Sony Will Start Pressing Vinyl Records After 28-Year Hiatus (fortune.com)

Sony said this week it will begin pressing vinyl records again, ending an almost three-decade hiatus. A dramatic increase in demand for vinyl music in recent years prompted the move, the company said. From a report: After a 28-year hiatus, Sony announced this week that it plans to open a new facility in Japan dedicated to pressing vinyl records. It's a back-to-the-future announcement at a time when the true digital music revolution -- downloaded and streaming via always-on Internet connectivity -- has quickly grown to dominate listening habits. According to Japan's recording industry association, the country produced nearly 200 million records per year in the mid-1970s. That's unlikely to return. But while many of us have been content to wirelessly download our music, a surprising number of people are going to the store -- or Amazon.com, let's be honest -- and purchasing a vinyl record, sleeve and all.

Comments

But... But...

[sconeu]

How will they get the rootkit on the vinyl?

Nostalgia makes money.

[DatbeDank]

I was given a record collection and a hi-fi record player. Mostly classical, some classic rock. It's cool to show off and immensely satisfying when you put the needle onto the record, but most of the time I just fire up Pandora and be done with it. And no, the distortion doesn't sound better at all.

Re:Anybody know

[__aaclcg7560]

Japanese hipsters get their own dedicated power pole for $10K to $40K each to run their audio equipment.

http://www.avsforum.com/obsessive-japanese-audiophiles-install-private-power-poles/

Miss the artwork

[christurkel]

I have no idea if vinyl sounds any better but what I miss is the artwork, the covers, gatefolds and sleeves. Not even CDs got close.

My plan

[puddingebola]

In the 1980s vinyl crashed. Nobody wanted it. Used records at my local book store sold for $3-$4. Compact Discs sold for $15-$18. Everybody wanted digital disc. It's 2017. New vinyl records cost $25-$30. Nobody wants compact discs. Used CDs at my local book store cost $4-$6. Collectors buy $30 records and place them in sealed vaults. I need to buy all the used CDs I can, and then find the switch on the reality inverter and throw it again.

Just bought my first Record Player in 35 years

[mykepredko]

I still have a few albums from when I was a teenager that never went on CD (Remember "The Secret Policeman's Balls")? My wife has a ton she wants to get onto her iPod.

And to get them onto digital I got a USB turntable. Using the Audacity software to convert the output to .mp3s.

I've just done a couple albums so far - I was pretty anal about keeping them clean and free of scratches while putting them on good quality cassettes (they've been played two to four times at most) - and I have to say I prefer the sound of CDs. The occasional pops and pickup hum that many people/hipsters find endearing, I find annoying and distracting from the music. I used to be pretty good at nailing tracks but it's not like riding a bicycle, I need to relearn it (although I'm breaking up the tracks fine using the software).

I was surprised at how the quality of the turntables don't seem to match the quality of 35 years ago. My previous turntable was a direct drive Technics that was built from solid aluminum castings; Shure cartridge and I can't remember who made the needle. I bought a highly rated Audio-Technica which is more than serviceable and produces nice sound, but I definitely prefer what comes straight from a CD, iTunes or Amazon.

I know my son will be scandalized at this post but I grew up in the age of (great) LPs and despite not having the same album artwork, I don't miss LPs at all.

Re:Just bought my first Record Player in 35 years

[Anonymous Coward]

"I was surprised at how the quality of the turntables don't seem to match the quality of 35 years ago."

Sure they do. Not a Crosley, but there are plenty of very good turntables made today, from many thousands of dollars down to U-Turn's Orbit turntable, for well under $200. Adjusted for inflation, today's tables (and cartridges) are better than 35 years ago.

Re:Just bought my first Record Player in 35 years

[iampiti]

I didn't know they still made typewriters. Do they get used anywhere except for a few nostalgics?

Re:Vinyl is the only physical media I buy

[stabiesoft]

I have maybe 100 CD's from the 80's. They all play just fine. How did you manage to break them? I still buy CD's for that very reason. They are archival. I also have some vinyl from the 70's, and I'd never buy more. Just playing vinyl degrades it.

But will it have...

[chemicaldave]

...rootkits?

Re:Vinyl is the only physical media I buy

[rjune]

I buy CD's for the same reason. I rip them to MP3, but if I ever want to switch to another format I have them. No DRM to mess with, and only the occasional Sony rootkit.

Re:Not for Me

[Megane]

Wannabe DJs these days can use a laptop and a midi controller. They can't afford the equipment to spin and mix vinyl (a good turntable isn't cheap, and you need two of them and a mixer), and they probably don't have space for crates with a decent amount of music.

Please stop calling it Vinyl

[AnalogDiehard]

I grew up during the record era. As the era of CDs approached, vinyl was replaced with plastic and the quality of record presses went to HELL. I remember too many times when I had to return a record 3-4 times before I got one that didn't skip.

I embraced CDs emphatically and I will never go back to records, plastic or vinyl.

I do not miss the needle noise, premature wear, groove distortion, wow & flutter, or compromised frequency response.

National Semiconductor used to print the Audio Design Book which provided a detailed description of how record playback works, and it is an engineering kludge with its compromises. It is far from a perfect playback system.

Re:Please stop calling it Vinyl

[radarskiy]

"vinyl was replaced with plastic"

Polyvinyl Chloride is a plastic.

Re:Please stop calling it Vinyl

[sl3xd]

IIRC, many MP3 encoders had a 'brick wall' liter at ~16 kHz at lower nitrates — which isn't a bad trade off for compression: higher frequencies take more bits to record. And the VAST majority of humans above 18 years can't hear past 16 kHz at safe volumes.

(In general, the threshold volume to even hear 20 kHz is also roughly the same as the pain threshold (and well above the damage level)

AAC is a huge improvement over MP3 at low bitrates, and does not have the brick wall at 16 kHz; it's a moot point as most people use bitrates over 256 job/s. HE-AAC further improves low bitrate performance. (But few use it, because efficiency be damned, more bits must be better!)

FLAC and Apple Lossless are lossless: its raw PCM bitstream compressed like a zip file - when decompressed, they are bit for bit identical to each other and the original.

DAT, on the other hand, is a pure PCM: IIRC DAT had even better frequency capabilities than CD (48 kHz vs 44.1). DAT was one of the primary recording mediums for live music, as well as the low end of the professional recording industry. There are no limitations to DAT's recording and playback capabilities; the only thing the CD does better is skip songs.

The music industry did kill the DAT as a consumer medium — they required a form of DRM which included audible garbage. Of course, they tried to kill pretty much every consumer recordable format (MiniDisc, DCC, MP3 players, burning your own mix CD's, and even compact cassettes.

Overall, the world of consumer audio is full of charlatans selling expensive snake oil. A lot of people claim loud & long they have golden ears, but nobody's been able to demonstrate it in double blind testing.

Far, far fewer have taken a basic signal processing course (and have learned the actual science of sound). I die a little every time I see the step-sine vs smooth curve "comparison" for digital vs analog audio. (Including in a recent issue of Popular Mechanics).

How high is the water mama ?

[Archfeld]

Do you remember the 8 track limitations on track size/length ? It is hard to think of a more disruptive thing than the change of track in the middles of a song. I had and used 4 track reel to reel players for a long time, but 8 track really sucked all around. Cassettes were much better...

Vinyl is 'ok' but what I find amusing is most if not all vinyl is produced from a digital master so the basic 'warmth' or 'tone' argument is sort of silly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

It's probably not the same company

[Roger W Moore]

How would the same company make a knockoff???

It's probably not the same company. Either the original company goes bust or it's parent company shuts it down and then the brand name is sold off to someone else who makes cheap knockoffs for a fraction of the price. This gives them a window to sell their cheap knockoff for far more than it is worth but for far less than the original brand cost before everyone realizes what has happened and stops buying the product. Technically it's not a knockoff because they actually own the soon-to-be-worthless brand but in all the ways that really matter to us consumers, it is a cheap knockoff.

CD destroyed the music market

[knorthern knight]

Up to the 1970's, the big music market was teenagers with limited disposable income buying 45 RPM records for approximately $1. They were only interested in the "A side" (the heavily promoted song) and "B side" took on a derrogatory meaning. Since the focus was on 1 song on the record, it was also known as a "single". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So teenagers were buying one song for approximately $1 (does that sound familiar?). Then the music industry went over to CDs. A kid with limited allowance from his/her parents could no longer buy the latest hit for $1. He or she had to pay $20 or $25 for the entire CD, just to get one or two "hits". Parents did not instantly increase kids' allowances by a factor of 20, so music purchases plummetted. Well... like... dohhhh. Of course the MPAA blamed it on piracy.

It was only when Apple used its power to drag the music industry, kicking and screaming, back to single-song sales for $1 (digital format this time), that music sales recovered.

There is a lesson for cable TV here. Give people a-la-carte, i.e. an option to pay a reasonable price for just the channels that they want, and they'll pay for it. If you insist on selling only "the-500-channel-universe" for an arm and a leg, sales will plummet.