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I'd be in at twice that price. I have lots of music...lets fill this thing with tools for system optimization.
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You can approximately replicate the sound of my stereo system by listening to your stereo system while wearing shooting muffs full of BBs and eating cheerios while stomping on a Speak-and-Spell.
So for as long as this thread has been around (and just received a bump after about 3 months), when would we actually be maybe seeing something come out of this?
It's getting somewhat more likely, but we're still a long ways off. I'd eyeball that we'd need a buy-in of at least 200 records before the cost per record gets anywhere near under $5. So far I count about 41.
To keep costs down, I am very strongly considering requiring a minimum buy-in of 5 records. So the minimum buy-in cost would be $25.
So if you're genuinely interested in this and would buy 5+ records, please respond. Once I get a count of about 100 I'll start a different thread for the real group buy.
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Here are some more thoughts on the subject, assuming this ever gets off the ground. Feel free to comment.
Like I said in the earlier thread, the actual tracks would be created digitally, probably 24/96 WAVs. These would be available online for comparison to the recordings.
I'd expect to use a DMM mastering plant instead of laquer. This is going to be an objective test setup LP and not subjective - DMM to the best of my knowledge has superior noise and distortion characteristics from a numerical perspective. It's a no-brainer to use it. I think it's a bit more expensive though. (There are only a couple DMM plants left in the world, from what I understand.)
I am strongly considering using low-weight vinyl instead of 180g. By "low-weight" I mean 135g (the "usual" weight), or maybe even lower. Hell, I may even go Dynaflex if I can get away with it, and the plant supports it. It will be quite a lot cheaper, and for these purposes will work just as well, if not better.
The record would be at 33rpm.
The anti-skate test tones would obviously be included, but it's not worth doing completely stupid crap like +18db tones. Also, due to the shallower grooves required of DMM, I fear that the risk of the stylus blowing right off the groove will be higher when mistracking occurs. But I don't think that's a good enough reason to abandon DMM.
Frequency response would be computed from per-channel spot frequency bands. Really, that's the only way I see to accurately measure frequency response, because it allows effects like crosstalk, harmonic distortion, and speed deviations to be accurately separated out.
I'll be adding the "usual" wow/rumble bands, so that people can reproduce those numbers on their own setups. Also, I'm keeping an eye out for tests that can determine both static and dynamic stylus drag, since those are pretty hard to come by.
For virtually all numeric performance results - including frequency response, wow/rumble, dynamic range, crosstalk, THD etc - you'll need to use a computer to compute them. You might even want a flat preamp (one without an RIAA eq). You can emulate a flat preamp on the computer, but the results won't be as accurate. I'll look into producing a program that can spit out all those numbers for yall given a WAV recording.
One big unknown in all of this is the quality of the mastering/pressing, since I will likely not have access to the plant, won't know the specifics of the mastering, etc. Of course I'll want to know as much as I can about it, but I am a little concerned that the results that can be obtained from this test record cannot be compared to those from the CBS test record series, etc because of the lack of production control. I'm open to suggestions on how to mitigate this risk.
Unlike HFNRR, and like CBS STR records, the test bands will NOT be locked. You'll play the record from the beginning and everything will play.
Some bands will be provided for tuning alignment and balance by ear, so you could use this in place of HFNRR. But they will probably make up less than 20% of the recording space. The rest of what you can do with a test record really needs measurement equipment (or software) to really use properly.
The packaging will be as spartan as humanly possible. Rice paper sleeves, white outer sleeve, one-color printing of both the outer sleeve and the record labels.
Given that this is a completely amateur effort, and I've never made a record before, etc I will not hold myself responsible for the quality of the disc that you'd receive. Caveat emptor. But I will make every effort to make this as high a quality a release as possible, and all the records will be sold as close to at cost as possible. (Any excess funds will be donated.)
This is an idea with merit
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