2. analog
  3. 164879-148308

The Lifespan of an LP?

How many times can one play a new vinyl lp before the sound noticeably degrades? For the purpose of the exercise, assume one takes decent care of the record and has a properly set up and maintained, good quality deck and stylus. My system has been taking quantum leaps in quality over the last three years and I find myself buying more mint and near-mint vintage  records on Discogs and audiophile remastered records from MoFi etc. Thanks!
heilbron

Showing 2 responses by tomcy6

tomcy6's avatar
tomcy6
2,623 posts
 
The Library of Congress did a study of archival audio storage in the 1980s. In this study they concluded that laminated media like tape and CDs had lifespans that were measured in years and a couple of decades, depending on storage.

Ralph, The CD is about to turn 40 next year and so far there have been very few reports of CDs failing.  I know that I have CDs from the 80s that still look and play just fine.  So I think we can scrap that LOC study.
tomcy6's avatar
tomcy6
2,623 posts
 
?? I've had a few of them fail for no good reason.

1+ Ralph, I have had plenty of bad CDs.

I'm thinking that the return rate of CDs is probably lower than that of LPs.

In this study they concluded that laminated media like tape and CDs had lifespans that were measured in years and a couple of decades, depending on storage.

It's not clear from the line above exactly what the study concluded about CD lifespan, but if they meant that CDs had a lifespan of 25 years, they were way low.  If CDs from 1996 and before were failing in large numbers we would be hearing a LOT more about it.
More to discover