I was born in the 90’s so grew up with tapes and CD’s. Tapes are/were rubbish. But I still buy CDs; I don’t buy MP3s since I want some cover art and all those other bits of paper you get with a CD.

I recently noticed that there are a few places that still sell vinyl and bands still tend to release LP’s.

I am interested not so much because of sound quality, but because I think there will be something that bit special in placing a needle on a record rather than whacking a CD in a laptop.

Am I getting needlessly emotional about dusty old tech, or is there genuinely something special to be had here?

I think the sound is more ‘alive’ on vinyl, kind of warmer with more character. I like the crackling, gives it another layer. not sure what that means really, but I know I prefer it.

I was playing with a turntable in the local hifi shop and have to admit i was close to pulling the trigger, they had lots of new vinyl in there and it sounded incredible

Am I getting needlessly emotional about dusty old tech, or is there genuinely something special to be had here?

Theres a ritual thats missing now that we google and download music and thats the hunt for music and the anticipation of having to get it home before you can listen to it. If its a good hunt and the occasion of the first play is exciting then that colours your experience of the music and a lot of that is evoked by the object rather than the tune.

Buying music on vinyl today refers to that experience… but its only a reference. Music is no longer rare or limited in its availability, you had to physically hunt for vinyl and you had to care for it as it might never be available again.

Nobody needs to keep going back to iTunes every week to see if the empty spot on the rack with name of the record you want in Dymo tape has been re-stocked yet. Nobody is on first name terms with the guy behind the counter in Amazon who knows that theres a white label of that 12″ you are looking for in someones garage in Nottingham. Nobody remember the first time they pealed the cellophane off a Spotify playlist.

These things are the warmth and character of vinyl. But buying vinyl now only refers to that, it doesn’t make it real again.

Anyway, I’m off to alphabetise my MP3s and then restack my Kindle by colour and hue

I still buy vinyl…

Very well said maccruiskeen.

Saturdays for me used to be trawling the record shops of Birmingham. Starting at Second City Sounds, through Reddingtons, Tempest, Swordfish, Plastic Factory – then finishing with the concessions in Oasis.

It was always New Model Army I was looking for…so was familiar with the back catalogue of New FADS, New KOTB and Gary Numan!

I got all the stuff I used to lust after, the gatefolds or picture discs, limited run 10″, foreign covers etc on ebay a few years later. Wasn’t really the same.

My 15 year old has recently discovered my vinyl collection. He loved it, I think it’s the process as much as the sound he likes. He counted them, which I’ve never done; 425 LP’s.

Starting at Second City Sounds, through Reddingtons, Tempest, Swordfish, Plastic Factory – then finishing with the concessions in Oasis.

I used to trawl pretty much the same route but ending up at Don Christies*, with music gently heaving its way through the back wall and into the rag market. Searching for music I’d heard about, but not actually heard.

*They probably didn’t stock much New Model Army though.

Saturdays for me used to be trawling the record shops of Birmingham. Starting at Second City Sounds, through Reddingtons, Tempest, Swordfish, Plastic Factory – then finishing with the concessions in Oasis.

Same here! 😀

franki – Member
Saturdays for me used to be trawling the record shops of Birmingham. Starting at Second City Sounds, through Reddingtons, Tempest, Swordfish, Plastic Factory – then finishing with the concessions in Oasis.
Same here!

and here! Very sad day when Pastic Factory died, and then tempest a few months later.

Ideal for me would be CD’s in a LP cover. All that space for the artwork and words, without the ritual for cleaning dust before you can play, and having to turn it over every 25mins.

Theres a ritual thats missing now that we google and download music and thats the hunt for music and the anticipation of having to get it home before you can listen to it.

Agreed. I used to be an absolute music nut. Loved spending an hour or so flipping through records or CDs in some independant record store, I found so much great stuff by taking a chance on something….

But that’s changed. Once you finally commit to 100% digital (An that for me was only a year ago) there’s a whole different mindset. The other week I learned that there was a new album by a band I thought were loooong gone. Within minutes I had it and was listening to it. I can carry pretty much my entire music collection around in my pocket and listen to it anywhere. I listen to FAR more music now than I ever have done becasue of this. As for new stuff, there’s so many different ways of browsing through music (And having a quick listen before you buy it) these days that I don’t miss out on anything. And the best thing? Price. If you only want 2 tracks of an album, you only need to buy 2 tracks, and an album is now a lot cheaper downloaded than in a store anyway. Half price nearly?
And I just don’t have the time to go to record shops all the time any more…

I know exactly what people mean about owning and using an actual physical CD or record. I have been that luddite 😉 but how many people buy a CD, rip it to digital, then never touch the CD again? A fair few I’d wager.
Once you get with the times, it’s a revelation. 🙂

People don’t listen to albums any more, and I think that’s a shame. I often hear a track on the radio and when it ends my brain ‘cues up’ the next track in my head.

I used to spend hours in record shops, seeking out 12″ singles of favourite bands, just to get those elusive, exclusive B-sides. I used to get import discs at vastly inflated prices just because the B-sides were different.

There’s something nice about vinyl, it’s a big, tangible thing full of glorious artwork. Would this be a good time to mention my laserdisc collection?

Then as others have said, there’s something very ritualistic about sliding a disc from its sleeves, placing it gently on the turntable, wiping the surface of dust, lowering the needle onto the platter, it’s a very physical, involving thing. But there’s one thing people always forget about vinyl.

The problem is that, really, records were shit.

Muddy sound, awful dynamic range unless you spend a fortune on equipment. Wow and flutter; snap, crackle and pop. Having to tiptoe around the room in case you fart in the wrong key and the stylus slides across the record, possibly damaging it permanently.

At a festival a couple of years back, I went to a ‘classic albums’ playing. Sat in a darkened room with a bunch of other anoraks, I listened to Dark Side of the Moon reproduced on a top end Lynn system costing thousands. It was an experience and the album’s great, of course, but it still hissed and crackled like my old MIDI system turntable.

Digital (CDs / mp3s) offer far more accurate sound reproduction, which I appreciate some people find clinical. But you can recreate that vinyl sound fairly readily by randomly frobbing your graphic equaliser and then frying chips whilst rolling a bowling ball across a laminate floor.

Records are all but dead, apart from a few rose-tinted nostalgia hounds. I miss the ‘specialness’ of an album, but I don’t miss the sound, at all.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/record-player/id323729398?mt=8

I’ve got a pretty decent Vinyl collection I need to shift (lot of late 80’s/early 90’s rock/metal inc a lot of picture discs) is ebay the best option?

whacking a CD in a laptop

😆 😆 😆 😆

Whilst I’m not in any way anti digital, vinyl takes the win.

Check out John Dent from Loud Mastering talking about vinyl

http://vimeo.com/29121804#at=0

I’m somewhere between Maccruiskeen and Cougar on this. The hunt and anticipation was a lifestyle. The god awful sound of an old, used / abused LP on your shit turntable and system was the reason I welcomed CDs with open arms.

Unless you spend thousands on a vinyl system and only ever play perfect LPs the benefits are completely lost. I still prefer to buy CDs rather than download. I’ve got something physical and I can pretend about the hunt and anticipation whilst it’s in the post. Also the majority of downloads are compressed to hell and sound terrible.

I still use vinyl and buy both new and S/H records I also get lots of music on line. I’m not sure it’s worth a newbie getting into vinyl now TBH.

90% of my listening is done digitally and off playlists to pick and choose tracks I like, vinyl isn’t good for that obviously. For the other 10% of the time there is something I like about putting on a record that I can’t really quantify but wouldn’t be without. Also despite technological advances analog recordings on vinyl really do sound different and to my ears very, very good..
Also I like high end turntables and all that goes with owning one, they are lovely things.

I’ve asked for both the Dinosaur Jr and Bob Mould albums for chrimbo on vinyl. Always preferred it, not for sound reasons, just because It’s how I grew up listening to music. I still have plenty CD’s and MP3’s so i’m no snob.

Thing is you now usually get a download code with your vinyl record to get the MP3’s anyway

Records are all but dead, apart from a few rose-tinted nostalgia hounds.

A fairly sweeping statement, sure a lot of DJ’s now are preferring to go with MP3’s because it’s easier lugging round a laptop rather than a bunch of vinyl, but more and more home listeners are switching back to vinyl. The inherent throwaway nature of the MP3 does not sit well with a lot of people who want something tangible for their money rather than a bunch of information they can lose in a second simply by their laptop playing funny buggers

I still have a large vinyl collection and still enjoy listening to it. Not sure I agree with spending thousands for it to sound nice though. If you have a half decent amplifier and speakers and then add a record player or CD of a similar price point the record player will sound nicer than cd. (20+ years ago one journo wrote that if everybody had a Rega record deck CD players would not have taken off. Rega’s being better & cheaper at the time.

I have upgraded a bit over the years, second hand Naim pre-power amps, PSU & speakers and it does sound nice. I do put my mp3 player through the system occasionally and the sound is so disappointing in comparison, if convenient.

As much as I love my vinyl I don’t think I would really recommend anybody young buying into vinyl due to the storage space and difficulty getting it. Not sure how much a second hand Linn LP12, Naim Nait 2 and Linn Kan II’s would cost, say £1,000(?) but it would still sound great.

OOooohhhh the crackle.

Any vinyl junkie gets a tingle down their spine when they hear this… especially if you’re about to get deep into a 2hr vinyl only mix 🙂

music must have soul– vinyl captures that, crackles,missed notes, all the imperfections that make us human–no contest !

rudebwoy – Member
music must have soul– vinyl captures that, crackles,missed notes, all the imperfections that make us human–no contest !

The music posses that, not the medium that carries it. I last bought vinyl in 1982, when I had given up trying to listen to Peter Gabriel 4, because of the incessant crackling in the background. I took that album back five times and every replacement was the same, vinyl pressings, irrespective of whoever did the mastering, were utter crap, so I bought said album on CD, despite not owning a player.
I worked Saturdays in a hifi shop, so recorded it onto a TDK metal tape and used the CD for demos.
Nowadays I buy CD’s and downloads, I certainly do NOT miss clicks and pops distracting me in the middle of a quiet passages, and masking subtle, tiny details, like the sound of the next door neighbour’s mower on a recording by Red Bird, made in the lounge of their house with a single mic, or the dustcart driving past on another track.
And I most certainly wouldn’t pay the £26 for a Beatles album that I saw on Sunday, or £20 for The Staves album when I saw them last night. £15 got me their album on CD and an EP by their rather good support.
Before anyone asks, I used to play my vinyl on a Logic DM101, with a Zeta tonearm, and an AudioTechnica MC cartridge, about £2-2500 at the time…
I think there’s a lot of romantic bullshit talked about vinyl, to be perfectly honest, part of the reason vinyl sounds ‘warmer’, was because it was EQ’d for the master lathe, to stop high-frequency ‘ringing’ and to stop transients at low frequency causing grooves to run together, which means the stereo master tape was compressed, just the thing people complain about with MP3 files. Which is why 12″ singles always sounded better; wider groove spacing, no EQ.
Ken Kessler used to write about this in HiFi News and Record Reviews, my ‘bible’ back in the 80’s.
Downloaded MP3/AAC tracks can give me shivers up my spine, can reduce me to tears, I don’t need clicks and pops on a rotating piece of plastic to achieve that.
Like I said, the emotion and feeling is in the performance, not the medium that carries that performance.

Analogue is great but crackles and pops are just a horrible reminder that you’re listening to a facsimile, not the real thing. The missed notes and other human imperfections are there whatever the media is but in this modern age few come out of the studio. Born To Be Wild’s massive wrong bass note came across loud and clear on digital 6 music a few weeks back!

ChipsnGravy: Thanks, that John Dent lecture was excellent 🙂

I recently got a rega turntable off eBay – I quite enjoy buying cheap 2nd hand vinyl of discogs and owning old records.

But I only buy stuff for a couple of quid or so. There is no way I’m paying 15/ 20 quid for new music on vinyl when the cd can be had for a tenner or less – and the music was recorded using digital equipment anyway

chiefgrooveguru – Member
Analogue is great but crackles and pops are just a horrible reminder that you’re listening to a facsimile, not the real thing. The missed notes and other human imperfections are there whatever the media is but in this modern age few come out of the studio. Born To Be Wild’s massive wrong bass note came across loud and clear on digital 6 music a few weeks back!

My sentiments exactly.
Also, how do you listen to your vinyl on a train, in a car, on holiday, sitting in a coffee shop?
Record onto a Chrome C90? Per-leeez. 🙄