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Maybe his experience was with a bad record player... or he had some friends with that opinion... The 16lps I've seen in Spain were classical music, and I think, putting all this in the pot, that maybe classical music was not the ideal for that speed, as if indeed there was a tendency in the players to wobble (I mean the usual 4 speed record players in the popular market, where the tt was driven by an idler wheel) then the long sustained notes of strings or piano would have been marred if the speed was not clock-exactly sustained by these players. That could be the usual scenery for a common listener and record fan. No doubt that those other purposely made 16rpm sound systems as the Seeburg, could have been designed in a different way, and gave much better results, than the usual, common market, 4 speed record players. Such a professional and good 16rpm machine wouldn't be in the market for the common man, or could have been too expensive, being also incapable of playing the common speed records. So the middle man who wanted to try these long lps, at least here in Spain or Europe, would have to play them in the common 4-speed record players of the time, which weren't as good to play on that slow speed... All together, that could well have been the 16rpm experience for the common music lover in the Spain (or Europe) of the mid fifties. And that could be the reason to make them think that this was a failure, as indeed it was in the popular record market.Marco Gilardetti wrote: Tue Feb 16, 2021 9:51 am For some reason, instead, 16 RPMs were primarily marketed for pop. Perhaps, had they released long operas or symphonies on a single 16 RPM, the story might have changed.
In which sense your father thought 16 RPMs were a technical failure? They still play fine after all these years.
I'm only trying to tie the real facts we can see, to the only direct opinion I knew in my youth, adding some logic to reconstruct the scenery behind the facts: with all that has been said herein, the idea I've got is summarized this way. Only were succesful the purposely made 16rpm machines and records issued for a very limited niche in the market (the lounge sound systems), but for the main stream of record shops and common record players buyers, it was indeed a commercial failure. No doubt that with modern electronics, direct drive tts, high end audio systems, these 16rpm commercial records can sound perfect, but this was not the situation for the average record buyer in the mid fifties.
This is how I think that bad opinion may have been born.
The fact is that they finally weren't so popular as the record makers had expected, they are very rare today, isn't it? Kind of a rarity... many times scarcer than our old beloved 78s... Last time I saw one 16rpm lp was many years ago, in those second hand record stores!
No doubt they are today a collector's item, much more expensive than 78s!
What amazes me is the appreciation, maybe I'm wrong.. that the 4 speed record players lasted much longer in the market than the records... If the record makers didn't make so many 16lps, why the tt makers insisted on having the 16rpm available for so long?
