CX Discs : Better, Worse & the Same as a normal record - A Forgotten Format
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ต.ค. 2017
- CBS envisioned all records made after 1982 utilising their CX encoding system, but if you've bought any music on vinyl since the mid 80s, you won't see a CX logo on the sleeve...so what went wrong. Watch this video to find out.
If you are interested in the technical details of CX - here’s the patent www.google.com/patents/US4376916
Here’s the link to my DBX Disc video • Retro HiFi: DBX Disc -...
Answers to regularly asked questions
Q) What kind of monitor is that?
A) Here's my video about it: • Going UltraWide with t...
Q) if you could have played the audio samples shown, what do they sound like
A) It’s very hard to spot the differences. It’s just that the very quietest moments (which are fleeting and only last for a fraction of a second in these pop songs) are a little bit louder. You can hear the section highlighted on the waveform in the link below -and you'll see why I didn't include it in the video as it does a very good job of proving very little. The sample is played in the following order CX Disc, CX=ON, Normal Record, CX Disc, CX=OFF bit.ly/2yYG36M
Q) What is that Subscriber counter thing in the background?
A) Here's my video about it: • Review: LaMetric Time ...
Other Questions:
Q) Did CED & LaserDisc players have built in CX decoders
A) Yes they did..except for some of the very earliest models.
Q) Could you take pictures of both sides of that circuit so I can try and reverse engineer it and make my own CX decoder.
A) Nope - there's no need - Instead, follow the guide in this issue of Popular Electronics if you want to build your own www.americanradiohistory.com/A...
------------SUPPORT--------------
This channel can be supported through Patreon
/ techmoan
Patrons usually have early access to videos
--------------SUBSCRIBE-----------------
th-cam.com/users/Techmoan?...
------THANKS TO ------
Jerobeam Fenderson for the intro animation: oscilloscopemusic.com/
---------Outro Music----------
Over Time - Vibe Tracks • Over Time - Vibe Track...
-----Outro Sound Effect-----
ThatSFXGuy - • Six Million Dollar man... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
I wish sound engineers had opposed the loudness wars as vividly as they did smear CX. Digital loudness maximization in the 1990s has done significantly more damage to the overall sound than the comparatively modest analogue CX system.
@@curtisscott9251 why is that necessary when we can just use vinyl records?
@@vladg5216 Because of the Loudness War. Shellac records are believed to be mostly unaffected by the Loudness War, which started when *vinyl* records became available (that was 1949). The expression "Loudness War" was, IIRC, coined in the early 1970s, long before the widespread adoption of digital audio recording and processing.
However, as studio gear also improved during that time, sound quality was still improving despite the onset of Loudness War. Digital audio, which appeared in the early 1980s in the form of the CD, was at first actually a counter-movement to the vinyl Loudness War, as the technology allowed for a larger dynamic range than vinyl (and CDs and CD players were so expensive that "audiophiles" were the target group).
Then digital signal processing and editing became affordable for the studios, while simultaneously digital audio hit the mass market. No longer were "audiophiles" the target, but anyone who had money in his or her hands. Suddenly, it was easy to route your mater mix though a cheap digital multiband compressor, indiscriminately dial every setting to "10" and receive and extremely fat sound. Yes, fat, not audiophile...but your target group has changed anyway, so why worry?
As some people discovered that LPs from the 1970s sounded better their remastered CD counterparts from 2010, some people began considering LPs "audiophile" (even though there might be a 1980s CD of the same recording which sounds better than the 2010 CD version and the 1970s vinyl version...). So suddenly a market appeared for vinyl versions of contemporary music. In a few cases, these vinyl releases were actually improvements over their recent digital releases (and in a few very rare cases, excellent digital version of these vinyl remasters were relased). In a lot of cases, the vinyl releases were butchered together by the same incompetent mastering engineers who had botched up the digital version already. For a brief time, excellent SACD and DVD-A versions could also be obtained, before some "clever guys" also figured out that these formats could also "benefit" from hypercompression.
TL;DR version: it doesn't matter whether your medium is vinyl, polycarbonate or crystalline silicon - it is the mastering engineer who decides whether the result will be excellent, tolerable or "death magnetic".
CX is already horrible as it completely destroys lower volume sounds. So engineers did not "smear" it, it was genuinely bad, not modest at all. Just as the flatting-out-at-the-top-volume in the 1990s with both new music and terrible "remasters" of older music. BOTH was bad, not just one of the approaches.
@@klausstock8020 That pun is the red hot chili pepper on the top :)
Amen...Almost as soon as the engineers were given a big upgrade in dynamic range (i.e. the intro of the Compact Disc) they fumbled in short order. First by not realizing everything needed to be remastered because all of the mastering of tapes was being done with the LP as the primary litmus test. In other words boosted lows (to circumvent the fact deep bass took too much space in the grove to make a 15 to 25 minute LP side) and a little attenuation in the upper treble to curb HF losses. The first CDs sounded atrocious often due to this. When the mastering labs should have been solving these problems they chose instead to embark on the "loudness wars" which would be lots of compression and upping that new average level. This was the worst and it's ironic mastering engineers like Doug Sax called CX heresy and foul. CX was fantastic I think. The compression and upped volume of CDS was the greatest audio crime of all time. True the earliest A/D converters were a bit edgy...but, if they recording was really mastered correctly for the CD format without extreme compression even 1984 CDs had the "right stuff". Oh well...at least I learned why CX was ditched and that you probably can't find a CX decoder. I like this episode, thanks.
Love how you describe your adventures in getting the equipment. Most reviews don't do that.
Don't ever leave because of the 2% of viewers, I've become dependant of my weekly techmoan fix, your the best channel on you tube. From Tasmania Australia
I’m in Hobart
I'm in Sydney!
you're*
Sunshine Coast Qld
Beulah Vic
At 7:29 I just had to think of a German saying: "Hat's gequalmt und auch gestunken, war's ganz sicher Telefunken." (translating to: "Did it smoke and did it smell, then it was surely Telefunken.") ;-)
DAS hab ich auch gedacht^^
So how do you say, "No highs, no lows...it MUST be Bose" in German?
@@eddiewillers1442 Keine Höhen, keine Tiefen... dass muss Bose sein! :)
How about: "Did it smoke and did it smell, your Telefunken was the well." (just to keep the rhyme)
@@jailbrekartz i would prefer "keine höhen und tiefen in der dose - bose!" oder so ähnlich... damit der reim auch noch da ist. :)
Techmoan is probably the most comfy TH-cam channel
Can think of others.
I'd say Ashens fits the bill as well.
and Technology Connections ... I'm subscribed to all, I think
YES
Don't forget bigclive
Engineers didn't complain much when Dolby B was implemented for cassette tapes. They should have let the audience discover and determine the sound and not the crazy ears of the engineers. There are so many variables that take place once the recording is played back by the consumer. Ignorance wins again for what might have been a success.
Dolby noise reduction is vastly superior because it is both an expansion and compression shifting that shifts by frequency so it is much better and liked much better by engineers.
@@seanmckinnon4612 This is utter nonsense. The differences between an original record and an undecoded CX disc is is much smaller than the difference between an unencoded cassette tape and a Dolby B encoded tape that is played without Dolby B.
@@electrictroy2010 You would have lost the high frequencies with a Dolby B type of system. Most LP's suffer from this loss already. Dolby had other projects in mind like Dolby FM which was a thing. It had already had a huge success in analog tape noise reduction.
What a shame. So the audio engineers damned a pragmtic and beneficial compression/decompression scheme, and then gave us the loudness wars, compressing the hell out of everything, and all for a few cents more. The irony is wonderful. Just goes to show the importance of the intra-industry PR drive.
@randomguy8196 A vynil has a pretty good dynamic range, reducing it slightly for players without decoders is not a huge compromise.
The general public won't notice or care, and those that care enough, will most likely invest in a decoder anyway!
So I second the original comment's sentiment; the audio engineers failed to do the very simple excercise of considering the vast majority of consumers don't have the same super audio senses as them. They arrogantly thought that since they could tell the difference, and they deemed it horrible, then everyone could tell the difference and agree on their hyperbolic sentiments.
I mean, if they agreed that the decoder does it's job to reduce noise, then why was the undecoded audio such a big deal? What exactly do they feared? That the consumers would never get a decoder and get used to lower quality recordings without being a better quality option? That would have not happened, quite the opposite! CX would have made reduced noise vynils widely accesible and with time players with decoders and stand alone decoders would get cheaper.
But if you read the quotes of the engineers, you might think the non-decoded discs sounded highly distorted, which simply wasn't true. So they in effect convinced consumers off a falsehood and the consumers ended up worse for it.
Honestly, shame on those arrogant blokes!
@randomguy8196 That's the whole point of CX! CX gets you reduced noise with the decoder. Without it you still get pretty much the same thing as a regular vynil but slightly different. The whole point is to get people getting the decoders necessary
MQA anyone?
As someone who lived through the 45 and vinyl, I can’t for the life of me understand the nostalgia now for crackling audio. Long live the true physical CD. Uncompressed audio. Truly the best conqueror of vinyl with the exception of larger art work
The only CDs I truly enjoyed a Lot where the HDCDs if u had a CD player than would Play them once u inserted a HDCD into the player the light would come on letting you you had a HDCD playing n quite honestly for me at least it was the nearest a CD came to vinyl from what i read HDCD's technology was bought by Microsoft n ALL music companies didn't want Microsoft to have control over them so they just banned it, they came out with HSCDs (if I remember right) but that was Nothing special so sadly we all lost in sound quality
listening to vinyl nowadays isn't about the sound quality, its about the sound warmth. CDs and other uncompressed media forms are just that. They're uncompressed. They sound amazing but at the same time very sterile, almost soulless, if you will. Cassette just sounds snowy and crushed. But vinyl? Vinyl's warm, vinyl makes the music feel like it has a soul.
CD is like a perfect, sterile hospital; vinyl is like a lit fireplace in your childhood home.
There's just something special about it.
@@thetamaximum1901 But it is about sound quality as you said its a warmer sound its a fuller sound its more musical n pleasurable the Only CDs I really enjoyed enormously on par with vinyl where HDCDs but sadly as Microsoft bought the rights all music mongols ganged against Microsoft n ban the system then they came up with HSCD but they where Nothing like HDCDs, HDCDs had More music contents in them as If you open up a curtain to reveal a more fuller content
A good clean record, played on a decent player with a decent stylus isn't filled with crackles and pops. The biggest difference is how the music is mastered. With CD they can crank everything up to 11. That is something they can't really do with a record. When CD's took off, they created the loudness wars, something we are still hearing the effects of.
If you care about sound quality over nostalgia, you aren't going to pick MP3 CDs over the ability to keep hundreds of thousands of uncompressed tracks on a HDD/SSD. CDs are shit, scratch easily and are unplayable on a lot of modern hardware, can contain horrible low-bitrate MP3s, and really you pick them cause nostalgia. Not because of any advantages over other formats. If you can understand the hype over CDs, you can understand the hype over vinyl records.
(Additionally, you don't go around in a restaurant screaming "I can't for the life of me understand the nostalgia now for salt and pepper", as if pops and crackles aren't just musical seasoning)
Cheers for these brilliant vids. Today, I wandered into a storeroom in my university in Tokyo. It was filled with old video recorders, dusty recording equipment and all sorts of other things. The only thing I could think was "Techmoan would love this lot."
I like how it was very specifically designed _not_ to be an audiophile disc. I guess those pretentious sound engineers just didn't read the little card that came with it.
That was quite interesting! I'm from Germany, I'm 50, and I've never in my life heard of CX. Funny to imagine that, in 1981, they believed they could delay the CD for another 10-15 years. I bought my first CD player in 1985 and never looked back. Oh, and funny, from the titles on the list that was shown near the end, I actually owned three of them on CD back when they came out. Jesus, I'm old :-D Thanks for all those great videos!
if it matters, I adore your Muppet bits.
SirCrest I like to think most people do, but perhaps I never get to see the criticisms people have of them since those comments aren't typically voted up.
Their jokes do make you moan.
Where do i sign up for the MPAS ?
Muppets is trade marked, don't get your comment pulled by youtube and lawyers after Techmoan!
TIL what the CX Decoder button on the HiFi Receiver in the living room does. Now to see if we've been listening to CX records on a CX capable system with the decoder off for the past decade...
lmfao, were you?
were you?
From what I read on Wikipedia, The Wall from Pink Floyd was one record to get the CX treatment. I still have an original pressing of The Wall from either the late '70s or early '80s, from my late father's LP collection. I'll dig it up sometime to see if it happens to be the CX version.
I bought my copy of 'The Wall' pretty much as soon as it arrived in the shops. I've just fished it out of storage to check, curiosity got the better of me.
Nowhere on the sleeve, liners or disks does it mention CX on my copy.
My copy predates CX ( D'Oh!, could have saved myself a job if I'd checked the dates ). Maybe your Dad's does too.
If I had to guess, I would think my dad's copy does predate CX like yours. I wouldn't be surprised if it is a first pressing from 1979, as my father was already a fan of Pink Floyd in the '70s and owned original copies of Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon and Animals on vinyl. All of those records are in storage right now, so I can't quickly pull them off the shelf to check their dates unfortunately.
I´ve been through lot´s and lot´s of records, since I collect, my dad did it too and traded a lot, knew other traders...and "CX" never crossed our paths, in germany that is...I´ve never even seen that CX on a player either...
I'd check on Discogs.com, but you might take that with a grain of salt. I picked up what I thought was a normal copy of Claude Bolling's "Toot Suite," only to find it was the CX version. CBS may have done what they did with late-stage SQ quad albums and just given the same catalog number to both versions. It doesn't sound bad, but it seems a slight bit compressed.
Was that the album with a blinking Red led in the cover...
I was very young at the time but I seem to remember Somthing wbout that...
Funny to see the Audacity graphs, during the noise test on the end of the record, I had felt the 3 seconds of music were super loud on the CX-encoded record with CX off, and it materialises when looking at the graphs. Good stuff :)
Good good man, your videos are always fantastic and well researched. Please keep up the good work! You have at least one dedicated viewer in Idaho!
Ron Whisner make that two in Idaho.
And speaking of CX encoded records, prior to this, there was SQ records, a quadraphonic 4-channel sound which was put out by CBS Records in 1972, and released a series of albums in quadraphonic with the SQ matrix. I only have a Sony SQ Decoder model SQD-1000 is a device where you can hook up to four channels including two speakers on the front which is my Realistic stereo receiver, and the other two speakers on the rear which is my cheap mini-amplifier. When I was playing around, I went to find songs on TH-cam and hear what it sounded like. I also popped in a DVD or a digital copy of a movie that has Dolby Digital Surround 5.1, it will sound the same as it was using the SQ matrix system, and it does fine with my SQ decoder.
Highly educational as always, one of the, if not THE best tech channels on TH-cam. Great mixture of facts, research and comedy.
It seems like these audio engineers predicted the "loudness war" that happened with CDs in the 1990s and 2000s.
Of course the "noise reduction" there was intentional (and to be honest made the CDs match the way they sounded on the radio who had already squashed the dynamic range.
Now, you have these companies reselling their libraries by putting the dynamic range back in, and releasing them in hugely expensive high bitrate, high sampling frequency and high bit depth lossless files telling you that it's the high definitino sound that make it so much better (as opposed to the resmastering)
Those seem to be more expensive than regular CDs (and regular downloads) too.
@Lassi Kinnunen it happens in a lot of industries. Is your vineyard not selling much wine? Make it more expensive so people will think it's higher quality, and your sales will go up.
A CX disk played without a decoder might sound even better to listeners who had low wattage stereos. By making the quiet parts louder they wouldn't feel they had to crank the volume up too far to hear them. I had the opposite problem with some early CD releases (Peter Gabriel's Security for example). It was impossible to set the volume right. Either the soft parts were below the room noise or the loud parts rattled the speakers. I compared my original with a re-release and the remix had a lower dynamic range but sounded so much better.
From the description it sounds like compression being added
I don't have the liner notes so I don't know if the re-release of Security I had was remixed and remastered from scratch or just a compressed version of the old master.
Here I was thinking that the added compression on some old records was just part of the format
My dad had a DBX decoder but we only ever had one DBX record, Heart "Dreamboat Annie". I really have no idea if it sounded any better or not because everything sounded pretty damn good on my dad's system.
the best way to stay up late is to wait for a new video from matt :D
Hi. Brilliantly researched. I'd have given up if my deck had gone to Russia. Bob.
Diddly doo, Bob.
Doea anyone else imagine techmoans wife shaking her head in despair whilst watching him lying on the floor playing with puppets ever other day lol. Thats not a complaint, if anything, she should join in!
dibs on the band name "Puppet Sex Orgy"
With all his gear, I'm beginning to doubt his wife is still living with him!
I'd like to see a behind-the-scenes video on the making of the puppet sequences.
Joe Van Cleave , great idea.
Perhaps she should voice the wife!
Nothing terribly exotic about the 3 chips on that board at 8:10 btw - the TL084 is a bog-standard quad op-amp (still available today & cheap as dirt), while the JRC 13700D is a version of Texas Instruments' LM13700 - a dual transconductance op-amp (a bit more exotic, but still available for a few dollars each). Implementing a CX decoder might make an interesting project - with a potential market of several dozen people, I'm sure...
I was thinking the same when he zoom in on the TL084.. I was also thinking you could add phono inputs to the cheap belt drive deck and feed in the output from a decent one. That is what the 8 Bit Guy would have probably done.
The complete circuit is just a bunch of opamps. Popular Electronics Jan 1982. Could probably build that circuit today for $20 or so - although the CA3280 is hard to find and only available in through-hole DIP.
And then you can sell it in a box from Maplin electronics on eBay for €500
www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Poptronics/80s/1982/Poptronics-1982-01.pdf page 39
You would just substitute the CA3280 with the LM13700. Pretty much identical excepting the output buffers, and those aren't used...
This channel is great! Some of the most well-produced original content on all of youtube! The puppets are a nice little touch to finish off these videos as well; for some reason that Subaru Legacy joke had me literally laughing out loud by myself.
A product marketed and made for the average consumer, the non-audiophile, that got completely shafted by sound engineers (who invariably are audiophiles) who felt personally offended by a system that doesn't cater to them.
I can see why they were pissed off, but considering the way the Loudness War turned out and how the same producers are now creaming themselves over their very compressed work, they don't get my sympathy.
Yeah. To my layman's ear, they sound like nothing more than audio-snobs that killed a decent idea that could have easily kept evolving into a fantastic one.
Actually audio engineers are just as unhappy over the loudness wars.
However it's a case of you do what the client demands, or you don't get paid.
@@VideoArchiveGuy But they don't have their names removed from the mastering credits.
@@pietermol8508 I bet the guy who said that wouldn't actually have done it, if push came to shove. Posturing never changes...
A soon as you mentioned laser disc, I had to go check. Sure enough, 2/3 of my collection has that lil logo on it.
Right? I knew I had seen that logo before. Initially, I thought I must have had a record or two with the logo on it, but out of the thousands of LP's, there was no way I was going to look through them just for that. Then he showed the Laserdisc. That's where I had seen it, and it's on most of the discs that I have.
Hey Seed Yeah, CX got a lot more mileage out of that format into it's final years.
All LaserDisc (and stereophonic CED) players manufactured since 1981, when the CX equipped LD-1100 was introduced, had CX noise reduction capability as a standard feature. Pioneer also released a stand-alone CX adapter for use with their VP-1000, Magnavox's VH-8000/8005 and the industrial players that were all released before CX was adopted. The first CX encoded LaserDisc was "Olivia Newton-John: Physical" on the MCA Videodisc label.
Most LDs pressed after the introduction of CX have a flag set that tells the player to switch CX on automatically so you'd never even know it was supposed to be there, only some of the really early releases don't have that flag so you have to enable it yourself. I got one of those, tried it and turning it on and off didn't really seem to make a lick of difference.
The amount of work you put into your videos is astounding! Love your content!
Thank you for your videos! I really enjoy hearing about these forgotten audio formats and different older technologies.
I really appreciate the amount of work you put in every video you release. Superb quality of content and editing
Curious, if you play a regular record with the CX turned on, does it introduce any sort of funkyness?
Interesting question
yea im really curious about that too, actually. same with dbx. id love to hear what these systems do to a normal record.
Life is complete, another Techmoan video.
I have to say I am amazed at just how much you go through and spend for this channel. I understand you are interested too. I just wanted to thank you for all this work. I am truly interested in everything you have posted. Thank you
One of the best channels on TH-cam. Always look forward to your videos. Please do not ever leave.
6:57 "Precision Belt Drive" it says 😂😂
Yet another excellent weekly video. Great work!
So much effort went into this, I'm glad you persisted. Excellent video, I love LPs but never knew about this!
I've been listening to vinyl my whole life and I have several CBS albums from the early 80s, but I've never heard of CX or noticed the CX logo before. I have to check through the collection now. Very informative and interesting video. Thanks for sharing.
Si, How did the search go?
Totally lost it at the Subary Legacy part. :D The puppets are indeed a huge reason for watching these videos, besides just the information on the interesting technology.
These videos are so interesting, thanks for sharing!
It is always so interesting to watch your video because it is something I don't know that much in regards to all of the different formats over the years. As always, "Thanks for sharing"! :-)
"...and if you find that CX logo then you've been listening to the discs wrong all these years. It's enough to make an engineer weep." Love it. I had no idea that CX or DBX encoding ever existed. Thank you for making this brilliant video to explain it.
And who's gonna punish today's sound mastering? When playing a new movie at home, I have to continuously change the volume up and down because the loud parts are too loud and quiet parts are too quiet. Without dynamic normalization of the volume level, it is unenjoyable (for me at least).
Thanks Techmoan for the great story. And, here in Hungary, we really like English (not American) humor.
My home cinema amp has dynamic range control, I can set to low, normal and high
Your videos give me joy.. keep up the good work sir !
finally! A subscriber that doesn't have shit for brains...it is brilliant work isn't it?
This was total news to me. I have about 600 LP's in my collection of recordings, most purchased in the 1970's and early '80's (stopped buying vinyl shortly after CD's became available). I've never heard of CX or DBX encoded vinyl records in spite of being somewhat of a techno geek (but remember, there was no internet at the time, only magazines or newspapers for such info). I was aware of quadraphonic LP's (but never purchased any). For many years I used a matrix quadraphonic setup with my home stereos, a technique of wiring the speakers (FL, FR, LR and RR) in a particular way to a stereo amp to achieve a surround sound effect. Google "Surround-sound-for-free" to see a diagram of the method. It is not really free because it does require four speakers, but the rear speakers don't need to be particularly high quality.
your videos are fascinating and i am getting an extreme amount of enjoyment exploring forgotten recording formats, etc, several of them unknown to me, and i thought i knew it all. ;)
Rather ironic that Dad puppet’s joke doesn’t work in Australia because the Subaru Legacy is called the Liberty here. 😂
Thank you for this so much! I’ve listened with great interest to your entertaining lessons on format wars and “history of” videos! I don’t know whether you’ve already covered the following but when I was in my 20’s I had a JVC KDA33 cassette deck which I absolutely adored! This had a noise reduction system called SANRS (“super automatic noise reduction system” I believe). Could you elaborate a little on this or perhaps direct me to where you already have? It appears to me that it worked in a similar way to CX? Thanks again for the time, trouble and humour you put into informing the rest of us! Every Blessing, Gordon
Fantastic review and analysis of a format I would probably never see in my lifetime. Thank you for the knowledgeable & in-depth videos. The puppets are an absolute joy
The level of you effort spent exploring this deprecated technology is superb. Good job 🙂
I dare you to do a full episode with you as a muppet.
Awesome idea, and a 'human' section at the end with Techmoan wearing disguises!
Perhaps we'll see something like that posted on 1st April 8¬]
Great idea. Do it straight, too. Just a regular episode with a muppet.
THIS ^^
I love it when they show up in 'regular' parts of the episode. I don't know if the muppet haters are really still out there or not (I never see their comments) but I'd love it if they showed up in the regular episodes more... even if it's just a little aside moment.
I remember when this system came out and failed. I also remember when the very first CD players appeared in stores in the early 80’s and everyone was in awe of them. CDs gradually overtook lp’s in the record stores and then records disappeared. It was the end of an era. Now records have made a comeback again,but it isn’t and never will be the same as before. As others have pointed out,it’s largely driven by nostalgia and a lot of the kids buying lp’s are doing it for novelty’s sake. I remember once hearing a 20 something year old guy talking to someone about how he just bought a new crosley portable “turntable” and how much better “vinyl sounded than CDs”. Makes me wonder if his CD player was also a crosley portable that sounded equally as bad as the record player.
Even I couldn't get everything review by you in my country. I really enjoy your Chanel and I almost see every video you produce. Great content. Hope the best to your Chanel
Splendid - I watched this video several times over the last years, and now I could make a explanatory video to this one from an engineers POV: To keep it short - an expander is really a cheap trick to overcome the general weaknesses of vinyl records... I totally understand why people like Bob Ludwig got mad about it... Much appreciated and I like the "silly outro" best. You should do a whole show just with your puppets :))
"General weakness of vinyl records"??? Vinyl, as an analog format is the perfect rendition of the real world acoustic wave, not the stepped harsness of the hot digital mess!!! /s Did I make you cringe? Lol
Oh, look at that. 2 of Billy joel's 52nd street LP!
Great video Techmoan!
So i wonder who brought the third copy?
I think buyer buy it.
My dad
Here's a thought have a collaboration with Big Clive he might have some time to reverse engineer the PCB: reply: I'm so glad there are those of us on the Ave,BigClive, Buckin'BillyRay, Fran Blanche, EEVblog, MikesElectricsStuff,Thunderf00t too Radar. I could go on these people are brilliant.
Boris S. I'm glad I'm not the only person that shares those subscriptions, I feel a lot less weird now ;-)
There are plenty more of us
Niall Sommerville sale here!!!
Boris S. Great idea!
Cannot wait to see techmoan on netflix and ave on amazon...
I dunno how you were the only thing to get into such a niche such deeply and well written way. This too was an interesting video to someone who never was or will be into vinyl records. Of course your presentation and to note things beyond you; your voice is very pleasant to listen to listen to.
Thanks for this episode.
Great video!! Amazing work to make this video and show all the differences!
Great job Techmoan!
I love your puppets!
Ricky Li yes!! Me too!! More please! I also love the background “funny” music . Please don’t listen to the haters, and keep doing the puppets!
Puppets for life!
They speak very highly of you as well.
Oh, I'd love to inherit a Subaru Legacy (preferrably the estate), but in any case: These puppets are awesome! And sitting them in front of ancient, deprecated computing hardware is an even better idea! Makes me wonder: Do you have some kind of legacy computing museum going? 2 weeks ago, I was at the Vintage Computing Festival of Berlin, and they had a lot of amazing old stuff, starting with an old PDP-8, of course a PDP-11 and others, as well as many computers from the 70s and 80s...I think you would have totally enjoyed that (or could even have contributed to it by showing your own hardware which still works)! I went there only to either fix or get rid of an old RadioShack Tandy TRS-80, and I am confident that it ended up in capable hands who will resurrect it for the living to admire an old technology another day!
Great video, thanks very much for the research, history and explanation, along with your usual fantastically-produced demonstration. I didn't think I was going to be able to 'get' what the issue with CX decoding was, but you explained it well considering it's not something we can hear in the video. Props!
Confession; I used to HATE the puppets (but never complained about them because these are your videos, not mine) but I swear, since you put the warning up on the videos of them I have started to watch and actually enjoy the puppet parts.
Best vinyl you turned me on to was DBX Disc. It RULES. And if Bob Ludwig says CX stinks..it stinks.
Mike Gervasi: Yes, I have a few DBX encoded discs. They sound just like CDs. I got the DBX 224 model so I can encode DBX on my reel to reel recorders.
Fascinating! So much research and particularly love the engineering perspective . This is very eye opening. Thanks for all you do.
Great video, as always. About the record speed fluctuations and warble on your first Telefunken RS 220 CX - I had a similar experience with a Sony turntable, and it turned out that the little rubber motor mounts were the source of the issue. In my case, I was able to hack a fix together that worked for me by placing a small washer on either side of each mount and tightening the motor screws tightly. I hope this helps someone else who encounters a similar warble issue.
Love your channel and the knowledge you share. Oh, and the puppets are always a treat! Keep up the good work.
Fifties RCA changers have the rubber motor mount grommets soften and sag, the puck wheel sticks out below the rim. Lots more like that.
A similar story is going on nowadays in the recording industry. I'm a head engineer in a recording studio and I work with local artists to help them promote themselves, and I may be spending days or weeks on an LP working with equipment worth hundreds of thousands of pounds while trying to tell a story through music. Then at the end of the day, I go back home and on my way I see people listening to music on £5 earbuds. The question is why do I bother putting these musicians in front of a £7,000 microphone, running through a vintage tube preamplifier into an analogue console worth £200,000 and process it with a plethora of plugins and outboard that add subtle detail if the end user will never hear or pay attention to it? I do my job to this level more out of respect for the art rather than giving the consumer an amazing listening experience. The truth is anyone can make a 'hit pop record' on a laptop and a cracked version of FL Studio these days.
DJ Shuffle As a below average consumer, I listen to badly compressed sound all day on £3 earbuds or phone speakers, then occasionally have a quality listen at home with my good headphones and a lot less background noise. A few records real shine through then, most don't. When using the cheap earbuds, the background noise from traffic and machinery drowns out most of the detail anyway, so there's no point upgrading those.
Some people pay attention. I wouldn't call myself an audiophile, but I have invested in a nice transparent dac and some 8" studio monitors. I've given up mp3 and have started buying CDs to rip to wav. I can tell which albums were badly recorded ( Eminem), and I appreciate the decent remasters (Michael Jackson - Bad). My setup cost about the same as a brand new iPhone, so pretty affordable I think, but the main attraction these days is portability; people would rather spend £800 on an iPhone and then be left with just £5 for some earbuds. But when I buy an old CD and discover that it was recorded with professionalism I am very grateful :)
There were a times when both - consumer market and producers technology were in connection - with a case of CX we just saw a moment when it started to brake up. Before an improvement on produceers side were dedicated stright to consumers which intended to pay for them because it was the only way to enjoy music in private. . Now it is fully broken - producers can pay any money for their technology but it is not consumers "smart phone" technology as You stated. Aviability of music in cheap crappy way made worthless to pay for equipment. What's worse, noise is considered "a kind of music" - it seems cultural change. My brother 70 asked me if "somebody stil listen to J.S Bach?" and it horrified me.
If I may pop in with an answer, as a Composer and ‘Indie Musician’, there are two reasons:
1) Because you love your work. No matter what happens to the output, you should still love what you are doing. Even if no one ‘sees your finished painting’, you should have enjoyed working on it. You should have had the expression of yourself within it, creating it, as your own experience. Others enjoying your painting the same way you do, and on as many levels, should be merely ‘icing on the cake’.
2) Sticking with the ‘painting’ metaphor I seemed to have fallen face first into; in the future, perhaps many generations from now, people will look at your painting with a different mindset, or under different types of lighting, SOMETHING that ‘opens the door’ to what you have created and all the levels of expression within, taking the viewer (coughlistenercough) to the level of enjoyment that you envisioned, experiencing it all, on every level, just as you originally intended.
That is how it is with my music (what little I have been able to finish and publish - I have many irons in the fire still waiting to be forged); I always put large amounts of layering and dynamics in my music/tracks, ‘in my art’ - and I hope that someday, that person who listened on earbuds or through a laptop speaker, will someday have large and great-sounding over-the-ear headphones or hi-fi speaker setups, maybe their grandchildren will… and then they will ‘discover’ the sounds I put quietly within, the choice of which instrument to ‘hide’ behind the others, which sound I placed ‘just so’, to express something at that point in the song…
I perform my art as my own expression, as well as for the enjoyment of others - even if they do not ‘enjoy it as I do’ or appreciate it on as many levels as I do, at the time. Perhaps they will, someday. Perhaps they never will. Perhaps I love even the smallest amount of joy a listener gets, from ‘my creation’. Perhaps that’s how you should be, too…
+Munenushi Of course I love what I do. It's an amazing feeling to bring what an artist hears in their head to life for anyone to enjoy. My work can be evaluated and used for examples in the education sector, but in the end this is a very subjective process with no right or wrong. There are mistakes, there are unorthodox or even damn right unethical techniques being used, but if it gets the right results its absolutely worth it. Of course the end user will never have the same vision I get in my studio, but they will never get the subtleties either if they're listening to the music with cheap earphones on a metro with a screaming baby beside them. Most end users listen to the music passively (unless they're a great fan of the artist), and in order to pick out the details I plant in my music you will need hundreds if not thousands of $$$ worth of equipment. And this is my point; unless they're doing a deep analysis, no one will go to the trouble of organising the optimal listening environment for the best experience, hence there's not too much point in bothering myself about the tinniest speckles. Doesn't change the fact that I love my job and I will keep going while my hearing serves me right.
Cx in the chat boys.
Cx TriHard
cmonBruh
Try hard
Pogchampion
Maybe that means the soft-spoken people are allowed to speak up a bit, while the loud and obnoxious people should tone it down somewhat.
Astfgl - Nice ~ *
O man, all the work, time and effort you did. Crazy, it’s a full documentary. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Excellent stuff yet again from this channel!
...and then the loudness wars happened, and ever since formats with comparatively HUGE dynamic ranges master to within 10dB of max; a practice which continues till today, the steady THUMP of overcompressed kick drum samples noticeably ducking out the rest of the song each time.
To be fair, though: The loudness is preferable in a lot of cases, most in fact. Hell, moving outside of recorded music, I have to say one of my biggest pet peeves in movies is how fucking wide the dynamic range is: One moment, the dialogue is whisper quiet, then something explodes at basically the same volume of a real goddamn explosion, and then everyone is back to fucking whispering juuuuuuust until my ears stop ringing, at which point another round of gunfire starts up. Oh, and don't get me started on the fucking soundtracks blaring or barely squeaking throughout the whole mess...
Plus the clarity of a more compressed sound is greater in most cases, and even some great recordings of yore are hailed as having far more life despite being barely any less smashed as modern recordings. Really, the 'problem' only is a problem when there is an extreme abuse of compression that actually radically alters the sound 'just because.' Like in the Loudness War of the 1990s-20??'s...
Matter of taste, really. Just funny to me that the trend in mixing and mastering moves opposite the potential of the formats so grandly.
How do you find such obscure media formats? Subaru Legacy. LOL. I never knew the United States was your largest audience. But I must say, I am a contributor. By being part of your U.S. audience.
Currently the audience breaks down like this... US 35%, UK 16%, Canada 5.2%, Germany 4.7%, Australia 3.7%, then on to the Netherlands, India, Sweden...
THX1138 another US listener checking in. I love your videos!!
Netherlands, whooooo! And yes, we are perfectly fine doing our own translations over here.
Americans seem to be the biggest audience for pretty much every channel out there, which isn't a surprise as they out number everyone else on the English speaking part of the net.
On a per capita basis, Techmoan is most popular in the UK. At time of writing, there were 4,000 views. Using audience breakdown figures from Techmoan, and population figures from Google, that's 9.8 UK viewers, 6.1 Australian, 5.7 Canadian, 4.3 US and 2.3 German viewers per million residents. - Matt from Western Australia.
TL084's are just bog standard OpAmp's (4 in a package), and that 13700 chip might be an LM13700 ea an OTA (operational transconductance amp), basically, a voltage controllable version of earlier mentioned TL084. Only reason I know this, is because a few years ago I was pretty heavy into making my own modular synth. Those are the chips used in the audio path. 084's for general amplification around various circuits, 13700's usually in vca/vcf/vco circuits (amp, filter and oscillator modules). Nothing prorietary here, these chips are still being made. Actually, the 13700 might be hard to come by, but there's good alternatives available. The Synth-DIY crowd is pretty crafty when it comes to keeping circuitry like this in circulation (because once the last OTA has gone and stopped being produced, it would mean the end of the line for a lot of great modules). Not likely to happen any time soon, with the recent resurgence in interest for modular synthesis (just check out sonicstate's channel, it's basically all modular these days). Right, i'ma stop here, this is turning into a wall of text.. cheers man!
Your videos are always fascinating.
Thanks.
Puppet Sr.: "But I have to give it to ya, because it's my legacy. My-"
Me: "Don't you do it."
Puppet Sr.: "Subaru Legacy."
Me: _long inhale_
That might just be the best terrible joke I've heard on this channel. Cheers from America.
CBS should re-visit the CX Disc technology for todays music. The reasons why is because all the claims of the yesteryear were ultimately based on Dynamics. Unfortunately the majority of today's music are lacking in Dynamics. Final down-mixes of today's production are constantly hitting 0db (dbfs). Headroom is almost non existent in today's world of mastering which is unfortunate. Record labels have been on this loudness war to make songs sound loud yet somehow retaining the elements in the production to sound "decent". At the end of it all, every instrument in the track is loud with even its most subtle elements peaking at -6 ~ -3 db. Sooo, in turn this could be a good thing for the CX technology, it wouldn't have to work hard in expanding and such because the compression/limiting algorithms in the mastering would tackle most issues. This would in turn have loud playback reproduction as per the mixdown of the actual track and low noise floor (if any at all) complimenting the CX Technology.
Somebody tried. Look up HDCD.
Very good episode as usual, but the puppets were hilarious! Bravo!
Thank you for incredible, informative, and entertaining videos! I am a BIG fan!
The best video and def the best puppet skit yet!! Tech don't ever sack the puppets! You know they are your legacy. Your---- suburu legacy
Of course, the audio engineers didn’t end up quitting.
Much to their chagrin, the “loudness war” started roughly a decade after CX was introduced, and has only gotten worse and worse.
Seems that the only format nowadays (including high-res audio) where they don’t destroy the dynamic range of a recording before bringing it to market, is vinyl.
Indeed. Where are all these conscientious engineers now, when modern digital formats with copious dynamic range are compressed all to shit...
Sometimes hi-res audio has a better master. This is why I bought my Dream Theater and Green Day records on HDTracks (though some of the former were not an improvement so I didn't buy them). Occasionally a remaster doesn't suck. Occasionally.
I will say it isnt always the engineer's fault. Personally as an artist, i prefer the sound of a squashed dynamic range. It makes any song more exciting and more "hype"
Naw, they do that too, at least with a lot of new records I've heard. Music is, after all, an artform that isn't created in a vacuum - or mastered in one.
The thing about the loudness war is this. On that, the compression is intended.
They can ramp everything up to 11 on a CD in ways they can't on a record, because an extra loud CD won't make the laser jump out of the pits the way an extra loud record will make the stylus jump out of the groove.
Brazilian viewer here. Thanks for your hard work, i realy enjoy every single video!
Your introductions are good. Quick and thorough.
Can you do a video about Fisher Price Pixelvision?
th-cam.com/video/u_si3xAoTeM/w-d-xo.html
Techmoan That was good. Thanks.
Bedtime? Nope, Techmoan video
Thumps up as always....each week I await pecienly for your video... Greatings from L.A Cali.
I couldn't remember CX, and when you mentioned it was backward compatible, I just couldn't think how it was possible? The engineers saying it was useless and the reveal it was just compressed made it all clear. This has of course to be audible to the detriment of the audio without a decoder and is a dumb idea unless it's 100% accepted.
I played a lot with analogue compansion schemes like this in the 70s, though focused on tape rather than vinyl. The problem they all suffered from was that a sudden transient at low frequency (a drum beat say) would cause a momentary rise in the level of high frequency background noise (very noticeable if there's no music at high frequencies to mask it). This is called "breathing", because that's what it sounds like. And it's really annoying. Unless you are prepared to compand on individual frequency bands separately, which would be very expensive to do back then (e.g. like Dolby S), then there's no real solution to this. I can understand the engineer's frustration, because they'd have known it couldn't live up to its promise. I do wonder how many of those same engineers ended up as perpetrators of the 'loudness wars' a decade or two later, where everything on CD got compressed to hell for more 'punch'. I'd like to have seen them get together to resist that, but they obviously didn't.
I found a CD with a CX logo on the back of the box, any ideas why?
Perhaps they didn't bother adapting the art work when the CD was released.
which cd?
@@monetize_this8330 Top Gear 36 Classic Driving Tracks
@@ArlenMoulton2 cheers!
This channel is quite nice, soothing, predictable, and information dense (compared to other channels I watch), which I enjoy a lot compared to channels with half the video dedicated to ads, sponsorships, skits… etc. when I’m in the mood, I love me some Linus Tech Tips but seriously this channel is a hidden gem that I’m enjoying more and more often! No random yelling, loud sounds, or sudden noises. Combine that with his unreal patient, kind, understanding, and unfailingly polite personality, I feel safe here and know he won’t let me down (production quality is rock solid/consistent).
I LOOOOOVE the muppet section! Wish you made a separate section just of that!
Techmoan videos are the only thing on youtube I specifically make a cuppa for beforehand and view in full screen.
6:56 - Go home turntable. You're drunk.
You, sir, are a technological archeologist! Very valuable to have somenone documenting these technologies, and even publishing them on TH-cam!
You actually got me to look at my discs. I don't have any vinyls with CX but I do have 5 Laserdiscs with it. Also yes I do have a Laserdisc player which is a Pioneer CLD-V2400 if anyone was curious.
Do an episode on HD DVD
your muppets are funny : )
In an interview, Techmoan said it took twelve generations of selective breeding, reinforced by intensive training from a young age. This artist lives for his craft, and it shows!
Wow, this was interesting. Cant IMAGINE the amount of research behind almost every single sentence. Seriously, good job!
I learn something new every video. Thank you for your work.