Cd’s or vinyl

I have a Linn LP12 with Ittok arm. Pretty old now but still a good deck. I can’t remember when I last listened to a record. CD or Radio 3 for me.

Do you have any idea what that Linn is worth? A Basik is very expensive, my mate has one he bought new, and has had it upgraded, and it’s worth several thousand pounds now, LP12’s run to many thousands! Go online and you can find s/h LP12’s going for £1500-2500, but I’ve just seen two from petertyson.co.uk, this being the most expensive…

https://petertyson.co.uk/linn-sondek-lp12-50-turntable?clickref=1101lzQGeLdn&utm_source=partnerize&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=1101l69362

I gave up on vinyl in 1982, when I returned four copies of Peter Gabriel’s fourth album because they were unplayable, the surface noise made them unlistenable, and that coincided neatly with CD being introduced, and that album was one of the first. I happened to work part-time in a HiFi shop, so I had access to nice equipment, my turntable was a Logic DM101, Zeta tonearm with AudioTechnica MC cartridge, about £2.5k retail, so if vinyl was unlistenable on that, it must be bad. It was, vinyl was being recycled, ground up and reused for new albums, I had one that had lots of little white specks all over it – under a magnifying glass they were bits of ground up label embedded in the disks!

I wouldn’t trust vintage vinyl, tbh, without knowing the history. Plus it wasn’t unusual for the original stampers used to press the disks to wear out or get damaged, and a replacement cut from a copy of the studio master, which might be a second- or third-generation tape, so sound quality is degrading at every stage.

It’s possible to tell, by looking at the sleeve details, where it might say ‘Mastered by Bob Ludwig at Masterdisk’, he’s accepted as the best vinyl mastering engineer ever, but you can look at the run-out grooves of the disk, and one side might say ‘Masterdisk’, the other might say ‘Stirling Sound’, so it can’t, by definition, be as good quality because it’s been mastered from a second generation tape, by a different person at a different mastering studio.

Having said all that, early CD’s were pretty crap because they were mastered from tapes EQ’d for vinyl, which has a totally different dynamic range.

But no shitty background noise, though.

Music snobbery seems to have peaked.

And paying all that money for vinyl and then playing it on a mediocre record deck makes no sense to me.

I do still buy the occasional bit of vinyl – new stuff from Trunk, or Ninja Tunes, etc. if I see something cool – but I’m not into these £30+ reissues of classic albums.

Luckily most of my vinyl purchasing was back in the 90s – 00s, when new vinyl was still relatively cheap, you could pick up proper bargains in places like Music and Video Exchange (I haunted that place when I lived in London!), and charity shops were full to brim with exciting finds as everyone was just chucking out their old LPs.

I clearly remember walking out of a Torquay chazza with David Bowie’s entire back catalogue for a cheeky 50p per LP 😆

I clearly remember walking out of a Torquay chazza with David Bowie’s entire back catalogue for a cheeky 50p per LP ?

Those were the days when you could get five pints, a bag of chips and still get changes out of a fiver

early CD’s were pretty crap because they were mastered from tapes EQ’d for vinyl, which has a totally different dynamic range.

Back in those days, CDs were labelled [A][A][D] or suchlike to indicate how far along the food chain it’d been converted. The first fully (mainstream?) [D][D][D] disc was Brothers in Arms.

I’ve mentioned this before but MrsRNP beloved father had a ‘gold turntable’, after his death it got lost in the garage.

I found it and discovered it was a Nottingham Analogue Dais. I contacted them and dropped it off for repair (they also replaced the arm & stylus) and did an amazing job.

Record playing in our house is a lovely emotive charged affair.

Those were the days when you could get five pints, a bag of chips and still get changes out of a fiver

😆 not quite, but old vinyl was literally as cheap as chips.

I had to look that turntable up as I thought it was a copy of my Systemdek biscuit tin from ’85

Very expensive indeed

I need to get some electrical repairs to my A&R Cambridge A60 amp from the same era and see if the Creek amp I’ve got up the loft fires up with no cracklin

Vinyl for me…but then I’m a old skool rave dj , 2 decks and a mixer turns vinyl into a instrument