What Are the Dots on the Side of Vinyl Turntables, Is It Decoration?

djmentors.com

10 points·smugglerFlynn··3 comments

Fun story: in childhood I played with father's vinyl and reel-to-reel magnet tapes. They had different recording speeds and typically I could easily guess which is correct by funny singer voice. Until I discovered Jean-Michel Jarre -- I had listened for hours, but haven't been able to figure out which speed was the correct one.

It would seem at some point that even manufacturers of contemporary turntables forgot (or just don't care) about this, I've seen multiple turn tables with trimming potentiometers, lacking the speed indicator and strobe, and I've put off buying, because.. gee.. how am I going to trim it without them.

It’s the consumers that don’t care. So the manufacturers don’t bother.

So many turntables these days are weird USB enabled devices made for the occasional playback of an album purchased for the retro novelty. People discover and listen via streaming services, not by digging through crates in a dusky shop.

Even DJing has changed, and software can beat match perfectly without needing a visual indicator, and your whole set is stored on a drive.

I’ll never forget visiting my friend who set up a turntable in his rec room and proudly played something and made a comment about the warmth and superiority of vinyl

I went back to his receiver and moved the connection to the phono input and told him there, should sound a lot better now.

He just didn’t notice or care. The act of handling vinyl was what he wanted.

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