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Return of the Vinyl Album

Posted by kdawson on from the vinylly dept.

bulled writes "NPR ran a story this morning about the comeback of vinyl. It seems that sales of new vinyl records are up about 10%; sales will approach a million this year (as against half a billion for CDs). NPR mentioned the popularity of a turntable with a USB interface — they didn't specify the brand; could be this one, or this — and speculated on other possible reasons for the resurgence. They mentioned sound quality and lack of DRM as possible causes. Sound quality can and will be debated, but DRM rates a resounding 'Duh.'"

13 of 490 comments (clear)

  1. Not surprising. by Chouonsoku · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From a collector's stand point, vinyls never really faded from popularity. I still have all of my old vinyls and purchase new ones today by more current bands.

    1. Re:Not surprising. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Exactly. Vinyl went underground with the advent of the CD, but otherwise, it hasn't gone anywhere. It still has its niche, and it always will.

  2. Flashback by FatAlb3rt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Didn't vinyl make a comeback about 12 or 15 years ago during the grunge era? What makes anyone think this is anything other than another small bump in popularity?

    1. Re:Flashback by battery111 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      vinyl is also the de-facto standard for DJ's at parties and clubs. CD equivalents that allow you to mix and scratch are somewhat frowned upon in these areas, and while the rave scene has lost most of it's popularity, there are still quite a few fans out there of this type of entertainment. I don't think that anyone's arguing that vinyl is going to overtake CDs or other digital formats in popularity, merely acknowledging that the format is still thriving, and shows no signs of disappearing any time soon.

    2. Re:Flashback by adelord · · Score: 5, Insightful

      vinyl is also the de-facto standard for DJ's at parties and clubs. CD equivalents that allow you to mix and scratch are somewhat frowned upon in these areas, and while the rave scene has lost most of it's popularity, there are still quite a few fans out there of this type of entertainment. I don't think that anyone's arguing that vinyl is going to overtake CDs or other digital formats in popularity, merely acknowledging that the format is still thriving, and shows no signs of disappearing any time soon. Vinyl was the standard, but isn't anymore. Today artists like Richie Hawtin and Sasha use Ableton Live http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ableton_Live to produce a dynamic set that is impossible to trainspot. Wikipedia has a list of users: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ableton_Live _users

      Others like Mark Farina use cds. Final Scratch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Scratch is still in use as well.

      Judging by what was seen at the winter music conference this year, th stand set-up is four decks- two for cds and two for vinyl. Five years ago vinyl was the standard, but times are still changing.

      Vinyl is still in common use, esp. for local or regional artists, but of the people I know who actually make their living off of playing music none use vinyl exclusively anymore.
      --
      Eugene Debs: "Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization"
  3. So let me get this straight... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People are buying vinyl because it sounds better than digital recordings, and then using a USB turntable to make digital recordings of their vinyl records.

    What am I missing?

  4. Re:its hip to own vinyl by Mr2001 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You're joking, right? The White Stripes and Modest Mouse are shining examples of lo-fi. There's nothing "audiophile" about them.

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  5. Re:Copyright by Mr2001 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Uh, sure thing amigo. You bought a car, so that means you can just steal as many more as you like. Bzzzt! You just failed Common Sense 101. Stealing a car deprives the original owner of that car. Downloading an album doesn't deprive anyone of anything, especially if you've already paid for it. Come back when you understand the difference between information and physical property, OK?
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  6. Not surprising-Art for spaces sake. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's another reason that no one has mentioned yet. More space for cover art.

  7. Re:Copyright by Mr2001 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sleeping with your wife while you're at work doesn't deprive you of your wife, as long as she's there for you when you want her. Therefore, sleeping with your wife is OK! No, sleeping with your wife is "OK". Sleeping with my wife is fantastic. Sorry you're missing out, but for some reason, she only likes to sleep with guys who have enough common sense not to compare copyright infringement to theft, adultery, or other acts involving force or deceit.
    --
    Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
  8. Re:Analogue vs Digital by Cordath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A lot of vinyl-philes have this strange notion that an analogue recording is somehow capable of storing a perfectly accurate continuous waveform that is superior to digital media precisely becasue it is continuous rather than discrete. In a perfect world that might be true. In reality, it is not.

    Four basic things contribute to the fidelity of all recording formats:

    1. The tolerances of recording equipment. (e.g. How closely the signal produced by a microphone resembles the soundwave that generated that signal.)
    2. Generational loss in mastering
    3. Manufacturing tolerances that affect playback
    4. Tolerances of reproduction equipment.

    All formats are limited by #1, and #4 is in the hands of each individual end-user. (i.e. If your stereo sucks, what format you prefer won't matter much.) However, number 2 and 3 are biggies.

    Generational loss means that if you want to do anything more than slap a live recording onto a LP with no post-production whatsover, the quality will suck. Nobody masters albums in analogue these days. 99.9% of the vinyl being released was mastered digitally and then dumped back to analogue, so kiss that analogue "magic" goodbye.

    The manufacturing tolerances of LP's are also a huge issue. When was the last time you picked up a micrometer made out of vinyl? It's not exactly the most ideal material for making something that has to have hyper accurate spatial dimensions. It's easy to scratch, and has a large coefficient of thermal expansion. Just play it back at a different temperature than it was cut at and you're already pretty badly off. The tolerances of a pressed vinyl disk are also larger than you might think, and have the effect of greatly reducing the practical information capacity. (i.e. In theory, analogue recordings contain infinite infomation. If you could record a waveform with even just very very large precision in vinyl, digital media would be useless because you could pack much more data into an analogue pressing. Digital media dominates today. Guess why? The precision of vinyl sucks dingo balls.) Everything that can go wrong with vinyl will have a direct impact on the sound. The lowly CD, by comparison, has built in parity information that allow any decent CD-reader to extract bit-perfect copies that would be identical to the master.

    That being said, many CD recordings do suck, but that's the fault of mixing engineers who want to push it to 11 instead of mastering at an appropriate volume that won't clip the waveform. If a recording is mangled in this manner it's going to sound like crap no matter what you record it on.

  9. Re:There's no debate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, an interesting thing happens when you compare CDs and vinyl records. Turns out that CDs do a much, much better job of reproducing the original recorded waveform than vinyl. I.e, for sound fidelity, CDs totally kill records. It's not even close.

    Now the interesting part. It seems that humans don't really care about sound fidelity. They care about things sounding good, which is actually not the same thing. The vinyl records introduce a whole range of coloring distortions into the audio. This is made far worse by the noise reduction circuitry and lousy, thermally varient amplifiers (I'm talking to you, tube-amp owners). This radically changes the way the sound comes out (go ahead, compare the waveforms using an oscope). It also makes them softer, warmer, and generally more pleasant. The real world has a lot of harsh edges, ringing tones, and crackles that really don't sound too pleasing.

    So, in conclusion, vinyl is crap for reproducing audio. It's good for making sounds pleasing to humans (except for the horrible scratching sound, of course). Ever wonder why the totaly voice-synth'd Britney Spears albums sell so many?. It's the same reason that people like vinyl records.

  10. Vinyl Makes Music Fun Again by ecliptik · · Score: 4, Insightful

    At 25 I just inherited my dad's vinyl collection and I've found they make music fun again. When digital distribution of started to catch on I stopped buying CDs, but then it felt like I was just buying filenames. Even when I occasionally bought a CD, I would just rip it to MP3 and put it on my shelf never to bother with it again. Convenient yes, fun not so much.

    With vinyl all this convenience goes away. It's fun to go to the record store and sift through 1.00$ bins, or find pressings of newer groups. Then when you get home, you play it. You don't put it into your computer and hit button. You open it up, carefully take the disk out, notice the large liner notes, spin up the table and enjoy. It's more of an event than just rip. burn. play.

    Sure it's analog, and there's the occasional distortion, but with a decent cartridge and stylus it's amazing how good new vinyl sounds. Finding spare sleeves to put your favorite albums in then putting the cover them on your wall make for some good excellent wall art too. To me it's similar to why I buy books even when I can get e-books. Life it's just about making everything streamlined and perfect, sometimes you need a little analog grit to keep it interesting.

    Of course, I negated myself already by writing about ripping vinyl with 100% Free Software , but that's more for getting my dads old albums onto CD for him.