Re: (Fwd) Re: livin' la vida vinyl

[Shawn Mamros <mamros@MIT.EDU>]

>WBCN still has turntables They are just covered up normally. They are still
>used occasionally for Nocturnal Emissions and weekly for the Techno show. I
>would  guess would be that WFNX still has them as well. Any of the
>Techno/ClubDJ shows would still need them. BCN still has a ton of old Vinyl
>both in the Studio and the Music Department. I would think ZLX would still
>have them too for out of print records.

Unless ZLX has specialty shows where they play stuff that isn't part of
the regular playlist, I'd tend to doubt that they use vinyl at all, as
I'd think that everything on their playlist would now be available on CD.
Even if not, they'd probably put it all on cart or (more likely these days)
hard disk, if for no other reason than to prevent any sort of "vinyl glitches"
(scratches, skips, tonearms being bumped :-) from occurring OTA.

Back about a decade or so ago, I got to tour the WMJX studios.  At that time,
they actually did have one turntable in the air studio, but it was tucked
away under a countertop and never, ever used.  All the music they played
OTA, whether originally sourced from vinyl or CD, was transferred to and
played from carts.  They're almost certainly using a hard disk system now,
I would think.

Think about it - when's the last time anyone's actually heard a vinyl
glitch OTA, outside of a college station?  Or even a CD player glitch?
Hard disk systems just have so many advantages, even when the jocks are
live.  Heck, I'd even recommend one for MBR, if I didn't know well enough
that it would take the better part of several lifetimes to get all of our
vinyl contents on to disk (assuming that there's even a disk system big
enough to hold it all!).

-Shawn Mamros
E-mail to: mamros@mit.edu