A Turntable Reborn Turns Its Back on Its Hip-Hop Legacy [NYT]

New York Times ^ | January 1, 2017 | Jonathan Soble

[Yardstick]

UTSUNOMIYA, Japan — In the sofa-appointed listening room of a factory north of Tokyo, hi-fi fans can listen to vintage vinyl records on a sound system costing $45,000, including a sleek silver turntable. Musical choices include rock — the Eagles’ “Hotel California,” sounding warm and vivid through four-foot-tall speakers — jazz and classical.

Not on the menu: hip-hop.

Or disco. Or the thumping, floor-convulsing sounds of modern techno or house music, which helped make the record player at the center of this audiophile’s paradise famous.

The turntable, the Technics SL-1200, may not enjoy the name recognition of, say, Fender electric guitars or Steinway pianos. But if you have watched a D.J. scratching furiously behind a rapper in the last few decades, you have almost certainly seen one, or, more likely, a deftly manipulated pair.

[ArmstedFragg]

There’s still a huge library of jazz, blues, big band music, classical, and opera from before WWII. In the US, every bit of it was recorded direct to vinyl. Some of it sounds pretty good even though mike technology wasn’t all that great back then. We didn’t get tape recording (wire initially) ‘til ‘45 or so.