q for serge / vinyl wear

[fraser.]

Would you be able to use your measuring equipment to record the line level signal of a turntable?

I ask because i'd like to see a technical evaluation of vinyl wear. Would it be possible to get recordings of the same record at different points in it's life, for example:

brand new

after 10 plays

50 plays

100 plays

1000 plays

10,000 plays?

obviously this would take quite a long time for some measurements. Ii'm not sure how you could take stylus wear out of the equation either, but then that would fairly reflect real world conditions anyway

 

[SergeAuckland]

You can do that for yourself with any half-decent PC sound card plugged into the record out of your pre-amp/amplifier. Then, the spectrum and noise levels can be analysed off-line using some free software like Audacity, or better perhaps, RMAA (also free). This will show how the noise level rises and the high frequencies are progressively rolled off with successive plays. As to stylus wear, if you limit yourself to one track on the LP, then if the track is, say 4 minutes long, then even 10,000 plays will only be 667 hours, so well within the lifetime of the stylus.

Measuring increasing distortion may be possible, but difficult with music, but if you had a test LP with a band of tone, that could be used for distortion testing.

Of greater concern is whether the human involved has the stamina, but technically it can be done.

S.

 

[guypettigrew]

Of greater concern is whether the human involved has the stamina, but technically it can be done.S.

It would also be interesting to know how many people play an album 1,000 or 10,000 times.

I doubt any of mine have had more than 100 plays, most albums are probably played much less than even 50 times.

Guy

 

[fraser.]

I would love to do it myself but don't have a pc with a half decent soundcard or a turntable at the moment.

if i'd realised it was that simple I wouldn't have directed it at anyone in particular! If anyone can be arsed doing this i think it might be quite interesting

 

[SergeAuckland]

I would love to do it myself but don't have a pc with a half decent soundcard or a turntable at the moment.if i'd realised it was that simple I wouldn't have directed it at anyone in particular! If anyone can be arsed doing this i think it might be quite interesting

That might limit how far you get with the investigation.... ;-)

S.