Oh noes teh sky is falling!

[KRW1]

Originally Posted by vargo

That's all fine and well, but it just goes to show that as with most posters here, you allowed personal taste to cloud your objectivity.

You didn't say that most albums you are interested in buying come on vinyl. You said that "It's rare now a new CD comes out without a vinyl version as well" and clearly that statement is not true.

Using Amazon's new and forthcoming release section, I estimate that between 2/3 and 3/4 of new CD releases do not have an accompanying vinyl release. So to say that it's rare is completely incorrect.

You're estimate as about as much use as mine. Amazon's coming soon lists every little CD that comes out. Of course not every tiny special interest CD is going to have a vinyl release in the same way as The XX or Coldplay are going to. That's pretty obvious.

Objectivity be damned by the way. I've said many times I don't give a stuff for it.

The larger point is this - vinyl records are enjoying something of a comeback. I don't care if its 2% of the total market or 80% of it, so long as the releases come out, that's all I'm bothered with. Why should I care what you, or anyone else, does?

But anyway, out of interest -

I looked at this weeks new releases, the only two that don't have vinyl versions are the Now Compilation and the Dolly Parton thing (except that it does have a release now I look harder)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s?url=search...parton%20vinyl

Even the bloody Frozen Soundtrack had a vinyl release, albeit limited edition.

Looking at the top twenty current sellers, the only one that doesn't have a vinyl release is the Five Seconds to Summer thing- a boy band and the Frozen thing which is now out of print and Metallica - Black album because its out of print but I bet you it comes out in a 180g version pretty soon. The 'Now' things too.

So 14 out of 20. Not too bad. Quite the rarity, I'm sure you'd agree and I'm only not counting Frozen and the Black album as they're OOP. They certainly exist. The Black album was released at the height of CD popularity, by the way. In those days it was close to impossible to buy vinyl versions, even if they existed. They'd only get one pressing and that was it. YOu had to actually ask in the store for them as very often they wouldn't even put them out. This is why some of my collection from that era is insured for £££££s. (I do have the Black Album). Certainly not like today with its vast amount of vinyl all over the place for the audiophile to fritter their pennies away on.

We've never had it so good and I'm including bluray collectors in that statement too, just for the hell of it. It's a collectors paradise. I've also just sold about 1/3 of my bluray collection, raised about £1k. Try doing that with a spotify account. I'll spend it on more.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by KRW1

You're estimate as about as much use as mine. Amazon's coming soon lists every little CD that comes out. Of course not every tiny special interest CD is going to have a vinyl release in the same way as The XX or Coldplay are going to. That's pretty obvious.

Objectivity be damned by the way. I've said many times I don't give a stuff for it.

The larger point is this - vinyl records are enjoying something of a comeback. I don't care if its 2% of the total market or 80% of it, so long as the releases come out, that's all I'm bothered with. Why should I care what you, or anyone else, does?

But anyway, out of interest -

I looked at this weeks new releases, the only two that don't have vinyl versions are the Now Compilation and the Dolly Parton thing (except that it does have a release now I look harder)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s?url=search...parton%20vinyl

Even the bloody Frozen Soundtrack had a vinyl release, albeit limited edition.

Looking at the top twenty current sellers, the only one that doesn't have a vinyl release is the Five Seconds to Summer thing- a boy band and the Frozen thing which is now out of print and Metallica - Black album because its out of print but I bet you it comes out in a 180g version pretty soon. The 'Now' things too.

So 14 out of 20. Not too bad. Quite the rarity, I'm sure you'd agree and I'm only not counting Frozen and the Black album as they're OOP. They certainly exist. The Black album was released at the height of CD popularity, by the way. In those days it was close to impossible to buy vinyl versions, even if they existed. They'd only get one pressing and that was it. YOu had to actually ask in the store for them as very often they wouldn't even put them out. This is why some of my collection from that era is insured for £££££s. (I do have the Black Album). Certainly not like today.

KRW1, I wasn't trying to put a downer on your hobby, I know better than most that those of us who seek out the best, can still find it. I just thought it was over the top to describe it as 'coming back with a vengeance' (other poster, not you) when it is still very low key. I listen to vinyl as well, trust me, I appreciate the quality. If it does grow, I will be chuffed.

[KRW1]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

KRW1, I wasn't trying to put a downer on your hobby, I know better than most that those of us who seek out the best, can still find it. I just thought it was over the top to describe it as 'coming back with a vengeance' (other poster, not you) when it is still very low key. I listen to vinyl as well, trust me, I appreciate the quality. If it does grow, I will be chuffed.

I wouldn't say it was storming the market and making ITunes quake, but its never been easier to find quality recordings. I read somewhere that the biggest problem now is there aren't many pressing factories anymore and they cant keep up with demand. Enjoy it, it's great.

[Blu Warrior]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

Beats, IMO, has nothing to do with people enjoying good quality and everything to do with a sheep mentality. They are the 'in' thing. If it was really about quality, people have much better options for their money. It's the label, same as fashion. It's as simple as that.

Exactly!

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by KRW1

I wouldn't say it was storming the market and making ITunes quake, but its never been easier to find quality recordings. I read somewhere that the biggest problem now is there aren't many pressing factories anymore and they cant keep up with demand. Enjoy it, it's great.

I don't know how old you are but were you around for its initial era? You can't beat the smiths on vinyl!

[KRW1]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

I don't know how old you are but were you around for its initial era? You can't beat the smiths on vinyl!

Oh yeah, I'm an 80s kid, have loads of Smiths on vinyl. Fabulous.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by KRW1

Oh yeah, I'm an 80s kid, have loads of Smiths on vinyl. Fabulous.

Good lad!

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by pentatonic

But you see, all three types can be found side by side at your jewelers. They sell the real thing, but some also sell manufactured diamonds, which are real diamonds, while other types are plain old imitation diamond gems (with other names). This is a situation any married man would face, not a special event. They really all look alike for the untrained eye. Someone with mild interest could tell apart the entire fabrications from the other 2. Need much more info to distinguish the man-made diamonds from the real.

This is a real life occurrence, valid for all. And trust me if your fiance (If you have) wouldn't care if she can tell, she wants the blu-ray of diamonds.

I have no idea what point you are trying to make. Since you are all over the place. Let me ask you this,if your expert can't tell the difference without special tools between a Cubic Zirconia and a diamond will that make a difference to what someone's fiancé thinks? and if someone has a fiancé that does not care will that make a difference if the expert can tell the difference without special tools?

The thing you seem to refuse to accept is that yes, some just can't tell.

I never said everyone should be able tro see the difference or should care about the difference. OI am saying that the difference is there no matter what. For example obviously someone 100% blind can't see anything and so won't be able to see the difference, so yes some people can't tell.

but going with that please answer these questions

a)A blind person is in an HT, the receiver is sending out the audio and the projector is off, does the projector project a picture?

b)A blind person is in an HT, the receiver is sending out the audio and the projector is on, does the projector project a picture?

c)Is there a difference between the picture in scenario a and b?

d)Let's say we have scenario a, and the blind person's spouse enters the room and turns on the projector does the spouse see something different when the projector is off and when it is on?

Would it be far fetched to say chances are my sens of appreciation of sound is much higher than yours, just because I hear things you can't even imagine is caused by what. Not that your not a smart guy, you have no idea what the heck I'm talking about. Should I consider you ill for such, or just say, well Anthony is a fine engineer and, myself, well I could probably teach you a thing or 2 on sound. Do I feel the need to, no, it can't be expected of all, just like HT.

There are people with golden ears (abnormally good hearing) and people with eagle eyes (abnormally good eye sight). If you have golden ears and you can hear nuances that I can't then it is normal that with my mostly normal hearing (three years ago when I got a hearing test it was on the higher edge of perfect for my age) I can't hear the full richness that is in the audio and that you can hear. Also being in my 40's (better example) my hearing range would not be the same as that of a teen. But it would be stupid of me to decide that because I can't hear the ringer on a teens cell that has a mosquito ring tone on it http://www.freemosquitoringtones.org/ that there is no ringing when there is because my nephew knows when someone calls.

On the other hand you miss the obvious. A person with perfect vision has 20/20 , someone with better vision will have 20/15 or 20/10 and even possibly 20/5. But if a person has 20/30, 20/40.... then his vision is faulty and they need to get their eyes checked and hopefully corrected, just like I have been doing with my glasses most of my life. If it took 20/5 vision to see the difference in PQ your point would make sense that there is nothing wrong with someone's vision if they can't see the difference. But if the reason someone can't see the difference is because their vision is like Mr. Magoo and they have 20/80 vision (OK Mr. Magoo was most likely worst than that) then they need to get their eyes checked and get it fixed. Here if someone has worst than 20/70 in corrected vision in at least one of his eyes they are not allowed to have a driver's license. why ? because it is dangerous to have them drive a car, they just can't see well enough, and some places it is even stricter. Bad eye sight is not a laughing matter and it is an illness.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

Buds? Not what I am seeing. They all have beats (unfortunately)

same here, and I always find it hilarious when you have them walk by you with their 300$ earphones listening to the overly compressed MP3 on their phone.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by octagon

Put differently, if people stop caring about the differences between diamonds and cubic zirconia those differences become little more than distinctions.

yes and no. For example we have diamond tip drills and blades because diamond is one of the hardest substances, even if no one cared what was on their ring the differences in the properties between diamonds and CZ would still remain the same.


Also I don't think the word you are looking for is distractions (if people don't care they won't be distracted since they would not pay attention to the differences), maybe trivial is a better word.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

same here, and I always find it hilarious when you have them walk by you with their 300$ earphones listening to the overly compressed MP3 on their phone.

It's just hideous. I could never be one of them. For that, I am so grateful.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by wormraper

yes, but they aren't stylish. don't forget that style wins above substance any day of the week. just look at the clothes market

I would also add ignorance. Once in the bus ( public transportation) there was a late teen with his Beats that came to sit beside me. I was a bit too alert and bored so I start of with "nice ear phones".... long story short he said he has them because they are the best earphones out there and so they make the iTunes he buys better. So I pointed out earphones can't make something better and so they can't save a bad source like iTunes and cheap ear buds would do just as well music wise and that if he actually cared he should get a better quality source to go with his high quality earphones. So he rolled his eyes and gave that "you are old so you can't know anything" look teens give to adults and we left it at that.

I am sure a lot of it was style and sheepishness (that is what the other kids at the private school use) but some of it is also not realizing that you can put lipstick on a pig but it still remains a pig and they (like that kid) actually believe that it matters.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by octagon

So'Nobody cares about quality anymore' is a popular refrain (and has been for generations) but it doesn't really hold up.

agree on that, the sad truth is there has always been for everything people that care and people that don't. But it seems today everyone just focuses on the mass market sheep and make it a rule.

Yes, people who buy designer or brand-name clothes pay a premium for the label but they're also paying for shoes that don't fall apart after moderate wear and shirts that don't fade or lose their shape the first time you wash them.

that is not necessarily true and does not make much sense, a lot of very expensive fashionable clothes and shoes are very cheaply made while there is also a lot of very cheaply made stuff that is well made.
But let's go with a simple example, there is a shirt that is "height of fashion" and is 75$, 4 months later that shirt is out of fashion and the store wants to bring the new lineup in and so it is on the discount shelf for 25$ (2/3 off) will it automatically fade faster or fall apart faster just because it is now no longer fashionable and 1/3 the price?

It's popular to dismiss people who buy Bose or Apple as trendy sycophants but as overpriced as they are Bose and Apple make some pretty decent stuff.

disagree on that. Apple could be called decent but Bose does not make decent stuff. They continued using cheap paper cone speakers when many better and less expensive speaker makers moved to better materials for their cones, their receivers are way too finicky and problematic. They sold their 321 crap as surround sound when it was not since it only had 2 speakers.

Hell, Monster makes very nice cables. One might be able to make the case that people buying them are stupid but it's hard to say they don't care about quality.

agree monster cables are way over priced but they are for the most part good quality and well made so if someone is OK with paying that high price why should anyone else care.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

Beats, IMO, has nothing to do with people enjoying good quality and everything to do with a sheep mentality. They are the 'in' thing. If it was really about quality, people have much better options for their money. It's the label, same as fashion. It's as simple as that.

agree, if someone cared about quality (and new what they are talking about and not just parroting what the marketing tells them) they would get much better quality by listening to the CD on a CD Walkman with earphones that came free than beats on the iphone with tunes from iTunes.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

Vinyl is very niche at the moment. Last time I checked it was just 2% percent of the market. Unless anyone can update me?

yes, it is very niche, but it has also been stable (as in not dying and sometimes even growing a bit) for over 20 years. The masses moved away from it a long time ago but the people that care about the sound of vinyl (and there is constantly new blood) still care and will keep it going possibly for eternity.

That is the major point that I think people are bringing up. As long as people care for something (be it vinyl or CD or LD or BD or anything else) what the masses choose is immaterial. A format (like VHS, LD....) dies when it is dropped by both the philes and the masses drop it.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

yes, it is very niche, but it has also been stable (as in not dying and sometimes even growing a bit) for over 20 years. The masses moved away from it a long time ago but the people that care about the sound of vinyl (and there is constantly new blood) still care and will keep it going possibly for eternity.

That is the major point that I think people are bringing up. As long as people care for something (be it vinyl or CD or LD or BD or anything else) what the masses choose is immaterial. A format (like VHS, LD....) dies when it is dropped by both the philes and the masses drop it.

My concern is that vinyl has a hipster appeal at the moment (the artwork, sleeve, novelty) but can that maintain itself?

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

My concern is that vinyl has a hipster appeal at the moment (the artwork, sleeve, novelty) but can that maintain itself?

hipster appeal might help numbers a bit but if it had that much hipster appeal the numbers would be much higher.

Also hipster appeal can't be used to explain that the market dropped a bit when 8-track and tapes came to market and dropped a lot with CD almost to the niche market it is today. Even if one believes it is a fad and hipster appeal (which I don't buy as the sole factor) is what pushes record sales to a new high that has not been seen in let's say 2N years, obviously something had to maintain it for 2N years and that can't be fad or hipster appeal. Vinyl has been at under 5% for over 20 years and it never went away and that is the reason the "hipsters" can be re-introduced to it.

Even if you assume it is a fad for hipsters and they will eventually move away from it why would the people that have been listening to records fro all those years here it was under 5% stop all of a sudden. That could happen if something (seen by them) as better comes along but hard to believe that they would stop for what has existed for almost 30 years.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

hipster appeal might help numbers a bit but if it had that much hipster appeal the numbers would be much higher.

Also hipster appeal can't be used to explain that the market dropped a bit when 8-track and tapes came to market and dropped a lot with CD almost to the niche market it is today. Even if one believes it is a fad and hipster appeal (which I don't buy as the sole factor) is what pushes record sales to a new high that has not been seen in let's say 2N years, obviously something had to maintain it for 2N years and that can't be fad or hipster appeal. Vinyl has been at under 5% for over 20 years and it never went away and that is the reason the "hipsters" can be re-introduced to it.

Even if you assume it is a fad for hipsters and they will eventually move away from it why would the people that have been listening to records fro all those years here it was under 5% stop all of a sudden. That could happen if something (seen by them) as better comes along but hard to believe that they would stop for what has existed for almost 30 years.

Maybe you are right.

[pentatonic]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

There are people with golden ears (abnormally good hearing) and people with eagle eyes (abnormally good eye sight). If you have golden ears and you can hear nuances that I can't then it is normal that with my mostly normal hearing (three years ago when I got a hearing test it was on the higher edge of perfect for my age) I can't hear the full richness that is in the audio and that you can hear. Also being in my 40's (better example) my hearing range would not be the same as that of a teen. But it would be stupid of me to decide that because I can't hear the ringer on a teens cell that has a mosquito ring tone on it http://www.freemosquitoringtones.org/ that there is no ringing when there is because my nephew knows when someone calls.

Anthony, I'm not going into this, as anyways whatever I say you will feel the need to shoot it down and have the last word. Apologies if this comes off as a personal attack, but it's not, it's only based on my time in this thread.

But just to point out one last thing, I don't have golden ears, nor are golden ears needed, I just know what to listen for, and my experience tells me things from what I can pick up in the sound that someone who doesn't have that same experience will pick up, or even care to try and hear, for most, those "things" are trivial to their enjoyment of music. Enter what is commonly referred to as "the audiophile", with all the hearing loss normal to humans in general.

Well, my point was that the level of interest one has for something, whether it's music, or movies, will often dictate their level of knowledge about it and usually the better informed pick up on these things . For the others, those differences, for lack of a better word, just aren't important to their enjoyment.

The same can be said for everything else, including HT. Why is it so hard to accept that "the sheep" possibly can't tell those things that for you are obvious. And if you teach them, chances are they will still not care. Their enjoyment is the content, not the container, the same for music, where one hearing stuff differently that the sheep is also possible, based on your experience, desire to develop a different approach to it, and a lot of time.

For the same reason I don't expect all to have the same time and desire to dig deeper in sound, I also don't expect most to care about the same things in HT. If you can't understand that well, I'm kinda lost for words.

And for all, please people, stop the use of derogatory expressions for the masses, I'm sure there are plenty of fields where your level of knowledge would make you a sheep, or an idiot, or whatever terms have been used here.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by pentatonic

Anthony, I'm not going into this, as anyways whatever I say you will feel the need to shoot it down and have the last word. Apologies if this comes off as a personal attack, but it's not, it's only based on my time in this thread.

But just to point out one last thing, I don't have golden ears, nor are golden ears needed, I just know what to listen for, and my experience tells me things from what I can pick up in the sound that someone who doesn't have that same experience will pick up, or even care to try and hear, for most, those "things" are trivial in their enjoyment of music. Enter what is commonly referred to as "the audiophile", with all the hearing loss normal to humans in general.

Well, my point was that the level of interest one has for something, whether it's music, or movies, will often dictate their level of knowledge about it and usually the better informed pick up on these things . For the others, those differences, for lack of a better word, just aren't important to their enjoyment.

The same can be said for everything else, including HT. Why is it so hard to accept that "the sheep" possibly can't tell those things that for you are obvious. And if you teach them, chances are they will still not care. Their enjoyment is the content, not the container, the same for music, where one hearing stuff differently that the sheep is also possible, based on your experience, desire to develop a different approach to it, and a lot of time.

For the same reason I don't expect all to have the same time and desire to dig deeper in sound, I also don't expect most to care about the same things in HT. If you can't understand that well, I'm kinda lost for words.

And for all, please people, stop the use of derogatory expressions for the masses, I'm sure there are plenty of fields where your level of knowledge would make you a sheep, or an idiot, or whatever terms have been used hear.

Free speech man.