[Vintage-Audio] Turnabout?

Thu Dec 2 15:36:51 EST 2010

Welcome to my club Bob! Been there, felt that, pressed that ... OOPS!

I am confident that you can still procure a good CD player from a high end 
stereo shop. If nothing else, the Bay Of E is sure to have a ton of them.

I agree with you Robert. I am sitting here with a fortune in DAT tapes. One 
deck has died. I am now using my very expensive commercial Sony ES deck. 
When it fails ... I am screwed!

The DAT is the ONLY way that I can get studio grade copies of previously 
recorded music or to use to remaster a vinyl album to a CD. Bob has some of 
my remastered CDS, so I know that he appreciates the quality I can generate 
via that medium. You can not get it copying from one CD deck to another or 
from a two deck CD unit.

Robert. I fear we are going to be subjected to downloading digital junk via 
a high speed modem etc. The end result of people not caring about audio 
quality, just cheap and in abundance.

I have yet to hear a single commercial TV satellite or cable that generates 
anything close to the "CD Quality" audio they boast about!

The headphone units are even worse! And on and on ...

What will happen? Eventually enough audio minded listeners are going to toss 
the digital stuff into a recycle bin. Then manufacturers will rediscover 
vinyl etc. In fact, some recording Artists have a vinyl only clause in their 
contracts! When looked at statistically, vinyl is still outselling CDS about 
three to one! Absolutely true!

Bob, when I helped develop TTS - Text To Speech as a third party author in 
1981 for Texas Instruments, I was the happiest pig in a puddle! Finally the 
blind were going to be able to use a computer! Even better, do it 
affordably! It cost me six thousand dollars to make my IBM XT talk! It cost 
me over two grand to make this XT HE system talk. Now the scanner that 
talked, another $1400 And on and on. But it was worth it! I could read the 
darn TV Guide or Newspaper or Popular Electronics or whatever... When I 
wanted to and without having to practically beg some sighted friend to read 
it to me.

Well, now the systems are so digital that the blind are barely able to use a 
computer. Provided they can afford the two grand to make their four hundred 
dollar computer talk!

I think we better breed some offspring and raise them listening to nothing 
but quality audio! Then maybe, just maybe, ten percent of them will keep 
things like speakers and true RMS watts and CD players etc. available!

DBF

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Nickels" <ranickel at comcast.net>
To: "Vintage home and professional audio equipment from 1975 back" 
<vintage-audio at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Monday, November 29, 2010 5:11 PM
Subject: [Vintage-Audio] Turnabout?

>I find myself looking, so to speak, at a problem from a perspective I'm
> not accustomed to, but one I know Duane will get a kick out of.    Like
> many of you I suppose, I figured the CD was probably the last media ever
> to be produced by mankind, so I ended up buying a lot of 'em, including
> many replacements for my old vinyl LPs.   Now I realize I could rip 'em
> all and store 'em on a hard drive but there's still something about
> putting a disc of some kind into a player and selecting the track that I
> want to hear.  So I bought a couple of TEAC brand single-play CD players
> a number of years ago that have served until now as an audio source for
> my various vintage setups.
>
> The other night one died.  It's unrepairable by me at least, as it's
> half surface-mount and it's probably a driver or something that's
> causing the 6 volt regulator to run hot.   So I thought maybe it's time
> to buy a new CD player.   Wrong!   With few exceptions, consumer-grade
> CD players have become as obsolete as 8 tracks!
>
> So what's a guy to do when he likes to select tracks rather than just
> play the entire disk?   I know DVD players will play audio CDs, but
> when's the last time you've seen one of them with a display on the
> machine rather than just on-screen?  Of course the ironic part is  -
> this is the world Duane knows well, and here I am fussing because I
> can't buy a player that tells me which track I've selected!     The
> simplest and cheapest answer is just to use a low-end DVD player and
> count button-presses I suppose - or use the abysmally-designed remote
> control.    I'd really rather have a nice component type CD player than
> a portable - and don't want to have to have a TV nearby just for the
> on-screen display - but evidently I'm in the minority.
>
> Anyone else run into this dilemma?
>
> 73 Bob W9RAN
>
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