speedo miles and km for usa models...by law?

[flynrider]

I just wish they would stick to one format. I have had to buy my rock music collection 3 times now, Vinyl, 8 track and CD lol

Vinyl, 8-track and CD? You young whippersnappers and your high tech gadgets.



Just kidding. That Ampex shares an entertainment center with my turntable, cassette deck and CD player. I also have an 8-track player in the back room (an original Lear).

[Rocky_imp]

I just wish they would stick to one format. I have had to buy my rock music collection 3 times now, Vinyl, 8 track and CD lol

Vinyl, 8-track and CD? You young whippersnappers and your high tech gadgets.



Just kidding. That Ampex shares an entertainment center with my turntable, cassette deck and CD player. I also have an 8-track player in the back room (an original Lear).

Vinyl, 8-track and CD? You young whippersnappers and your high tech gadgets.



Just kidding. That Ampex shares an entertainment center with my turntable, cassette deck and CD player. I also have an 8-track player in the back room (an original Lear).
You're not alone. I do too

[Ulvetanna_imp]

The shame in Ulvetanna's recording example is not that the young musicians decided to record to analog, but that they wanted to master the recording digitally. If the intent is to make the music available in an analog format then just skip the digital portions of the recording chain all together. The real problem with this scenario is that very few people have a decent enough playback system anymore to hear the difference between a recording made with low-end digital recording equipment and one made meticulously with an all-analog process (and that's if they even care). Most people now tend to listen to music through their computer speakers or via crappy headphones so it doesn't really matter that much to them. When it comes to recording music, if the desire is simply to make your music available for the masses via any of the digital based formats then don't bother with going to the trouble to incorporate analog technology into the mix, just let the music stand on it's own. Whether it's recorded music or motorcycles —I'd much rather see manufacturers leave the bogus stuff out/off.

Vinyl albums that were digitally recorded are exactly the same to me as a water-cooled bike sporting "air-cooling' fins, or using offset cylinder timing to create some unevenness in an otherwise amazingly smooth engine. Just like digitally recorded vinyl records, these things are done for no other reason than to sell more product (typically to people that don't know any better). Millennials go for this kind of thing with their music, as di some of us old farts with our motorcycles. Obviously I'm not thrilled with Honda's decision to intentionally make the engine run rougher. I will tell people that I bought the CB despite such a decision by Honda. In the case of Triumph, of course the fins add "some cooling' by the nature of physics, but they could have just as easily been left off. This along with the fuel injection being tarted up as carbs is exactly the same as digital recordings being transferred to vinyl records. The difference isn't so much the products involved but the age groups that they are being marketed to. Most vinyl records these days are being sold to millennials and most retro motorcycles are being sold to older guys. Either way, the marketers are counting on these different sets of consumers to buy into the image that they've worked so hard (and in the examples above, have gone above and beyond) to create.

The one thing about the CB1100 which I have said quite a few times is that it really is an air-cooled inline four. It feels like it, runs like it. It's about as close to vinyl as one could get. It's not modeled. So you are in fact experiencing the real thing so to speak.

The Royal Enfields are also air-cooled and pretty retro from all I can see. The twins should be really nice bikes.

The one thing about the CB1100 which I have said quite a few times is that it really is an air-cooled inline four. It feels like it, runs like it. It's about as close to vinyl as one could get. It's not modeled. So you are in fact experiencing the real thing so to speak.

The Royal Enfields are also air-cooled and pretty retro from all I can see. The twins should be really nice bikes.

One could argue that Honda dropped the ball and doomed the CB to the marginal sales success that it is by hewing too close on authenticity and delivering an underwhelming performance envelope. I get the design brief and labor of love that the CB is, but from a marketing standpoint, Honda’s conservative take on the CB, particularly considering how earthshaking the CB 750 was, to me is much more bothersome than fake fins.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The shame in Ulvetanna's recording example is not that the young musicians decided to record to analog, but that they wanted to master the recording digitally. If the intent is to make the music available in an analog format then just skip the digital portions of the recording chain all together. The real problem with this scenario is that very few people have a decent enough playback system anymore to hear the difference between a recording made with low-end digital recording equipment and one made meticulously with an all-analog process (and that's if they even care). Most people now tend to listen to music through their computer speakers or via crappy headphones so it doesn't really matter that much to them. When it comes to recording music, if the desire is simply to make your music available for the masses via any of the digital based formats then don't bother with going to the trouble to incorporate analog technology into the mix, just let the music stand on it's own. Whether it's recorded music or motorcycles —I'd much rather see manufacturers leave the bogus stuff out/off.

Vinyl albums that were digitally recorded are exactly the same to me as a water-cooled bike sporting "air-cooling' fins, or using offset cylinder timing to create some unevenness in an otherwise amazingly smooth engine. Just like digitally recorded vinyl records, these things are done for no other reason than to sell more product (typically to people that don't know any better). Millennials go for this kind of thing with their music, as di some of us old farts with our motorcycles. Obviously I'm not thrilled with Honda's decision to intentionally make the engine run rougher. I will tell people that I bought the CB despite such a decision by Honda. In the case of Triumph, of course the fins add "some cooling' by the nature of physics, but they could have just as easily been left off. This along with the fuel injection being tarted up as carbs is exactly the same as digital recordings being transferred to vinyl records. The difference isn't so much the products involved but the age groups that they are being marketed to. Most vinyl records these days are being sold to millennials and most retro motorcycles are being sold to older guys. Either way, the marketers are counting on these different sets of consumers to buy into the image that they've worked so hard (and in the examples above, have gone above and beyond) to create.

Regarding music, people have traded fidelity for portability. And it’s a darn good deal. I enjoy vinyl as much as the next guy...my buds and I have monthly vinyl listening nights... but I’ll take Spotify and 30 million songs at my fingertips anywhere I am on earth, for $14/ month, over having to plop myself down in my den to listen to a record. Every day. I’m failing to see the link between fins on water cools motorcycle engines, and the consumption of music.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Most people will never see, er, that is, hear the difference, nor do they care. But as a musician since the 6th grade, I care and can try to explain.

I grew up first listening to transistor radios, and a "Hi-Fi" played LP's and singles, with usually a solitary 6" woofer and two oval speakers, one left and right of center. I'd listen to that for hours at night at low volumes and it seemed to me I was in the group, it was so real.

That seems ridiculous by today's standards of fidelity; we have 7.1 surround, a pure digital signal chain from beginning to end, and so on. All that's pretty much irrelevant to most people, whether they're in a theatre or in their car or living room or wherever.

People like music, it has an energizing or therapeutic effect on us, which is truly medicinal. It can be a tonic or it can be depressing.

Folk music is the simplest sort of music, with lyrics generally about social unity, strife, tragedy, or sometimes joy. Folk music was originally composed simply to be sung by the human voice.

The human voice has very distinct sonic characteristics. The overtones from what we generally consider a great singing voice always fall into a certain measurable and distinct range. We now call this quality "WARMTH". Many tests have been done to see why certain singers have a great appeal. This is down to the bone structure of the skull and the cavities which resonate.

All this is scientific fact and has been studied for decades.

The early electronic equipment used to record and reproduce sound naturally lent a warmth to the tonality of whatever was recorded. Analog technology peaked around 1955 or so. Condenser microphones with vacuum tube preamplifiers had a superb recording quality and lent a natural warmth and "compression" to the singer or instrument. Recording consoles used vacuum tubes and simple circuits. Even the magnetic tape lent a warmth and saturation to the recorded sound. This was very desirable.

Leo Fender used simple, well-known electronic circuits out of a standard handbook to design his guitars and amplifiers. He did not know how to play guitar, he was not a musician. He was a businessman with a good idea. Just how good was not known for some time; those simple circuits, using the most basic electronic principles, yielded the best sounding guitars and amplifiers of all time.

When digital recording and storage became popular, most people gobbled it right up without any criticism. CDs took up a lot less space than LPs and most people I spoke to said they felt the CDs sounded better. I was a musician at the time and still am, and I thought they sounded like crap. It was not until 25 years later I was completely vindicated, when the reasons why digital music sounded like crap were well-understood.

In the 1980s when digital stuff first arrived, the sample rates and data transfer rates were very, very slow. CDs were sampled at 44.1 kHz and 16 bit in the 1980s, and with the garbage analog/digital converters used at the time, they sounded very harsh. This is what I was hearing. I hated CDs and hardly listened to them except in the car. They hurt my ears.

The Linndrum was an electronic drum machine that was used a lot in the 1980s and it also sounded like crap. But it's on countless hit records. "Don't Come Around Here No More" by the late Tom Petty comes to mind. I hated those things and refused to use them.

To produce a good vinyl record requires a very strict and precise process, with a whole chain of very specialized electronic equipment for mastering and cutting the first one, from which all others are cloned. The dynamic range of a vinyl record is very limited, because the bass frequencies as well as excess presence (about 5 kHz) will cause the needle to jump right out of the groove. But this is very desirable for listening because one can hear the softest as well as the loudest passages without having to strain or adjust the volume control. And vinyl mastering imparts warmth.

Today digital music can sound magnificent, because all of the peculiarities and characteristics of the techniques and equipment used for analog recording (unknown and taken for granted back in the day) are very, very well understood and well-modeled in digital software. The fidelity and dynamic range is far better than any analog system can reproduce; however, hardly anyone owns the equipment to attain that fidelity nor would they be able to notice the difference anyway.

The reason this is similar to cooling fins is because fake fins suggest a simplicity and authenticity of a time when air-cooled motorcycles were popular, which just happens to coincide with the golden age of rock and roll. Fins were also popular on cars, as were dual exhausts, in 1955. Neither one adds a single whit to the performance of the vehicle. But the garish fins on the automobiles at the dawning of the supersonic jet age suggested stability, speed, and agility, which is what we were all seeing in fighter and bombers like the F-86 Sabrejet and B-58 Hustler.


The '57 Chevy had fins. My favorite classic car.

The era of motorcycles, fins, scoops, jets, rockets, and rock and roll music was born between 1950 and ended about 1970. The CB1100 captures as authentically as practicable the look and feel of the motorcycles that began to be popular at the very end of that era.


The XB-70 Valkyrie, mid-1960s Cold War bomber.

And there again, music is part of the equation. Engines produce music. Air-cooled engines produce the best music because much of the mechanical clatter can be heard, and it blends with the exhaust note.

The twin pipes are favored by traditionalists for two main reasons:

First, they are stereophonic which creates a pleasant "doubling" of the combustion sounds. (Doubling is a well-known and often-used technique in the recording of popular music, most often applied to guitars and voices, to thicken and spread out the sound).

Second, the twin exhausts suggest jet or rocket effects which seem, on a gut level, to impart just a bit more power or speed to the vehicle.

That's why people buy bikes with those features.

The simplest configuration is a single, well-tuned exhaust, liquid-cooling, and so on but that experience is not "viscerally" satisfying nor is it soulful.

Why our minds and bodies respond to "warmth" "speed" "power" and "authenticity" is something for the adherents of Carl G. Jung to explain.


...whatever that means.

[LongRanger_imp]

I'm still using a 1973 Marantz receiver. It works great. No need to replace it. I will admit that I haven't spun my collection of early-60's Blue Note vinyl for quite some time, but my turntable is still connected and ready for action. Probably could use a new cartridge though.

In the same breath that some bemoan fake fins and fake carbs, one could add spoked wheels. There's no functional reason for manufacturers to continue to offer spokes, but it's what this market segment relates to and expects on their retro-styled bikes (I suppose). No harm, no foul, and like the fins and carbs, they look cool. I'm unaware of any claimed performance gains, but to Guth's point, that's not how these bikes are being marketed.

[emptysea]

Capo is right twice. First time --The music/motorcycle analogy is a poor one and the fact that it took three WAY-long posts to explain it is proof. Second time -- Spotify. There is a bit of a learning curve, but I haven't visited my CD or iTunes library for months.

And I'd like to add one more comment... there's a lot of belittling of Millennials here. I suppose that's because of "Those Darned Kids" Syndrome. My son is a Millennial (interestingly, my daughter who is just 15 months his younger is not). He's a musician and a (retired) motorcyclist. He doesn't want fake air-fins on a motorcycle and does enjoy vinyl recordings, but not exclusively. He would say that there are many many digital recordings that sound as good or better than analog could ever do and I trust his ear. He has an IRA even though he is still in graduate school. I guess it gets my back up when people generalize about Millennials, musicians, or especially Millennial musicians. I feel the same way when someone starts in on how horrible lawyers are when my daughter is studying to become one.

[the Ferret]

Lol ya can't take it personally Sea or someone would be able to offend you about anything. There is a grain of truth in all generalisms and stereotypes, and there are exceptions to every one as well. Not everyone can be pigeon holed.

What I know about music could fit in a thimble with room to spare and about all I can say about all this music explanation is, for me, it's like reading Kevin Cameron explaining how a motorcycle engine works. Waa waa waa waa waa waa (think the sound of an adult talking in a Charlie Brown cartoon). Doesn't mean it's not valuable information, just means I only understand the basic words, all the technical details are lost on me. But that's ok.

[emptysea]

Don't worry. It's not a big deal about the stereotyping.

That was an afterthought that in hindsight should have been omitted. What I should have included, but did not was that this whole music/motorcycle thread is based on Ulvetanna's comment, "It's what Millennials want. They don't have any idea of what actually makes anything function. They like cassette tapes, and vinyl records, and all that junk because certain kinds of old school are very cool. Those are the people buying most stuff now." I should have set aside the insulting portions of this statement and focused on the first sentence. I suppose that it may be what Millennials want; I do not know. What I do know is that neither Triumph nor Honda designed their retro bikes to appeal to Millennials. Most, if not all, the Bonneville ads I have seen feature men over 40 (Gen X or Boomers) or women (of whose age I am not certain, but younger than myself). Honda, as we know, didn't advertise the CB1100 in the US very much, but the ads that I have seen feature older, usually Japanese, men. Honda's own description of the target market for this bike is those people who recall the CBs of the early 70's, which is to say mostly men, many of whom are approaching their early 70's themselves.

So, it is highly unlikely that these "faux" parts on these bikes were added because "it's what Millennials want". If they are added to appeal to a particular market demographic (and I am not conceding that they are), then it is much more likely that it's what GenXers and Boomers want. Oh and by the way, if it also to be assumed that it is the Millennials who like the idea or "look" of analog recordings because it's "cool", then the entire music/motorcycle analogy as presented blows up.

Ferret - I know what you mean about listening to discussions about technical matters that are beyond my comprehension. WGN radio did, maybe still does, do a farm report at noon everyday. I would tune in even though I do not know a thing about farming. They'd go on about fertilizer or seed or the price of pork bellies. Fascinating stuff which I was never able to retain for more than 2 minutes. LOL

[Guth_imp]

Well, if you're not an audiophile then maybe the chosen analogy is not the best. I'm not talking about basic music consumption. I'm talking about actively listening to music for playback accuracy. "High-Fidelity" man, as the kids used to say back in the day. As a general rule, musicians tend to be some of the least demanding individuals when it comes to their musical playback equipment. I don't blame them as the price of decent playback equipment is part of the problem these days. The cost of an iPhone isn't that much more than a really good phono cartridge (and they only go up from there). That's just the cartridge. I still have my old Linn turntable from the 80's and it cost more back then than any iPhone does now. By the time you add amps, preamps, speakers, etc. you could have bought a motorcycle, lol. But guys in pursuit of high-fidelity find a way to justify paying for such systems, just as we were able to convince ourselves that a relatively slow, air-cooled 1140cc, standard motorcycle with few bells and whistles was worth the cost for the experience it provides.

Vinyl records might have limitations when it comes to dynamic range (the difference between soft passages and lound passages), but older recordings took very good advantage of such range. I own around 2,000 albums, the majority of which are more than 30 years old. Most of today's recordings (that happen to be digitally recorded) are so compressed that they just don't sound natural to someone who actually actually pays attention to how live music sounds. Recordings don't have to be made this way, but the industry chooses to do so because this tends to make the overall recording sound more "exciting" to catch someone's attention, but it's not realistic. This works just fine for the masses as most people just don't care, don't notice, or both. When you take those same overly compressed recordings and then transfer them to a vinyl record, there is no benefit at all. The only thing that you've accomplished is that a person is now able to play said recording on their cool new turntable. Which in the case of most turntables bought by young folks today don't even have the same abilities for playback quality as the CD player that they've now abandoned. (It's the motorcycle equivalent of some young guy trading in his CBR250R for a Sym Wolf Classic 150 just for the retro vibe.) But those same young folks will go on and on about how great this all sounds because they've been convinced that vinyl sounds better. Vinyl can sound better, but there's no guarantee that it will. You've got to have the right vinyl and the right playback system. MTC, I'll give your kid the benefit of the doubt here and trust that he knows all this stuff.

That's what I'm referring to in this case. If Triumph were being honest, they would have said something along the lines of "we've made our fuel injection look like carbs, added some fins to the cylinders and tucked away the water-cooling where folks have a harder time seeing it so that you'll be seen rocking the cool old-school vibe!" That's honesty, but most boomers aren't going to be swayed by that. Trying to convince people that those fins are really anything other than aesthetic as Capo noted is no different than the young guys talking about how much better their new vinyl records sound. In the case of the typical young guys I'm referring to, it's simply ignorance. In the case of Triumph it's marketing baloney. But hey, it does indeed sell, just like the turntables and vinyl records that so many of the young guys are buying these days.

Ulvetanna, I'll give you a different analogy. I don't hardly play my electric guitar anymore. I ended up giving away my 1964 Fender tube amp to my brother as I knew he would truly appreciate it. Now a company could build a solid-state amp and then stick a few light bulbs in the head so that they would glow like tubes. Then they could market such an amp as having "tube sound". Plenty of guys wouldn't know the difference. But if I had sent something like that to my brother I don't think he would have been nearly as appreciative. Fake tubes/fake fins done just for looks and marketing appeal, same difference. Bugs me, but most guys just don't care about this kind of stuff anymore. So be it.

LongRanger, those old Marantz receivers get the job done. They even had decent phono stages. I've got one out in our cabin, just because I like the way it looks. I don't have a turntable hooked up out there because I don't really sit down to listen to music. I just use it for background music every now and then so I'll just hook up iPhone to the auxiliary port. If those old original Blue-Note records are still in decent shape then you've got a relative goldmine on your hands. The prices for those slipped beyond my comfort zone about 20 years ago. Consider me envious.

[the Ferret]

Btw I'm in the same boat over on the tps evaluating ii issue thread too. I know they are disucssing important stuff but it sounds like waaa waaa waaa, waa waa waa to me. Makes no sense at all lol.

Glad those guys can undertand it though.

[Ulvetanna_imp]

Don't worry. It's not a big deal about the stereotyping.

That was an afterthought that in hindsight should have been omitted. What I should have included, but did not was that this whole music/motorcycle thread is based on Ulvetanna's comment, "It's what Millennials want. They don't have any idea of what actually makes anything function. They like cassette tapes, and vinyl records, and all that junk because certain kinds of old school are very cool. Those are the people buying most stuff now." I should have set aside the insulting portions of this statement and focused on the first sentence. I suppose that it may be what Millennials want; I do not know. What I do know is that neither Triumph nor Honda designed their retro bikes to appeal to Millennials. Most, if not all, the Bonneville ads I have seen feature men over 40 (Gen X or Boomers) or women (of whose age I am not certain, but younger than myself). Honda, as we know, didn't advertise the CB1100 in the US very much, but the ads that I have seen feature older, usually Japanese, men. Honda's own description of the target market for this bike is those people who recall the CBs of the early 70's, which is to say mostly men, many of whom are approaching their early 70's themselves.

So, it is highly unlikely that these "faux" parts on these bikes were added because "it's what Millennials want". If they are added to appeal to a particular market demographic (and I am not conceding that they are), then it is much more likely that it's what GenXers and Boomers want. Oh and by the way, if it also to be assumed that it is the Millennials who like the idea or "look" of analog recordings because it's "cool", then the entire music/motorcycle analogy as presented blows up.

Ferret - I know what you mean about listening to discussions about technical matters that are beyond my comprehension. WGN radio did, maybe still does, do a farm report at noon everyday. I would tune in even though I do not know a thing about farming. They'd go on about fertilizer or seed or the price of pork bellies. Fascinating stuff which I was never able to retain for more than 2 minutes. LOL

We are experiencing thread drift. There was another thread discussing the failure of Cycle World, Sport Rider, and so on. They failed to understand what makes Millennials tick. It's a social-media-driven world out there now. So, there's nothing insulting intended to be in my comment. It's accurate. From a purely marketing assessment, the comment is accurate.

My explanation of the change in music from analog to digital and back to analog is well-understood in the music production community; I wrote it in response to Guth's post about it.

Well, if you're not an audiophile then maybe the chosen analogy is not the best. I'm not talking about basic music consumption. I'm talking about actively listening to music for playback accuracy. "High-Fidelity" man, as the kids used to say back in the day. As a general rule, musicians tend to be some of the least demanding individuals when it comes to their musical playback equipment. I don't blame them as the price of decent playback equipment is part of the problem these days. The cost of an iPhone isn't that much more than a really good phono cartridge (and they only go up from there). That's just the cartridge. I still have my old Linn turntable from the 80's and it cost more back then than any iPhone does now. By the time you add amps, preamps, speakers, etc. you could have bought a motorcycle, lol. But guys in pursuit of high-fidelity find a way to justify paying for such systems, just as we were able to convince ourselves that a relatively slow, air-cooled 1140cc, standard motorcycle with few bells and whistles was worth the cost for the experience it provides.

Vinyl records might have limitations when it comes to dynamic range (the difference between soft passages and lound passages), but older recordings took very good advantage of such range. I own around 2,000 albums, the majority of which are more than 30 years old. Most of today's recordings (that happen to be digitally recorded) are so compressed that they just don't sound natural to someone who actually actually pays attention to how live music sounds. Recordings don't have to be made this way, but the industry chooses to do so because this tends to make the overall recording sound more "exciting" to catch someone's attention, but it's not realistic. This works just fine for the masses as most people just don't care, don't notice, or both. When you take those same overly compressed recordings and then transfer them to a vinyl record, there is no benefit at all. The only thing that you've accomplished is that a person is now able to play said recording on their cool new turntable. Which in the case of most turntables bought by young folks today don't even have the same abilities for playback quality as the CD player that they've now abandoned. (It's the motorcycle equivalent of some young guy trading in his CBR250R for a Sym Wolf Classic 150 just for the retro vibe.) But those same young folks will go on and on about how great this all sounds because they've been convinced that vinyl sounds better. Vinyl can sound better, but there's no guarantee that it will. You've got to have the right vinyl and the right playback system. MTC, I'll give your kid the benefit of the doubt here and trust that he knows all this stuff.

That's what I'm referring to in this case. If Triumph were being honest, they would have said something along the lines of "we've made our fuel injection look like carbs, added some fins to the cylinders and tucked away the water-cooling where folks have a harder time seeing it so that you'll be seen rocking the cool old-school vibe!" That's honesty, but most boomers aren't going to be swayed by that. Trying to convince people that those fins are really anything other than aesthetic as Capo noted is no different than the young guys talking about how much better their new vinyl records sound. In the case of the typical young guys I'm referring to, it's simply ignorance. In the case of Triumph it's marketing baloney. But hey, it does indeed sell, just like the turntables and vinyl records that so many of the young guys are buying these days.

Ulvetanna, I'll give you a different analogy. I don't hardly play my electric guitar anymore. I ended up giving away my 1964 Fender tube amp to my brother as I knew he would truly appreciate it. Now a company could build a solid-state amp and then stick a few light bulbs in the head so that they would glow like tubes. Then they could market such an amp as having "tube sound". Plenty of guys wouldn't know the difference. But if I had sent something like that to my brother I don't think he would have been nearly as appreciative. Fake tubes/fake fins done just for looks and marketing appeal, same difference. Bugs me, but most guys just don't care about this kind of stuff anymore. So be it.

LongRanger, those old Marantz receivers get the job done. They even had decent phono stages. I've got one out in our cabin, just because I like the way it looks. I don't have a turntable hooked up out there because I don't really sit down to listen to music. I just use it for background music every now and then so I'll just hook up iPhone to the auxiliary port. If those old original Blue-Note records are still in decent shape then you've got a relative goldmine on your hands. The prices for those slipped beyond my comfort zone about 20 years ago. Consider me envious.

Boss, you are preaching the gospel to the choir here. Literally.

Without getting into all of it and writing a book, I go back a ways, to 1970, when I first started playing and listening to electric music.

We are ABSOLUTELY ON THE SAME PAGE here.

Well, if you're not an audiophile then maybe the chosen analogy is not the best. I'm not talking about basic music consumption. I'm talking about actively listening to music for playback accuracy. "High-Fidelity" man, as the kids used to say back in the day. As a general rule, musicians tend to be some of the least demanding individuals when it comes to their musical playback equipment. I don't blame them as the price of decent playback equipment is part of the problem these days. The cost of an iPhone isn't that much more than a really good phono cartridge (and they only go up from there). That's just the cartridge. I still have my old Linn turntable from the 80's and it cost more back then than any iPhone does now. By the time you add amps, preamps, speakers, etc. you could have bought a motorcycle, lol. But guys in pursuit of high-fidelity find a way to justify paying for such systems, just as we were able to convince ourselves that a relatively slow, air-cooled 1140cc, standard motorcycle with few bells and whistles was worth the cost for the experience it provides.

Vinyl records might have limitations when it comes to dynamic range (the difference between soft passages and lound passages), but older recordings took very good advantage of such range. I own around 2,000 albums, the majority of which are more than 30 years old. Most of today's recordings (that happen to be digitally recorded) are so compressed that they just don't sound natural to someone who actually actually pays attention to how live music sounds. Recordings don't have to be made this way, but the industry chooses to do so because this tends to make the overall recording sound more "exciting" to catch someone's attention, but it's not realistic. This works just fine for the masses as most people just don't care, don't notice, or both. When you take those same overly compressed recordings and then transfer them to a vinyl record, there is no benefit at all. The only thing that you've accomplished is that a person is now able to play said recording on their cool new turntable. Which in the case of most turntables bought by young folks today don't even have the same abilities for playback quality as the CD player that they've now abandoned. (It's the motorcycle equivalent of some young guy trading in his CBR250R for a Sym Wolf Classic 150 just for the retro vibe.) But those same young folks will go on and on about how great this all sounds because they've been convinced that vinyl sounds better. Vinyl can sound better, but there's no guarantee that it will. You've got to have the right vinyl and the right playback system. MTC, I'll give your kid the benefit of the doubt here and trust that he knows all this stuff.

That's what I'm referring to in this case. If Triumph were being honest, they would have said something along the lines of "we've made our fuel injection look like carbs, added some fins to the cylinders and tucked away the water-cooling where folks have a harder time seeing it so that you'll be seen rocking the cool old-school vibe!" That's honesty, but most boomers aren't going to be swayed by that. Trying to convince people that those fins are really anything other than aesthetic as Capo noted is no different than the young guys talking about how much better their new vinyl records sound. In the case of the typical young guys I'm referring to, it's simply ignorance. In the case of Triumph it's marketing baloney. But hey, it does indeed sell, just like the turntables and vinyl records that so many of the young guys are buying these days.

Ulvetanna, I'll give you a different analogy. I don't hardly play my electric guitar anymore. I ended up giving away my 1964 Fender tube amp to my brother as I knew he would truly appreciate it. Now a company could build a solid-state amp and then stick a few light bulbs in the head so that they would glow like tubes. Then they could market such an amp as having "tube sound". Plenty of guys wouldn't know the difference. But if I had sent something like that to my brother I don't think he would have been nearly as appreciative. Fake tubes/fake fins done just for looks and marketing appeal, same difference. Bugs me, but most guys just don't care about this kind of stuff anymore. So be it.

LongRanger, those old Marantz receivers get the job done. They even had decent phono stages. I've got one out in our cabin, just because I like the way it looks. I don't have a turntable hooked up out there because I don't really sit down to listen to music. I just use it for background music every now and then so I'll just hook up iPhone to the auxiliary port. If those old original Blue-Note records are still in decent shape then you've got a relative goldmine on your hands. The prices for those slipped beyond my comfort zone about 20 years ago. Consider me envious.

You know about Line 6, right? Digital modeling guitar amps? They sound like crap. Then they started doing a hybrid with a 100W tube power amp somehow thinking that would warm it up. LOLOL!

Capo is right twice. First time --The music/motorcycle analogy is a poor one and the fact that it took three WAY-long posts to explain it is proof. Second time -- Spotify. There is a bit of a learning curve, but I haven't visited my CD or iTunes library for months.

And I'd like to add one more comment... there's a lot of belittling of Millennials here. I suppose that's because of "Those Darned Kids" Syndrome. My son is a Millennial (interestingly, my daughter who is just 15 months his younger is not). He's a musician and a (retired) motorcyclist. He doesn't want fake air-fins on a motorcycle and does enjoy vinyl recordings, but not exclusively. He would say that there are many many digital recordings that sound as good or better than analog could ever do and I trust his ear. He has an IRA even though he is still in graduate school. I guess it gets my back up when people generalize about Millennials, musicians, or especially Millennial musicians. I feel the same way when someone starts in on how horrible lawyers are when my daughter is studying to become one.

I said exactly that in my [url=http://cb1100forum.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=12164&pid=195886#pid195886]Doctoral Thesis On the Relationship of Vinyl Records to Cooling Fins:

Today digital music can sound magnificent, because all of the peculiarities and characteristics of the techniques and equipment used for analog recording (unknown and taken for granted back in the day) are very, very well understood and well-modeled in digital software. The fidelity and dynamic range is far better than any analog system can reproduce; however, hardly anyone owns the equipment to attain that fidelity nor would they be able to notice the difference anyway.

Capo is right twice. First time --The music/motorcycle analogy is a poor one and the fact that it took three WAY-long posts to explain it is proof. Second time -- Spotify. There is a bit of a learning curve, but I haven't visited my CD or iTunes library for months.

And I'd like to add one more comment... there's a lot of belittling of Millennials here. I suppose that's because of "Those Darned Kids" Syndrome. My son is a Millennial (interestingly, my daughter who is just 15 months his younger is not). He's a musician and a (retired) motorcyclist. He doesn't want fake air-fins on a motorcycle and does enjoy vinyl recordings, but not exclusively. He would say that there are many many digital recordings that sound as good or better than analog could ever do and I trust his ear. He has an IRA even though he is still in graduate school. I guess it gets my back up when people generalize about Millennials, musicians, or especially Millennial musicians. I feel the same way when someone starts in on how horrible lawyers are when my daughter is studying to become one.

That's terrific, and the exception to the rule. Smart man.