Vinyl disks were on the brink of "not being made anymore", yet they were resurrected. Why not cylinders?
To try and treat the question seriously, the LP was the peak of electro-mechanical (or mechanical) recording. We don't listen to wax cylinders the same reason we don't listen to 78s (except for historical recordings). They have inferior sound quality.
i did and can sound fantastic indeed but I can't deal with the cleaning/caring hassle anymore I do miss the beautiful cover art work though
If I understand you correctly, the question is why discs and not cylinders... IIRC, the cylinders, when standardised by Edison, spun at 160rpm, and had a track density of 100 tracks per inch. That yielded a playback time of up to a whopping 2.5 minutes, and as such, they were marketed as 2-minute cylinders. I’d say that’s why we didn’t return to cylinders.
Cylinders sound quality it's worst, Vinyl sound quality was not improved by digital. Simple. Well, as i post originally, Vinyl can have "drawbacks" for someone that don't see / don't like the other benefits. The same happens to me with digital downloads ... ripping / labelling / organizing / level the volume / blah blah For me the best of digital it's the streaming plataforms. Always my opinion and no "right or wrong". We can see other points of view on things ... we'll learn more. If i only listen to people that think like me, i'll always be "right".
All this talk about wax cylinders has me thinking, and there isn't a weakness of LPs that couldn't be alleviated by going to cylinders. Not wax cylinders, but vinyl cylinders. Many LPs aren't all that flat, and any can warp. Cylinders are strong and stable. Vinyl is flexible, but if a liner was used that weakness could be eliminated. Years ago, it might have been magnesium; today carbon fiber would be the obvious choice. Tracking errors across the side? A cylinder would of necessity use a tangential arm, like some house-priced disc spinners. Cartridge set-up would be simple. End-of-side distortions caused by smaller, close-crowded grooves would be eliminated. Time capacity is the big stumbling block. Two ways to solve that - make the cylinders longer and larger in diameter. Also, rotation speed would be a factor. But hey, we already have 33.3 vs. 45 rpm LPs. Turntable design would have to change - literally turned on its side - though pretty much any industrial lathe could be easily adapted. Given the popularity of hyper-precision CNC machinery, most of the engineering has been done. Of course it would have to be dressed up in all the audiophile finery, and made "buzzword compliant." But I wouldn't be surprised if this could be done at a very competitive price point. Would this be practical? Geez, are you serial? An average album might well require a cylinder two feet long and six inches in diameter. Imagine collecting a couple of thousand of those! But, really, how practical is reel-to-reel tape? We're talkin' audiophiles here, not rational people. If nothing else, this would tweak the tails of the digital-only crowd. Worth doing just for that. Oh, and you could store great big cover art and booklets in the cylinder. Great sound and great aesthetics!
