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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

#151

Post by parsimo2010 »

CDs are dying, but they are mostly being killed by streaming services, not by vinyl. Digital music formats are still the king by far. The vast majority of people don't even care that their streamed music is lossy and they lose out on high frequencies that their ears can't hear and their headphones can't reproduce.

Vinyl appeals to hipsters and dumb audiophiles (there are smart audiophiles, but they aren't buying vinyl), both communities that are prone to buying into hype. Hipsters move on as soon as something becomes mainstream, and dumb audiophiles will move on as soon as there is a more expensive option with newer/cooler buzzwords attached to it. Cassette tapes could replace vinyl someday as the hip alternative to digital music- it's retro and analog, plus they are portable and don't skip/lose track during heavy movement (which a record player would do if you could go jogging with one).

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

#152

Post by phicoh »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #66

CDs are a nearly-perfect format and it's sad to see them decline. Mainstream digital music stores don't even offer CD quality, and streaming services are antithetical to preservation and allow content to disappear overnight.

The thing that got me to stop buying CDs for the most part is how badly they are mastered.

In past it was some labels that put out badly mastered CDs, these days artists that once produced excellent albums now seems to accept a final result that tries to win the loudness war.

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

#153

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #138
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…

The vinyl groove is about 25-100 micrometer, and feature sizes on it go down to about 22.5 micrometer [1]. Lasers are extremely cheap today compared to what they were back in the day, and doing laser interferometry to detect features this small is not that difficult. I imagine a hobbyist with the right skill set could hack together a reader for a few hundred bucks at most. [1] http://www.gzvinyl.com/About-vinyl.aspx

Yep, modern optical computer nice have sensors north of 10000 dpi, so ostensibly a hacked up mouse/scanner could read all the data with plenty of room for error.

A colleague was doing this in a decade ago, I wonder if he ever got it working.

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

#154

Post by tomc1985 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #140
tomc1985 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't care about physically experiencing musical media. I grew out of that in the 80s when I moved around a lot and had to keep moving multiple boxes of vinyl up and down multiple flights of stairs. If my FLAC collection was on vinyl I'd have to buy it a house of its own. Moving would require a military budget and a series of strategic planning meetings. That would rather more physical experience than I care for.

I'm not saying one should listen to vinyl exclusively, I agree that's ridiculous. But it is important to maintain and curate a physical collection of music -- wthether it's vinyl, CDs, FLAC, or MP3, and that is something that streaming makes impossible.

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

#155

Post by monocasa »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #99
Etheryte wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah but it's got a bit better over the past decade as more people realized why that certain something was missing

Has it though? The wiki article (and my experience) implies that it's been getting worse, not better.

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

#156

Post by ofibrvev »

dbcurtis wrote: post #83
ofibrvev wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have dismantled the players. Truly a marvel of electromechanical design. So many hand soldered and assembled parts. It is incredible they made it work mass produced. Too bad it was 20 years too late.

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

#157

Post by eropple »

agumonkey wrote: post #119
thinkmassive wrote: post #15

By revenue, not by units sold. Still interesting, and not really surprising based on my anecdotal experience of artists I follow. Streaming audio is good enough for most sound systems commonly in use. Vinyl serves as a better collectible from a favorite artist for a few reasons. - more room for cover art - physical analog medium (superficial, but has value to some) - requires more care than CDs (proves the owner’s de…

The ritual of electromechanical device has some appeal. The arm, the spin up, the pops. Even CDs had some ~groove (yes intended), the tray and interface. That's something digital media reduced almost to zero (I guess younger generations had the bliss of the ipod wheel).

I've sometimes thought about setting up my Shuttle Pro jog wheel to act like an iPod wheel...

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

#158

Post by kozak »

Koshkin wrote: post #126
kozak wrote: post #100

The biggest relevation for me about vinyl was when I realized that it's CAV (constant angular velocity) and not CLV (constant linear velocity). It means that audio quality gets progressively worse as you move from outer tracks to inner tracks!

Not necessarily worse, though. There could be undesirable mechanical side-effects from the track moving too fast against the needle as well. (I am sure there is a huge body of engineering science about this.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Afikv6k1-c

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

#159

Post by pkorzeniewski »

I bought a turntable from the 80s several months ago and I love it :-) I never had a turntable before so it's actually a "new" technology to me, but I find the physicality of the whole thing wonderful - choosing a record and setting up the turntable is like a ritual, you just enjoy the moment.

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

#160

Post by Aaronmacaron »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #151

CDs are dying, but they are mostly being killed by streaming services, not by vinyl. Digital music formats are still the king by far. The vast majority of people don't even care that their streamed music is lossy and they lose out on high frequencies that their ears can't hear and their headphones can't reproduce. Vinyl appeals to hipsters and dumb audiophiles (there are smart audiophiles, but they aren't buying viny…

Your conception of vinyl buyers is very negative. I think there's another category of people that buy vinyl. If you really love an album and want to support the artist you can purchase the vinyl version of the album. Apart from supporting the artist you often get additional treats like a nice booklet with the lyrics or additional art/imagery.

I really think there's extra value in buying vinyl apart from it being hip.

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