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Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

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Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#81

Post by puranjay »

tzs wrote: post #71

Is anyone working on a reasonably priced turntable to play vinyl discs without degrading them? In the mid '80s, Finial Technology announced such a turntable, and had a working unit at CES in 1986. It had a stylus that contained laser interferometers that could very accurately and precisely measure the distance from the stylus to the grove walls. It kept the stylus near, but not touching, the groove, getting the audio…

Look at Audio Technica's LP series

If you have a higher budget, check out Pro-Ject or Rega Planar

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#82

Post by sverige »

echelon wrote: post #49

As much as it pains me to say this, I think I'm a hipster. I put a lot of attention and care into my audio and vinyl setup, but now that you can find albums at Walmart, the hip factor has been sucked out of it like a vacuum. I've recently been downsizing, and this might be something that doesn't stay with me. I'll keep my signed albums, but maybe not the rest.

I advise against selling your collection. I sold almost all of my vinyl in the late 80s and really regret it.

Also, one of my favorite vinyl albums ever was a cutout Flying Lizards record that I got for a dollar at some very un-hip store. Provenance has nothing to do with it, it's the album itself.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#83

Post by dbcurtis »

ofibrvev wrote: post #38
habosa wrote: post #25

Vinyl is one of those old-school technologies that seems like it's from the future. Somehow we turned sound into a disk. You can see and feel the sound and then a tiny needle will reproduce the original sound just by touching the disk. And in very high quality! Blows me away every time I think about it. And we could have kept going: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc

Could have kept going... The CED offers one hour of VHS quality per side that rapidly degenerates. I own a sizeable collection of them, and while sorta neat, it’s also sorta terrible. The vinyl offers quality superior to most consumer tape equipment rivaled only by 11 ips reel to reel. CED had no quality advantages, decays rapidly and is non recordable. It was a non-starter. The fact is that CED was in the works sinc…

An old boss of mine worked on that beast! From the sounds of it, it barely worked in the lab. He told a story of getting so frustrated one day that he literally shoved his ‘scope off the back of the bench in frustration and walked out for the day. In his opintion, it is a good thing that it is dead and buried.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#84

Post by stjohnswarts »

targonca wrote: post #68
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really just want a FLAC rip of a CD to play over a media center, then consider simply downloading the FLAC rip from a filesharing community, but then buying the vinyl release for the sake of owning the physical artifact. That way, you both get high-quality digital audio and you financially support the artist, but the vinyl release has larger artwork and is more satisfying as a collector item.

I personally prefer buying FLAC from Bandcamp. It's the most artist-friendly option I'm aware of (and the most environmentally friendly too!). Some of them even include the same artwork in PDF that would be printed for the CD/vinyl edition.

This or direct download, I want the artist to get as much money as possible. The bug companies run off pure breed and don't even give the artist 10% of revenue unless they are in the top 0.0001% who can afford to demand it or walk.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#85

Post by rwmj »

Freak_NL wrote: post #78
rwmj wrote: post #39

Here I am listening to Daniel Barenboim's Beethoven Piano Sonatas spread over 24 sides of vinyl, purchased for under a tenner in a charity shop. A CD would be more practical, but the set of records is a real experience, even the getting up to skip the occasional scratch and turn over the records. Edit: downvotes over 20 minutes. Do you doubt that I'm really listening to it (I am, before I read this news)? Or that vin…

These are good years for listeners of classical music picking up the occasional vinyl in charity shops and flea markets. In my experience, classic big name rock records get cherry-picked from everywhere by the proprietors of upmarket vintage stores, but classical music is left alone. Demographically speaking, lovingly collected vinyl collections are steadily entering the market due to the generation that bought them…

Yes exactly! I've also been collecting prog rock on vinyl for many years, but that is usually so expensive that getting CDs or youtube rips is far more practical. However classical/operatic box sets are the sweet spot of well preserved (incredible sound quality) and cheaply available. For example I have a second hand box set of Verdi's Aida which has probably bought me more joy than virtually anything else I own, and I'm not even really a huge fan of opera.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#86

Post by nealabq »

echelon wrote: post #49

As much as it pains me to say this, I think I'm a hipster. I put a lot of attention and care into my audio and vinyl setup, but now that you can find albums at Walmart, the hip factor has been sucked out of it like a vacuum. I've recently been downsizing, and this might be something that doesn't stay with me. I'll keep my signed albums, but maybe not the rest.

I was born in 1960, and I think I became a hipster when I graduated college (Berkeley) in 1982. That was when I moved to Portland because the only San Francisco jobs used Cobol. I didn't like SV and car culture.

But I always had trouble with vinyl. I lived in buildings with creaky wooden floors and the needle would jump when I walked by. I welcomed CDs.

My dad, however, was more hipster than me. And so I've just inherited 1000 vinyl albums.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#87

Post by Etheryte »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #73

Vinyl is 90% nostalgia and 10% logical. Modern recording methods are far superior and have much better fidelity. I much prefer my flacs on amodern high end system

I'm not sure whether this still holds, but for quite a long time, vinyl was a surefire way to avoid the loudness war [1] — the physical medium simply wouldn't allow for such extreme transformation and still play well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#88

Post by inflatableDodo »

tzs wrote: post #71

Is anyone working on a reasonably priced turntable to play vinyl discs without degrading them? In the mid '80s, Finial Technology announced such a turntable, and had a working unit at CES in 1986. It had a stylus that contained laser interferometers that could very accurately and precisely measure the distance from the stylus to the grove walls. It kept the stylus near, but not touching, the groove, getting the audio…

I've been looking at the possibility of using high speed cameras and image processing. I suspect this is a hackable problem using just open source libraries, off the shelf camera modules and cheap single board computers.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#89

Post by falcrist »

habosa wrote: post #25

Vinyl is one of those old-school technologies that seems like it's from the future. Somehow we turned sound into a disk. You can see and feel the sound and then a tiny needle will reproduce the original sound just by touching the disk. And in very high quality! Blows me away every time I think about it. And we could have kept going: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc

We kinda did keep going, except we put the grooves onto foil as little dots, and read them with a laser. Also, the whole thing is encased in polycarbonate.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#90

Post by cortesoft »

tomc1985 wrote: post #69
cbdumas wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Physical media is for when you want to really enjoy the music. Wow this is some condescending, pretentious nonsense. Also, every streaming service I've ever used is perfectly capable of playing an album in order.

You're discounting the value of physically experiencing the media you're consuming. Pretentious or not, it really is a different feeling, something that streaming can't replicate.

Physically experiencing? You mean the act of placing a record on the player, or something else?

So only the person who touches the album gets the full experience?

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