Hunting Rifle

Fun Stuff To Do On The

Airplane Photo

Cleaning Hardwood Floor

Liquid Measurement

Make It Up With Love

Alexei is right, The LP was superior to the 78, even if you are talking about the LP as invented in 1948. The background noise levels on an LP were lower and, as Alexei points out, in a much less noticeable frequency range. Also, 78s had a VERY limited play life. Unlike an LP, each play of a 78 did extensive damage to the disk (even with a good player). If I owned a collection of 20,000 78s, I’d probably have them transcribed by a professional and never touch them again.

Many of the early LP recordings were designed to sound just a little bit better than AM radio (that being less expensive to make, but good enough to impress buyers).

-r

diamonis, speaking as a 20-yr-old (though not quite vivacious, but i do have some vivacious, hot friends…) i would suggest that whispering sweet lisp-statements in a girl’s ear will probably work much better at someplace like mit. correct strategy, incorrect environment (unless you are at mit already. hehe).

Philip, I hang out with one group of guys where everyone else is 55 to mid 70s. Those guys get more female attention, especially from the cute 20 year olds, than anyone. My guess is you’re not old enough yet.

On music, how’s the live scene there? I live in a small town, and what’s stopping me from buying CDs is that I can buy a CD for $18.99 that I’ll listen to once, decide I like one or two tracks, and listen to each of those 5 more times each over the life of the disk, or wander down to one of the 3 venues in my town of 13,000 that has live music every night, spend $5 on a beer and toss $5 in the hat and hear an hour or two of kick-ass original music, some of which will probably end up being covered by some inferior front-band with a big advertising budget on an RIAA label in a couple of months.

And no $20k granite turntable ever competes with live, as long as the musicians weren’t depending on the engineers to make their sound later.

Philip, I think the problem with early LPs was not in recording technology, but rather in players. 78s were definitely a luxury, and someone shelling out a sum equivalent to current US$50 per shellac disc could also buy an expensive and technically advanced player from Thorens or Telefunken. LPs were aimed at the mass market, and players had to be very cheap. Only after appearance of mass-market magnetic cartridges people started to realise how much information is really recorded on an LP, and became ready to pay big money for players.