Vinyl sales up again

[Doctor J]

3 hours ago, Woodwind said:

I don't like downloads or streaming both from a sound quality point of view or ethically (specifically spotify).

If an artist I like only has their music on bandcamp download rather than physical product I have to think hard about whether I'll buy it :

If the ethics bother you then you should embrace bandcamp. Over 60% of the money goes to the artist. There is no other platform which even comes close. Plus, you can download purchases in lossless and wav formats so sound quality should not keep you awake at night either. If the music is good enough, you'll find a way to come back to it

[meterman]

I still buy music on vinyl, have done since I was a kid. I don’t buy as much vinyl as I did maybe 10-20 years ago but I still buy it. I’ll buy CDs as well, sometimes at gigs, but often for the old “expanded-with-bonus-tracks” reissues. I even still have a cassette player, but that’s my problem haha 😂 

A couple of projects I’m involved with have got vinyl LPs and 7” singles being released early next year and usually the label gives us a box of complimentary freebies which we can sell on Bandcamp or wherever. Which sometimes is the only way we’ll see any money especially when the vinyl is a ltd edition release. Very handy this year,  what with no gigs etc. 
I’d be interested to see how long the vinyl revival continues, or if it’s just a passing fad. I love music and ultimately the format it’s presented in doesn’t enhance or detract from that. I do love finding old reggae 12’s or funk 45s still, that won’t change I don’t think.

[bass_dinger]

16 minutes ago, Doctor J said:

 

Do you have an impressive beard?

Define "impressive"!

I think that I want my hifi to sound like the original recording - if I want soft and fuzzy, I can always throw a duvet over the speakers....

For me, the biggest revelation has been the purchase of Atacama speaker stands.  The definition is better, more focused - and the music is easier to listen to, and less fatiguing.   

[TheLowDown]

Some people have been known to fuss over having to have audiophile type quality. Above an mp3 of 320bps(some people say 192), very few people can tell the difference in the quality anyway. A lot of people have vivid imaginations.

Just enjoy the music.

[Jonesy]

2 hours ago, toneknob said:

Same here, an excellent lockdown pastime (for a few weeks anyway)

There were some pleasant surprises to be had!

I had a couple that were worth a bit more than I would've thought and def a nice return on what I picked them up for a car boot sales. The only downside is my Dad has realised what his collection is worth....... This means that I get searched pretty much any time I'm leaving his place to make sure I haven't got any Sabbath albums on me 😂

[PaulWarning]

9 minutes ago, TheLowDown said:

Some people have been known to fuss over having to have audiophile type quality. Above an mp3 of 320bps(some people say 192), very few people can tell the difference in the quality anyway. A lot of people have vivid imaginations.

Just enjoy the music.

must admit I can't tell the difference between 320 or 192bps mp3's (although I can tell when it gets down to 128bps) or lossless like wav files or even CD's, but then I do wear hearing aids. I used to be a bit of an audio file and agonise over what piece of equipment sounded best, it can be a curse

[4000]

I stopped buying vinyl years ago, mainly for reasons of practicality, partly because my Thorens deck died and I couldn’t afford another. It’s been cds since; I got rid of most of my vinyl and only kept stuff that meant a lot to me, like my autographed stuff. A couple of years back I was given a reasonably decent deck by a relative. I haven’t hooked it up yet though, because, well, cats.😂

 

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

9 minutes ago, 4000 said:

I stopped buying vinyl years ago, mainly for reasons of practicality, partly because my Thorens deck died and I couldn’t afford another. It’s been cds since; I got rid of most of my vinyl and only kept stuff that meant a lot to me, like my autographed stuff. A couple of years back I was given a reasonably decent deck by a relative. I haven’t hooked it up yet though, because, well, cats.😂

 

Cats come first 😼. How does it feel being without vinyl at the moment ?

[4000]

1 hour ago, RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE said:

Cats come first 😼. How does it feel being without vinyl at the moment ?

I miss the interaction, the almost ritualistic process of playing a vinyl album, poring over the artwork etc, but the vinyl itself? Not really. And even the experience has, I suspect, a lot of nostalgia attached to it. I don’t think putting vinyl on now could ever capture the feeling of saving up for, buying and playing say Wish You Were Here, in my teens. In those days each album was a major life event. I think it would be difficult for me to experience that again at my age and in the modern world, with so much of everything. And if I’m honest, having just bought both Kate Bush remastered boxed sets on cd, they’re beautiful things in their own right, just in a smaller package. 

But yes, there is no way playing vinyl on a turntable would survive our cats!

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

5 hours ago, 4000 said:

I miss the interaction, the almost ritualistic process of playing a vinyl album, poring over the artwork etc, but the vinyl itself? Not really. And even the experience has, I suspect, a lot of nostalgia attached to it. I don’t think putting vinyl on now could ever capture the feeling of saving up for, buying and playing say Wish You Were Here, in my teens. In those days each album was a major life event. I think it would be difficult for me to experience that again at my age and in the modern world, with so much of everything. And if I’m honest, having just bought both Kate Bush remastered boxed sets on cd, they’re beautiful things in their own right, just in a smaller package. 

But yes, there is no way playing vinyl on a turntable would survive our cats!

Similar thoughts here . 
I remember buying vinyl to be played when  I got home from work.

Once iPods and then iPhones were introduced, it all stopped as I could listen to music on the train/ bus etc. Headphones of course. Now it seems to have lost that sparkle . 

Similar to your Kate bush box sets, the tangerine dream ones are well worth it.

[nilebodgers]

Funny the nostalgia for vinyl. I still remember the anxiety of buying LPs in the 70s, getting them home and then sadly having to trail back to the shop because they were scratched or warped.

I much preferred CD although the LP format was way better for artwork.

[Monkey Steve]

Never had a problem from any of my cats when playing vinyl

However, prior to flogging most of them (vinyl, not cats), my old cat did sharpen his claws on the bottom row of all my albums.  Little sod

My current cats show no inclination to do the same thing...but I do now put them (vinyl, not cats) all in PVC sleeves

Worst they've ever done to my CDs is scatter them around the room when chasing a mouse

Edited December 31, 2020 by Monkey Steve
clarity on the confusion between cats and records

[Bobthedog]

1 minute ago, Monkey Steve said:

Never had a problem from any of my cats when playing vinyl

However, prior to flogging most of them, my old cat did sharpen his claws on the bottom row of all my albums.  Little sod

My current cats show no inclination to do the same thing...but I do now put them all in PVC sleeves

Worst they've ever done to my CDs is scatter them around the room when chasing a mouse

 

Do the cats mind being put in sleeves? Can they still breath? 😀 

 

I would love to have vinyl but alas only have CD’s to play with.

[toneknob]

26 minutes ago, Monkey Steve said:

Never had a problem from any of my cats when playing vinyl

However, prior to flogging most of them, my old cat did sharpen his claws on the bottom row of all my albums.  Little sod

 

At some point in the early/mid 90s a cat snuck in through a barely open window and p*ssed in a Casio keyboard that was on the third shelf up (an expert flatmate later helped identify the odor). Turns out there's more p*ss in a cat than can comfortably fit in a Casio keyboard (who knew!) so it overflowed on to shelf two, which held my admittedly in those days much smaller record collection.

Words were said, some of which I'm not proud of. Much of sections H-R had to be discarded/burnt. The specific cat was never identified (turns out you can't dust for cat p*ss) but this may explain my ongoing for dislike for cats to this day and an unexpected spike in second hand record shop activity in the Hampshire/Surrey/Sussex areas in the mid-90s.

 

 

Edited December 31, 2020 by toneknob

[Monkey Steve]

see - cats are great for the economy 🤣

I'm probably laughing harder than I should at something that was quite upsetting for you at the time - sorry

Edited December 31, 2020 by Monkey Steve

[Stub Mandrel]

Yessongs.

😎

[4000]

10 hours ago, RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE said:

Similar to your Kate bush box sets, the tangerine dream ones are well worth it.

They’re on the shopping list. 😉

Rather ironically the most fun I’ve had listening to music recently has been discovering new (or previously unheard old) stuff whilst working from home. Played via YouTube on an iPad into a £50 Bluetooth speaker, so hardly hi-fi, but the joy of discovering the music has far outweighed any shortcomings in quality, which is probably a lesson in itself. 

[4000]

One of our old cats sprayed all over our old Mac. Unfortunately it got inside it and over time just corroded everything. When it comes to cat pee vs technology, there’s only one winner. 😉

[BassTractor]

Following is all written AFAIK and IMHO, and I just love to be corrected:
For those interested, and bear with me please:

I like whales. So far so good.
Me liking whales is not imperative to me reading up about all whale species, write down the perceived "best" capacities of each of them and then "construct" a super whale species that incorporates all those exact capacities in one species so I can write a Save The Whales article where I present all whale species as if they all have all those capacities. (Yes, I've read that article and it made my stomach go round.)

Same with vinyl.
I like vinyl. So far so good.
Still: the theoretically possible LP was not part of what we lived with every day.
The regular LP in the 70s was not nearly identical in quality to the pre-mixing recordings or even to the mix (which could be stellar, as evidenced by for example the famous Decca recordings from around 1959). The regular shop vinyl would have an amplitude resolution comparable to a 12-bit to 14-bit recording, and the "sampling" rate, though theoretically limitless would normally compare to 24 to 28 kHz digital ( = you could hear up to 12 to 14 kHz sounds).
IOW in practical terms, your average LP was a lousy product compared to the theoretically possible and perceivedly desirable, and also compared to a 16-bit/44.1 kHz CD.
We liked the LP. Many voiced negative opinions about the first CDs, in part rightly so. After some time the regular CD outperformed the regular LP from a  technical point of view  -  despite well-known limitations of digital recording, digital mixing and all the converting being involved.

In this, the human ear (not every ear, but the ear that was important for manufacturers) was found to have a listening capacity comparable roughly to a digital 22 bit / 40 kHz (the latter written for direct comparing; it translates f.x. to being able to hear up to 20 kHz).

BTW 1, the Nyquist theorem is right within what it says. It never said that a 40 kHz sampling rate (the one that was turned into 44.1 kHz for the CD) also gives a 20 kHz sound at the correct amplitude and in the right phase.
This point may be unimportant in practical terms, but I like things to be correct so we really understand what we're talking about.

BTW 2, and really unimportant, research showed that a tiny percentage of people somehow had a perception of sound well above 20 kHz. At the time it was not explained, and I've not since seen an explanation beyond the possibility it was something with the gear used to create the sound. Answers may be on the web somewhere.

Anyway, when creating the CD, Sony and Philips were very aware of all of this stuff (false or true).
They just created a product. I know for a fact that Philips was very occupied with creating a "Philips product" as a boss put it to me (simply put: with limitations and catering exclusively for the bottom line). But a "Philips product" being limited does not mean the vinyl alternative automatically is a god-sent.

Since the analogue side of things is open on the quality side (can "always" be improved on), it's only in recent decades that vinyl has had the potential of really competing with the 16-bit/44.1 kHz standard.

The digital side however, with CD-A, DVD-A and BluRay hit back with 24-bit/96 kHz or something (I forgot the specifics), and that format, if executed well, outperforms the human ear at any rate.

I've willingly avoided the mixing part. Stuff is so awesome these days that IMHO it has little meaning in practical terms. If you start talking about mixing, you really need to talk about the other processing going on.

TLDR: vinyl is fine, that's all. I love it, but as far I can see see it's far from a god-sent.

Corrections very welcome.

Edited December 31, 2020 by BassTractor

[BassTractor]

5 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Yessongs.

😎

Sorry, haven't read the whole thread yet, but may I ask:
As like "Der Ring des Nibelungen"? As in: you're referring to the amount of sides to play?
In case: that was one of my main reasons, if not the main one, to adopt formats that were not LPs. One day, I played Wagner a whole day without ever having to change a thing. My iPod did that for me.

I hate it when somebody is dying on stage and has to suffer whilst I drag my behind out of the sofa to turn a record and let the poor bar steward die with some dignity. 

[Dad3353]

1 hour ago, BassTractor said:

...I hate it when somebody is dying on stage and has to suffer whilst I drag my behind out of the sofa to turn a record and let the poor bar steward die with some dignity. 

Indeed; I've Schubert anecdotes on this very subject. If it can't reproduce the 'live' session, then it's not 'hi-fi'.

[Stub Mandrel]

1 hour ago, BassTractor said:

7 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Yessongs.

😎

Sorry, haven't read the whole thread yet, but may I ask:
As like "Der Ring des Nibelungen"? As in: you're referring to the amount of sides to play?
In case: that was one of my main reasons, if not the main one, to adopt formats that were not LPs. One day, I played Wagner a whole day without ever having to change a thing. My iPod did that for me.

I hate it when somebody is dying on stage and has to suffer whilst I drag my behind out of the sofa to turn a record and let the poor bar steward die with some dignity. 

No, I'm suggesting my copy of Yessongs gives great joy of ownership for reasons, indeed reasons without a single kilohertz in sight.

[Stub Mandrel]

1 hour ago, BassTractor said:

Sorry, haven't read the whole thread yet, but may I ask:
As like "Der Ring des Nibelungen"? As in: you're referring to the amount of sides to play?
In case: that was one of my main reasons, if not the main one, to adopt formats that were not LPs. One day, I played Wagner a whole day without ever having to change a thing. My iPod did that for me.

I hate it when somebody is dying on stage and has to suffer whilst I drag my behind out of the sofa to turn a record and let the poor bar steward die with some dignity. 

It was a retrograde step when they stopped numbering double album sides 1,4,2,3 for autochangers.

[Woodwind]

On 30/12/2020 at 18:21, Doctor J said:

If the ethics bother you then you should embrace bandcamp. Over 60% of the money goes to the artist. There is no other platform which even comes close. Plus, you can download purchases in lossless and wav formats so sound quality should not keep you awake at night either. If the music is good enough, you'll find a way to come back to it

Bandcamp is my primary means to buy music, but I should have expanded on my original post.

I like to use a computer or phone as little as possible and for as specific a task as is possible.

I enjoy the fact that listening to music requires different physical acts to writing a letter or watching a film etc etc

I engage with each activity in quite a profoundly different way (which will have an effect on the results - you'd never write the same sentences using a pen as you would typing - in this case one isn't better per se, just different ), whereas flipping a laptop open to send an email, stream some music or watch netflix boxsets utilises the same means of involvement and I really don't enjoy this.

So if I can avoid a download I will.

 

In short Bandcamp is phenomenal 😃👌

 

[Woodwind]

3 hours ago, BassTractor said:

...
In case: that was one of my main reasons, if not the main one, to adopt formats that were not LPs. One day, I played Wagner a whole day without ever having to change a thing. My iPod did that for me.
...

This is a great point!

There are many pieces of music written where the primary way to engage with them is at a performance. This is compromised by whatever medium recordings of them are released on.

Eric Saties Vexations with its 840 repetitions (or whatever) would have used at least 180 78records had it ever been released. Mind you he might have enjoyed the fact that a home listener was getting up to flip sides so often.

 

On the other hand I'm sure Sleep would have written Dope Smoker/ Jerusalem as a much longer piece if they hadn't had the CD maximum length at the back of their minds