It's been building fairly slowly over the past few years and is getting ever more popular. Supermarkets have started selling 1970/1980 albums on vinyl at £20/£25 a go.
In the interest of research I spent an afternoon with a vinyl geek friend who has more LPs than I've ever seen in one place. In an effort to convince me of the warmth, truer sound, higher frequencies of vinyl etc. etc. I endured maybe 6 LPs each followed by their CD equivalent.
My verdict: The LP covers are nicer, there is a 'sense of occasion' setting up an LP to play (akin to popping open a cork from a wine bottle rather than untwisting a screw top) but the sound, apart from the crackles, seemed more muffled (is that warmer?) and rounded. The crispness was missing. Granted, one LP sounded on par and maybe edged it over the CD.
The CDs, on the other hand, provided a crisper and in my opinion better and sharper sound with more detail.
I could go on about newer vinyl pressings being better than old worn ones and that CD producing systems now give us better quality than few years back etc.
I'll play an LP when I haven't got the CD version and certainly wouldn't bother to get the CD in that instance, but ideally prefer the CD.
PS I am no hifi expert at all - just know what I like.
Last edited by: Dulwich Estate II on Sun 5 Mar 17 at 20:56
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I think you've covered it regarding the "physical" side; the LP is simply a nicer thing to own.
I've got very few left, only a few treasured Slade albums from my mis-spent youth and I'm pretty sure that most of them have the odd skip and scratch on them. However, getting rid of them isn't an option since they were part of me growing up, even though I can no longer play them, and I'm reluctant to fork out money for a turntable to plug into my PC
I don't even play my CD's very often these days either; ten quid a month to Spotify means I have a music library far in excess of anything I could buy in shops, and it also gives me insights into new artists I wouldn't have heard of in the past. Not parting with them, though, useful standby if the internet fails.
For example, I've recently discovered a bluegrass band called the Steeldrivers; listened to pretty much all of their back catalogue which would have cost me a mint if I'd had to buy them from the States. Only found them by dint of clicking on one of the "similar suggestions" from another track i was listening to.
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"Spotify means I have a music library far in excess of anything I could buy ....."
But surely that's a huge downgrade in quality ? Having said that I've never spotified so can't comment on the aural quality etc. but guess it's pretty poor.
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>> never spotified .... aural quality etc. but guess it's pretty poor.
It's good enough for listening via the phone or in the car in my opinion.
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>> >> never spotified .... aural quality etc. but guess it's pretty poor.
>>
>> It's good enough for listening via the phone or in the car in my opinion.
I think the quality is OK - I've never considered it to be poor. Streams fine in the car and the house, although I have quite a bit downloaded for off line listening so not sure if that makes any difference
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New trend for vinyl records... In New York over Christmas we saw more than one store selling albums on cassette tape. And the machines to play them on.
Anyone younger than 25 has probably never seen one.
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Time to dig out the wax cylinders I think.
In the early days of the telephone it was possible to be connected to a direct line to a concert hall for live listening.
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Thats nothing. On longer journeys I hire a string trio to play in the car. With the windows down in town.
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Youngest couldn't quite believe the tape in the Merc on last nights Top Gear.
My car has not even got a CD player, it is either streamed via Bluetooth or a USB stick / cable.
I was given the impression that the dynamic range for LPs on a good deck was better than CD as CD used sampling and missed some of the data though it shouldn't be noticeable.
Saw CDs being made a few times when I worked with a factory that made cover discs for magazines. Quite a process and the foot tread around a plasma machine that layered the precious metal (gold) was in an arc to avoid going near the thing!
Also saw the gold stored which was impressive. Gold was used instead of aluminium where the life of the CD had to be guaranteed.
I read somewhere years ago that the laser used in CD player was focused using a feedback loop based on the reflection on the surface of the disc - an idea first used by the Dam Busters to get the Lancasters flying at the right height.
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>> It's been building fairly slowly over the past few years and is getting ever more
>> popular. Supermarkets have started selling 1970/1980 albums on vinyl at £20/£25 a go.
>>
Indeed, last Christmas even Sainsbury's Christchurch had a temporary vinyl section*, surely there aren't that many deaf hipsters in the area?
* Largely aimed at the 3 people on the planet without a copy of 'Rumours'
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>> * Largely aimed at the 3 people on the planet without a copy of 'Rumours'
*waves*
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There's a ceremony to choosing what to play and putting it onto the machine. With MP3s that is entirely missing. If you're going to faff like that and enjoy the process, then you might as well faff properly and use vinyl.
I have a Spotify subscription. And I have a bluetooth box that I play it through in the kitchen. If I'm in the kitchen. In the drawing room I plug the phone into my old hifi separates set.
Mostly on Spotify I just play the things I already have on CD. In the last 35 years the great new advances have been the tape, the CD and the MP3 and Spotify. So each has reigned for an maybe 10 years before being superseded. (I'm putting c. 1980 as the beginning of the cassette tape, which I think to all intents and purposes is about right, for all that it had been invented earlier.)
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>> There's a ceremony to choosing what to play and putting it onto the machine. With
>> MP3s that is entirely missing. If you're going to faff like that and enjoy the
>> process, then you might as well faff properly and use vinyl.
Completely agree with this. It almost demands that you give it your undivided attention. I tend to play music while I am doing something else, whether it's driving the car, or background music when entertaining or doing stuff around the house. Something about vinyl makes me sit and listen to it, and give it my undivided attention. The artwork that accompanies a lot of vinyl is a joy to take in as well.
I got a lot of pleasure from restoring and upgrading a Rega Planar 3 turntable a few years ago, which has pride of place in my hi-fi. I also built a phono preamp from a kit which again was hugely rewarding. The sound it produces was worth every hour and every penny invested, and then some.
MP3 is fantastic for its portability and convenience (almost my entire music collection sits on a thumbnail sized USB drive in the car), but I will always enjoy listening to vinyl, and the sheer pleasure of interact with it.
Last edited by: DP on Mon 6 Mar 17 at 10:01
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>>.. but I will always enjoy listening to vinyl, and the sheer pleasure of interact with it.>>
No digital media can really be compared with vinyl and the appropriate means of reproducing it...:-)
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I only use digital for listening to music. I've got an old mp3 player for down the gym and the rest is on my computer, listen to the radio or youtube. Can't say having a room with LPs, CDs etc would interest me at all, but each to their own.
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If you buy a new vinyl album these days, the original will have been recorded digitally (lossless). So the analogue signal represented by the grooves is based on a digital recording.
So if vinyl sounds warmer, presumably that's partly coming from the use of a vinyl record, needle, receiver, amp etc.
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So the responses to date don't suggest that anyone on here, including me, buys new vinyl records.
Yet, turntable sales are booming and vinyl can be bought in mainstream shops - so someone is buying.
Is it those Hackney hipsters who pay good money to eat in a breakfast cereal restaurant? Who on earth is it?
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>>Yet, turntable sales are booming and vinyl can be bought in mainstream shops - so someone is buying.>>
I already have a Thorens 160 turntable and hundreds of LPs....:-)
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I buy new vinyl records. Not often, and very selectively, but I buy them.
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Tell me about it. We still buy the odd CD - probably packed and shifted around a 1000 plus of the things in pre-house move mode. Heavy !
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>> D'you sleep ok at night Cc: www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-yYG00Nr8I
Hmm. Not too bad, and a fun video. But if I really wanted noise music, Dog, I'd be picking this.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC3KMbSkYNI
Love the photo.
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>>
>> Yet, turntable sales are booming and vinyl can be bought in mainstream shops - so
>> someone is buying.
>>
>> Is it those Hackney hipsters who pay good money to eat in a breakfast cereal
>> restaurant? Who on earth is it?
>>
Sales are booming on a relative basis, that's relative to pretty much zero; and 'HiFi' sales have always been about perceived value not actual reproduction of the master recording anyway.
I get the vinyl experience thing, I never got rid of my vinyl, but it has nowt to do with sound quality.
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>> So the responses to date don't suggest that anyone on here, including me, buys new
>> vinyl records.
I don't buy them but my son (22) does and in considerable numbers. Friends, who'd noticed him using my collection from pre CD era gave him a modestly good seventies vintage Sony separates system for his 21st. They'd inherited it with a truckload of stuff when her reclusive bachelor brother died and thought it deserved better than the tip.
He's convinced himself the sound is better than digital (though I doubt it) but I think it's mainly the activity of getting the thing out, cleaning it etc, etc; bit like smoking a pipe!!.
Buys a lot of new stuff including signed new releases but he's also into secondhand, no trip to London is complete without him trawling round Camden.
He's rock nut and blogs on the subject:
blogginonheavensdoor13.wordpress.com/
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Why this new trend for vinyl records ? - Harleyman
