Silly thing...

[Inigo]

Only.... that I love gramophones and 78s! Why are they so magical...?

[Woody]

I’ve twice attended the Axpona audio expo in the Chicago area, to listen to and demo extremely high-end stereo equipment. Now, a fair amount of equipment being demoed there is pure snake oil, and a huge amount of equipment isn’t worth anything near what it costs. But by and large, everything sounds exceptional.

I’ve also been to the Phonograph Museum in Kanazawa, Japan. Three times a day, they demo nine or ten acoustic machines—cylinder machines, Diamond Disk machines, Victors, etc.

Like I wrote above, nearly all of the equipment at Axpona sounded great, but I never went home thinking that my consumer-level gear was inadequate. Nothing blew me away.

The demonstrations in Kanazawa, on the other hand, made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

[tim w]

I have not come up with the final answer of why I like records and machines. There are thousands of other things I could have become interested in but this is one of them. For about as long as I can remember. I am not surrounded by anyone who feels the same so I begin to doubt myself. It's nice to know a place like this wouldn't exist without people that like it as much or more then I do.
I am fascinated by just about every aspect of this subject. Whether it's real or imagined, it feels like these objects come with some kind of aura that came from the original owners. The things we have now are basically adaptations of stuff we had already. For me it's easy to imagine how exiting it was when it was all new and being experienced for the first time. That they are all direct live recordings, and as you watch it spin it brings something long gone back to life. I realize that all the frequencies are imperfectly captured. But what is captured works extremely well. You could swear the subject is right there in front of you as the sound wafts out and spills into the room. Listening to an original recording has an impact and presence that I rarely, if ever, heard in a transfer to another format.
The texture, weight, pressing imperfections, how the grooves look shining in the light. The progression and production changes in machines all add up to a special interest. Out of all moving parts going into making and reproducing records arises some kind of ineffable X factor that makes them stand out.
Michael Fremer, an audiophile writer goes to all the aforementioned AXPONAs, has always held that records are better. They just are. I tend to agree with him.

[Inigo]

Tim w, thanks for that long, precise and rich explanation on the matter... I agree 100%. Very well expressed

[Raphael]

Everybody has their specific interests, most of which would require a psychiatrist to analyze and explain why. Which brings to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8wB_nRRUD8

Raphael

[Lah Ca]

For me, it is the music first. I love music, most kinds of music from the simple to the complex, cacophonous and abstract, and in any age or in any genre of music, there is music that is dull and pedestrian, but then there is also the numinous and electrifying.

Music is one way of understanding and engaging with the past. Despite changing social values, changing diction, changing behaviours, etc, there is a core of universal human experience that runs through music--love, sexuality, sorrow, joy, humour, enjoyment and appreciation of human cleverness, the excitement of kinetic abandonment in dance, spiritual devotion .... The making of music is generally social. Engagement with live music is social. Engagement with recorded music is social by proxy. When you put one of your cherished Berliners on a machine to play it, you are creating a social engagement with the past. You are participating in a shared experience with people long dead. Books are another form of such engagement.

I also enjoy the craft of things that are well made. I have admiration for skilled labour.

My first gramophone/phonograph, an impulse purchased Aeolian Vocalian machine, to me, is a wonder of engineering and craft. The mechanical concepts that run through it are simple but clever, a clever implementation of wheels, levers, and incline planes, repurposed clock technology, together with basic musical instrument technology, drums and horns, but the implementation is elegant--there is nothing here that the ancient Greeks could not have done had they thought of it (except spring steel). The cabinet design and wood work are superb, a plain elegance that eschews busyness. There is an appealing sense of pride and caring on the part of the now long dead people who designed and manufactured the machine. And it is now almost 105 years old, and it still works quite well. Well done you long dead people!

Yes, the sound from gramophones and old discs and cylinders, even the best of them, is constrained and limited and noisy by comparison to a modern high-end stereo, but I do not listen to sound of the machine and recorded media, I listen to the music. And it is pretty damn fine.

[emgcr]

Well said and I agree completely. Thank you.

[jamiegramo]

Some very good points raised in this thread I agree with.

What I find fascinating is the real connection to the past. You are hearing something almost exactly as it did 50 or 100 years ago. Next best thing to a time machine. I think the same when I view old Stereoviews.

I’m lucky to have a broad taste in music and it’s exciting to play through a pile of 78 RPM records and find something you really like. There’s so much yet to discover.

[HMVDevotee]

This thread has been so gratifying to read and I appreciate everyone's observations.

I've enjoyed this hobby for about ten years now, but it was into my third year that I discovered in a trunk that belonged to my father two boxes of 78s that were his in the late teens and early twenties. Tied-up with twine and marked "Joe's Records" in my grandfather's hand, I discovered a set of one-sided Victor records, the recordings of the violinist Jascha Heifetz, and the opportunity of a lifetime presented itself. My father listened to these very records as he studied violin in New York, circa 1918-1920. One hundred and some years later, I can have the same experience that my father did when he was ten years old, and that I treasure.

[Damfino59]

Only.... that I love gramophones and 78s! Why are they so magical...?

Because they just are fun!

In 1969 I saw & heard my first Edison cylinder phonograph. I was nine years old with an interest in music & records. This strange mechanical contraption opened a direct window to the past.

This was a Edison Standard at the appropriate named “Barrel of Bygones” antique shop off of highway 83 in the Chicagoland burbs. If I remember correctly it was a two minute, announced “Uncle Sammy’s March”. Never before had I been so excited about actually hearing the actual sounds of our past. It would be awhile before I actually had any cylinders or phonographs. But there was a new interest in 78’s.

I have a good friend who is an audiophile. I’ve been to the Axpona show once with him. It’s definitely interesting. All of the hotel rooms setup with vendors demonstrating their wares. But to get that audiophile sound costs a lot more than I can or am willingly able to afford. And I can’t really hear it. I’m 65 years old, all of those years of mini bikes and lawn mowing without ear protection have done their damage.

My friend eventually assembled an audiophile system including a KAB Souvenir preamp. I had demonstrated my older version with my consumer grade stereo, so he got one of the newer models for his system.

Once he had a social gathering with some record collectors and shall I say regular folks? To demonstrate the 78 record playing ability of his system he did a comparison between the system, and an acoustic player. On the acoustic side we had a HMV 101, restored. And in the other corner around $50,000 worth of audio gear, Technics 1200 and Expert stylus. It sounded really nice.

But, more of the attendees were charmed and fascinated with the HMV101. It’s sort of like going to a Cars & Coffee event. With all of those nice expensive street machines. And a Model T, Hupmobile or Packard shows up. Suddenly they become the Bell Of The Ball.