Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for February 16, 2016

What store would sell that album to 6 year old?

What six year old knows all about mindless sex?

He’s into vinyl! Calvin is always SO cool and SO far ahead of his time…

Vinal’s better,6 year olds don’t listen to music like that, I hope,but it is kind of funny in a dark way.

Six going on sixteen.

I wish i could hear the difference between vinyl and CD.

I can only really hear the difference between hearing aids in and hearing aids out.

Interestingly enough, it looks like there’s now a band out there called Scrambled Debutante. (Or was. Their Facebook says they played their final show in October 2014.)

https://scrambleddebutante.bandcamp.com

“Deliberate abuse of dangerous drugs”? How does one “unintentionally” abuse drugs?

opus,

someone slips a rufie into your drink?

Sorry, vinyl lovers and professionally trained musicians, but vinyl = hogwash, these days it’s a fad. No turntable, however sophisticated, is capable of producing the dynamic range of a single piano. No turntable, however expensive, is never able to offer the mechanical stability of making a piano sound good. Nnything that retrieves information by dragging a nail through a groove is going to, at the end of the line, suffer from harmonic distortion (sometimes confused with “warmth”) expressed in whole percent values. Yes, ears work in the analog realm, but so do loudspeakers, even if the source material is digital. The days that analog masters were converted to PCM using a crummy A → D conversion process are long gone. There is no suitable alternative to DSD, and even PCM has come a very long way (although PCM is not nearly good enough for studio use – but then again it’s not used in the studio).

Of course, you may PREFER vinyl, but it’s nonsense to claim that it is better by objectifiable criteria.

*lets

My experience is that vinyl sounds better than CDs. If you have a $10,000 + system to play your vinyl through. (My brother has one. Sounds amazing.)

Into the wastepaper basket, that’s the right way!

I just finished reading Making Records by Phil Ramone, and even he doesn’t defend vinyl. Vinyl doesn’t have much of a bass end, and the last songs on a side require very high compression. These days the more current debate is between analog and digital movies in theaters, with occasional special screenings still available on film.

Messin’ with the parentals – now there’s one lucrative activity that I wish I had done.

Basically, the album glorifies everything that made the 80’s what it was.

I had no idea this was a real “music” group, and have a website you can visit by clicking HERE.

I would post a picture of the album cover, but it is quite tacky…

Apparently, some/most of you watched the Grammy Awards last night! Lucky me, I had a meeting at our church last evening, and wasn’t home!

I did record The X Files however, and plan to watch the episode this afternoon. Much more entertaining to watch Dana Scully and Fox Mulder, anyway…

I miss my record player and vinyls. Remember hifi?

This was early days of CDs so everyone bought vinyl. And this was pre-parental warnings on music.

Sell him a country & western record. Their songs glorify lying, cheating, & whiskey-drinking, not mindless sex & drug abuse.

The episode from two weeks ago is now my all-time favorite, but there is one scene in this week’s that I think is on par. You’ll know which one I’m talking about when you see it…

So what did you buy it for, Calvin?

I’d buy that CD.

I would be very worried if I ever heard a six year old talking like that. My parents raised me so away from the malice of the world, that I didn’t know what a subliminal message was until my teenage years.

Oh, please! I did it at a friend’s record store, both parts of it. I’m referring to an oscilloscope with the clipping being caused by the non-linearity of the digital wave form which was not routed through a speaker. We didn’t tape it and it wasn’t a laboratory. This is GoComics comments, not a peer reviewed journal and it was not long after CDs became commercially available. I stand by my statements. Did you not understand the part about a large CD collection and no turntable, thus no vinyl? I listen to CDs. They are good enough

Also, exactly how would I go about documenting a subjective claim? Why are you so confrontational? You could have told me that I don’t understand the technical aspects of the recording process (you would be wrong) but you chose to call me a liar.

For some reason, the word conniption has always made me smile.

Oh dear. I posted that comment, went to bed and forgot all about it. To all, it’s highly tongue-in-cheek, and a rip on the current “vinyl fad.”But I see that the result was another LP vs CD skirmish. It’s late, but maybe I can contribute. You see, one of the things I do is studio-quality LP to CD transcription and remastering for commercial release, so I get to see both sides intimately and professionally. As several people have noted, in theory at least, and within the range on human hearing, CDs are indisputably superior to LPs in essentially every respect. THAT SAID, the power of digital processing has, in recent years, led to some terrible abuses of the medium. The “clipping” that mattro53 observed with his oscilloscope is one result of what’s called the “loudness war.” Google it and be appalled. Far too many people demand that their recording be “louder” than anyone else’s on the radio, in the car or on the iPod. Consequently, levels are pushed HARD against the digital maximum. Trash results. By its very nature, that kind of thing just doesn’t happen with vinyl. It doesn’t need to with CDs, either, but it does. (Not so much with jazz and classical, but still…) Also, in the early days of digital, there were several other issues with converter quality, with the mixing & mastering software & hardware and with studio technique in general. Those are largely resolved. So these days, the sonic deficiencies with CDs are, sadly, entirely intentional and completely unnecessary.OTOH, an LP can, with optimal (and expensive…) equipment and conditions, sound quite excellent. And vinyl remains the all around best “archival” medium. A well stored LP will be readily playable centuries from now. A CD, and especially a CD-R, not so likely. That is specifically why I do what I do. Many LPs from decades ago are in far better condition than the master tapes from which they were made, if, indeed, the tapes still exist. And then there is the pleasure derived from the artifact itself, including the jacket, and the rituals involved in playing it.Oh, and BTW, what Neil Young is peddling with his Pono Player is almost pure nonsense. Any slightly better sound comes from the electronics, not higher bit/sample rates.