A number of completely disparate events brought me to this feature. Michael Jackson dieing had me digging into my MP3 archives for an album or two. This is not about him. (Of course, it can’t hurt me in the Google rankings either. 
) A year ago, the wife bought a turntable, with the intent of turning it into a halloween prop. And I ran across a box with a half dozen records in it this afternoon. My son asked if any of them were ‘Michael Jackson’, and sure enough, Thriller’s in there.
And Men At Work
and an album I didn’t immedately recognize. Turning it over, I read crappy red print on a crappy dark blue background Opera Sauvage…Vangelis. Interesting. And behind that album: Chariots of Fire. Opera Sauvage had a song that was turned into a Wine commercial. It hasn’t aged well. Chariots of Fire has. But more on that later.
So I dug up the record player, set it on top of the computer on my desk (bad move from an audiophile standpoint) plugged it into the stereo, and pressed the ‘phono’ button on the tuner for probably the first time in it’s life.
So, I start playing the album and am amazed that, after 25 years of sitting, flat, in a cardboard sleeve, there’s no dust, it’s not warped, and it sounds pretty good. What amazes me more is that there are no scratches. As a kid, I often commented I could scratch a record without removing the plastic-wrap, I could scratch it just by staring at it. There’s very little static and popping, and I note as I close the desk drawer, that the sound reverberates with a boom…of course. It’s attached to the desk, which is attached to the record player, which is attached to the tone-arm, which is attached to the record needle, which translates every movement is detects as a signal.
The next thing I noticed was a buzzing noise..I touch the corner of the record player and the buzz stops, sitting it on the computer was probably not the best idea from a vibration isolation standpoint. So I stop the record and sort around for a way to isolate the record player (visions of $75,000 turntables, with platters made of clear lucite and aerospace motors and turned steel spikes for feet run lightly through my head). I grab one of the toddler’s wooden chairs and place it on the carpet, away from the desk, place the player there. Oy, suddenly concerned about audio reproduction I am! I retest.
Wow.
I forgot what a soundfield was. Years and years of in-ear headphones make you do that. To the uninitiated, a set of speakers of any quality have the ability to disappear. When playing music, if you close your eyes, you cannot hear where the sound is originating from. The singer is here, the drums over there, the bass player over there, and the special effects wander around the room. (Your homework assignment is to find Living in Stereo by the Cars. That used to be SO COOL. STEREO was cool.)
Then I though it’d be a good thing to write about…but hey, I can’t do an OFT article about music, with pictures, and no sound.
Take the stereo, run an RCA cable from it to the computer, download Audacity, and hit record. A few minutes in, I kill the subwoofer (vibration!) thinking I’ll listen to the final result in my killer sound deadening in-ear headphones and it will be AWESOME.
A $300 computer with crappy onboard audio, free software, a $30 turntable, and a 25 year old piece of vinyl are being digitalized at 44 kHz, 32 bit float, stereo. The first time. (Bonus points if you can detect when the kids opened and slammed the front door, and when the Ice Cream truck drove past.) I’m afraid there’s a 60 cycle buzz that I’m just SURE a Monster Cable Power Conditioner would fix, but what the heck, it’s a Lab Experiment. What amazes me is: all the levels are correct, and I just decided to run with it and check out the results later. 20 minutes created a 500 meg file. The computer mixed it down to Apple Lossless in 4 minutes, and I had a digital reproduction that takes up 21 Mb.
Like I said, Chariots of Fire has aged better than I expected. Vangelis was experimenting with what would eventually be known as New Age. Synthy, Laser Blasts, the blowing wind. It’s out there, but not NEAR as out there as the music that came after that. (Think Beverly Hills Cop)
The front side contains the 5 or 6 major themes from the movie. Side ‘B’ is a single 20 minute track (Be gentle on my download pipe.)
Jazzed to see results, I slap it on a thumbdrive and run over to the Mac in the other room. Jack in the headphones, and press play. It sounds good-not-great. (soundfield) So consider that as you listen to the samples. You really _should_ play this back through speakers.
So…what’s the point of this already long post? I dunno. I could say it was the re-discovery of a lost technology, the experience of a long lost friend (That album got listened to a LOT), amazement at how a cheap, consumer-level computer could accurately record a 25 year old record, or I could just mention how I missed the sound of that needle hittin the record.
Take away what you will.
