Vinyl's Revival Is Now a Phenomenon On Both Sides of the Atlantic 278
New submitter journovampire sends this report about the resurgence of vinyl:
Vinyl album sales smashed records on both sides of the Atlantic in 2014, as a format that recently seemed on its last legs hit astonishing new heights. ...n the UK in 2014, vinyl album sales totaled of 1.3m – six times bigger than its tally just five years earlier (2009). In fact, 2014 represented the most vinyl albums sales in the UK since 1995 – nearly 20 years ago. In the U.S., vinyl sales have quadrupled in the past five years, narrowly missing out on a 10m sales milestone in 2014. Amazingly, the year’s 9.2m vinyl sales haul is the biggest since Nielsen Soundscan records began in 1993 – by some distance.
Can't DRM or Root Kit Vinyl (Score:5, Funny)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
peace out...
Re:Can't DRM or Root Kit Vinyl (Score:4, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
peace out...
How does watermarking a vinyl record identify who bought it, when they find the MP3 all over the Internet, again?
This is like the idiots who wantGPS in everything, not understand that GPS only allows the *thing* to *know where it is*; it does nothing for allow *you* to *know where the thing is*, unless it gets on a communications networks and *tells you*.
Good luck finding whoever ripped that MP3 from the vinyl record, and then sent it to his cousin in New Jersey, where it ends up in a used record store.
Re:Can't DRM or Root Kit Vinyl (Score:4, Funny)
Does it matter?
The distributor has proof (from their own sales records) that record number 12345 was sold to Firsthand Music Stores, Inc., who (as part of their sales agreement) recorded that you, T. Lambert, purchased record number 12345. The fine print on the record sleeve outlines your license agreement (that you agreed to by opening the sleeve), which says that you will not make unauthorized copies or sell the record to anyone who will.
As far as the courts are concerned, the distributor has proof that you were involved in the illegal copying, and since you agreed to the terms of use, you accepted liability. Either you provide your own records to pass the blame on to someone else, or you take the blame.
(As far as I know, no cases have actually confirmed this hypothetical chain of events, but I also don't know of any cases ruling it out, either)
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Also, watermarking each individual record would mean cutting the master each for each record would be extremely expensive. The main factor that reduces cost for disc records (and why they won over cylinders) is that it is easy to mass produce them (and in those days it was not possible to stamp cylinders). If you make a master for each record then it would be much more expensive to produce than tape (including the cost of reel to reel tape still in production).
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If you were to copy your Vinyl you will need to use the Analog copy method, which you can do with every other form of digital music.
I can take music off my phone, plug in the headphone jack to a Tape Recorder or to one of many digitial recorders. Then you can copy your music from one media to an other.
However being analog every copy will be degraded, so each copy of a copy will have limited sharing resource. Vinyl being all Analog makes it the perfect DRM.
Re:Can't DRM or Root Kit Vinyl (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but if you copy vinyl onto any other medium you risk losing that warm, rich sound you get from telling other hipsters how fragrant your farts smell.
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only if you run it through a DAC, rather than an amplifier that uses vacuum tubes. do you even audiophile? next thing you'll tell me is that you don't use directional Ethernet to ensure proper delivery and flow of electrons :(
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Then came the soft vinyl 33 rpm albums, followed by even softer vinyl ones. DRM was inherent in that they didn't last unless you were obsessive in the care and handling.
I hate record companies.
Nah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course you do have room for better album art and liner detail/notes, and you just can't knock what came with Cheech and Chong's Big Bambu, truly a watermark event in consumer relations.
And don't even get me started on the tube mythologies.
What this boils down to in the audio sense, in all cases except for two exceptions -- when you're playing vinyl you simply don't have a digital source for or when the digital source has been compressed and the vinyl hasn't -- is that consumers have been duped by Audiophile mythology. Badly duped.
There's every reason to have a turntable in your system, as high-performance as your budget can stand, so you can manage those two exceptions. No point in depriving yourself of something just because there's no adequate digital version. But barring those use cases, if your ears are actually working, you want a CD or better.
signed (Musician, music lover, engineer, recording engineer), me.
PS: You want to hear what a CD is actually capable of (and so also learn what crappy recording techniques and mastering houses have been cheating you out of), go get yourself a few CDs from TELARC [concordmusicgroup.com], and listen on a good system. No vinyl on the planet can even come close -- and that's just how it should be. Why don't all CDs (and up) sound like that? The vast majority of it can be attributed to bad recording practice and far too much compression (but I repeat myself.) Google "Loudness wars" and learn the ins and outs. It's both fascinating and sad.
PPS: Not associated with TELARC, except they've gotten a lot of my money already, and are going to get more. :)
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Or I may want a reel tape, played on a tape deck that has vacuum tubes.
Yes, I fully understand that tubes have worse specs than transistors. A couple of tape recorders that I have (that use tubes) are objectively worse than my transistor tape decks. However, listening to older music (like the Beatles) is much more enjoyable on the tube devices, the sound is "different". At the same time, if I want to record a more modern song I'll use one of my transistor tape decks.
And yes, I am sure that with enough DSPs
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If your're playing anything under 15 IPS then it's going to be muddy.
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19cm/s is good enough for me. In some cases even 9.5cm/s is good enough.
Damnit, I knew this would happen. ok... (Score:5, Informative)
It shouldn't be. Not unless either your tube amp, or your transistor amp, in a word, sucks, anyway.
Tube amps and transistor amps differ from each other in sound reproduction not at all in the linear zone used to reproduce music. A tube amp may have a slightly higher noise floor (and then again, it may not... but really low noise tube amps will cost ya.)
Where tube and transistor amps differ significantly (meaning, to your ear) are in what happens when you drive them so hard that they can no longer linearly reproduce the signal you're feeding them. A naive transistor amp will hard clip, generating a most unpleasant bunch of harmonics, along with a distorted version of the original signal. A tube amp (given an adequate power supply) will clip softly (by comparison), rounding off the signal instead of cutting the tops into flatlines or droopy reverse trapezoids, and this is much easier on the ear.
Now here is the thing: Anyone who likes music, much less loves it, would never, and I seriously mean never, not just "mostly wouldn't", manage music reproduction in such a way as to have our tube or transistor amplifiers distort. Because the second we do so, differences notwithstanding, the music would have to sound better to reach up through the resulting dreck to the standard of "sounding like shit."
So tube/transistor, difference meme, WTF? This WTF: For a musician, playing a single instrument, and usually that means an instrument producing a relatively simple waveform, the tube distortion *does* add interest (think electric blues guitar for the classic example), and so for the musician, the tube amp is a tool which does indeed get used in its distorted regimes.
But when that sound gets to YOU, the very last thing you would EVER want to do is add MORE distortion to it. You'll have some, because no sound production system is distortion free (the speakers are the worst culprit, followed by the stylus if you use vinyl) but man, you want that to be as near not-a-damn-bit-more as you can manage. Otherwise, your ear will shit in your auditory cortex and crown it with audio battery acid. Hate and discontent everywhere in your mind.
So, no. 1000 times no. Tube amps sound like transistor amps in hifi setups unless someone has completely screwed up your installation, or your ears.
Having gone that far, some caveats: That noise floor thing I mentioned, that's one. Lousy tube amps often hiss like angry snakes. If so, get rid of that POS (or at least try new tubes, and/or have someone replace the capacitors and old carbon resistors in your "classic" pride and joy.) Next, damping factor: For bass, a transistor amp may do a lot better, depending on your speaker systems. This is because transformer coupled outputs from a tube amp (these are typical) can't control the inductive kickback from a moving coil speaker as precisely and decisively as a direct coupled transistor amp can. However, from the tube days, there are speaker systems that were designed with this in mind, and which are extremely well behaved re inductive kickback, and so the end result is similar. This is a multi-variable issue (amp+speaker), and one that takes some knowledge to waltz around satisfactorily. So there's that. Finally, tubes are more likely to be microphonic; in a really high power system, that can cause feedback, which is intolerable; but the (good?) news is, there are very few hifi tube systems with that kind of whip-ass.
You like tube amps, I have no argument with you. I like them too, and I own some great ones. Plus, they glow in the dark, which appeals to my batlike nature. :) But when you say they sound different or better, just, no. Not unless something's been done very wrong, or something is broken.
If you want primo sound reproduction, the place to put your do
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The old tube tape recorder [narod.ru] I mentioned is a low quality device, probably even for its time. And yes, the Beatles and similar (essentially, the music that was produced and originally released as mono) sound better for me with the added distortion and limited frequency range. Maybe because it was mastered with a device like mine in mind (since it is similar to what people would have used to play their brand new records and tapes) maybe it's because I like the "different" sound for some music.
On the other hand
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Yeah, can't help you there. Was just trying to head off the audiophile tube argument at the pass.
What you're dealing with, I think, would be fairly characterized as things sounding like you're accustomed to hearing them sound, which pleases you, and there isn't squat I can say about that unless your actual preferences change. I can't do much about that remotely, much as I would like to try.
I will tell you this, though: Early Beatles recordings, suitably remastered, played back on my system, sometimes leave
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Re:Nah... (Score:5, Informative)
No.
Vinyl's dynamic range is about 70 dB on its best, never-been-played before, coming to you on monstrously expensive equipment, precision-mastered day. IOW, you almost certainly don't own any vinyl that is that good, and if you've played it even once, it's not that good anymore, anyway.
A CD's dynamic range is 90 dB until the disc itself fails, and most any CD player will give that to you, or very close to it (buy a good CD player, it's easy and inexpensive to do.)
A good amp/preamp combo can beat 100 dB easily these days (actually since about the late 1970's), so that's not an issue.
Your ear's dynamic range is about 120 dB from threshold of audibility to onset of pain.
The dynamic range of a properly designed, good-sized, mid line (handwaves... $500-$1000/speaker) moving coil multi-driver speaker system (pretty traditional stuff) often reaches 95-100 dB (in an anechoic chamber, at one meter... not your environment, but you still get what you need with a CD.) Tip: You can get some AWESOME classic speaker systems on EBay these days for a fraction of what they're worth.
Bottom line is that a CD player, a decent amp, moderate or better speaker systems, and you can have the whole 90 dB dynamic range of your CD. You'll need a good listening environment (quiet, mainly -- and quieter than you're imagining right now, most likely) and it's not a bad idea to have had a pro control the reflections, either, but it can certainly be done and on a reasonable budget, too -- more than reasonable if you love music, as opposed to just listen to it.
Additional tip: The higher the noise level in your listening environment, the more you have to turn the audio up so that the lowest sound exceeds the noise level. Let's say the noise level in your room is 40 db; then the 90 dB, to be all useful, has to start at 40 and reach 130, which you will hate, your ears will bleed, and you'll probably get arrested to boot. If you can afford the monster gear to hit those SPLs, which most of us cannot. There are limits to how quiet you can get it: your heartbeat, breathing, etc. set a permanent low-limit you can't defeat, even with headphones.
But. You get the ambient noise down, and then your 90 dB can "sit on" a lower starting point, and you can have the quietest sound, much quieter and still hear it, and the loudest sound at something under ear-bleedery. It takes some knowledge and planning, but again, it actually is 100% doable, and if you can't manage it, there are consultants who can. They live for that stuff.
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Which all doesn't matter since speakers don't exactly have 120dB range either... I always wonder why such illusory specs are important to a certain set of geeks. It's like arguing about the handling of a 1960s muscle car near light speed. It barely gets to 55 MPH, so what's the point?
Illusionary specs no longer remain illusionary when the difference is 96dB (for a CD) and 40-50dB for vinyl. For the record that's a 40000x difference in the volume of the noise floor.
While it makes no difference for 99.9% of the crap pressed onto CDs these days which consume about the upper 6dB for a typical pop track and 12dB if you're lucky there are many forms of music where volume is used to convey a message. Many classical records have movements where the quiet part of track is obscured by a not to p
Re:Nah... (Score:5, Funny)
What range DO speakers have?
Depends. I can get my PC speakers about thirty feet. As for the floor standing ones, I have to toss them like cabers... so about ten feet.
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What range DO speakers have?
Typical home loudspeakers have sensitivities of about 90 dB for 1 W at 1 m, but as you play louder the noise floor from distortion rises and therefore masks very low level sounds.
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First of all, speaker issues almost uniformly impact the music in quite different ways than vinyl does. So this isn't really a "thing" as you present it.
More generally, speakers are "what we have", or at least, most of us (there are some cool things in the labs, and these days, the term "speaker" covers a lot more ground than "moving coil transducer" when you start spending uncomfortable amount of money.) So almost e
Re: Can't DRM or Root Kit Vinyl (Score:2)
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Re:Can't DRM or Root Kit Vinyl (Score:5, Informative)
As an experienced audio engineer, I can assure you that I can fuck up a track just as well with analog as with digital. Using digital technology just makes the process faster.
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But vinyl looks nicer, and has better (well, bigger) artwork. No-one's buying vinyl because it sounds better (well, some probably are, but I don't think that explains the upswing in sales) - people are buying it because it's just a nice thing to own. Like real books, for instance. No-one has ever really cared about 'sound quality', because unless you sit in the sweet spot in your carefully adjusted room, or use very good headphones, it simply doesn't matter.
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Sometimes the vinyl releases are not as loud as CD releases, and loudness war is the main reason why CDs sound bad.
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I'm also not sure where you get the idea it's like a smoothing filter - you will typically get less high-frequency res
Psssh (Score:3)
Re:Psssh (Score:5, Funny)
If you really wanna go retro, use wax tubes.
what, do you mean you don't employ your own orchestra that plays the music you want on demand?
Re:Psssh (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of middle-class homes used to have a piano for that purpose, no lie. Once upon a time, music sales didn't mean recordings--it meant sheet music, so people could play the songs at home.
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And a lot of middle class people have scary memories of said piano as they recall either taking lessons on the thing or being forced to listen to someone who took (a few) lessons.
There is a reason we call it progress.
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A lot of middle-class homes used to have a piano for that purpose, no lie. Once upon a time, music sales didn't mean recordings--it meant sheet music, so people could play the songs at home.
These days, even if people had the piano, they'd lack the attention span to learn to play it...
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A lot of middle-class homes used to have a piano for that purpose, no lie.
In our family that would be four generations and counting.
My sister, who teaches and plays professionally, owns both a modern mid-sized Steinway concert grand and a restored antique parlor reed pump organ. The Steinway is everything you would expect it to be.
The organ --- typical of the mass-market product sold out of the Sears, Roebuck catalog ca. 1897 --- genuinely surprised me. I had no idea how capable and pleasing an instrument it could be.
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If you really wanna go retro, use wax tubes.
You know, I don't care if "the kids" got into it because they thought it was all retro 'n' shit. I just hope that, after they get over that, they realize how much better records are - for everyone concerned - and stick with it. But, even in the darkest days, the independent and the boutique labels put it out, and I was able to find most of the records I wanted. I decided to go back to vinyl only around '95 when about 30% of my music was on CD. You just can't beat 2" tape and vinyl.
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And did I mention that I don't even *OWN* an TV?
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And did I mention that I don't even *OWN* an TV?
Yes, yes you did ! [theonion.com]
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Novelty Media is Novelty (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Novelty Media is Novelty (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we're also at a point in society where many things have become just a bit too easy. I can carry around one thousand albums and play them back on a device the size of a pack of gum. Vinyl forces you to store and manage a bulky item. You can't take it on the go, you put on one album and you listen to it (or even only half of it). It's a listening ritual.
Similarly, people who don't find themselves doing enough real work do things like running marathons. Food preparation these days, especially for dinner parties, is often about showcasing how much time you have to devote to the process. In a world where you can have anything you want delivered the next day from Amazon, people are starting to want things that require a bit more effort.
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Similarly, people who don't find themselves doing enough real work do things like running marathons.
As a marathoner, I resent your implication that I don't do enough real work. Training for and running a marathon is my hobby. I train with doctors, lawyers, housewives, entrepreneurs, students, wait-staff, etc. It takes a lot of time and is like getting a second job but it's not because we spend all day doing nothing. Some people choose to watch TV in their spare time; some people choose to play video games. You may not choose a marathon over your current hobbies but that is your choice; don't denigrate th
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If you could see yourself from the outside, you'd realize how perfectly - amazingly, beautifully - you validated his comment.
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How much manual labor do you do? When I worked in fast food and manufacturing, I spent more of my spare time reading, gaming, and writing software. I still do those things in my spare time, but now, as a desk jockey, I do a lot more woodworking, cooking, and biking. I trained for a week long bike ride across Iowa. Best shape I've been in in years because of it. As I spoke with my fellow riders among the corn fields, I found a lot of professional workers. I didn't find any carpenters or plumbers or ele
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How much manual labor do you do?
Why does that matter? I don't run marathons for the labor involved.
When I worked in fast food and manufacturing, I spent more of my spare time reading, gaming, and writing software. I still do those things in my spare time, but now, as a desk jockey, I do a lot more woodworking, cooking, and biking. I trained for a week long bike ride across Iowa. Best shape I've been in in years because of it. As I spoke with my fellow riders among the corn fields, I found a lot of professional workers. I didn't find any carpenters or plumbers or electricians.
Among the people I run with are contractors, police officers, EMTs, etc. They run the whole gamut of professions from those who do a lot of manual work to those who do very little.
I assume that one of the reasons you find running to be rewarding is because of the amount of work it takes to successfully prepare for a marathon. Running a marathon in anything under 5 hours is a major achievement. We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Some guy that builds houses for a living? He doesn't need any more hard work.
Well I know of two guys who did run marathons who built houses for a living. One of them has since sold his business but that's what he did. It may be true that those of perform manual labor are not as likely to run but they are there.
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I did go vinyl for a short time, when both record players and records were dirt cheap. That is the big benefit of being trailing edge. But when the hipsters entered the scene and drove prices up, there were no benefits.
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Uh, yeah. Vinyl was hot among hipsters about a decade ago.
The thing is, if you like the album art then the vinyl version is objectively better than the CD version, since the art is bigger on vinyl. A lot of these records are bought primarily as home decor items.
Hipster bashing (Score:3)
Typical.
But then again, there's a lot of us old farts who still have a nice Vinyl collection collecting dust. Say what we will about the immediacy and portability of digital media, I get really irritated having to redownload/sync my media (especially CD and odds and ends picked up from bands on the internet) on my laptop. Yes, I can't take my vinyl with me on the go (and for that, I have my phone). but for lounging around the house on saturday afternoon, sometimes picking up an old record (or new one) has a bit of nostalgia that I can sit back and enjoy while sipping a coffee.
There's a coming anti-digital storm: Vinyl, Instant Film, cassette tapes, now we just need to see super 8 and 16 for film. Too many hacks, too many insecure sites, and people finally coming to the realization that maybe, just maybe, they shouldn't put everything they do online for anyone and everyone to see or "steal". I'm okay with this.
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Re:Collecting dust - great choice of words (Score:4, Informative)
I've been "ripping" from vinyl since the early '70s. Dust on records is easy to deal with. See below.
The big problem is you can't loan out any record you care about. Every time a record is played with a needle, it gets damaged. Just pulling it out of the sleeve is enough to make it a dust magnet. Records skip when you walk across the floor and you have to turn up the amp after the needle is on the record, or you can damage your speakers. CD's were a godsend because you can play them without using sterile technique.
Most people played their records with needles coated with grit and goo from the last 100 albums. Once enough lint built up, the records would start skipping and people would drag their finger across the needle to "clean" it. People paid well over $100 for a needle cartridge and would drag a dirty, grit covered $40 brush, covered in some goofy $20/oz fluid over every album. Most vinyl and needles get coated with crap and stay that way.
I worked in a university music library with a valuable record collection and learned to use running water and mild soap, if necessary, in a sink to remove dust, oil and dirt on the playing surface. Vacuum dust from the covers before pulling the records out. Keep water away from the label (towel blot) and let air dry. Stay away from all the expensive machines, brushes and fluids for cleaning albums. A cool water spray is very effective at cleaning a dusty or dirty record and leaves it static free. The needle needs checked and cleaned with a soft brush after each play. Often, it takes some isopropyl alcohol to clean the grease off the needle.
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Sure..
Let's move backwards! ...because you can't use any kind of digital medium without posting the result on the internet. There is no way you could take a video on a digital recorder and store it on some local medium such as a hard disc, flash drive or even a DVD and not simultaneously share it with all your buddies on Facebook and Youtube. Similarly there is no way you can keep your collection of scandalous digital photos anywhere except in your email box protected with a password of "password".
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Not surprising... (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, there is the retro side to vinyl. However, there is the physical aspect of the media, from plenty of space on the cover for album art (as opposed to what is shown on a smartphone display) to having liner notes and other niceties with the album, to the actual handling of a record which is 100% analog. Of course, its audio quality compared to a CD is debatable, but there is definitely something about having a record collection and the physical aspect of that.
For example, one physical aspect was Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" newspaper. Another album actually folded into a miniature desk. This is a physical trait that has been lost, and is now being rediscovered.
Of course, there is the fact that DRM and the play device phoning home isn't an issue, and it doesn't take that much in the way of electronics to play a record compared to a CD or MP3 file.
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The whole DRM thing is pretty much a non issue. No major music outlet (Google, Amazon, iTunes) has had DRM on their tracks for years. Even streaming providers don't use DRM anymore. That whole ship sailed a long time ago.
Its audio quality compared to a CD is debatable (Score:4, Insightful)
It's debatable in the same way as the audio quality of regular speaker cable compared with gold-plated oxygen-free copper cable is debatable. It's not a long debate.
If you look at the equipment the analogue-faddists are using, it is for the most part not the high-end audio equipment of a previous generation, but retro-reproductions of the portable record players teenagers used to have in their bedrooms, record players that sounded terrible then and sound just as bad now. The only thing that's changed is that there were a lot of genuinely hi-fi systems around in those days for comparison. These days tiny speakers with wildly exaggerated bass are the norm on pretty much everything you buy from mobile phones to TV sound bars; it's hardly surprising that the sound from a Dansette record player sounds better by comparison.
I still have the speakers I used with my pre-CD sound system and I don't regret ditching a turntable for the first model of CD player that was available - the sound quality is superior in every respect (noise, frequency response, dynamic range). Vinyl records are the audio equivalent of Instagram - washed out, artifically-coloured facsimiles of the original that have become a passing fashion.
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You totally missed the point, which that the LP form factor is fun.
I took the original poster's "debatable" to mean "not worth debating", which of course a much more common than the sense you're using ("something worth debating").
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I've always liked the old standby -- using studio monitors [1] and amps. They get just as loud as the audiophile stuff, but are engineered to have a flat response. That way, if I want boomy bass (no clue why), I can boost using parametric EQ. The ironic thing is that the price of studio items isn't cheap, but is reasonable, and you get what you pay for, as opposed to the snake oil audiophile stuff (studio monitors don't need to sit on quartz-free granite from Scotland, for example... they are just A-OK o
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Of course, there is the fact that DRM and the play device phoning home isn't an issue, and it doesn't take that much in the way of electronics to play a record compared to a CD or MP3 file.
I very much doubt that the vinyl enthusiast shares the geek's obsession with DRM.
You'll understand them better when you look at the reasons why a collector will pay a premium for a traditionally bound and illustrated book.
The audiophile turntable as much about sculpture as it is about music. The machine is exposed and celebrated, not hidden.
The geek can be so focused on the tech that he misses everything else that is important. From the earliest days listening to the phonograph was advertised as a social
Re:Not surprising... (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, its audio quality compared to a CD is debatable [...]
No, it isn't debatable. Due to physical limitations of cutting a groove in the record surface, and interpreting using a needle during playback, vinyl recordings ("LP" or other form factors such as 7 inch 45's) are physically constrained, preventing the recording of some low-frequency sounds and effects. Such sounds and effects are/were featured in electronic music ("techno", "dance", etc.). This was the reason behind the RIAA equalization curve used to de-emphasize the bass frequencies, it allowed closer spacing of the groove (which lengthen play time, the major justification / selling point of the LP format). There are also pre- and post- echos [wikipedia.org] of loud passages if preceded / followed by a very quiet section. Vinyl is an analog recording using techniques developed in the 1950s, and suffers from numerous limitations of the physical limitations of the medium, with no inherit noise reduction or error correction possible, so the vinyl format has absolutely no objective superiority in accurate sound reproduction.
There is one complicating factor, which is not inherit in the vinyl format itself. Modern ("revival") LPs do excel in that they often use a better quality final mix with a wider dynamic range, whereas final mixes for CDs and digital formats typically are highly or over- compressed (due to the auditory perception of "louder" will intuited as "better", the basis of the "Loudness Wars" [dynamicrangeday.co.uk]) before being transferred for commercial duplication.
Some well mastered (retain a full dynamic range between quiet and loud passages) CDs and digital recordings do exist, but sadly too many studios still over-compress the recordings.
There was the comical case of Guitar Hero [giantbomb.com], where digital recordings shipped with the game were of better (dynamic range) quality than were available as CDs or discrete available for purchase digital format (MP3, AAC, etc.).
Tell me that was intentional... (Score:5, Funny)
Quality vinyl pressings are still rare (Score:4, Interesting)
I noticed our local JB hifi has got a whole section of vinyl so had a leaf through. Most of the albums I already have on LP from when they were new and they cost a lot but it is still nice to see. The real problem LPs had back in the late 80's was the quality of the pressings because they were so mass produced and the vinyl was thin plus they were trying to squeeze a CDs worth of music onto the LP so you got shallow grooves and crushed dynamics making them sound much worse than they could. Given the choice between CD and those terrible LPs from that period the CD is hands down the better choice. If these new pressings are done right, they should sound very good assuming the source material is good and I have a few direct to disc LPs which are incredible. I don't tend to use my turntable these days but I have still got it, plus my collection and hope to have the right space to set it up because the experience of listening to a record isn't just about the quality but rather you end up listening to the whole album as a complete piece of work where with CDs or MP3s you would focus more on tracks
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LOL ... (Score:2)
I see what you did there ...
Not 100%... but hipsters (Score:4, Interesting)
There are a few types I see doing this.
You'll always have those insane people who think Vinyl has better quality than CDs or FLAC... but I imagine they are a pretty small group.
You've got people who're after the experience -- maybe a more personal feel to having a big physical system that needs more interaction. Again I imagine this is larger than the first group, but still relatively small.
And finally you've got hipsters, who'll do anything just because nobody else is doing it. Very suspicious that vinyl's popularity starts to grow with a strong correlation to this group's size.
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And finally you've got hipsters, who'll do anything just because other hipsters are doing it
fixed that for you.
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We're talking new vinyl sales, so let's put aside the obvious benefits of owning a turntable if you already have a significant vinyl collection.
I personally believe uncompressed digital formats, starting with Redbook CD, have a greater POTENTIAL in terms of functionality as well as fidelity than vinyl. Unfortunately, this potential has been unfulfilled as the vast majority of digital releases fail to live up to this potential by a fair margin due to poor mastering. The loudness wars has dumbed down the form
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Oh and here's an interesting comparison of different analog and digital masterings OF THE SAME SOURCE MATERIAL done by a professional mastering engineer.
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/... [stevehoffman.tv]
Re:Not 100%... but hipsters (Score:4, Insightful)
Finding that vinyl makes for a (subjectively) qualitative better listening experience than CDs; does not, and never will qualify anyone as insane.
Except it's never couched that way by an audiophile. They make wild claims about the math, the curves, compression, and then talk about their blind A-B tests where they swear they can tell the difference between one bajilion kHz and fifteen sisquintillion kHz. They hear the pops and hiss and say, "Oh, oh! This one sounds warmer."
It's a load of rubbish.
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Listening to music is highly emotional and subjective.
Claiming that vinyl, somehow, allows for a better one that CD is not subjective.
Knowledge of human hearing, audio signals all point to one thing, confirmed by blind tests: if you take a vinyl and properly record into a CD-R, or FLAC, people can't tell the difference.
Physical media (Score:2)
If one is going to buy the physical media version of an album, why WOULDN'T they get the Vinyl?
Re:Physical media (Score:5, Insightful)
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I know a few people who still buy vinyl because of the art work especially the ones with the artwork on the vinyl and never actually play them.
Now about quality... When I was a kid I had crates of albums and later cassette tapes then cds now it all fits on a single mp3 player and they all sound different but none of them sound the same as live. If I pull out a album that i've has since highschool and play it that would be nostalgia, not hipster wanna be garbage...
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Vinyl's growth (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a self-proclaimed "audiophile" but not in the annoying, trust-my-ears-only way that plagues the hobby (I'm a scientist, dammit). I have a nice tube amp, great speakers, subwoofer, etc.... and I have a turntable as well (and a network enabled player + nice DAC). Anyhoo.... I can speak to the non-hipster side of things. Yes, some of the growth of vinyl has a faddish aspect to it. But, keep in mind, many musicphiles and audiophiles never stopped collecting and buying vinyl even through the meteoric rise of CD.
If you are a major music fan (and do not have an unlimited supply of pirated needledrops on the internet), a turntable is essential. A lot of obscure stuff was never released on CD. A lot of stuff that was released from the past on CD sounded (and continues to sound) dreadful due to the mad scramble to ride the CD wave; nth generation tapes, some equalized for vinyl, were used as the source material. Thankfully a lot of stuff these days that is selling is remastered versions of old stuff from original master tapes (not copies). You can be cyincal about this (say the major labels are just milking old warhorses) and you can also acknowledge that the digital audio technology has increased astoundingly since the late 80s and 90s. What does this have to do with vinyl? Well, vinyl can sound really good if done well. I won't argue that it is a better medium than digital; it simply isn't. But it has its own charms.
I have bought vinyl reissues that were mastered very well, and the vinyl was quiet, lacking surface noise - but about a third of the time I get burned with either lousy mastering (sibilance and related issues - and I have a very good microline cart) or more commonly, ticks and pops in shrinkwrapped new vinyl (and run through a we clean). This is the way it has always been and will always be with vinyl.
A primary motivation I have for buying new vinyl releases of new music is to acquire recordings that haven't been as dynamically squashed in the digital mastering process. While vinyl releases can be very dynamically compressed as well, as a rule, vinyl releases tend to be mastered with more dynamic range than the digital version (you could argue that this is partly, or mostly due, to physical limitations of the vinyl medium). And yes, I acknowledge that most vinyl is either digitally sourced or goes through an ADA conversion.
But mostly I continue to buy vinyl because it's fun - it's part of a hobby I enjoy very much. Spending hours just sitting "in the sweet spot" and listening to music (from any source - digital, tape, vinyl or whatever) is something I enjoy. So while people scoff at the vinyl "revival" I'm just glad to see there are more choices our there for getting good sounding music.
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I'm also not dropping a couple hundred dollars on getting wooden knobs or golden cables either.
I bet you didn't get boutique magnetic cable lifts either, you cultural barbarian.
The Hipsters were right on one thing, though... (Score:2)
Personally (Score:5, Funny)
Damn it (Score:4, Interesting)
Years ago I was very close to buying a whole lathe setup with spare cutters and everything, it was an auction and the price was 1$... but you had to pay for getting the thing out of the warehouse that very day or they'd penalize you big time.
Sometimes I regret not being more proactive about the whole thing. I enjoy electromechanical contraptions like that and would have liked to make masters and one-offs for people.
But the thing was enormous and it would not have worked well in a 3rd floor apartment in any case. It would be happier in the basement of a warehouse.
http://gallery.audioasylum.com... [audioasylum.com]
plus two 19 inch racks full of all kinds of junk...
It's the artwork (Score:2)
What a comeback (Score:3, Informative)
Vinyl sales for the entire year totaled nearly 3.5% of 257 million albums sold in 2014! The other 96.5% of sales pale in comparison!
And we're not going to mention the 1.1 billion individual track digital sales! Because that would make vinyl look bad!
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I start to think what they call "warmth" is "muddiness".
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and noise
Re:It sounds so WARM! (Score:5, Funny)
(and some gasoline)
Well, *I* use whale oil, which burns much cleaner and with a warmer flame. But you mainstream types probably wouldn't appreciate it.
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(and some gasoline)
Well, *I* use whale oil, which burns much cleaner and with a warmer flame. But you mainstream types probably wouldn't appreciate it.
I have been hard at work cloning dinosaurs from mosquito DNA so I can raise them and make them into oil myself; the overall experience is vastly superior to your silliness with slaughtering those new-age whales. I'm also manufacturing new vacuum tubes for my unbeatable analog system, but you wouldn't understand how it works so I won't bother telling you, you silly modern sell-out.
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Wow. There is just so much wrong here...
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Knobs and buttons are far superior to crappy touchscreens when trying to change stations.
Agreed, but digital radios can (and often do) have buttons and knobs. What's nice is that in many cases you can decide what a given control does, rather than it being hard-wired at the factory.
No ridiculous black bars down the side of a picture when the camera is held vertically.
Huh? Never had that problem with an actual camera, digital or film. Your problem is with phones and other devices pretending to be cameras, to greater or lesser degrees of success.
When the power goes out, an analog phone line doesn't die or need a charger.
And VoIP has a built-in battery backup for this exact reason.
No reading a manual to figure out how to set your a/c or heating controls.
That's because they only do one thing -- keep the temperature roughly between
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Don't have to worry about a company telling you you can't listen to the music you already purchased.
There were plenty of attempts at analog DRM.. I mean RM.
No ridiculous black bars down the side of a picture when the camera is held vertically.
That's nothing to do with analog or digital. That's to do with phones, which are usually held and operated in portrait mode, having their camera in the same orientation as the screen, for obvious reasons.
Typewriters never lose your documents.
They also remain resolutely silent when asked to search for that thing you typed 18 months ago, though.
A compass never needs a satellite to tell you which way is North.
Neither does my phone.
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Most of what passes for "DJ'ing" today is what used to be called "Pressing Play on An iPad."
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What if I just like the look? I also have two reel to reel tape decks. It's FUN to watch reels.
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Yes, "great care". Not dropping them, keeping them in their sleeve, and using a carbon brush before playing. The burden! The pain!
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