Originally Posted by
msu2001la
To me, rim brakes are not like steel frames, or leather saddles or polished chrome hardware or tubular tires or whatever other retro vintage stuff wizzes your cheese. I absolutely disagree with the comparison of rim brakes and vinyl records. Vinyl records provide some nostalgia factor for sure, but they also are sonically superior to digital music and provide a tangible way to experience music that digital streaming fails to provide. I also prefer tube amps and analog watches and still get an actual newspaper delivered to my door every Sunday.
I was thinking about this when I got caught in a 20-minute cloudburst yesterday afternoon while out on my 1995 Cannondale hybrid with cantilever brakes. After the initial 5 seconds of "where are my brakes?" panic, I had no trouble adjusting to the conditions. Riding at a sensibly reduced speed, even on descents my stopping distance was at most doubled. That's a trivial difference when you have enough sense to ride cautiously.
The other side of the coin, and one possible negative of disc brakes that I haven't seen discussed, is that some less-experienced riders may become overly confident in their disc brakes. Like the people with four-wheel drive you see on interstates in blizzards---the ones who rip past you at full speed only to flip into a ditch around the next corner.
You're right that the comparison between rim brakes and vinyl records isn't entirely defensible. But CD's did take over the market from vinyl almost as rapidly as disc brakes have taken over from rim brakes. I guess marketing science has improved the techniques by which consumers are persuaded to dump the stuff they have that works fine for the newer stuff that works a bit better.
By the way, I have several thousand LP's, hundreds of 45's, and some pretty expensive vintage audio equipment, and I enjoy playing them while admiring the record cover artwork, but I'm under no illusion that the sound of vinyl is superior to that of digital music.
The last straw for me was the recent debunking of the claim that the frequency range of digital is inferior to that of vinyl, which claim was based on analyses showing that records contain frequencies at and well above 20,000 Hz. Seemed persuasive, until a subsequent analysis revealed that those high frequencies were not present in the source (i.e., the master tape) and that the same frequencies were present in the "silent" grooves between songs on the record.
The dynamic range of vinyl is more truncated, too, because of the physical limitations of the medium.
Unless you're talking about dbx Discs. I have a few of those, along with the dbx decoder, and they sound stunningly good. Easily equal to digital in frequency range and dynamic range, and far better than conventional vinyl. It's a shame that the CD revolution came along when it did, since dbx Disc might well have taken over the market otherwise. As it is, only a few dozen dbx Disc records were ever released.
Here's a terrific video on dbx Disc: