Worse from the perspective of fidelity, but not of portability, which is what most consumers care about. It was precisely because consumers cared more about portability that cassettes started outselling records, even before CDs became popular.

I avoid music in mp3 and similar lossy formats as much as possible, but frankly, I can seldom tell the difference between an mp3 encoded at 256 kbps or above and the source material.

Vinyl records with mp3 download coupons gives consumers the best of both worlds and seems to be the only viable business model left. It's too bad that the price of new records seems to have nearly doubled over the last 5 years, though. 5 or 6 years ago, the average price for a new vinyl LP was between $12-16, and now they all seem to be between $16-30.

I think that this is a very cool thread, so kudos goes to whoever started it

I sure hope that vinyl records make a comeback, I miss the good old days (coming from a 20 year old) heh I remember a couple of years back when I was up in my loft (attic to all the Americans out there), and I found one of my mums original Chuck Berry LP's and the sound was just sooooo impressive to my ears.

When vinyl was still king, a teenager could buy a 7" single of a song he liked and not have to buy the entire album. In the mid-80s, I remember being able to buy a Top 40 single in a plain paper sleeve from someplace like K-Mart for about $1.50, a used 7" for between .50 cents to $1.25, and more specialized 7"s like imports, indie releases, and ones with fancy packaging for $2-3.

As a teenager, I probably owned twice as many 7"s as I did LPs. They were a good way to discover new bands without taking a chance on spending $12 on an album you might not like, and in the case of major label releases, they were an inexpensive way to own the 1 or 2 good songs an artist might have without having to pay for the filler which major label LPs often were full of.

When the industry dropped vinyl and switched to CDs, it didn't see fit to carry over the practice of putting out singles. Sure, CD singles were available, but the selection at most stores was abysmal and they were overpriced (usually from between $6-10 from what I remember).

The record industry shot itself in the foot when it decided to not continue with the tradition of putting out singles. It priced its product outside of the income of the target audience for current pop/rock music, teenagers.

Does ayone know why 7" records have gotten so expensive? I walk into record stores and see 7"s being sold for between $5-8 these days. I can't believe anyone would pay that much for a 7". Selling them at that price seems to defeat their purpose.

I think its very much a "hip" thing over an actual sonic quality.

I'm 23, and most of the "Indie" people my age I know, those that subscribe to the fashion, "scene", bands, clubs, etc. are big into vinyl right now.

However!

I would say as many as half of them don't own a record player and have never listened to the actual vinyl they purchased. All the listening happens on iPhones and ipods through either the bundled white earbuds or a car stereo interface. But they talk about them to their friends of the same "group" and use them as a sort one-upmanship at times.

"Yeah, Lightning Bolt is great, but have you listened to their LP? Man, its just so much more pure than their digital releases, it really captures THEM, ya know?"

The person speaking in that little skit does in fact own the LP, but has never heard it.

I also live in a city (Oklahoma City) where "trends" and such tend to be a year or more behind and even then the folks are still a bit backwards without knowing any better.

Sent from my PC36100 using Gearslutz.com App

LMAO

This sounds like it should be written when records were first invented, what's that, like 10 years ago

I'm glad vinyl's made a comeback, but I wonder if the infrastructure is there to meet the increasing demand. Last I checked, there were less than a dozen pressing plants in the United States, the equipment hasn't been manufactured in decades, and there's fewer and fewer people who have the skills and knowledge necessary to run such operations.

Loudness wars is one thing... But I suspect people prefer vinyl over 16 bit 44.1 simply because it sounds better. The high frequency roll off on even a 320 kbps MP3 gives it away 100% of the time. Just know "where" to listen and you'll identify it without fail even on $20 headphones. Anything under 320 kbps has bits that sound "underwater" for lack of a better term.

But yeah, the loudness wars drove me to vinyl in the first place. My thinking was that I would mostly buy songs from the 70's and 80's, and many of the digital transfers of those songs were from inferior tapes. So I might as well buy the best version on vinyl. Turns out I was totally unable to restrain myself from buying modern stuff as well. Since the record player was in my possession I bought a new release or two on vinyl not knowing what to expect. Turns out it sounds better.

You gotta' spend real money on even a budget needle. You gotta' keep up the maintenance. You gotta' be a dust ninja. You gotta' handle the records with borderline OCD care. You can't make a playlist. But it does sound better, and that's what I'm after.

Speaking for myself, after all the bullsh*t I go through with young bands and their iPod preference, listening to my records is a huge relief. Even heavier stuff like Metallica or Guns & Roses just sounds nicer, easier to listen to, etc., etc.

I would only hope that a similar preference could be passed on to new musicians, but I believe it is a long ways off. The trend towards analog recording in the indie scene is awesome, but it's a dividing line, where they look for tape machines and vintage gear in a studio because they believe that is the key to their goal. In a sense it is, but sometimes young bands don't believe that the preferences of the engineer and his or her willingness to work towards a similar goal, regardless of the exact makeup of the studio, is just as important.

I recently battled a client whose album came out with a killer 70s type vibe that we worked hard to achieve with my digital recording process. IN the end he wanted it louder and brighter, compromising the quality of what already was cool. Why? Because everything he listens to comes from iTunes with an iTunes EQ preset turned on.

I can accept that some people think vinyl sounds better, in the same way that some guitarists prefer the sound of a tube amp to that of a solid state one, but if you're arguing that vinyl has higher fidelity than CD-quality audio, I don't agree. And that's coming from someone who hated the CD format so much that he didn't buy his first CD player until 1999, when he was practically forced to.

There are several reasons I think records are a superior format, but fidelity isn't one of them. I was shocked at the amount of detail I had never heard before when I listened to the CD versions of albums that I had listened to hundreds of times on LP.

Not that records don't sound plenty good; they're certainly good enough for a public that isn't interested in having the highest fidelity, and better than the squashed CDs that have been coming out for the last decade.

I've never noticed this roll off, not on $200 AKG headphones or on any other playback system I've used.

I just looked at a spectrogram of a Police song which I know has a lot of high frequency content, one spectrogram for the uncompressed audio and one for the mp3, and it does confirm what you say, though. On the mp3, everything above 15K is gone and the rest of the highs are attenuated.

It still doesn't make much if any audible difference (at least not to me), which is probably why the mp3 encoding software feels confident in removing data at those frequencies.

I haven't come across a Led Zeppelin album or recording of a symphony orchestra that has anything much beyond 14K, and yet I've never had the sensation that there was something "missing" from those recordings.

Isn't high frequency roll off part of the "warmth" people associate with analog? So maybe we can say that mp3s are "warmer" than CDs. heh

I've only ever noticed that "underwater" sound on stuff encoded below 192 kbps, especially on cymbals and similar sound sources.

There's not much point in arguing about it, since mp3 is based on tricking the ears and brain and not all of us hear the same way. I'm certainly not claiming that mp3 is a high-fidelity format, though I am skeptical of people who claim to be able to hear significant differences between source material and high bitrate mp3s.

At any rate, the "sound" of an mp3 is far preferable to me than all of these squashed CDs.

You're hitting on one of the reasons why vinyl is better. Pressings of the same album can be different, and sometimes there's even variation between the records in the same pressing. Vinyl records are as much works of art which have intrinsic value as they are mass manufactured goods, whereas CDs are undifferentiated clones, for the most part; whether digital music is on a factory-pressed CD or a hard drive makes little difference to most people. That's why records are highly collectable while CDs, generally, are not.

That's interesting. The reason I dug up this old thread in the first place was because I was trying to find out if there are any technical reasons for why the audio on a record can't be squashed as badly as on a CD.

I've been perfectly happy with the Grado Black, which last I checked, was under $100.

Some people are a little too anal about this stuff, buying record cleaning machines and the like. If I felt I had to put that much effort into it, I would've switched to digital a long time ago.

For serious listening, I would avoid the cheap plastic turntables found at big box stores, as they'll not only sound bad but will also damage records, but there's no reason why a person couldn't find an acceptable turntable and cartridge for a few hundred bucks. Check the classifieds and stores that sell DJ supplies.

Yeah, my turntable (Dual 1219) was free + a day of repair time. The cartridge was $150... Which is the ballpark I meant when I said "real money" for even a budget needle.

That sounds reasonable.

I wasn't sure what you meant because there are people out there who advocate spending what a luxury car would cost on a stereo system.

My MGMT records are plenty squashed... They pump and fart just like the "real thing". So hypercompression certainly can exist on vinyl. I haven't A/B'd them in a critical matter with my daughter's CDs of the same, but a casual comparison over the same speakers shows the vinyl to sound bigger and better. But since all of three seconds was spent matching the volume you can pretty much throw that comparison out the window.

Still I'd hazzard a guess that they got the full injection of compression and maybe dodged a final clipper or limiter or something.

Underground bands have always been putting out stuff out on vinyl, even through the 90s when vinyl was seen as "dead" by most people. I'm almost 32, and grew up buying punk/garage/indie rock on vinyl starting at about age 15. We always had a record player in the house though and I actually listen/ed to the records I own and buy. I think they sound better personally, if you are using a good player and good stereo setup that is. Guitars especially sound great on record. It's not really a "trend" as it's always been going on since the 70s with underground bands, although it's popularity may have increased lately due to the "hipster" uprising and obsession with the 80s and early 90s lately with teens and early twenty-somethings. Anyways, it's not anything new, you might have just noticed or something.

man u guys ...


over think ~everything~


its `cause der betta fer rollin' fatties ..

like duh

owen shakes his herd ---- buy a vowel already

sonic quality and numbers dont matter, the ears decide ...

vinyl

Well stated!

Vinyl sounds infinitely better than standard 16 bit cd... Only DVD/SACD audio comes close to the sonic bang of well recorded music pressed on virgin vinyl.

But a good turntable is a must. As is the set up of the cartridge and arm.

Entry level turntables from Rega or a Technics SL1200 are the cheapest you can go to really get the 'experience" of analog bliss.

If you have crappy stereo gear and a cheap turntable with a bent and worn needle playing scratchy and dusty warped records, you're probably better off with your mp3's.

Playing vinyl is an esoteric and deeply satisfying experience if done right though.

The fact that it's still around and somewhat thriving is very encouraging and hopeful to me.

The music industry could be thriving again if record companies released all new music on vinyl and blu-ray dvd only.

Bring back record stores and have them sell turntables and quality stereo gear. It would take a gigantic push by the industry, but if they care about quality and the art of music as much as the $, it could be done.

Gotta go back in tiiiiime... heh

I am not aware of any mp3s that are not made directly from the same squashed master that the CD was made from.

are you saying there is something about lossy compression that "improves" the sound of a squashed CD?

I'm in my early 20's and only really started collecting vinyl a year or so ago. I think what first got me was the chance to go pick out 20 old disco, funk, n' house LPs for $20 at my local dollar bin.

Then of course, there's something about its mechanical nature; watching the LP gently spin, hearing that occasional crunchy pop.

Generally, I pick out LP's from before my time (admittedly cause they're usually the ones in the dollar bin...The Arcade Fire's new album definitely cost a pretty penny last i checked), and I think that's one of the opportunities vinyl really provides the post-internet generation. A chance to hear older artists from their original recorded medium and explore the ones who didn't necessarily make it big or have faded into the background of history. Cheap re-discovery, like a musical pseudo-archaeologist!

Even though most of the oddball artists whose LPs I do end up picking out would be scoffed at and never considered en vogue these days by the mainstream media, my friends and I always find something we like in each track; a funky hit, a chunky bass, or a nice vocal vibrato ready to be pitched and sampled.

...speaking of sampling, everyone who's "makin' beats!" these days loves to talk about how they're sampling from vinyl!

In short, my personal experience tells me that part of this vinyl resurgence is about our generation not wanting to pay for music, and paying a premium ($1) to rediscover music of the past. But mostly, it's because it's cool, can be used for sampling, and sounds delicious. MMMMMMMMMmm....heh

My point was that whatever the deficiencies with the mp3 format, they are nothing compared to the damage that is done to audio by squashing it. It seems silly to argue about high frequency roll offs in regions the average listener isn't sensitive to when most mastering engineers are producing masters that sound like they've been run through a distortion pedal. If I had to choose between one or the other, the mp3 would be the lesser of the two evils.

And if you want to split hairs, it is possible and not even difficult to make an mp3 file from a recording that hasn't been squashed, and there are lots of CDs that came out in the 80s and 90s that were not squashed.

No. How did you get that out of what I wrote?

The truth would be the exact opposite; mp3 encoders probably have a harder time dealing with material that's been squashed.

I get it now.

My confusion was caused by the fact that this is not a choice we are usually presented with for the same song.

again, if unsquashed masters are available, I would agree. Still I will probably prefer the unsquashed .wav to the unsquashed mp3.


Yes, dynamic material creates temporal masking - where stuff can be safely dropped - you aren't hearing it anyway. Squashed material has to 'steal' data from more noticeable places.

The cassette seems to be popular with the hipster crowd these days. The other night I saw a guy in the subway wearing a T-shirt that was covered in images of cassettes.

I saw a band play a few weeks ago that was offering its latest release on cassette along with an mp3 download coupon! I was surprised that there are still any cassette duplication services or blank cassette providers left.

And you're right -- vinyl never went out of style in the underground rock scene. Punk bands especially were always conservative about the technology they worked with and suspicious of anything involving computers.

I see this t-shirt a lot too:




I think the shirt is cool, I secretly want one, but I would feel like a phony wearing it because though I own maybe 100 45s - I haven't put one on in 10 years.

I use the big HMV downtown to see which way the wind is blowing. 3 or 4 years ago, it had a small 6x6 foot rack of vinyl (which at the time I thought was amazing since I hadn't seen that much vinyl for sale in a big chain store in a long time). Now their vinyl section is taking up half of a long wall. So it does seem like the big chains are on the way to putting the "record" back into "record store."

I wouldn't buy anything there though as there are several independent record stores in my city that are better.

What I'd like to see is the big box electronics stores start selling a decent record player, not these cheap plastic things I've been seeing. Once that happens, then I'll believe that this is more than a fad.

My primary day job is a private music teacher. The younger kids (under 10) are drawn to vinyl because they've never seen anything like it, but they still buy from iTunes and just listen to their parents records. Amongst teenagers it splits a bit more; some don't listen to it at all, some listen to it some, and then the uber-hipsters ONLY listen to it.

"Kids" my age (in their 20s) usually have a fair amount of vinyl and we like to listen to it, especially when we're in the mood to actually LISTEN to an album rather than just have it on as background noise. My older sisters (in their 30s and 40s) have some vinyl and listen to it occasionally, but spend most of their time listening to their kids music or CDs in their car. My parents (and friends parents) still have stacks of old records, probably have an old record player, but stick with CDs or radio. They find vinyl to be a pain in the ass and don't like how much space it takes up. My dad also swears up and down that a modern love for vinyl is just "indie crap" and while they MIGHT sound better under ideal circumstances, CDs sound perfectly fine.

I think that the resurgence of vinyl is great. To me, vinyl has a totally different experience--the liner notes are bigger, it's more of a tactile thing, and the different colors of vinyl are super cool. I was one of the last people to move to cassettes/ cd, so i'd only given up vinyl the first time around when most of my favorite new releases weren't being offered on that format.

However, vinyl isn't the savior of the industry like many may suspect. It may sell pretty well, but it's still very expensive to make and get right (shipping is a killer--both from the plant, and shipping out to people). I'd pressed one of my releases on vinyl, and while it was an awesome experience, it was just too expensive to do. Everything was seeming okay in expenses until the shipping was factored in. Cds you can still get away with shipping them as an oversized letter, but vinyl is a parcel no matter which way you do it. As a small label, i'd often lost money on the shipping to offer the vinyl at a reasonable price (after the cost of the vinyl and shipping was totalled up)......very often you see smaller runs of vinyl going for $25-40 dollars a unit.

hi,

the experience of listening to music, as well of that of making music,
has drastically changed since the advent of digital.
that applies to other technological arts like photography and cinema.

to appreciate the superiority of vinyl, thou, a system of some quality is necessary:
a rega or project or similar turntable (with a decent chain down the line) is the threshold.

on a different note:
jamaica has the probably only 45 7" industry activity left
but it seems not for long...

SUPPORT THE JAMAICAN RECORD PRINT!
REGGAE SOUND SYSTEMS: BY USING MP3'S YOU ARE KILLING REGGAE MUSIC!

(and few things sound as heavenly on vinyl as some classic lee scratch perry black ark productions)

that's a true cat.

also the mind can fool even the best of minds, concerning argumentation and all

Digital = simulacrum, yes. However, the physicality of vinyl is its major flaw. One good scratch and it's done, like the Mona Lisa. Plus all the pops, clicks, noise, warping, wear on the grooves, dust, breakage, on and on. If you scratch a CD, so what? It's probably in your Itunes library. Burn another. I think the quality and convenience of CD trumps vinyl in almost every way except nostalgia. I grew up playing records on Sherwood and Technics t-tables, and I don't miss it, even though I have a collection of rare rock platters that I haven't heard in ages. Vinyl is being kinda pushed right now as an alternative to something, but I'm reminded of RATM:

"What you want is what they're sellin'
Make you think that buying is rebellin'"

It's totally true and it's a goddamn Shakespearian tragedy. MP3s and thier playlists kicked the loudness push into overdrive... And loudness is one of the worst things you can do if MP3 is the target delivery.