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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

#311

Post by glenneroo »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #291
glenneroo wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would even say that CDs really are somewhat disposable and cheap, they wear down after ~10 years and you often get scratches which cause your tracks to do the endless looping skip-skip-skip. I don't know how many DJ's I've heard play a scratched/skipping track, whereas Vinyl only skips if your tonearm weight is out of whack, the stage is bouncing, you accidentally bump the turntable (drugs are bad, mmmkay), or some…

If you're somewhat gentle with both, the CDs are going to last a lot longer.

Well UV light and oxidation cause disc-rot[0], so even if you leave them in their cases, they will eventually go bad. Therefore the only choice is keep them in a temperature and light controlled underground environment. Self-burned media tends to rot even faster.

And my point was mostly that if you're DJing with them, it's hard to keep them in pristine condition.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#312

Post by taylodl »

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…

If you want ritual then may I suggest reel-to-reel tape? You get ritual and awesome sound. If we're going to bring back analog then let's at least bring back good analog!

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#313

Post by fortyfivan »

oflannabhra wrote: post #138

I started collecting vinyl back in 2006, when my uncle passed and left me a turntable and a small collection. I grew up with Napster, CD-Rs, iTunes, and iPods. I've always seen my generations attraction to vinyl as a response to the ephemeral nature of digital music. Vinyl is orders of magnitude less convenient, but it is concrete. When I spend my $5-30 dollars, I own a physical good that I can manipulate. I think th…

This. I've been a record collector for 20 years, mostly focused on rare Brazilian music - https://www.novedos.com.

I don't DJ anymore so it's primarily a collector thing for me. Aside from the master tapes, an original vinyl copy is as close as you can get to the original recording, which is special. I'm far from an audiophile, so it's not about the sound, it's about the feels.

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#314

Post by robbrown451 »

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 agree, except that once digital music became available, going through that ritual feels artificial to me. Like, in the old days (say when I was in college in the 80s, when I used to make regular trips to the used vinyl record store), it was a necessity to go through that ritual.

As much as I can appreciate vinyl, I can't force myself to go through the hassle (and expense) of trying to do that today.

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#315

Post by osrec »

delinka wrote: post #230
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…

"...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…

I'm not sure if your cooking analogy holds in this case. As someone who has never operated a record player, I don't think the act of merely setting up the equipment would really add to my experience. If we were talking about replacing a musical instrument with an iPod, then your cooking analogy is more cogent. Perhaps the pleasure is more rooted in nostalgia - I remember an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond in which Frank (the elderly father) shuns a state of the art CD player for his vinyls (https://youtu.be/ZQM6GwUancI), and his reasoning for why was that it reminded him of the enjoyment those records gave him earlier in his working life. It's like when I watch a sketchy VHS of Mr Bean, it reminds me of times with my maternal grandfather in a way a crystal clear DVD copy never could!

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#317

Post by zzo38computer »

bamboozled wrote: post #294
jhbadger wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe they are simply enjoying that medium though? It's almost as if people are having a hard time coming to terms with that prospect. I don't prefer learning or brainstorming using pencil and paper because they did it in the twenties, I do it because it's effective and I enjoy it, same for reading real books, I just enjoy them more than a Kindle (which I tried and find subpar)

I agree too, pencil/paper it can be good I find it work good, and real books too I prefer. That is different than records vs CD, which is a different kind of thing to that in my opinion.

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#318

Post by zzo38computer »

afandian wrote: post #38

If you think this direction is bizarre, consider the 'cutting edge'. In the 21st century my 'CD player' (Spotify) is tracking everything I listen to so they can sell the data to a company who will build a comprehensive psychological profile about me and try to influence where I spend my money (or worse, which way I vote). This tweet specifically was bare-faced about it and appeared to be saying "our users are fine wi…

Agreed about that last part. And not just for music (although I do not use Spotify and that stuff anyways; I use local files or CDs), but also for television, where there are many other issues too, that would be corrected by analogue (although there are other ways to solve it too, analogue seems the simplest and neatest way).

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#319

Post by __david__ »

marcosdumay wrote: post #215
empath75 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the only explanation for this that I could actually understand. Anyone telling me that they think it sounds better just triggers eye rolling.

Honestly, have you looked at your sound system recently? At the time of vinyl, the RIAA had standards on how to process the sound. Those were good standards. On the move to digital we threw them away, and nowadays some companies go into the cheapest route, some go into the best benchmarks route, and nearly no company tries to release a system that sounds good anymore. But vinyl systems still have to follow the RIAA s…

They threw them out because they’re just there to compensate for specific distortion in the analog vinyl medium. As far as I understand the riaa equalization in your phonograph is just to undo the premphasis put there when it was mastered. It’s completely unneeded in digital audio.

Re: Sony plans to make vinyl records again

#320

Post by __david__ »

shuntress wrote: post #224
empath75 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the only explanation for this that I could actually understand. Anyone telling me that they think it sounds better just triggers eye rolling.

It doesn't automatically sound better. But the main reduction in quality from most digital storage comes from sacrifices made in encoding/compression to achieve more efficient storage. Since you simply cannot do this on analog storage, vinyl will not have these compromises and will usually sound better. But compared to good lossless digital storage that makes the opposite sacrifice (ie: Take up more space to retain m…

Of course vinyl has the same issues. How close are your groves? How rigid is your material? If you spin it faster you can het higher frequencies but then the needle has more chance to grind down those physical grooves each time you play it.

Uncompressed digital audio is going to sound equal to or (more likely) better, and it doesn’t have the degradation problem.

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