The end of vg+...don't panic?

[treeboy]

F G VG VG+ EX M-?? If this is the way things are heading, vinyl gradings could become a thing of the past.
http://diffuser.fm/laser-turntable/

I already know that even if I had one, I'd still keep my crappy old selection of "gouging" turntables.
Wonder how long before they become "affordable"? Not too soon if ELP has anything to do with it from what I can make out. They bought the patent years back apparently.
http://eandt.theiet.org/magazine/201...get-groovy.cfm

[Sonovox]

I don't think the price of these has come down in the last 20 years or so

[treeboy]

It just doesn't make sense to me. I'm sure more people would buy them if they were reasonably priced. How much can the components really cost? Product development costs? Nah!
The price of exclusivity I suppose.

[Striker]

They're supposedly rubbish at playing anything other than mint records too, which rules out 95% of my collection.

[effi_deep]

It just doesn't make sense to me. I'm sure more people would buy them if they were reasonably priced. How much can the components really cost? Product development costs? Nah!
The price of exclusivity I suppose.

this whole device doesn't make sense to me. it's the horror and i hate it.

[treeboy]

Out of interest, has anybody actually heard one of these?

[eclectiktronik]

Periodically this subject comes up.
From what I've read over the years, the problem is that whilst the laser is quite happy with the fixed level pits and flats in a CD, actually tracking a groove with all the horizontal and vertical movement, proved hard going. A main failing is that detecting the inevitable crud (something which most half decent CD players' error correction can deal with quite well) proved too much of a struggle. Probably because in the absence of pits and flats, (easily converted to binary code, no 'inbetween' so easy error correction), the lasers just read everything in the groove. Result is a hissy noisy sound quality inferior to even a budget hi fi record deck, hardly what one expects for five figure sums. Even with the benefit of zero contact so zero disc wear, it's too much money for too little payoff to be successful. Especially since for the same money or less, one can get a top flight analogue setup whose disc wear would be negligible anyway.

I'm sure with the advances in software over the last decade there's hope for this yet, though. There was also a system in development which scans the grooves phtographically and makes audio. Useful for extracting sound from warped or broken discs which no conventional player can track.

[Quivering Crumpet]

Out of interest, has anybody actually heard one of these?

I have a demonstration CD that was sent to me from ELP many years ago with samples. It sounded very good, but as pointed out above the records have to be in mint condition otherwise it'll sound like crap as the laser beams are extremely sensitive to dust, dirt and groove wear.