Why no unbreakable vinyl?

[Baines93]

You must love your "vynil babies" so much; you don't even know how to spell it properly.

Vinyl.

I don't mean to be rude, it is just kind of ironic!

The rest of your grammar is perfect though!

Matt

[grawk]

I was just gonna post how that typo bugs me more than most too

[gyrodec]

The main thing that makes vinyl great for records is that it can be pressed and it will flow into even the smallest parts of the groove, and all this at high production speeds. It will even pop out of the stamper and be perfectly stable after only a matter of seconds.

Most of the less breakable materials would have to be injection moulded instead of pressed, and it is simply not possible to injection mould a shape that wide and thin without significant issues and defects. (In a former life I worked with an injection mould maker for a produc that never happened, and there are many many restrictions on hapes you can IM if you want it to come out well.)

The rest of the points raised about stability, groove noise, cost etc are obviously also major reasons why we use vinyl, but its pressing abilities are also key.

[grawk]

And this all misses the biggest reason why records can be broken. The visceral thrill that comes from slamming a record down on the corner of the dj desk when you're sick of hearing the song that gets overplayed by the other djs at the station.

Take this job and shove it - SMASH.

[shallbehealed]

Originally Posted by memepool

If you look at the end of your stylus under a magnifier, after a while you'll see it gets a layer of dirt stuck on it which is a result of exactly what you describe.

The glass transition temperature of vinyl is 87C. BS is called in "melting dust".

PS. Tm= 212 C, certainly not enough to melt dust... what temperature does human skin melt at anyhow?

[papomaster]

Fixed the title

All of your responses were quite revealing, now another question : what changes could vinyl companies make to the disks to make sure they don't lose any sound quality over a longer period of time?

I have no personal experience with vinyl (I will someday, but that's another story), but what I've heard at the FSI from all the vendors using TTs to feed their systems was speakers doing some 'pops' and 'squeaks' at a variable level (some of them had none using brand new pressings, but my experience with Aerial Boundaries was quite tainted by the loud pops all over the place...

[bigshot]

Originally Posted by papomaster

Fixed the title

"vinyl" is a great Scrabble word.

Originally Posted by papomaster

what changes could vinyl companies make to the disks to make sure they don't lose any sound quality over a longer period of time?

They really don't need to do anything. Vinyl records are among the most stable recording mediums ever devised. With a properly aligned quality turntable wear is not an issue, and the vinyl itself will last more than 100 years. I have a hundred year old shellac record that sounds exactly the same today as the day it was pressed. (I wasn't alive back then, but you can tell by looking at it and playing it that it hasn't aged at all...)

See ya
Steve

[PITTM]

I had a few records I was going to throw out. But my friend and I played baseball with them and a crowbar. They break pretty easy in those situations!!

[bigshot]

I hear books make a pretty good bonfire too.

See ya
Steve

[spyderx]

The last vinyl record I broke was in the late 80's when a buddy and me were using his sister's madonna record as a frisbee. Direct hit to the curb did it.