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From: rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: net.audio
Subject: Re: Turntable questions (and alternate sources)
Message-ID: <850@opus.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 28-Sep-84 15:16:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: opus.850
Posted: Fri Sep 28 15:16:36 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 2-Oct-84 03:39:20 EDT
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Grantges, on the matter of sources other than LPs:

> There are a couple of other cassette sources Dick Dunn forgot to
> mention. 1) There  some prerecorded cassettes that are pretty
> good. I don't know them all as I buy very few, but Musical Heritage
> Society has some that are pretty good and (how can it be?) Book of
> the Month club. To say they are all bad is as off target as to say
> all CD's or all LP's are bad. 2) Some of us are fortunate to live
> within range of a really good FM station. With a good tuner and
> antenna farm, your source of music becomes semi-unlimited at better
> quality -or at least about as good - as you can get from your decks
> anyway. There are even magazines to tell you when your favorite pieces
> are coming up...

Grantges and I discussed this by mail.  The difference between his view and
mine is that his taste tends toward classical (or more particularly, away
from rock) where mine runs mostly to rock.  What he says is quite true of
classical music--there are many good tapes; the tape itself is reasonable
quality and the recording is done with Dolby B; the shells are good.
Moreover, in classical music you frequently have the option of choosing
among several performances of the same piece--the emphasis is on the
composer and composition.  His statements about FM are also accurate for
classical.

In rock, the orientation is toward the performer and the performance--if
you want the Grateful Dead performing "Dancin' in the Streets", it just
won't do to substitute Martha and the Vandellas in the studio.  And (let me
qualify this carefully) I have yet to see a rock cassette of decent
quality; in fact, I have yet to see one which was even equal in quality to
what you'd get if you copied the vinyl LP to a good tape, using a decent
turntable and cassette deck and NR.  Rock really bites it on recording from
FM.  You rarely know what's coming up, and even if you could record it
you're likely to end up losing the ends of a cut to a segue or DJ jabber--
hardly worth it for typically less than five minutes of music.

Another factor that occurred to me recently is that rock is in somewhat of
a slump (flames to /dev/null or at least move it to net.music) compared to,
say, the period of 1962-197x (x somewhere in 4..8).  That means that a lot
of the "important" music of rock is on old LPs which might still be
available as LPs but in any case have such low sales as to make it unlikely
that they'll appear as CDs in the near future.  An aging hippie such as
myself won't have to buy many (if any) LPs--I've either got them or know
someone who does.  But the person trying to (re)build a collection of
conventional rock (say wha?) has a job, and CDs are of little use here so
far.
-- 
Dick Dunn	{hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd		(303)444-5710 x3086
   ...Cerebus for dictator!