Vinyl is Back With a Vengeance

[franklinpross]

This caught my eye today. CD's are really sooo horrible if you like sound
and it's proper reproduction.

Why did most of us fall for the CD REVOLUTON in the 80's.

I'm so ashamed for having moved up to CD's.

That's why I posted a thread on which cartridge to buy.

I ended up with the same old same old reliable cost friendly
Stanton 681 EEE MK. it's on order from J&R . . .and now my new life resumes
where it left off in 1987. 3000 lp's waiting to be rediscovered.





Guttenberg's assessment is spot on-

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-10...ml?tag=nl.e702

anyone feel the same way? Just take a gander at some of the idiotic comments at the articles end....

[un4gvn94538]

https://forum.blu-ray.com/forumdisplay.php?f=91

[richteer]

Back?! As far as I am concerned (and I realise that I am in the minority here), vinyl never went away!

The renewed interest in vinyl is one thing that inspired me to consider launching a vinyl-centric audio magazine. Work continues in the background while I jump through certain government mandated hoops in order to qualify for the program in which I hope to enroll.

[franklinpross]

Originally Posted by richteer

Back?! As far as I am concerned (and I realise that I am in the minority here), vinyl never went away!

The renewed interest in vinyl is one thing that inspired me to consider launching a vinyl-centric audio magazine. Work continues in the background while I jump through certain government mandated hoops in order to qualify for the program in which I hope to enroll.

Bless you for caring! I wish you well in your project.

Please post a link for us to see . . . . .Subscription? 12 mos? pull some strings
for God's sake . . . . .c'mon we need you . . . . .

[rded]

Threads like this can stir up the pot. While its true that a good handful of CDs are not well recorded, the ones that were well recorded can make you cry to your mama! Believe me I know how good CD can sound Vinyl sounds good generally speaking, but there are also recordings that belong in the trash! At the end of the day, having both can be a real blessing(and I'm striving towards that). BTW, relying on a cnet article regarding audio, vinyl and cds is a joke. Those guys there are not really credible IMO.

[Sponge-worthy]

CDs sounded great until the Loudness War killed them.

[joe1515]

Originally Posted by rded

Threads like this can stir up the pot. While its true that a good handful of CDs are not well recorded, the ones that were well recorded can make you cry to your mama! Believe me I know how good CD can sound Vinyl sounds good generally speaking, but there are also recordings that belong in the trash! At the end of the day, having both can be a real blessing(and I'm striving towards that). BTW, relying on a cnet article regarding audio, vinyl and cds is a joke. Those guys there are not really credible IMO.

Red makes a good point saying all cd recording suck compared to Vinyl is probably not fare. I think it is all personal preference. I for one only listen to vinyl I like the sound better its warmer and it has a more live sound to me than cd's. Plus I spent a lot more money setting up my turntable playback.

The sound of Vinyl has made me appreciate artists so much more. For instance I always knew and liked some of Otis Reddings recordings, after I played one of his albums on vinyl he instantly became one favorite artist. It was like that was where he belonged.

To be fare you need equal equipment to do the comparison. Comparing a turntable, cartridge, and phono stage set up around 5k to cd playback on the oppo for instance is not fare.

After saying all that as Eddie Vedder so elequently screamed "SPIN THE BLACK CIRCLE"

Joe

[richteer]

Originally Posted by franklinpross

Bless you for caring! I wish you well in your project.

Plase post a link for us to see . . . . .Subscription? 12 mos? pull some strings
for God's sake . . . . .c'mon we need you . . . . .

Thanks for your support!

The mag will be a freely-downloadable PDF, available from the mag's (currently non-existant) web site. When I get the OK to start the ball rolling officially, I'll put up a temporary web site which will allow interested people to sign up to a notification list.

Stay tuned!

[DougMac]

Originally Posted by franklinpross

T
I ended up with the same old same old reliable cost friendly
Stanton 681 EEE MK.

How do you like the sound? That's what I'm using with my Technics SL-1500 MkII I bought for $20 at Goodwill. I think it sounds great!

[franklinpross]

Originally Posted by DougMac

How do you like the sound? That's what I'm using with my Technics SL-1500 MkII I bought for $20 at Goodwill. I think it sounds great!

Sir, you are correct.
It's a turntables dream. Such an honest sound,,I can't begin to tell you.

Really? $20 at Goodwill? You are on God's favorite list. Boy are you a lucky person. that's my TT. This is good news indeed.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN.

[DougMac]

Originally Posted by franklinpross

Sir, you are correct.
It's a turntables dream. Such an honest sound,,I can't begin to tell you.

Really? $20 at Goodwill? You are on God's favorite list. Boy are you a lucky person. that's my TT. This is good news indeed.

Yes, it's true. I'm so used to seeing the BPC at thrifts that I originally walked past it. Then there was a spark of recognition that drew me back. I took it to the nearest wall outlet and plugged it in, it functioned perfectly.

It needed some cosmetic TLC. It had obviously been stored in a damp environment, not too bad but there was a little corrosion and pitting. Also, the cover was scratched, but thankfully not cracked. A little elbow grease cleaned everything up. Of course, it suffers from the infamous arm lift failure. For $20, I'll live with it. It now sits next to my Technics SP-15 that I use for transcribing 78's. More on that in a second.

Speaking on being on the list, I found a TEAC X1000-R reel to reel at a pawn shop. It would power up, go into FF and FR, but no play. I talked the owner down to $50, my "pig in a poke" price. I took it home, opened it up and did a little research. There was a blown transistor on the motor control board and the drive belt had melted, a common fate. TEAC still sells parts. It was $11 for the belt and $3.50 for the transistor. I'm thinking the failure must have been early, because there was hardly any head wear and cosmetically it was in pristine shape. Oh, there was a scratch on one of the knobs, but another call to TEAC and $6.00 later I had a replacement! So, for less than $75 invested, I have a beautiful and fully functioning TOTL reel to reel!

My last story (sorry) goes back to 78's. I was in an antiques store in Arkansas that I had hesitated entering because they seemed overpriced. I found a table with a stack of 50-60 78's. I was disappointed because the first 5 or so was typical 40's records (Bing Crosby, etc.), all of which I already owned. The sixth record, though was an old pre-war blues record by Ida Cox on the Paramount label. Everything from there down was pre-war blues and jazz, all in great condition! While trying not to hyperventilate, I casually strolled up to the counter and asked the grizzled old man how much they wanted for 78's. He said: "Them black label records are 75 cents, but the blue labels and others are $1.00." I grabbed the entire stack and plunked down the $50 in cash. In the stack was a Black Swan, a very rare label. There was also Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Black Snake Moan".

[ZoetMB]

While I would love vinyl to be "back with a vengeance", since I have a few hundred vinyl albums that I would like to sell (I intend to keep 100), that is most certainly not the case and it's also not the case that vinyl generally sounds better than CD, although I will admit that this perception of quality is subjective.

Vinyl can sound better than CD if you're playing vinyl back on some esoteric system and the vinyl was mastered brilliantly and the CD was mastered poorly, but IMO, that's an unfair comparison. Of course a $5000 turntable and preamp might sound better than a $300 CD player and of course if someone blew the CD mastering or if the original tapes are no longer available (due to tape shredding, say) the CD will sound bad. But generally, any new vinyl that is produced is remastered from the CD source master anyway.

The reality is that in 2008, vinyl album units were 6/10 of 1% of long-form unit sales. It's literally a rounding error. And if you count 10 digital single downloads as the equivalent of an album as the industry does, than the vinyl numbers are even lower. 2009 figures aren't available yet, but even if they double, it's still NOTHING.

The reason why people think vinyl sounds better is because they remember the emotions they felt when they first listened to albums on vinyl. Every time I hear a CD that I think sucks and I think, "this sounded better on vinyl" and I go back to the vinyl, the vinyl sounds worse, many times remarkably worse. Those of us who are old enough to have been around for vinyl also listened to vinyl with better hearing. And that's what we remember.

I copy vinyl to CD-R for a New York City radio personality and if I happen to have the same album on CD and if there's room on the CD-R, I'll also transfer some of the tracks from the CD. They always sound better and it's not only because they're frequently recorded hotter. They have far less distortion, if stereo, they have better separation, they have far lower noise and they have better dynamic range. In an A-B comparison, no one would pick the vinyl.

As for Otis Redding, the Rhino CD boxed set mastered by Bill Inglot ("Otis: The Definitive Otis Redding") sounds really terrific, far better than any of the Otis Redding vinyl albums that I own. This set is out of print, so grab it now if you can still find a copy.

Well before the advent of CD, audiophiles complained like hell about the poor quality of vinyl pressings in the U.S. That was one of the reasons collectors started seeking Japanese and European pressings of Beatles recordings, not just because of the different track configurations. So it really makes me laugh that so-called audiophiles are now seeking those very same bad pressings.

Having said that, are most CDs recorded with too much level compression and loss of dynamic range? Absolutely. But most LPs didn't have a lot of dynamic range either.

Now if we're talking about 45RPM singles, that's something else. 45RPM singles in the U.S. had a distinct sound to them because they were generally mastered incredibly hot, but that distinct sound is largely distortion. (When I was a kid, I always wondered why the records sounded so much better during the fade-out. It was because there was lower distortion at lower levels.) We happen to like that distortion because it's harmonic distortion that creates square waves, and we like the sound of odd-harmonic square waves (like a fuzz guitar) because we find it "pleasing". One of the reasons the Rolling Stones came to the U.S. to record at Chess Records was to try and get that sound. Engineers in the UK, especially at EMI, would never "pin the needle" or aim for tape saturation, but engineers in the US used tape saturation as a creative device. But even in the case of 45s, when mastered properly to CD, single mixes sound pretty good. Bill Inglot was also responsible for the first Motown boxed set and those sound very close to the original singles. Unless you have near-virgin copies of the original singles, they won't sound better.

(For an example of a great sounding single that wasn't recorded too hot, listen to Dion's "Runaround Sue". It still sounds great today.)


As for the way we listened to vinyl, I agree that we listened "closer" and that albums were designed to provide two "arcs" of music: side A and side B. That might not be true for the way CDs are produced today, but that has nothing to do with the technical quality. Don't confuse the quality of the music or production with the quality of the technology.

Disclaimer: I have not yet listened to any of the new 180-gram vinyl that you now see in record stores for absurd prices. One of these days I will pick up one, but I don't expect to be impressed. Perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised.

[richteer]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

The reason why people think vinyl sounds better is because they remember the emotions they felt when they first listened to albums on vinyl. Every time I hear a CD that I think sucks and I think, "this sounded better on vinyl" and I go back to the vinyl, the vinyl sounds worse, many times remarkably worse. Those of us who are old enough to have been around for vinyl also listened to vinyl with better hearing. And that's what we remember.

No, the reason why people think that vinyl sounds better is because it does. Not a universal truth, to be sure, but pretty accurate.

Well before the advent of CD, audiophiles complained like hell about the poor quality of vinyl pressings in the U.S. That was one of the reasons collectors started seeking Japanese and European pressings of Beatles recordings, not just because of the different track configurations. So it really makes me laugh that so-called audiophiles are now seeking those very same bad pressings.

Eh? Dynaflex was a scourge, to be sure, but there aren't many audiophiles seeking them out.

Disclaimer: I have not yet listened to any of the new 180-gram vinyl that you now see in record stores for absurd prices. One of these days I will pick up one, but I don't expect to be impressed.

What record-playing gear do you use? It'd have to be pretty, umm, non-optimal, for the 180g records not to sound good.

[franklinpross]

Originally Posted by DougMac

Yes, it's true. I'm so used to seeing the BPC at thrifts that I originally walked past it. Then there was a spark of recognition that drew me back. I took it to the nearest wall outlet and plugged it in, it functioned perfectly.

It needed some cosmetic TLC. It had obviously been stored in a damp environment, not too bad but there was a little corrosion and pitting. Also, the cover was scratched, but thankfully not cracked. A little elbow grease cleaned everything up. Of course, it suffers from the infamous arm lift failure. For $20, I'll live with it. It now sits next to my Technics SP-15 that I use for transcribing 78's. More on that in a second.

Speaking on being on the list, I found a TEAC X1000-R reel to reel at a pawn shop. It would power up, go into FF and FR, but no play. I talked the owner down to $50, my "pig in a poke" price. I took it home, opened it up and did a little research. There was a blown transistor on the motor control board and the drive belt had melted, a common fate. TEAC still sells parts. It was $11 for the belt and $3.50 for the transistor. I'm thinking the failure must have been early, because there was hardly any head wear and cosmetically it was in pristine shape. Oh, there was a scratch on one of the knobs, but another call to TEAC and $6.00 later I had a replacement! So, for less than $75 invested, I have a beautiful and fully functioning TOTL reel to reel!

My last story (sorry) goes back to 78's. I was in an antiques store in Arkansas that I had hesitated entering because they seemed overpriced. I found a table with a stack of 50-60 78's. I was disappointed because the first 5 or so was typical 40's records (Bing Crosby, etc.), all of which I already owned. The sixth record, though was an old pre-war blues record by Ida Cox on the Paramount label. Everything from there down was pre-war blues and jazz, all in great condition! While trying not to hyperventilate, I casually strolled up to the counter and asked the grizzled old man how much they wanted for 78's. He said: "Them black label records are 75 cents, but the blue labels and others are $1.00." I grabbed the entire stack and plunked down the $50 in cash. In the stack was a Black Swan, a very rare label. There was also Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Black Snake Moan".

GOD'S FAVORITE INDEED!!!!! nice score

[franklinpross]

Having said that, are most CDs recorded with too much level compression and loss of dynamic range? Absolutely. But most LPs didn't have a lot of dynamic range either.
by ZoetMB

Nice, informative piece. There were a lot of Lp's that sounded awesome.
One comes to mind I just listened to again. It was a GEM produced by The Hit Man, David Foster. Come to think of it his work as well as Phil Ramone's were quite outstanding. The LP was Peter Allen's BICOASTAL. The dynamic range
and prescence and all of that were right on the money. Columbia Masterworks
Original Casts recorded at 30 IPS were also unusually splendid. RCA RED LABEL
Classical Lp's still are terrific. One comes to mind. The Gershwin set with
the POPS. It beats the CD by a mile. And also...my hearing today is just a sharp as it was 45 years ago (thank God).The original copy I bought in 1959 of GYPSY in mono destroys the 24bit re-mastered
one done by Sony a few years ago . ...Goddard was good.

[Riff Magnum]

Originally Posted by franklinpross

Why did most of us fall for the CD REVOLUTON in the 80's.

I'm so ashamed for having moved up to CD's.

Probably because records aren't portable and cassette tapes sounded like butt.
Why be ashamed? As others have said, just because it's on vinyl doesn't mean it's gonna be greatness. A well recorded, mixed, and mastered album is gonna sound good regardless. Let's be honest, most people don't wanna buy a $500 TT, drop a ton on preamps/amps, good speakers, and then go out and spend $35 everytime a new album comes out that they want just for a "marginal" improvement in sound and that much desired analog "warmth." Most people listen to music in their cars, or while they're exercising, or waiting in line, so vinyl just doesn't appeal to most people.
For the record, i'm not most people, and i love me some vinyl.

[Yautja]

It's back alright & with a vengeance it is, even here in Australia many shops are starting to sell them again, great to see

[Johnny Vinyl]

I can't believe it has taken me a month to respond to a thread on vinyl! I must be losing it!

Although my vinyl rig sucks by comparison to many many others here, you'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger fan of the Black Gold. I have been purchasing vinyl since 1967 and my collection numbers well into the 4 digits, and is represented by just about every music genre you can find.

Like Richteer posted earlier, I never left or abandoned the format and was able to find specialty stores selling used Lp's during the lean years, and even the odd new pressing.

To me vinyl isn't just about the sound. Some are indeed downright terrible, but when it's done right....nothing else compares! Additionally, and this is what has always been of huge importance to me, vinyl is an interactive medium. I love the relationship between the listener, the actual vinyl, the TT, the cleaning, the care, etc.

Another benefit, and maybe the most important one of all, is that vinyl forces you to listen to the music. You cannot just walk away, as Side A will be done by the time you get back as each side is only about 20-23 minutes long (sometimes a slight bit longer).

Vinyl is an experience that cannot be matched by any other format!

Have I made myself clear?

John

[franklinpross]

Originally Posted by John72953

I can't believe it has taken me a month to respond to a thread on vinyl! I must be losing it!

Although my vinyl rig sucks by comparison to many many others here, you'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger fan of the Black Gold. I have been purchasing vinyl since 1967 and my collection numbers well into the 4 digits, and is represented by just about every music genre you can find.

Like Richteer posted earlier, I never left or abandoned the format and was able to find specialty stores selling used Lp's during the lean years, and even the odd new pressing.

To me vinyl isn't just about the sound. Some are indeed downright terrible, but when it's done right....nothing else compares! Additionally, and this is what has always been of huge importance to me, vinyl is an interactive medium. I love the relationship between the listener, the actual vinyl, the TT, the cleaning, the care, etc.

Another benefit, and maybe the most important one of all, is that vinyl forces you to listen to the music. You cannot just walk away, as Side A will be done by the time you get back as each side is only about 20-23 minutes long (sometimes a slight bit longer).





John

yes, John you have made yourself clear.

I think it's terrfic that you spelled out the experience so well.
Might I add that as a kid in the 50's and 60's I took the interactive
part more seriously than most. I had this little microscope that I rigged so I could periodically VIEW the stylus . . after the muck was cleaned off with a toothbrush dipped in diluted alocohol, I would view my little stylus in the light of an exposed bulb to gander at the clean stylus . . .then and only then could I continue listening . . . .ahhhhhhhh..life was so rich then . . .

[Johnny Vinyl]

Originally Posted by franklinpross

yes, John you have made yourself clear.

I think it's terrfic that you spelled out the experience so well.
Might I add that as a kid in the 50's and 60's I took the interactive
part more seriously than most. I had this little microscope that I rigged so I could periodically VIEW the stylus . . after the muck was cleaned off with a toothbrush dipped in diluted alocohol, I would view my little stylus in the light of an exposed bulb to gander at the clean stylus . . .then and only then could I continue listening . . . .ahhhhhhhh..life was so rich then . . .

So cool! And as a person most likely around my age (I'm 56) I can appreciate and identify with your experience completely.

And yes....life was indeed rich then!

John