Talk:Phonograph record

Equalisation

The paragraph about companies continuing to use their own equalisations into the 1970s is completely wrong. US Columbia changed to RIAA in mid-1955, Britsh Decca changed to RIAA on January 1st 1956. Telefunken (not Teldec, which was not an LP label until 1983) and Deutsche Grammophon used RIAA from at least 1962 in accordance with the DIN Standard for LPs issued in that year. Wikipedia shouldn't publish such unverified nonsense Barretter (talk) 20:43, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Twelve years ago I had access to the Ronald Penndorf book Recollections guide to collectible LPs which I recall said that Columbia released some discs with their old house curve into the 1970s. I added that reference myself[1] in an attempt to make sense of what had already been written in the article. I no longer have that book.

The scale of such non-RIAA releases isn't defined by Penndorf as far as I know. It might be small pressings, or filters that are not so much different than RIAA. So the reference does not support a global statement saying that RIAA filter was ignored in a major fashion. Binksternet (talk) 21:37, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Equalisation 2

At one time there was a long section on equalization, but it was completely unsourced and had some OR problems, so was rightly removed. But this left the following section orphaned in the Limitations section:

Further, even after officially agreeing to implement the RIAA equalization curve, many recording labels continued to use their own proprietary equalization even well into the 1970s. Columbia is one such prominent example in the US, as are Decca, Teldec and Deutsche Grammophon in Europe.

I have removed this because it doesn't make sense to include this in the absence of any other discussion of equalization, and it certainly doesn't belong in Limitations. GA-RT-22 (talk) 21:03, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

References

The lead

@PuppyMonkey: The lead is a summary of the article. Nothing should go in the lead that isn't discussed elsewhere in the article. See WP:LEAD. GA-RT-22 (talk) 03:26, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

LP versus CD

Why is the section written in some sort of "lamer" language? Is it intentially oversimplified? "The necessity for digital recordings to presume upper and lower bounds, sampling the tones and soundwaves within those limits and using the resulting information to store and recall the audio"? "To presume upper and lower bounds"? Do you mean "to use filters"?

Anyway, the section should just say that while the Shanon–Kotelnikov–Nyquist sampling theorem "says" that the sound recorded on CD can be faithfully converted to analog, the real-life devices (DACs) that do this are imperfect. --Moscow Connection (talk) 08:18, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Surprisingly, the current source ([2]) source for most of the first paragraph is fine. ("Completely rebuild a sound wave" – nice, that's what I wanted to say, but couldn't find the right words, so I wrote "faithfully convert to analog".) But we should just explain aliasing. Here's a more technical source: [3] (found by googling „CD "Nyquist" "imperfect" "44.1 kHz"“). --Moscow Connection (talk) 08:40, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

That section could use a re-write. Lots of nonsense in there. GA-RT-22 (talk) 19:29, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

45 RPM

78 RPM redirects here, and since there is no article for 45 RPM I am quite surprised to find that 45 RPM does not redirect here too. It's a disambiguation page, all the uses listed are derivative of 45 RPM record, and none are particularly well known. I can't find any previous discussion on this topic. I propose we change it to redirect here. GA-RT-22 (talk) 00:32, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

If we declare Phonograph record to be the WP:PRIMARY topic for 45 RPM then we would redirect 45 RPM here, rename the current disambiguation page 45 RPM (disambiguation) and add a hatnote to this article pointing there. I'm not convinced this would be a better organization for readers. I think it is possible or likely readers could be looking for Single (music) when searching for 45 RPM. ~Kvng (talk) 14:22, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Compatibility of microgroove records

As a suggestion, there could be something more on the compatibility of mono and stereo microgroove records.

The article already correctly states that "As a result of the 45-degree turn and some vector algebra, it can be demonstrated that out of the new horizontal and vertical directions, one would represent the sum of the two channels, and the other representing the difference. Record makers decide to pick the directions such that the traditional horizontal direction codes for the sum. As a result, an ordinary mono disk will be decoded correctly as "no difference between channels", and an ordinary mono player would simply play the sum of a stereophonic record without too much loss of information." So, it says that a stereo cartridge and stylus is backward compatible to a mono recording, which is definitely true. However, it does not state that a legacy mono cartridges/stylus is generally not compatible with stereo recordings. That is because a mono cartridge only allows horizontal movement and the stereo recording has a vertical component. The legacy mono stylus may also have a larger radius (25 micron, not 12.5 micron as the stereo stylus, based on this source https://www.audiomisc.co.uk/HFN/LP3/aroundthebend.html ). Therefore, playing a stereo record using an old mono cartridge, while it will play the record, can damage the record, although both 'mono' and 'stereo' recordings are called 'microgroove'.

The older 78 rpm format used a stylus with a far larger radius, but it is more obvious that a 78 rpm player is incompatible with 'microgroove' and nobody is likely to even try playing a modern LP on a 78 rpm player.

Note that the partially duplicate article on LP record and the article Phonograph also do not cover this aspect.TrimmerinWiki (talk) 00:44, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

FYI I have made changes to LP record to reduce it being a duplicate of this article. It now has a more clearer format that talks specifically about the original LP by Columbia, and things that apply to records in general rather than just LP I have moved them over here. Sateystnes (talk) 23:21, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Social Impact sections

@Tbagshaw: I have reverted your edits for two reasons. One, you didn't include any inline citations. See Wikipedia:Citing sources. Two, you changed a citation to the NYT, removing the url but leaving the archive-url the same. We don't normally remove or change citations without saying why. Your section headers are also incorrect, see MOS:SECTIONS. GA-RT-22 (talk) 14:52, 24 April 2024 (UTC)