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Vinyl's Revival Is Now a Phenomenon On Both Sides of the Atlantic
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.
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 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") 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, 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.).
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.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
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.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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.
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
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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!