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Sony plans to make vinyl records again

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#281

Post by ovao »

DiNovi wrote: post #279
eanzenberg wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno.. digital music just sounds better, is more consistent, portable, and all around easier to play than vinyl. Why stop there? Do you also churn your own butter, milk your own cows, shave with a straight razor? Personally, I think it's just silly hipster bias.

uncompressed digital definitely does; but since most services dont offer that, its not what most people compare against

You'll actually have a very difficult time finding a modern lossy encoder at sane settings that will produce anything worse than what's achievable with a vinyl record. Because modern oversampling D/A converters are also very good, very abundant and very inexpensive, you'll have a similarly difficult time finding a digital playback system that's more poorly-equipped at the task than a purely-analog playback system.

From a purely technical perspective I'll pick a typical lossy file over vinyl every single time.

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#282

Post by bitJericho »

ovao wrote: post #239
bitJericho wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, for sure. That said, there's a lot to be said about listening to an entire album. I'm a huge fan of CDs for this reason. It's a good mix of Vinyl vs Digital. I know I'm getting perfect, uncompressed digital audio. My setup is designed for involved listening if I want it, and I do that mostly with CDs, rather than records. At the same time, if I want something new, or a cd I don't have, I just put on Spotify.…

I'm a huge fan of CDs for this reason. I know I'm getting perfect, uncompressed digital audio. Ah, but you don't know! On Beck's Odelay Deluxe Edition release, for example, there are at least two tracks that came from a lossy source. I don't think it's something that happens often. But through some combination of factors it has happened before, and probably happens more often than people might be aware.

True. There's also issues with volume and with analog to digital conversions. But even still, almost any cd is better than it's analog equivalent in just about every measure.

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#283

Post by 0xCMP »

nocman wrote: post #250
delinka wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...using one medium over another somehow makes you more "serious" about the music" I believe you missed the point. He says the ritual makes the listener more involved with the music. He doesn't say different media make one more or less serious about music. It's similar with food: you can be serious about your food whether cooking it yourself or ordering it at a restaurant (or eating at a buffet.) But you're more inv…

No, I don't think I missed the point. My point was that he was unnecessarily tying the listener's activeness/seriousness/whatever with/about the music to the medium it was on. I totally get the point about there being different levels of interaction with music. I just don't think that listening to music on vinyl equates to you being a more active listener. For some it might help, I suppose, but I think it is far from…

It's a similar argument to digital vs physical in other areas. Ebooks vs real books. Evernote/Notes vs a real notebook and pen.

There is research which says our minds react differently to the physical world than to the digital one. So from the idea it follows that using a Vinyl itself may not be better/worse than digital, but the mental state you enter into because of the higher activation cost (decide to play music + go to place where music is + select music + play music + go back to place to relax) as well as the reduced control (requires significant movement to pause/play/go back/go forward vs a digital device in close proximity) that it makes a difference in appreciating the music that is playing because of that investment of energy.

If you play something on Spotify you just aren't invested as much and aren't as likely to pay as much attention to the song as you would if you had invested that energy into playing it on vinyl.

So not so much that you can't do it with modern mediums, but that the modern mediums are not designed to inherently provide that feeling or bring you to that mental state.

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#284

Post by bamboozled »

nocman wrote: post #213
bcrescimanno wrote: post #144

As someone who started collecting vinyl about 3 years ago, it's about the difference between passive and active involvement in music. So much of our music consumption these days is a largely passive activity. We have music in our headphones while we work. We have music on in our cars while we drive. We have music on in the background of social events. While modern digital formats have given us true ubiquity of music…

While I can understand the nostalgia of playing music on a record player (many of us had lots of records when we were younger), and how that experience could be different for you, perhaps in a very pleasant way, I find the idea that the experience of using one medium over another somehow makes you more "serious" about the music (or more engaged with the music, or whatever else you want to call it) is laughable. You c…

It can't be just about "nostalgia", because it's growing popular with teenagers of today.

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#285

Post by InclinedPlane »

bcrescimanno wrote: post #144

As someone who started collecting vinyl about 3 years ago, it's about the difference between passive and active involvement in music. So much of our music consumption these days is a largely passive activity. We have music in our headphones while we work. We have music on in our cars while we drive. We have music on in the background of social events. While modern digital formats have given us true ubiquity of music…

Precisely. Do vinyl records sound better than, say, mp3s? Objectively not (at least from a pure audio perspective). But that's not what's it about. Humans aren't robots. The ritual, the priming of the experience, the necessity of putting effort into the selection and stewardship of your music collection, even the fragility and fussiness of dealing with vinyl records themselves. All of these things help deepen the experience and make it easier to justify taking time out of your day just to listen to music (there's so much temptation to multi-task and push music into the background otherwise). Could you do all of these things otherwise? Sure, but it definitely seems a lot harder for people to do so. This is just how the human psyche works, and it's pretty serious, important stuff. Think about how much of religion is built on the same elements (ritual, caretaking, tradition, etc.) for example.

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#286

Post by maldusiecle »

gorkonsine wrote: post #203
k-mcgrady wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problems I have with CD's that I don't with Vinyl: - CD's scratch and then skip easily - CD's come in horrible plastic covers that break if you look at them wrong. - Skipping to a certain part of a song is much more difficult with CD's. - The benefits vinyl provides (large artwork and liner notes/ lyrics, posters etc.) don't all apply to CD's and at that point there's not much/any benefit CD's have over digital.

>- CD's scratch and then skip easily Only if you mishandle and abuse them. Doing that to vinyl records is going to make them sound lousy too. Both of them are fairly delicate. >- CD's come in horrible plastic covers that break if you look at them wrong. Those jewel boxes are easily replaced, because most of them are standard (the exceptions are weird ones, like the double-CD ones). The plastic boxes keep the booklets…

> But that's not a big problem; in the CDs, it's just shrunk down to 1/4 its LP size. Get some reading glasses if you have problems seeing that.

By the same reasoning, I suppose I should throw out my tablet and replace it with an iPhone and a magnifying glass.

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#287

Post by wepple »

bcrescimanno wrote: post #144

As someone who started collecting vinyl about 3 years ago, it's about the difference between passive and active involvement in music. So much of our music consumption these days is a largely passive activity. We have music in our headphones while we work. We have music on in our cars while we drive. We have music on in the background of social events. While modern digital formats have given us true ubiquity of music…

Thank you. This is exactly how I feel but I haven't been able to describe it before.

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#288

Post by gmarx »

tnecniv wrote: post #226
gmarx wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that you call it a "hi-fi" which is what it would have been called the generation before mine. We always called it a "stereo". I've always been amazed by how rare it is for a person to be interested in a system that makes the music sound better. The difference between an iPhone with the default earbuds and a $5000 stereo rig with speakers is astounding but only a tiny fraction of the listening public cares

At least in my experience, it's one of those things that you don't know what you are missing until you have it. I remember when I bought my first pair of IEMs. They were pretty cheap, but still better than whatever earbuds came with my iPod at the time. After listening to the new IEMs for a while I was unable to go back to the Apple ones because they sounded so much worse. If you asked me a few days prior, I would ha…

yup, that's the downside of the hobby. I spent years chasing improvements which only satisfied me for a week. Took me years to stop and enjoy "good enough". Recently played something on my system for a musician friend and he was unimpressed...then I was crestfallen

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#289

Post by InclinedPlane »

eanzenberg wrote: post #191
bcrescimanno wrote: post #144

As someone who started collecting vinyl about 3 years ago, it's about the difference between passive and active involvement in music. So much of our music consumption these days is a largely passive activity. We have music in our headphones while we work. We have music on in our cars while we drive. We have music on in the background of social events. While modern digital formats have given us true ubiquity of music…

I dunno.. digital music just sounds better, is more consistent, portable, and all around easier to play than vinyl. Why stop there? Do you also churn your own butter, milk your own cows, shave with a straight razor? Personally, I think it's just silly hipster bias.

You realize how ridiculous this is right? Why not just plug yourself into a VR headset and eat your meals in pill form?

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#290

Post by jhbadger »

bamboozled wrote: post #284
nocman wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I can understand the nostalgia of playing music on a record player (many of us had lots of records when we were younger), and how that experience could be different for you, perhaps in a very pleasant way, I find the idea that the experience of using one medium over another somehow makes you more "serious" about the music (or more engaged with the music, or whatever else you want to call it) is laughable. You c…

It can't be just about "nostalgia", because it's growing popular with teenagers of today.

Nostalgia can be about idealized versions of the past that one never experienced oneself though. When I was a teen there was a very popular TV show about the 1950s called "Happy Days" that was popular even among us teens who had no experience of the actual 1950s. Similarly, more recently, "Mad Men" about the 1960s.
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