes it makes a huge difference
it makes one smug and superior beyond belief




keeping signal cables away from the mains or crossing power leads at 90º angles makes perfect sense
as does not buying cheapo nasty ones that fall apart

there's enough nonsense about this whole area of Woo to power Totnes for many years

Nic knows what to do with CD's

http://www.nicolascollins.com/texts/cdhacking.pdf

[Dave2002]

Sorry?! If your CD (or player) has a fault in it, you're supposed to drill a 1/8" hole in it?? Who discovered this "solution"?

I love this one. |

I hope Gordon's reply has now explained the idea.

[umslopogaas]

Several people have mentioned surface noise on LPs, and the need, and difficulty, of cleaning. Time for a plug for the Keith Monks Record Cleaning Machine. A big investment, but well worth it, I could not endure the hassle of cleaning by any other method. It does look a bit Heath Robinson, but it does the job very effectively.

If you buy one, you will need a Customs and Excise licence to buy industrial methylated spirit, but relax, they dont charge you for it.

One clean on the Monks can actually make the noise worse, because it will raise up old dormant dirt but not remove it; however, two scrubs will get it as clean as it can be. Its worth pointing out, though, that some LPs have inherently crackly surfaces and no amount of cleaning will remove this. A dealer once told me that the problem is particularly bad with discs pressed during the oil crisis (somewhen in the seventies? I cant remember); the price of vinyl, which is derived from oil, shot up, so the companies started to pad it out with filler, and the filler causes the crackles. I dont know if this is correct, but it sounds plausible.

The source of the vinyl may have something to do with it, too. I dont know where Supraphon bought their raw material, but from the noise on some of their items you'd think they bulked it up with builders sand.

[Dave2002]

Yes it makes a huge difference
it makes one smug and superior beyond belief




keeping signal cables away from the mains or crossing power leads at 90º angles makes perfect sense
as does not buying cheapo nasty ones that fall apart

there's enough nonsense about this whole area of Woo to power Totnes for many years

Nic knows what to do with CD's

http://www.nicolascollins.com/texts/cdhacking.pdf

That linked article is "interesting"! Was it you who posted the Youtube some while back (circa 1-2 months) showing a performance for modified CD players etc?

My own experiences with USB were rather specific to the Humax/computer link. Generally cheapo USB cables, or perhaps slightly more expensive ones from firms like Belkin available from Amazon are good enough. I would not recommend following the snake oil route of using cables stroked by virgins (left to right, definitely not right to left ...) from Pacific islands (apologies in advance ...) which firms like Russ Andrews seem keen to promote.

Signal cables away from power cables does make sense, as does right angle crossing.

I'd suggest generally going for cheap (but not cheap and nasty) unless there are obvious problems.

[MrGongGong]

Yes it was me
Nic has done lots of really interesting stuff that manipulates technology
he also wrote the definitive book (Handmade Electronic Music)
and is an all round good egg indeed

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I love this one. |

I hope Gordon's reply has now explained the idea.

Yep: completely missed the point on that one!

[Dave2002]

MrGG

Can we have a reminder of the Youtube - or a link to the earlier post in case anyone else wants to try it please.

[salymap]

Are we talking about vynil or acetate (78rpm) discs?

I have a vast collection of LPs, both mono and stereo, and mono 78s 10" and 12" which were bequeathed to me by an elderly uncle.

The 78s were always played using Imhof Thorn Needles, which could be re-sharpened after every playing using the IM Pointmaster - a gadget which rolled the needle back and forth across a strip of sandpaper, or it could be manually sharpened using an EverReady razor blade.

The result is that there were no scratches or appreciable groove wear, so I copied most of them onto CDs using my own quality 3 speed turntable. (Thorens) Alas, some of those CDs have developed dreadful crackles (doesn't seem to happen to my commercial CDs, so it must be down to the suspect quality of CD-Rs).


Old 78s of such as Heddle Nash, Webster Booth, Norman Allin, Dame Clara Butt - and even Gracie Fields come out of the past with gorgeous clarity. In a little flat like mine, who needs stereo?
I'd rather listen to Stokowsky conducting Scheherezade with the Philadelpia in 1936 than Jukka Pekka something-or-other on the latest stereo recording, assembled like a jigsaw puzzle from numerous takes and retakes.

Anyway, I'm a bit deaf in my right ear, so I suppose I really hear everything in mono.

Volti

That's sad VS - is that why you gave up the - violin, was it?

[Ferretfancy]

Several people have mentioned surface noise on LPs, and the need, and difficulty, of cleaning. Time for a plug for the Keith Monks Record Cleaning Machine. A big investment, but well worth it, I could not endure the hassle of cleaning by any other method. It does look a bit Heath Robinson, but it does the job very effectively.

If you buy one, you will need a Customs and Excise licence to buy industrial methylated spirit, but relax, they dont charge you for it.

One clean on the Monks can actually make the noise worse, because it will raise up old dormant dirt but not remove it; however, two scrubs will get it as clean as it can be. Its worth pointing out, though, that some LPs have inherently crackly surfaces and no amount of cleaning will remove this. A dealer once told me that the problem is particularly bad with discs pressed during the oil crisis (somewhen in the seventies? I cant remember); the price of vinyl, which is derived from oil, shot up, so the companies started to pad it out with filler, and the filler causes the crackles. I dont know if this is correct, but it sounds plausible.

The source of the vinyl may have something to do with it, too. I dont know where Supraphon bought their raw material, but from the noise on some of their items you'd think they bulked it up with builders sand.

Umslopogaas

When I was using the Long Playing Record Library many years ago, the gentleman behind the counter kept finding returned LPs covered in industrial meths, and this was before the Keith Monks cleaner appeared on the market, he also used to say that he would like to jump on Cecil Watts's grave! The truth is that LP cleaning really needs care.
I'm sure that the machine works, but I have a simpler and less messy answer.

I use one of those electric toothbrushes that work by squirting water through a small nozzle from a reservoir that holds about 250ml. I fill the device with tepid water, adding two drops of detergent and "sand blast" each side of the disc before rinsing and allowing it to dry. I have more than a thousand LPs, and they are still in good condition with very little problem with clicks and scrunches.

In my experience, most noise on LPs is suffered by people who try to use pickup cartridges operating at very low tracking weights, causing wear and tear and sometimes not tracking the groove properly. A moving coil cartridge at a tracking weight of about 2 grams and correctly aligned in a good arm solves most of the problems.

I would certainly not wish to part with my LPs, since many of them have not yet appeared on CD, and I still get much pleasure from them. I agree with you about some of those East European discs, but I think the problems were caused by bad factory cleanliness rather than the use of vinyl fillers. That said. I've been quite lucky finding a few Supraphon gems in my local Oxfam shop.

[Gordon]

On holding it up to the light it's possible to see some fine pinprick size holes in the metallic layer. There may be quite a few CDs with such fine holes - if you want to spend time checking for these - but generally the error corection and interpolation will counter the effects and users won't be aware of these.

That is very true Dave and so poor aluminising may just cause too many holes for an error control block.

Too many could also upset poorly designed servos, both tracking and focus. Both these servos have to keep to very tight precision; depth of field is very small, the track is only 1.6 microns wide and the disc spiral is moving at about 1 metre per second [3.6kph] beneath it! Small depth of field means surface irregularities are out of focus but they will affect how light gets to the detector and so reduce its ability to produce a clean readout.

Whilst the specs and theory may suggest what the CD system CAN do the engineering of a particular player has many areas where the spec is silent, servo dynamics being one of them!

One thing to remember - ALWAYS clean a CD radially, never circumferentially. The error protection works along the spiral not across it and so blemishes or damage that is circumferential is far more likely to cause trouble. I used to know some of the numbers so can't do a quick sum or two but one can work out how long a CIRC block is along the spiral and so get an idea what kind of damage is serious. A 1/8" hole makes about 3 milliseconds of a gap along the spiral but across [radially] it accounts for about 6 minutes!!

[Volti Subito]

I think your 78s are shellac, not acetate?

Yes. Thank you for the correction - it's just that I knew they were not vynil.

V S

[Volti Subito]

That's sad VS - is that why you gave up the - violin, was it?

No. It was due to arthritis in my left hand, but I still keep my violin in the wardrobe and check it occasionally. It's a nice instrument but probably of no value, other than sentimental (it used to be my father's)

V S

[MrGongGong]

MrGG

Can we have a reminder of the Youtube - or a link to the earlier post in case anyone else wants to try it please.

I think it was this one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UACmvCVDdg

I love the way that the skipping becomes a percussion instrument

[mangerton]

Ah, the snake oil pipeline again.

Curiously raising some cables - e.g USB cables - off the floor can make a difference, I suspect due to electrical or possibly interference effects, and also when (1) the cables may not be fully screened and (2) the digital recovery protocols used on a digital link aren't robust enough. I discovered this when trying to move data from an old Humax Freeview box to a computer. The probability of success definitely improved when the cables were off the floor. It was repeatable.

Dave, yes, I quite agree that great care has to be taken with signal cables wrt screening and keeping away from mains. I'm not so convinced of the importance of keeping mains or speaker cables off the floor on little wooden pyramids. As you know there's a lot of snake oil out there. Thanks too for the info about hole drilling and green pens.