AH Challenge: Vinyl Remains Dominant

[KCammy]

The public flock to new ideas, replacing the old systems, or technology - regardless of quality.

Even if cassettes or vinyl were somehow as convenient as CD's then people would still buy the CD.

You can't stop the march of progress, regardless of the quality of that "progress".

Take the iPad. It has half the processing speed, memory and capability, for twice the price of an average laptop, yet it still sells in huge numbers. Why? People love new technology.

 

[Emperor Norton I]

The public flock to new ideas, replacing the old systems, or technology - regardless of quality.

Even if cassettes or vinyl were somehow as convenient as CD's then people would still buy the CD.

You can't stop the march of progress, regardless of the quality of that "progress".

Take the iPad. It has half the processing speed, memory and capability, for twice the price of an average laptop, yet it still sells in huge numbers. Why? People love new technology.

I'd disagree. Just because something is new doesn't mean it's the darling of the public. Otherwise, the CED and Laserdisc would have been huge; instead, the former is something you've probably never heard about, and the latter is something which was a niche product which many people don't recall.

 

[Emperor Norton I]

Question: Not necessarily related to the OP, as it would be the kind of AH cheat I tend to dislike, but is Compact Vinyl possible?

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Hi Norton

I think you'd love Portland, its almost like living in an other time line most days. Vinyl records are the current hipster thing around here. Walk into some of the local record stores and it would blow your mind. All around me there are examples of technology like vacuum tubes, the nintendo entertainment system, even 8-track tapes, all stuff that never really went away here. I even have a friend that collects old Apple and PC computers from the 70s and 80s, ever see a tape cassette drive.

The only way you could keep vinyl dominant is to slow the advance of technology. Have the oil crisis in the 70s lead to a major depression or have the Three Mile Island meltdown end in an apocalyptic disaster, it would have to on that scale. As for the record companies trying to suppress recording technology in the 70s and 80s by buying off congressmen and other tactics, they tried that and largely failed. They couldn't touch overseas companies in Japan and Europe.

 

[Panzerfaust04]

Question: Not necessarily related to the OP, as it would be the kind of AH cheat I tend to dislike, but is Compact Vinyl possible?

Incredibly unlikely. The first barrier is a limit in the medium itself; it'd be nearly impossible to make a disc small enough to be carried easily but large enough to hold a whole song. Five inches (around the size of a CD) was about as small as discs ever got IOTL, but those could barely hold more than a minute and a half of music at the outside.

Even if that limitation was somehow surpassed and they figured out how to get, say, three or four minutes out of a five inch disc, there's another problem: you'd need to not only keep the disc perfectly stable, but you'd have to keep the needle in contact with the record at all times. It's extremely unlikely you'd be able to stabilize the player enough to prevent your jogging music from turning into a mass of unlistenable skips. I know that in the 50s there were experiments with car record players that used a vacuum to hold the needle down, but it wore out records very quickly and I'm not sure something like that could even be included in a portable device.

Basically, I can't see a way to make it really viable.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Not really compact vinyl but I can't believe I forgot about 7-inch 45s. Just a single on each side.

 

[Emperor Norton I]

Hi Norton

I think you'd love Portland, its almost like living in an other time line most days. Vinyl records are the current hipster thing around here. Walk into some of the local record stores and it would blow your mind. All around me there are examples of technology like vacuum tubes, the nintendo entertainment system, even 8-track tapes, all stuff that never really went away here. I even have a friend that collects old Apple and PC computers from the 70s and 80s, ever see a tape cassette drive.

Ah, I might enjoy Portland. I'm not a Hipster though, or at least I hope not since I can't wear that tight of jeans. ^_^

Incredibly unlikely. The first barrier is a limit in the medium itself; it'd be nearly impossible to make a disc small enough to be carried easily but large enough to hold a whole song. Five inches (around the size of a CD) was about as small as discs ever got IOTL, but those could barely hold more than a minute and a half of music at the outside.

Even if that limitation was somehow surpassed and they figured out how to get, say, three or four minutes out of a five inch disc, there's another problem: you'd need to not only keep the disc perfectly stable, but you'd have to keep the needle in contact with the record at all times. It's extremely unlikely you'd be able to stabilize the player enough to prevent your jogging music from turning into a mass of unlistenable skips. I know that in the 50s there were experiments with car record players that used a vacuum to hold the needle down, but it wore out records very quickly and I'm not sure something like that could even be included in a portable device.

Basically, I can't see a way to make it really viable.

Stability would be a problem with basic needle technology.

But is there anyway to super-compress the grooves even further to be smaller sizes in order to contain the same music but fit more of it on a side? In lieu of a needle, perhaps a laser could be used instead.

You guys may say "why not just use CD's then" but that's not the point.

 

[the_lyniezian]

Sorry to bump again, but you know me and subjects like this.

I wonder if one thing that could help this along might be a format war? IIRC one reason for the CD becoming dominant is it was pretty much a standard for igital music- both Sony an Philips worked on developing it, and other manufacturers were on board too. If you have several rival disc, or perhaps even digital tape formats, whilst it's probable you might get market dominance of one, I think format wars might have done enough enough to kill off RL digital tape formats and (maybe) high-density magnetic disk storage for computers.

There's a probability that cassettes will perhaps take over for portable storae, but vinyl might well be successful for the audiophile market. I would imagine ultimately that MP3 or some other downloadable digital file format might eventually win out regardless, though.

I don't know if something could be done in terms of stability with linear tracking (providing the tone arm isn't too long)?

 

[mowque]

The issue is that CDs are simply better in nearly every way.

 

[Swan Station]

Did anyone else read "Vinyl" and "Dominant" in the title and think this was gonna be a discussion on alternative fashion?

Myself, I was thinking about automobile interiors of the '70's.

 

[ScorchedLight]

No way. I can see them outclassing cassettes because fuck cassettes.

Now that I've said that, I will gloat about my First Edition vinyl disc of "The Dark Side of The Moon". It's in perfect condition. It's perfect.

About wear, couldn't some kind of laser contraption "read" the grooves on the disc? If so, a vinyl could be played without wearing it, perhaps even keeping the rich analogue sound.

 

[the_lyniezian]

No way. I can see them outclassing cassettes because [...] cassettes.

Now that I've said that, I will gloat about my First Edition vinyl disc of "The Dark Side of The Moon". It's in perfect condition. It's perfect.

Played it ever?

About wear, couldn't some kind of laser contraption "read" the grooves on the disc? If so, a vinyl could be played without wearing it, perhaps even keeping the rich analogue sound.

Read back into the thread- it's been mentioned.

If CDs or their equivalents could be held off long enough, I supose they might possibly stand a chance, and might not cost in the thousands.

 

[ScorchedLight]

Played it ever?

Two times. I repaired an old Technics turntable just to listen to the damn thing. But it's far too valuable to expend.

About the laser turntable, I was thinking more of a device that could actually play normal LPs, as a replacement for needle readers. If done, you can see a rebirth of the vinyl.
Also, vinyls are damn awesome.

 

[Emperor Norton I]

About the laser turntable, I was thinking more of a device that could actually play normal LPs, as a replacement for needle readers. If done, you can see a rebirth of the vinyl.
Also, vinyls are damn awesome.

As the_lyniezian said, it was already mentioned. However, the problem with it is cost (and it can't read non-black vinyl, and it can't preform the same cleaning at needles).

 

[Emperor Norton I]

I'd like to bump this to bring up a point:

What about direct digital download coming about earlier? We'd jump straight from the age of Vinyl and the other pre-CD formats to a situation like what we have now where music has become simply microscopic files which don't need any portable thing except the player, and thus sidestep the need for CD's, and thus you wouldn't have a need for your music disc to be portable.

I created this topic some time ago. While it has been detracted against, it could help inform the topic.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=195539

 

[The Admiral Hook]

This is why I love that you are a member of this site, Nort.

 

[Swan Station]

I'd like to bump this to bring up a point:

What about direct digital download coming about earlier? We'd jump straight from the age of Vinyl and the other pre-CD formats to a situation like what we have now where music has become simply microscopic files which don't need any portable thing except the player, and thus sidestep the need for CD's, and thus you wouldn't have a need for your music disc to be portable.

I created this topic some time ago. While it has been detracted against, it could help inform the topic.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=195539

Direct digital download requires fast Internet speeds and high capacity drives (the sound cards were probably available, and processors could handle it as long as you didn't also want to play a game or write a paper on the same machine). I think it happened OTL at just about the earliest time that it was possible, unless you can create the internet ten years earlier, and speed up Moore's law as it applies to hard disk memory and baud, there's going to be something like CDs in between.

EDIT: Nevermind, just reread the linked thread. I brought up pretty much the same argument there.

 

[Emperor Norton I]

This is why I love that you are a member of this site, Nort.

'cause I'm sexy and bring up topics no one else has the cajones to make?

 

[Emperor Norton I]

I'd like to bump this to add an idea, and I'm doing it at the dead time of the morning so it can be buried if no one really cares:

I believe I did a thread similar to this where we discussed Tape format remaining in place without the Digital revolution, or analog never being replaced by digital, or something like that.
From the discussions there, I think a good way to have Vinyl remain would be to skips the CD age altogether and go straight to Digital Downloads. Because with an MP3 or MP4 or any digital type you'd like to have it (or whatever type they could have it be in the 80s), you have no need for a CD. That's what's happening now; CDs don't really matter anymore, and vinyl is rising as a result because people like to be able to physically handle music, and vinyl makes them feel like they're really experiencing music by having this big LP and album sleeve and turntable to play it on. And, on top of that, it's becoming a thing where with a vinyl album, they give you a code for a free digital download of the album. So perhaps that could arise earlier: vinyl LP's released, with a code to a digital download version of that album or single.
There's two ways such a scenario could work: one, digital technology is progressed in the 80s enough to where digital music downloads from an internet-type body is possible, and some sort of container exists which can store that data in reasonably high amounts. Two, CD is retarded either in development or popular adoption to the point where when they could take off, we've already made it to the point where digital downloading and data storage on portable music players are possible; and it doesn't even need to be portable, since digital could be at home and then cassette's could still be used for portable listening until such time as a portable digital device is invented.

 

[Aelita]

I'd like to bump this to add an idea, and I'm doing it at the dead time of the morning so it can be buried if no one really cares:

I believe I did a thread similar to this where we discussed Tape format remaining in place without the Digital revolution, or analog never being replaced by digital, or something like that.
From the discussions there, I think a good way to have Vinyl remain would be to skips the CD age altogether and go straight to Digital Downloads. Because with an MP3 or MP4 or any digital type you'd like to have it (or whatever type they could have it be in the 80s), you have no need for a CD. That's what's happening now; CDs don't really matter anymore, and vinyl is rising as a result because people like to be able to physically handle music, and vinyl makes them feel like they're really experiencing music by having this big LP and album sleeve and turntable to play it on. And, on top of that, it's becoming a thing where with a vinyl album, they give you a code for a free digital download of the album. So perhaps that could arise earlier: vinyl LP's released, with a code to a digital download version of that album or single.
There's two ways such a scenario could work: one, digital technology is progressed in the 80s enough to where digital music downloads from an internet-type body is possible, and some sort of container exists which can store that data in reasonably high amounts. Two, CD is retarded either in development or popular adoption to the point where when they could take off, we've already made it to the point where digital downloading and data storage on portable music players are possible; and it doesn't even need to be portable, since digital could be at home and then cassette's could still be used for portable listening until such time as a portable digital device is invented.

You had to have digital music first in order care about compressing it. There's a whole nexus of technologies that had to come together first before the first audio CD was even possible. And those audio technologies didn't pay for themselves. You need to develop digital PCM, and a way to store that on magnetic master tapes. But once you do that, what do you do with your digital audio? There's no point in using it to make an LP, you'd just degrade the audio quality transferring it to an analog master.

To get a sound equivalent to an LP, you pretty much have to go the CD level waveform, which is an uncompressed digitial pulse code modulation track, with 16 bit sound depth at 44.1kHz. When the CD debuted in 1980, there was no general computer in the world that could store and process that much data. Hard drives were usually a few megabytes, and ridiculously expensive, and you couldn't play it back without specialized hardware.

There's a reason why audio compression came a long time after CD audio. It's because compression requires a processing power premium over uncompressed audio, even if it is easier on data transfer. We don't realize this because it's a trivial task today to compress or decompress an mp3, but it's something that was at the cutting age of computer capabilities when it was introduced.

The MPEG 1 standard wasn't published in 1993 for both video and audio compression, and the layer 3 audio compression commonly called mp3 was a serious user of processing power on personal computers of that era. The first realtime decoder for mp3 didn't come out until two years later. I honestly don't think the gap can be neatly bridged. Especially when interest in audio compression and particularly psychoacoustic models started because people wanted to be able to store their digital audio on a computer without filling a whole harddrive with WAV files.