Voelund - 'Comfort Lives In Belief'

[Pedaling Prince]

I was actually referring to vinyl pressings. I'm pretty unfamiliar with recording on tape other than anecdotal stories because it largely fell out of favor when I was very young.

Oh, well I was thinking in terms if studio capabilities, not home stereo.

I heard that if there were too much low end on a vinyl pressing, or if it were panned too far to one side, it can cause the needle to skip, so those frequency regions were cut out for records. Something like that

Actually, what was done was something called RIAA equalization. You're right that grooves with low frequency waveforms too large would cause the needle to skip, but it's also true that high frequencies tended to get lost in the high frequency noise of the groove. So what they did was when they created the record master was they boosted the high frequencies and attenuated the low frequencies. Then, at playback, the reverse was done; the low frequencies were boosted and the high frequencies attenuated by exactly the same amounts, restoring the flat frequency response and, as an added bonus, removing a lot of the high frequency noise. Unfortunately, this also emphasized low frequency noise which is why low quality turntables always had so much "rumble;" the vibration of the turntable driven by low quality motors, bearing and drive systems would be transmitted to the stylus and amplified by the RIAA curve.

That's the basic principle of it. If you're interested in more detailed technical information on the RIAA curve:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization

I don't think much of the consumer level speaker systems of the day could even get as low as 40 unless you were the type who invested in big cabs with 10 inch subwoofers like my dad . You'd probably know more about this topic than I because you seem very well read on it.

Well, I'm also approaching 42 years old so I've had some personal experience with it as well. Granted, my experience with record players in particular goes back to when my age was still a single digit. Still, even then I had a discerning ear for good sound quality; I just didn't know why different media sounded the way they did. For example, I knew that cheap record players had a rumbling sound but I didn't understand why. I also knew that I could hear a pre-echo of Grover's voice on my Sesame Street record (an effect I noticed on some other records, too, but that one was the most audible example I can remember), that TV sound was terribly buzzy and noisy, and 8-track sound tended to play at noticeably uneven speeds. Now I know what caused all three of those problems.

Actually, truth be told, when I was about eight or so I opened up both an 8-track and a cassette and looked inside to figure out how they worked; when I did, young as I was, I realized immediately why 8-tracks played so poorly. On the 8-track, the capstan and pinch roller actually powered the tape's movement which made it extremely susceptible to slippage. On the cassette, the capstan and pinch roller merely regulated the tape's speed; the tape was actually driven by the take-up reel.

I've been into this audio thing for quite a while...

As regards speakers, I suspect you're right when you speak of the average consumer speaker, but then again that's as true today as it was then. The average non-audiophile's stereo today is usually their computer, and the average set of computer speakers doesn't generally go down any lower than 40 Hz, either. When you get right down to it, actually, not all that much has changed in loudspeaker technology in the past 40 years, at least nothing dramatic. My speakers are 80s vintage high end consumer speakers (Pioneer CS-539s to be precise). I've listened to many speakers of equivalent quality manufactured today; I'm hard pressed to hear any dramatic difference.

I'm not saying that there haven't been any advances, of course. Bose in particular seems to have some amazing innovations when it comes to small speakers that produce astonishingly big bass. But Bose is a special case, specialty speakers that the average listener wouldn't even be interested in. As far as your basic good quality loudspeaker goes, not a whole lot has changed in its design in several decades; the biggest changes have been in recording technology.