Pick of the pops.....

[Yellow Fang]

My 10 year old daughter found an old 45 b52's rock lobster in a cupboard and brought it to me and asked what it was . Spent 3 hours finding and setting up an amp ,deck and speakers ,but the look on her face when she heard music was priceless she then said is this how they listened to music in the olden days lol

Three hours?

 

[Colin B]

Three hours?

Yeah finding it all may be a little exaggerated but took a while

 

[Basil.B]

The same here, i wore headphones for years with the volume at full belt! It saved the hassle of neighbours and parents complaining. I haven't worn them for years but i need the subtitles on the telly most of the time.

Same for me!

 

[ufkacbln]

Same for me!

Pardon?

 

[EltonFrog]

I listened to that show too, I thought it was great, as well as having the unique sound of vinyl records the presentation seemed to have a bit more edge to it, more lively, I really enjoyed it, brought back some great memories too.

I'm reminded if an incident about ten years ago when I decided I would digitise all my albums. I had an IT apprentice that worked for me, a lad of 17 and I gave him the task of doing the job, I showed him what to do and gave him the records to record and left him to it. A few hours later he came to me saying he completed the job. " already ?" Says I, " both sides?"
" what d'ya mean both sides ?" says he. <face palm>

 

[Ian A]

You are actually nearly right but its actually CD cropped below 20 hz cropped above 20khz Mp3 is cropped the same but then compressed/expanded which further degrades sound quality further as do WMA files. The explanation given by the record companies is that the majority of people cannot hear beyond this range and what is true is that the mainstream "HiFi" set ups do not produce these frequencies but high end audiophile equipment does have the capability, which gives a more normal warmer tone to recordings. Needless to say the quality of BBC transcription turntables and cartridges is hard to beat but it can be done although the cost can be eye watering (bit like top notch carbon cycles) these then need to be matched to amplifiers and loudspeakers of similar quality. Funnily British companies are still world leaders in this field with companies like Linn, Radford, Naim, Bowers and Wilkins, Sugden,Quad and countless others

It's a logarithmic scale and most people start to go well below 20kHz as you get older but it's probably only around half an octave missing at the top for what numerically would seem likea large portion of the hearing range. When I as a student we were always told that gramophone records could not reproduce anything below 1kHz and the brain interpreted the lower frequencies using the higher frequency harmonics. This may of course have been tosh.

 

[raleighnut]

It's a logarithmic scale and most people start to go well below 20kHz as you get older but it's probably only around half an octave missing at the top for what numerically would seem likea large portion of the hearing range. When I as a student we were always told that gramophone records could not reproduce anything below 1kHz and the brain interpreted the lower frequencies using the higher frequency harmonics. This may of course have been tosh.

It may well be true that we cannot hear below 1kHz but we can certainly feel it. As an anecdote I was once sat after a 12 hour night shift glass of single malt, strong black coffee and a "Camberwell carrot" to hand uncle Frank on the turntable amp flat out (7/10 on 33 control unit dual 303's bi-amped to B&W's) and I noticed some distortion/rattling so checked all connections cleaned the stylus etc wound it back up still there. By this time I had finished the coffee so went into the kitchen to refill my cup and noticed the rattle was louder in there so wandered round to locate it. It was the heating elements in the toaster and yes the neighbours were at work.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

I'm reminded if an incident about ten years ago when I decided I would digitise all my albums. I had an IT apprentice that worked for me, a lad of 17 and I gave him the task of doing the job, I showed him what to do and gave him the records to record and left him to it. A few hours later he came to me saying he completed the job. " already ?" Says I, " both sides?"
" what d'ya mean both sides ?" says he. <face palm>

My 6 year old asked me the other day about the big CDs I've got in the rack.

 

[the_mikey]

1kHz is the test tone that used to accompany BBC test card transmissions, maybe people are struggling to hear below 100Hz?

 

[the_mikey]

You are actually nearly right but its actually CD cropped below 20 hz cropped above 20khz Mp3 is cropped the same but then compressed/expanded which further degrades sound quality further as do WMA files.

To understand the mathematics behind mp3 audio read about 'Fast Fourier Transform'

 

[Ian A]

It may well be true that we cannot hear below 1kHz but we can certainly feel it. As an anecdote I was once sat after a 12 hour night shift glass of single malt, strong black coffee and a "Camberwell carrot" to hand uncle Frank on the turntable amp flat out (7/10 on 33 control unit dual 303's bi-amped to B&W's) and I noticed some distortion/rattling so checked all connections cleaned the stylus etc wound it back up still there. By this time I had finished the coffee so went into the kitchen to refill my cup and noticed the rattle was louder in there so wandered round to locate it. It was the heating elements in the toaster and yes the neighbours were at work.

I think you may have misunderstood my post. I absolutely agree about the feeling part too. The human ear is certainly rated at 20Hz bottom end. I still remember this as being 17m wavelength. Super anorak statistic there! The point about the gramophone is related to how the brain interprets sound. If the gramophone fact is correct and it could not reproduce frequencies under 1kHz which the brain would normally be able to hear it is possible for the brain to interpret lower frequencies due to harmonic frequencies which are at frequencies which are multiples of the original frequency which isn't being recorded/played back. I've never even seen let alone heard a gramophone so couldn't know if the 1khz thing is true for a gramophone or if our lecturer was winding us up/full of it for that particular factoid. There's a whole field on psycho acoustics and how the brain interpets sound. All clever stuff which is why I haven't dealt with most of it . I've got a few visual tricks up my sleeve for how the brain and eyes interact too. My favourite fact is that tv commercials are transmitted at a lower volume on ITV at least than the tv programmes. They still sound louder as was the intention of the people who made then.

 

[raleighnut]

I think you may have misunderstood my post. I absolutely agree about the feeling part too. The human ear is certainly rated at 20Hz bottom end. I still remember this as being 17m wavelength. Super anorak statistic there! The point about the gramophone is related to how the brain interprets sound. If the gramophone fact is correct and it could not reproduce frequencies under 1kHz which the brain would normally be able to hear it is possible for the brain to interpret lower frequencies due to harmonic frequencies which are at frequencies which are multiples of the original frequency which isn't being recorded/played back. I've never even seen let alone heard a gramophone so couldn't know if the 1khz thing is true for a gramophone or if our lecturer was winding us up/full of it for that particular factoid. There's a whole field on psycho acoustics and how the brain interpets sound. All clever stuff which is why I haven't dealt with most of it . I've got a few visual tricks up my sleeve for how the brain and eyes interact too. My favourite fact is that tv commercials are transmitted at a lower volume on ITV at least than the tv programmes. They still sound louder as was the intention of the people who made then.

He may well have been using a play on words/definitions and referring to a gramophone as opposed to an electro-magnetic turntable in order to provoke discussion a popular trick with lecturers!