Slashdot Mirror
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.
peace.
If you really wanna go retro, use wax tubes.
Go figure. Hipster trends hit mainstream, give it 2-3 years and vinyl will fall by the wayside as people pickup Zune's and say "THIS IS HOW IT WAS MEANT TO BE!"
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
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.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
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.
I start to think what they call "warmth" is "muddiness".
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
"Vinyl album sales smashed records on both sides of the Atlantic in 2014..."
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
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
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.
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.
(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.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
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.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
I'm waiting for punch cards to come back. You just don't get the same experience when loading your program on cassette tape.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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, 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. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Because of the low quality, getting even worse over time, and large size. This is why rational people transitioned to better media, leaving just the hipsters with this now-totally-inadequate technology.
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...
plus two 19 inch racks full of all kinds of junk...
Mostly random stuff.
and noise
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!
I was so glad to throw away my turntable. It was a high-end model, with a highly-rated cartridge/stylus. Even so, and even after I used the recommended dust remover on every disk several times, I had annoying clicks and hiss within a week after a new album purchase. Good riddance.