Vinyl record sales hit 18-year high
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
- Increased prevalence of bundling high quality MP3 downloads with a vinyl purchase. Independent artists often do this and (at least in Germany) Amazon's autorip also is usually good for vinyl purchases.
- Flea markets. I often find albums I'd like to own for €3.
I kind of have mixed-mode listening -- in the living room, when guests are over, it's nicer atmosphere-wise to say, "Nobody's plugging in their smartphone to play some track from YouTube; we're listening to records." But on my own, even when I buy CDs (which I still do) I usually rip them and then listen to them exclusively from my MP3 collection. With the bundling of vinyl and MP3s, it makes it easy to replace the album that goes in my physical collection (I have several hundred CDs and about 100 records) with an LP, and still get the benefits of having high quality digital music. For those of us that still have a bit of a fetish for physical collections of things (I like paper books for the same reason), that hits a nice sweet spot.
Most of the time you consider it creepy when big company knows your buying history, but in this case amazon wraps it in such a nice package it's hard to resist.
But guys, the worst thing to have when you are moving or there is a flood or you are broke is vinyl. It's heavy, it degrades (in theory it should last, but in practice...), it sells bad. Once you have a dedicated room for your vinyl collection I will believe you when you say you like the format.
Imho the future of vinyl should be a "dubplate"-esque existence. Press them to play them, throw em out when you no longer need it. A consumption good. Collecting vinyl is insane, but making use of it is nice. Play it till its dirty and then get rid of it. I need none of the romance that goes with it.
I forgot to say: There are genres which rely on vinyl for archival purposes. That's right, we don't have backups. We need a grand plan for safe keeping past music. There is so much history going away for a fiver... save whats on the vinyl!
Could be be looking at a second romantic movement?
Weep for the tunes that were never even pressed in the first place though, those definitely aren't on any private tracker.
TBF weaponry of this kind shouldn't really be in the hands of the general public: https://soundcloud.com/dubplates-vinyls/dillinja-deep
BUT, what's in 20 years from now? The vinyl does degrade (because I want to play that tune from 91, not just own it), and I can't RIP from vinyl because the sound is worthless (ironic how we cherish the vinyl sound while its completely useless for a recording).
What I am really scared about is all the DAT tapes going missing. A grand initiative should be started now, to archive FLAC copies of all master recordings.
I mainly use vinyl when I want to do the ritual which can be quite calming. But normally I listen to my digital ripps of the stuff.
Some releases on Bandcamp: http://bandcamp.com/?g=all&s=top&f=cassette#discover
Bad sound quality, no easy way to move between songs, tape degrades, mechanics of players can destroy the tape, etc. etc.
I have fond memories of cassettes -- traveling around with a portable recorder, recording songs off the radio, making mixes -- but they don't have much practical value these days.
NO! Wrong!
Sound quality: Cassettes can certainly sound amazing! Here's how to do a proper transfer: http://www.technofileonline.com/texts/howtotape.htm Further, the highs and lows get certain artefacts introduced through the format (tape compression, saturation) which can actually enhance the mix (smoothing out the highs, for instance).
But even more importantly, certain music is made for the format. Entire sub genres revolve around the low-fi aesthetic that tapes make available. Check out http://fangsandarrows.com
And here's another fact: They are CHEAP to make and FUN to own; thusly, if you run a small label or is independent, it is the perfect merchandise. Some people love the artwork (which inspires creativity through it's constraints), some people love the sound (compared to CDs for instance), some people like the quirkiness of having it on their window sill and other people just want to support the artist and don't have 20-40$ for an LP.
And practically, when you play a small gig, you can just throw 10-20 tapes in your bag, and you're ready to go (unlike with vinyl).
Please buy more cassettes!
(I do recognise all the problems associated with the format, but it has many positives in 2014 as well, as i hopefully made clear. This was all blood straight from my heart as i run a small cassette label: http://scalatapes.bandcamp.com (though the tapes themselves are still being printed as we speak))
And again, http://fangsandarrows.com/ is great if you're curious about sub-communities like these.
To this day it's my favourite format. There's a ritual; going to the vinyl shelf or bag, taking it out the right way, placing the needle - it primes your mental state in a way that pointing and clicking just can't.
The margins were super tight on vinyl though. It cost more to produce, package and ship than CDs - and costs were compounded if you were trading with other labels. I quit when the music industry went into disarray. One day our French distributor cleared out their warehouse and we got a shipment and a note saying sorry - they were selling T-Shirts now.
But it seemed to me that vinyl would endure, maybe even grow as people looked for something more. I'm so glad to see it has!
http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/29-vinyl-records-and-digital-a...
Some people say vinyl sounds "warmer" or better and if you're a professional and you have the right equipment that might be true but for the average consumer that owns the average consumer electronics in their square rooms with no sound absorption you'll hear no difference over 192 (or even 128) mp3.
Cal me boring but I'll stick with my Sonos with it's never ending Google Music playlist over clunky vinyl any day. ;-)
I still spotify, by I vinyl too :)
Everything available digitally has a weak dynamic range.
Having said that, most pop music is compressed for radio or jukebox these days where all dynamic range is killed in the pursuit of loudness.
Everything available digitally is restricted by an end user license agreement
..But, as you said the actual dynamic range is down to the original source and the whims of the mastering engineer.
A good dynamic range for a rock music recording is 15 db. Some of the really badly compressed recordings have only 5 db or less.
The best classical recordings come close to 20 db, but that usually involves speech.
None of the available formats has a problem with any of this.
Here is a link with dynamic range measurements for countless albums, if anyone wants to check: http://dr.loudness-war.info
The technology required to listen to a record is stone-age simple compared to even a magnetic cassette, though, let alone a digitally compressed .mp3.
The point being that if you own a hard copy of media, that media can always be read (if the hard copy is still viable), given the right technology. If you own a license to stream a piece of media, as soon as that industry actor goes belly up so does your license.
Given vinyl records last longer (when properly cared for in an archival setting) than a hard drive or magnetic tape does, I'm pretty certain neither you, nor I, nor our great-grand-children will live in a world where you can't gain access to a turntable.
There may be fewer manufacturer choices than there were four decades ago - but there are also more (and more labels pressing for) than there were only a decade ago.
Most likely it is the other way round. A nearby record store made a test a while ago. They invited an audience and compared vinyl with digital on three different pairs of equipment. In direct blind comparison, the audience rated digital better only on the most sophisticated systems (> 10.000 dollar DAC/record player).
Their result is: if you spend less than 4000 for your player and care for best sound, go with vinyl. I guess that applies to most of us ;o)
Stick the money on an amp and speaker set that sounds good (that still doesn't require 10k btw).
You are right that good dacs are available for less (a few hundreds). But my points were the results of the test. I tried to keep out my personal opinion. Opinions about vinyl or digital usually end in flamewars.
google translator is your (pidgin-english-)friend, if you shouldn't be fluent in german ;o)
If you want to say you like vinyl because you like the feel, the blowing the dust off, the setting the needle, the flipping to side B then I'm fine with that but to say it's a better sound (that is noticeable to make it worth the premium and hassle) that's just silly. Hipsters will be hipsters though.
To me, the transition between vinyl and purely digital music is similar to the transition from paper books to ebooks, music just had more transitional states. I think of vinyls as the paper books of music. Sure, they take up more space, but there is just something about the feel of it that makes a difference.
We probably will be known as "the great lovemaking civilization" despite all the atrocities commited, because of all the sleazy pop songs pressed on millions of vinyl records. I bet the ancient greeks would have put much more effort into factual accuracy of their pottery decoration too, if they only knew.
If nothing else, the analog medium re-creates the historical relationship with the audience for recorded music. You might not sell a lot of records, but those who buy your record do so for only one reason: Because they want it.
Once I get rich I'll buy a proper hifi set and a vinyl player and start a little collection. Just for kicks.
For me it's that that really make the differents with MP3/Playlist in which you are in a full-consumer mode spending half your time skipping songs.
I admire physical things like LPs, but they are not practival for my liking, I decided against them when buying my first Hi-Fi system back in 1999 and I still do now. I think my next Hi-Fi system will be a nice DAC for a computer (would be nice to find a good one that supports Blueetooth AND USB at the same time) plus a nice pair of monitor speakers. ADAM A5X's could have digital inputs, as they have digital amps already anyway, but they don't.
One thing I love about LPs, though, is that they have such huge space for gorgeous art.
[1]: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/129971-vinyl-records-are-far...
The stylus size on an LP is something like 2.5 thousandths of an inch, or about 63.5 um. The printer used in the link above (an Objet500 Connex) has a minimum layer thickness of 16 um. The article talks about 600 DPI, which may be a horizontal resolution? That works out at around 42 um. The Objet website just gives a minimum resolution of 16 um.
Either way, when you look on the scale of the needle your groove is going to have a lot of hysteresis - essentially appearing very blocky. The high frequency sound components are going to be lost completely.
There will obviously be improvements on resolution. The problem is that to build something which can accurately make records with high frequency sounds (perhaps 15kHz), you need to build it to very high tolerances. It's very hard to make those sort of tolerances cheap.
Some low cost 3D printers have been made which use UV light to cure epoxy resin layer by layer. The 2D resolution of those technologies is dependent on the resolution of the UV projector rather than the mechanical tolerances of the rails and extruder, so there's a lot more potential for high resolution prints there. The Z direction is still dependent on mechanical movement though.
However, aside the tactile arguments, one of the properties of vinyl that many enthusiasts love is the "warmth" distortion that the medium adds - even from a digital master.
I understand that's not the point of playing vinyl (I frankly don't understand what the point is, but then again, I don't understand the point of collecting a room full of shiny discs in plastic cases either), but the audio quality argument sometimes offered by people who like vinyl sounds like the typical justification bias, a bit what you regularly hear from people who buy gold-plated HDMI cables.
This last point might sound weird, but there have been some (informal?) studies that have suggested that to be the case. http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/03/11/153205/young-people-...
Personally I don't like the "sizzle" of MP3s, but I wouldn't say I miss the warmth of vinyl either. I'm someone who have always preferred the clarity of FLAC or CDs. Each to their own though :)
I am puzzled why my previous comment got down voted though. Would whoever negative repped me mind elaborating why they considered my post so heinous it deserved to be modded down?
But I don't buy vinyl for the sound, I buy it because I like having a wall full of it.
I usually don't trust vinyls that don't indicate their recording/producing/pressing method.