New JAES paper on tracing distortions

[Dub Studio]

This is my point, they don’t need to put “cocaine free” on the bottle because even though it used to contain coca leaves it doesn’t any more, and nobody would assume it does.

I agree, the initial use of the word acetate was misleading, but by now acetate and lacquer are used so interchangeably (as evidenced by Larry’s book to mention just one example but there are many others) that everybody understands this. Hence why the word acetate made it into the paper and hence why nobody is wondering what the author meant by it.

I think for this to be seen as a meaningful correction, there would need to be some sort of ambiguity and I just don’t think there is. Does the word acetate hinder our understanding of the paper, or cause confusion or ambiguity? Would the word lacquer help us to understand it better? I am not convinced.

The word lacquer does sometimes help to disambiguate, for example when comparing dubs and masters, but not in this paper. The author does not need to make the distinction, because the article is not about dubs v masters per se.

I am not saying it would be wrong to use the word lacquer in the paper, but I find acetate to be perfectly acceptable. As a catch-all term for cellulose-nitrate covered discs, it can be used too.

Incidentally, it’s very hard to find examples of people using the term “lacquer dub” or “dub lacquer” (each of those search terms yields just over 1000 hits on google) so its unlikely to be used as a catch-all term any time soon.

Yes, I know the author is talking about masters, but if we frown upon acetate as a catch-all term, we have to find another one to replace it, and currently lacquer is just not doing the job.

We will not be struck down by lightening for using the word acetate. Likewise saying swarf instead of chip, or styluses instead of stylii

[boogievan]

This is my point, they don’t need to put “cocaine free” on the bottle because even though it used to contain coca leaves it doesn’t any more, and nobody would assume it does.

As most people who were born after 1886, I had heard about Coca-cola before I knew what coca leaves and kola nuts were. It sounded fine - especially as mere sounds. Real, fake, or merely onomatopœia, Coca-cola® is its registered trademark. It, therefore, doesn't matter to us whether or not it ever contained those items. (...though it did contain them.) Whereas, lacquers have never contained acetate, nor did cellulose acetates ever stand a chance in the nickel sulfamate baths used for forming metal records, and neither term is a trademark. So, their usage will either be accurate or 'jive' or false. I welcome the 'jive' use of 'acetate' (= instantaneous record). I'm striving, here (in this thread), to correct the false use of those terms. The revised term, 'acetate master record', would be true if it meant the designated polyvinyl acetate pressing (or cellulose acetate dub?), that's used as the 'master' (i.e., 'source program') disk, during a turntable-to-lathe transfer to (a) lacquer.

...now acetate and lacquer are used so interchangeably (as evidenced by Larry’s book to mention just one example...)...

Uncle Larry's book no longer contains that word, there, because, as you can see, he revised it.
Every pressing plant in the world asks for lacquers to be shipped, and not 'acetates'.
The terms are not used interchangeably by the adept.

I think for this to be seen as a meaningful correction, there would need to be some sort of ambiguity and I just don’t think there is. Does the word acetate hinder our understanding of the paper, or cause confusion or ambiguity? Would the word lacquer help us to understand it better? I am not convinced.

There wasn't ambiguity that the usage was wrong. There is no scenario in which an acetate could be used to master a vinyl.
AussieOzborn didn't seek clarification, because he already knew it was wrong.
The word, 'chisel' isn't ambiguous, either. Both are simply incorrect in terms of scholarly exactitude as well as professional parlance. Yet the micropoint stylus is closer to being a chisel (when wielded by a stereo cutting head that can do vertical and diagonal impressing, in addition to engraving) than an acetate is to being master blank.

The word lacquer does sometimes help to disambiguate, for example when comparing dubs and masters, but not in this paper. The author does not need to make the distinction, because the article is not about dubs v masters per se.

Au contraire. The word, 'lacquer', retains ambiguity.
According to Apollo, and Public Record (who use the term, 'Recording discs' instead of 'dubs', or 'instantaneous records'), dubs and masters are, both, 'lacquer' records.

https://www.pbr.co.jp/master-en
"Master disc (one side)
specifications: 14 inches (35 cm), 10 inches (25 cm)

Recording disc (both sides)
Specifications: 12 inches (30 cm)"


https://www.apollomasters.com/
"Apollo Masters manufactures the highest quality lacquer record discs."


The OP doesn't need to distinguish between 'dubs' and 'masters' because, in his linked paper, he's talking about the blanks used for making vinyls, only (not, 'instantaneous records', which is how we're using the term, 'dubs', here...) and this is why he needs kindly to refrain from writing, 'acetate'' in the entire paper.

I am not saying it would be wrong to use the word lacquer in the paper, but I find acetate to be perfectly acceptable. As a catch-all term for cellulose-nitrate covered discs, it can be used too.

'

If the author had added the phrase, '...as they have often been miscalled,' I'd welcome the misusage, too.

Incidentally, it’s very hard to find examples of people using the term “lacquer dub” or “dub lacquer” (each of those search terms yields just over 1000 hits on google) so its unlikely to be used as a catch-all term any time soon.

When I forced Google to search only for 'lacquer dub', I found a Prince "ACETATE master lacquer dub plate test pressing MINT."
It turned out to be a lacquer - and a dub plate - only. (12"/45)

Yes, I know the author is talking about masters, but if we frown upon acetate as a catch-all term, we have to find another one to replace it, and currently lacquer is just not doing the job.

It's doing the job for the world's only manufacturer of blank cutting disks (Public Record).

According to Robert K. Morrison, 16" LP mastercutter for Picto-Soud, manager of AMPEX Standard Tape Laboratory, and founder of Standard Tape Laboratory, 'acetate' was never a catch-all term, except for those who didn't understand the history of its use and/or the formulation used to coat aluminum substrates, which contained no actual 'acetate'.

We will not be struck down by lightening for using the word acetate. Likewise saying swarf instead of chip, or styluses instead of stylii

As long as that's 'styli', with just one 'i', innit?
(In the land of the bi-furcated stylus (for playing a stamper), the 1-i'd 'styli' for cutting the 'grandmother' records are masters.)

Swarf is not an incorrect word.
From Wikipedia: "The word is cognate to Old English sweorfan (“to rub, scour; to file”)."
It's not standard, here, in Conus, but there's ambiguity over what swarf and 'chip' is made of, depending on the the kind of blank, innit?
Acetate is now, and has always been, incorrect, worldwide (unless they were talking about cellulose acetate blanks. which are not suitable for processing at a lab). Again, if we're in Wolfman Jack mode, talkin' jive over at CBS or RKO, I shouldn't mind suggestions that acetates be cut so that we can take them home and play them. But not at the AES! 0;


- Bøøgievan_pa-Trollin'

[Dub Bull]

These images are from active ebay auctions for 78 rpm acetates:





Notice the root beer color - like 'safety film' ...

- Fr. José

[vladan3101]

For what it is worth, ran into this passage on https://www.rarerecords.net/record-info/acetates-and-test-pressings/ :
"While acetate pressings are usually referred to by record sellers and collectors as 'acetates,' the term used to describe them within the industry is 'lacquers.' That term makes more sense, as there isn’t any acetate used in the production of these records. For purposes of this article, however, we’ll call them 'acetates,' as that’s the popular term used in the record collecting world."

[Dub Studio]

We should be wary of calling words “correct” and “incorrect”. It is perhaps more useful to think of words as having “currency” or lack thereof. Neologisms are created all the time, either by accident or design, and if they are used enough, they become part of our language, whether we like it or not.

The usage of a word may make logical sense, or it may not, but that’s not how we decide whether it has currency. The origin of a word is nothing more than a footnote in the etymology of that word, but it does not infer a greater validity than a word whose origin is more obscure, or perhaps counterintuitive.

By and large, language is as language does, so you are on the right track if you seek out the meaning of a word by using known examples, as Boogievan / Dub Bull has done.

However, you cannot use the same method to demonstrate that a word is incorrect because that is like proving a negative. You would have to show that the word acetate has never been used to describe a master disc in order to prove that it has no currency.

The other alternative in this case is to turn to experts for clarification. The problem with this approach is twofold.

Firstly, you are making an assumption about authority. When I said “according to whom” I was not asking who carried out the supposed correction, I was asking at whose behest that correction needed to be made. I still don't have an answer to that.

Secondly, the problem with claiming to be an authority on a word is that you will be called upon to back up your reasoning, and that is where the problems really start. It is very hard to give a definitive reason as to why one word should be used over another without resorting to giving examples, thus rendering your authority moot. There is a famous example of this which I will outline below*.

In any case, as far as I am aware, no such authority exists. The closest I think we have is perhaps the AES, and they not only published this paper which uses the word acetate to describe master discs, but they have also published at least 3 more**, quite correctly as far as I am concerned.

Good learned people have used the word acetate to describe master discs, and to suggest that these people didn’t understand the history of its usage, or were talking jive, is way off the mark.

Some good arguments have been made in this thread about the usage of the word lacquer, but I don’t see the point in addressing them because I am not the one claiming a word is incorrect, I am merely pointing out the absurdity of arguing that lacquer is a stronger candidate based on its physical qualities, or some perceived authority. That is not how language works (at least not always).

* an example of the problem with linguistic prescription (aside from the seven paragraphs of criticism on the theory itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription) is the case of the RAE Spanish dictionary that claimed to “cultivate and stabilise the purity and elegance of the Castilian language, removing all the errors in words, modes of speech, and syntax that have been introduced by ignorance, vain affectation, carelessness, and the excessive freedom to innovate. It will be used to distinguish foreign words, phrases and constructions from our own, the outdated from the current, the low and rustic from the courtly and elevated, burlesque from seriousness, and, finally, the accurate from the inaccurate”.

I think you can see where this is going… they came under criticism for some racist definitions, which they initially refused to change, claiming "we simply photograph the landscape; we do not create it” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diccionario_de_la_lengua_espa%C3%B1ola

Essentially, when challenged, they had to either admit to being racist, or fall back on linguistic description instead (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_description) thus renderring any authority moot.

Personally, I wouldn’t want the job of policing language, but they asked for it, and so do those that claim a word is incorrect.

** I did a quick search on the AES site for papers with the word acetate and found at least 3 that seem to be using acetate as a kind of catch-all term for cellulose nitrate discs from the papers I could access. I wouldn’t describe Duane H Cooper, Dieter Braschoss or the Westrex Corporation as jive in their language usage or lacking in understanding of the subject matter.

- Compensation for Tracing and Tracking Error, Duane H Cooper, “acetate lacquer”.

- Development and Application of a New tracing Simulator, Dieter Baschoss, “Demands of cutterhead, stylus, and acetate blank”

- A moving Coil Disk Recorder, C. C. Davis, Western Corporation, “acetate playbacks of LP recordings”

It really is OK to use the word acetate here. There is ample evidence of its usage, and the closest thing to an authority that we currently have seem OK with it.

[Dub Studio]

For what it is worth, ran into this passage on https://www.rarerecords.net/record-info/acetates-and-test-pressings/ :
"While acetate pressings are usually referred to by record sellers and collectors as 'acetates,' the term used to describe them within the industry is 'lacquers.' That term makes more sense, as there isn’t any acetate used in the production of these records. For purposes of this article, however, we’ll call them 'acetates,' as that’s the popular term used in the record collecting world."

There is no rule that says we should use the word that makes "more sense". In fact, it doesn't need to make any intrinsic sense at all. Consider "soap opera". Eastenders is certainly no opera, and it has nothing to do with soap.

As long as it can be understood to mean what the author intends it to mean, it's OK.

[vladan3101]

Regarding the nomenclature, at least in the old times, ran into the "NAB Audio Recording and Reproducing Standards for Disk Recording and Reproducing" from 1964, available at https://www.richardhess.com/tape/history/NAB/NAB_Disc_Standard_1964_formatted_text_and_graphics.pdf. It includes a glossary of terms and definitions and on p.10 has this entry:

ACETATE DISC-An acetate disc is a recording disc consisting of a solid substrate coated with a plasticized cellulose nitrate lacquer.

Let me see if I can add a snapshot here.

[Phinster]

this seems to be obsessing with what lacquers are called...this paper might have some interest back in the 70's ,but I don't think now...

[vladan3101]

this seems to be obsessing with what lacquers are called...this paper might have some interest back in the 70's ,but I don't think now...

The problem here was that several well-established forum members felt the term "acetate" was so wrong that a correction should be published in JAES (which is not unheard of but is very rare). I did further research and documented findings, mainly to justify why I would not be submitting any corrections myself, at least for now.

I am sorry if you found my part of this discussion obsessive, but quite a few forum threads go into details that many would consider hair-splitting (so I stopped following some of them; it is an option anybody can exercise).

I was more intrigued by your comment about the 70s, however. Do you think that the tracing distortion is not a problem now? Or that it is better understood now than it was in the 70s?

[Dub Studio]

this seems to be obsessing with what lacquers are called...this paper might have some interest back in the 70's ,but I don't think now...

Yes the discussion got derailed, and it became about semantics instead of content, but that doesn't mean the paper itself is at fault. As with a lot of content on the net, people only comment if they feel they need to. That's not a reflection on the content, but on the person posting the reply.

This paper is as relevant now as it's ever been IMHO, and I look forward to giving it a proper read.

[Greg Reierson]

This paper is as relevant now as it's ever been IMHO, and I look forward to giving it a proper read.

Definitely! Distortion on playback is one of the most important things for all of us to understand. This is especially true in an era of cheap tables, conical styli, a young consumer base with little understanding of proper table set-up, etc.

[Steve E.]

I think the relevant points about common English language term usage have been made, and graciously received by the author. Can this thread be redirected, going forward, to the actual intended content of the paper?

Thank you! And congrats, vladan3101!

[Phinster]

This paper is as relevant now as it's ever been IMHO, and I look forward to giving it a proper read.

Definitely! Distortion on playback is one of the most important things for all of us to understand. This is especially true in an era of cheap tables, conical styli, a young consumer base with little understanding of proper table set-up, etc.

Very true ! With a properly set up deck and high compliance and 'supertrack' pickups such as the Shure V15 range and provided the record is cut at some sort of
sensible level and not heading towards the center hole,playback distortion is hard to recognize with out doing comparisons between the source and the record..
Any cutter will tell you that....