Talk:LP record

The average tangential needle speed relative to the disc surface is approximately one mile per hour according to the article. Averging over a radius from 15 to 7 cm we get 1.382300768 km/h or 0.383972435 m/s, which is about 1 mph. Jimp 06:38, 2 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

Someone here needs a lesson in doing calculations and giving results using significant figures. 1.38 km/h or 380 mm/s, neither of which is close to 1 mi/h or 447 mm/s. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ametrica (talk • contribs) 12:02, 9 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

You mean 384 mm/s ... if you're going to nitpick over sigfigs, you need to be consistent about it. Also, that's 0.859 mph. Though it's probably better to give the typical outer and inner diameter speeds to show how much they vary through the course of playback... 46.208.118.253 (talk) 10:24, 9 April 2018 (UTC)Reply

What is the essential difference between a LP record and an album? If there isn't one, then the articles should be merged. If there is one, then that should be described. What, for Wikipedia purposes, is the distinction between LP record and Gramophone record? I'm wondering if LP record is stuck between describing album and Gramophone record, and if so, should the article be refocused, or should it be merged? SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 09:12, 4 December 2015 (UTC)Reply

An album is a collection of tracks that could be physically on an LP, CD, cassette, 8-track, minidisc, etc. An LP is a vinyl record, and one type of gramophone record, that usually contains an album. --Michig (talk) 12:30, 5 December 2015 (UTC)Reply

I agree with Michig. An "album" of recordings was originally a set of 78s packaged together like a photograph album. The fact that the word was used colloquially, later, as synonymous with an LP or CD is certainly deserving of mention, but doesn't warrant any merging of articles. Ghmyrtle (talk) 11:17, 10 December 2015 (UTC)Reply

An album can be made up of one LP record, a pair of them (a Double Album), three (a Triple Album), etc., or as was said above, could be music released on other formats such as CD or cassette. An LP record is just that. One Long-Playing record. A single lump of plastic. A Gramophone record is not necessarily an LP. A gramophone record is playable on a gramophone, but that doesn't carry with it the long-playing aspect. 45RPM and 78RPM records are both gramophone records, but are of short duration, therefore not LPs Musicfan1353 (talk) 16:51, 1 February 2016 (UTC)Reply

Does all of the above get solved by merely changing the first sentence of the introduction from "This article is about vinyl or gramophone records. " to "This article is about the long-playing (LP) vinyl record, a type of gramophone record. "  ??? Musicfan1353 (talk) 17:00, 1 February 2016 (UTC)Reply

I don't see that as a problem. We are not talking about the article itself here - we are talking about the hatnote at the top of the article, which is only there to point readers to the right article if they arrive here by mistake. Ghmyrtle (talk) 18:42, 1 February 2016 (UTC)Reply

it might be time to update the last sentences of this section, specifically

"...by the early 1990s the CD had definitively succeeded in toppling the LP from its throne." and "...a modest renewed interest in vinyl has developed and the demand for the medium has been on a steady increase in niche markets, particularly among audiophiles, DJs and fans of indie music. However, the vast majority of recorded music sales are of compact discs and downloadable digital audio files, because of their greater convenience of use, generally cheaper prices and wider availability."

in 2016, vinyl dominates existing bricks and mortar stores, which are themselves a niche market ... whether or not this is a fad is debatable but the record companies and stores are clearly exploiting the demand while it exists ... there are plenty of articles on the "vinyl revival" in the mainstream press that could be used as citations, including info on new and old pressing plants ... J Edward Malone (talk) 19:42, 15 June 2016 (UTC)Reply

It probably is time to update it, but please note that hard facts (numbers) and good references will be needed. And we need the format-independent numbers to put the LP numbers into context. (As an example of what we don't want, the popular press is fond of raving e.g. "sales increased by 40%!" when they increased from 10 units per year to 14.) Jeh (talk) 21:27, 15 June 2016 (UTC)Reply

This. Ought be difficult to prove one way or the other, but I would suspect the record referred to in this simile is in fact a 78, not a vinyl record. Vinyl records do not very easily break, although it is easy to scratch one. Shellac records are rather easy to crack or break, and if you have a record that remains on one piece but has a crack, it will skip. I guess you could call a severely scratched vinyl as being "broken", as sometimes "broken" is used as a synonym for "defective", but I remember this saying from as far back as the early 1959s, when 78s were still quite common while vinyl was more of a niche market. Wschart (talk) 13:45, 14 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Except that this simile does not refer to a record that has been physically broken into multiple pieces. (You're right about that being far easier to do to a 78 than to a vinyl LP... you can bend the latter practically double... 45s are almost as easy to break as 78s.) When someone is accused of "sounding like a broken record", it means they are repeating the same thing over an over.... like a record with a scratch in it that pulls the stylus back a few groove-widths, so that short section of the material, one or a few revolutions' worth, repeats over and over. Given how soft the vinyl LP is, together with lighter tracking forces and much shallower grooves than the 78, this was much easier to do on an LP (or a 45) than a 78. It doesn't require a crack. Jeh (talk) 16:46, 14 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Jeh is correct. Binksternet (talk) 18:51, 14 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

I recently made an edit regarding this matter, but just now belatedly discovered this discussion. My edit added a parenthetical noting the precedent of a cracked (rather than simply scratched) shellac 78, as it seemed readers might otherwise be puzzled about why a merely scratched record could be called "broken" in the simile. The expression certainly goes back to the shellac era: there was a now-obscure popular song in 1936 entitled "The Broken Record" (lyric excerpt: "My Sweetheart, you're gorgeous, you're gorgeous, you're gorgeous, you're gorgeous, you're gorgeous, you're gorgeous tonight / That's a song I heard on the phonograph / The needle caught on the broken half / And kept playing..."), waxed by at least a half dozen bands ranging from Guy Lombardo to Red Norvo and Wingy Manone. Relevant OR: it takes one hell of a scratch or divot to cause the steel needle in the very heavy pickup of a typical prewar record player to jump outward from the beefy groove it is playing and repeat. In my experience, skipping ahead is almost always the journey made by a needle thus momentarily dislodged. An open crack, especially a break resulting in misalignment across the fracture, is a far more likely cause. I sometimes get the impression that many writers, including collectors who ought to know better, are falling into the error of contemplating vintage phonographic technology through the lens of their own experiences with semi-permanent styli (which do not wear out in the course of playing one side of a 16" shellac disc) and featherweight pickups that can get bounced by a lead-footed stroll across the floor or a fleck of crud in the groove. 66.81.220.154 (talk) 15:56, 9 October 2016 (UTC)Reply

I don't think calling a record that skips "broken" requires that it be physically cracked. It's "broken" as far as correct functionality is concerned, right? Anyway, the current text (as last edited by .154) seems to address both usages and the historical connection between them, so that seems fine to me. Jeh (talk) 19:08, 9 October 2016 (UTC)Reply

I do believe that Cooks binaural records belong in this article as they are the first commercially available two channel recordings on disk but some of the details are inaccurate.

Here's the text: "Emory Cook's 1952 idea of using two tracks, and a system using vertical modulation (harking back to Edison's 1877 experiments) for one channel and (then-universal) horizontal for the other".

I believe that there are two issues here (although perhaps only one is inaccurate).

The two channels on Cook's binaural disks are recorded with different equalizations but both are horizontal. A Cook binaural tonearm (such as that manufactured by Livingston) simply required two standard cartridges. For more detail see the discussion in the Cook Records entry.

Also, Edison's disks were successfully marketed for a number of years (1912-1929) and were cut vertically (hill and dale) so I don't know that characterizing the method as harking back to his experiments gives the right impression (although this is, of course, accurate).

I'd have changed this but I thought that the original author may want to investigate and change.

RichardBeckwith (talk) 18:27, 25 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

You are correct, I have a few of these discs. I'm not sure where the vertical modulation came from. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 18:32, 25 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

RichardBeckwith Actually, I'm pretty sure the vertical/horizontal system is referring to a system that is independent of Cook's, at least that's how I read the sentence ("...and a system..."). I'd leave it alone for now, but if no references can be found for this system (I've not heard of it, did it ever see commercial production?) then it should be removed. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 18:36, 25 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

Nice to know someone else owns some of these. I have a few myself. I have a thing for obsolete technology so I have collected a bit of Cook-binaural equipment over the years and have interacted with others about this. imagine that I'd have heard of another format if it existed. This is especially the case since it would suggest a different style tonearm and I have spent an embarrassing amount of time obsessing about tonearms. As a consequence, I am fairly certain that there are no disks quite like those described. It is certainly the case that there are no tonearms that have ever been manufactured for playback (which, oddly enough, I'll admit doesn't mean that the disks were never made). I wonder if this description is not a kind of permutation of the description of standard Westrex-style stereo, which essentially combines the vertical and lateral (as noted later in the paragraph). — Preceding unsigned comment added by RichardBeckwith (talk • contribs) 16:39, 26 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

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I know it might vary somewhat, but there's presumably a certain set range that the run-out area and lock groove occupy in order to maximise play time whilst remaining compatible with automatic systems? And it's probably not changed since the days of the macrogroove 78, so that people can still play their shellac on a modern turntable equipped with a suitably robust needle... Do we know what it is? I guess at about 10cm or four inches before but apparently that's wrong. It's a useful thing to know both for calculating linear media speed at the end of a disc (from which we can estimate frequency range for a particular playback stylus and/or cutting head, both at the start and end of a side), and how wide a recording band is provided on a typical 7, 10 and 12 inch disc (and so how many grooves of a particular width will fit in that space, and thus the theoretical maximum playing time)... It's not given anywhere in this article, nor in the general "vinyl record" one. 46.208.118.253 (talk) 10:28, 9 April 2018 (UTC)Reply

Interesting point. In the days of '78's, it appears that there was no actual specified standard, though almost all '78's produced had a central label that was between 3.0–3.25 inches (76–83 mm) in diameter, though the diameter of the end point of the recorded groove was dependant on the length of the recorded track. The shortest playing 78 in my collection has a 5.5 inches (140 mm) diameter end point of the recorded area (not including one '78' where the 'B' side is entirely run-out groove as it is just a single sided disc).

However, the lack of standardisation of the time is revealed because at least one manufacturer of '78' records (Broadcast) had central labels that were just 2 inches (51 mm) in diameter. With the end of the recorded area just 1.5 inches (38 mm) in diameter, it was smaller than most labels. I have not come across any wind-up gramophone fitted with an auto-stop that fails to play the entire record. Modern 33/45/78 capable auto-stop turntables will stop before the record has finished playing suggesting that they are designed with a minimum size of recorded groove in mind. 81.129.194.214 (talk) 17:05, 4 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

This article needs sections added on The Audiophile Companies such as Mobile Fidelity who produce extremely high qualilty products.

This and other related sections need to be updated and added to reflect the fact that Vinyl never stopped being produced and now, as we near the end of the Physical CD format in favor of streaming, that Vinyl sales have been skyrocketing in the last few years. New Products are being announced at CES and the value of Vintage Record Equipment is on the increase — Preceding unsigned comment added by Imagineer2018 (talk • contribs) 01:44, 8 February 2019 (UTC)Reply

It is incorrect to say that vinyl has never stopped being produced. Fifteen years ago, it would have been impossible to source vinyl recordings or indeed new equipment on which to play them. Today, it is very different. The record stores are full of vinyl records, and the players to play them. Even the stores that sell very high end audiophile equipment will now stock expensive turntables (amplifiers have always featured a 'phono' input, mainly to support legacy turntables).

Why the resurgence in vinyl? There can be many reasons, but one of the main drivers is that many bands producing recordings insist that analogue sounds superior to digital recordings. It is not true of course otherwise the record companies would issue 'prestige' recordings on vinyl, which they do not.^[1] The insistence comes from vested interests, in particular, a major change in the business model of record production.

In the middle of the 20th century, if a band was signed up with a recording company, that recording company would record their single or album, mix it, edit it, market it and sell it - paying the band a per track sold royalty of one old penny.

In the 21st century, all that has changed. A contract with a recording company now only covers producing the final records and their distribution. The band is expected to provide the record company with a finished master tape having funded the recording, mixing and editing of the tracks out of their own pocket. The band is even expected to market the recordings themselves (or more usually, pay a marketing company to do the job). The main issue is that analogue recording and mixing suites using (largely) legacy equipment are relatively cheaper to hire, whereas digital suites with their more complex and newer equipment are proportionally much more expensive to hire. Basically, the bands convince themselves (and others) that analogue is better simply because they do not want to pay to do it digitally.

For the vastly reduced service that the record companies provide, they pay the bands exactly the same number of pence per track sold today that they used to pay in 1970.^[2]

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Longplay (video games) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 02:16, 14 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

I actually own this album. It's not a single LP with 90 minutes of music. It's 2 LPs. I don't think that this is a good example for an extended play LP. Tdknox (talk) 20:52, 30 August 2019 (UTC)Reply

I am moving the following uncited material here until it can be properly supported with inline citations of reliable, secondary sources, per WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:CS, WP:NOR, WP:IRS, WP:PSTS, et al. This diff shows where it was in the article. Nightscream (talk) 14:42, 23 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Much of the material you tagged in June is basic factual stuff, widely known to every topic expert. Wikipedia:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue. I think the tagging was excessive. Binksternet (talk) 01:49, 23 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

It never ceases to amaze me how often people try to use this argument. First of all, "it's factual stuff, known to every expert" is not a basis for inclusion. The basis for inclusion is verfiability. How do you know it's factual stuff? How do you know it's known to every expert? I don't know that. WP:BLUE, aside from being an essay, and not a policy or guideline, references information that is "common knowledge" or "obvious". The information moved to this talk page is not.

Second, the sky is not always blue. When rainclouds are overhead, it's gray. At night, it's black. On clear night with no light pollution, it's filled with stars. When it snows, it's pink. And on other planets, it's various other colors. The color of the sky is a phenomenon determined by the science of atmospheric optics, which is purely scientific. How is that not requiring of citations??

Lastly, it should be pointed out that in the sky article, the parapraph that describes the color of the sky has........a citation!

Bottom line: This argument, when used to argue against requiring citations, is a really shitty one. Nightscream (talk) 16:47, 23 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

While it’s nice to have some logo visuals, File:LPlogo.svg lacks both source and author information, and above that, any authority to provide a logo for this type of medium. I suggest it being removed, or anyone could provide a phantasy version of “a logo for LP record”. -- WA1TF0R^䷟ 09:35, 30 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

 

That logo is not "ficticious". (WA1TF0R's original word) Columbia used it on its first commercially-released LP's and players in 1948 and it should not be removed. Its provenance must be available somewhere. JustinTime55 (talk) 16:14, 1 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

There are images of labels with the logo in this Library of Congress article and in Columbia Records 1949 catalogue. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 18:01, 12 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

In theory, quantization noise for 16 bit audio CDs is about -100dbB. That isn't zero. Practically, it is below just about every other noise around, in just about ever environment. Maybe except for an anechoic lab. Gah4 (talk) 09:40, 1 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

There are 2 images referencing "Neumann lathe." Yet there is nothing in the article referencing the subject. More information is needed. 76.88.55.202 (talk) 03:19, 11 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

I noticed this article does not cite a patent or a paper showing the original specs (e.g. weight, groove size...) of the long play vinyl record. Do they exist?-- Carnby (talk) 22:10, 17 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

So a bad thing about this article I see is that, in addition to talking about the original LP from Columbia and the history behind it etc, it also contains numerous contemporary info that isn't necessarily specific to the LP and these are basically already covered in phonograph record. Since the phonograph record article talks generally about all record formats, this article needs to focus specifically on LP when it was still something distinctive.

It's really confusing. I imagine a young kid reading this who wants to know about records will just end up confused about how there's this LP and a phonograph record without a proper explanation for them (and the fact the term "LP" is still used generically). I am going to make edits to this article to make it more clearer at the top and maybe remove some of the very recent stuff that are already in phonograph record. Sateystnes (talk) 01:31, 5 May 2024 (UTC)Reply