In the 60’s and 70’s I bought lots of vinyl LPs and recall exchanging many of them because of flaws. Typically I would check the disc for scratches then listen for pressing faults. Most often this was evident from periodic hiss on the first track and high frequency distortion on the last track. If this was okay then I’d look at how far off-centre the hole was or how warped the disc was to judge how much ‘wow’ this would cause. (Wow is the pitch variation created by the stylus moving from side-to-side or up-and-down as it follows the groove). Altogether I was a pretty disappointed by the product quality and rarely got a perfect copy but had to accept the least worst. But now I hear music pundits talking fondly about vinyl records, waxing on about the ‘warmth’ and ‘depth’ of the tone compared with ‘cold, flat’ CDs. I find this somewhat difficult to comprehend; listening to a piece of music with clicks, hiss, wow and flutter, poor high and low frequency definition, does not make me feel warm or deep but just makes me feel irritable. I have thought there must be a market for some expensively priced electronic circuitry which emulates the effects of vinyl and introduces clicks, hiss, wow and flutter for those souls who insist on a true pre-HiFi experience.
All this got me thinking and I have a decided to hold onto our last remaining Cathode Ray Tube television as I’m guessing in a few years’ time video pundits will be wistfully recalling the days of analogue television and use terms such as ‘warm’ and ‘deep’ to describe the picture quality. There could be some cash in it people!
