There are a couple of things that have pushed me towards buying more vinyl:
- 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.
Yeah, digital bundling makes a huge difference. Digital files are the clear overall winner in terms of convenience, portability, and flexibility but even leaving aside any audiophile debates over sample rate and analog vs digital, there's something a lot of people enjoy about tangible items, big cover art, and the feeling that paying (or paying more) is justified when you get a physical thing as opposed to a bunch of bits. Bundling lets you have it both ways and since the cost of distributing the digital version is very low, it's not much of an added cost (even if either way you're primarily paying for the cost and value of the actual data whether you buy vinyl, CD, or mp3).
Mp3 redeeming and Amazon's DRM-free AutoRip (Germany here too) is a real game changer buying Vinyl. It's a convenience that makes me happily pay 20 bucks for an LP without thinking twice.
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.
I handle vinyl every week (DJ). Yes its a convenient format, the sound might be warm. I mostly like vinyl because its half of its own playback device. As a DJ its definitely convenient to be like "oh I spin this thing and it plays whatever the needle is on". Vinyl makes for a very nice percussion instrument.
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!
Anyone complaining about vinyl being a hipster thing can now focus their attention on cassettes, which have no redeeming value outside of camp and irony.
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.
I spent my early 20's pressing vinyl in the Czech Republic (anyone who ran a niche label will know the place :) and shipping it around the world.
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!
"There is a strong suspicion in the audiophile community that LP reissues are commonly mastered from a CD source. What this means is that, instead of traveling to a record label's tape vault, finding the original master tapes and a machine that can play them, and going through the painstaking and expensive process of transferring that tape to a mastering disc in order to press LPs, the starting point is actually a CD. And the LP pressing is essentially an inferior copy of that CD. In these cases, the "warmth" you associate with the vinyl record is completely up to the distortions added by the playback process. "
Interesting enough I went over my brother in laws this weekend and sure enough he has a brand new record player with fancy balancing and strobe speed selection and a whole bunch of new and old albums. During our meal we listened to a 40 year old Elton John album which didn't sound horrible but wouldn't hold it's weight next to its digital counterpart.
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. ;-)
"Some people say vinyl sounds "warmer" or better and if you're a professional and you have the right equipment that might be true (…)"
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)
For me it's a lot less about the "warmer" sound. It's about the availability of prep loudness aware mastering and the fact that I actually own the copies. Everything available digitally has a weak dynamic range. Everything available digitally is restricted by an end user license agreement - and can be taken away from me without my consent.
Although I wouldn't necessarily call it a "hipster thing," I agree with the idea of vinyl as an "antidote to the own-nothing trend."
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.
This thread is full of people claiming that people buy vinyl for the 'warm' sound. For me it's the experience. I have a pretty shit record player and the sound is not very good. However the experience of actively listening while looking at the artwork/photos and reading along to the lyrics can't be matched by digital. Sure I can Google the lyrics and look at the artwork in iTunes but it isn't the same experience. I listen to music most of the day and that's done digitally. It's convenient and I have access to everything. But I treat vinyl like I would treat watching a movie. Something I sit down to do in a nice atmosphere.
I think that from all the modern ways of storing information, vinyl might be one of the most resilient. Archeologists will dig out and put together pieces of vinyl on the year 5014, like they do with ancient pottery today.
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.
I normally don't give in to psychological woo, but I wonder if the medium affects the quality of the music itself. I'm a performing musician with virtually no recorded work, but I definitely play better if I know that somebody in the audience -- even just one person -- is listening.
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.
I think that because music has become such a common and accessible thing now (via one-click downloads and everyone having a collection of thousands of songs), vinyl is making a comback because of its physical nature. It's solid, large, comes in a nice packaging where you get to hold and admire the artwork, etc.
Once I get rich I'll buy a proper hifi set and a vinyl player and start a little collection. Just for kicks.
I am wondering why other dedicated stuff doesn't seem to have a future despite its own physical nature. E.g. Chumby shot down, there haven't been much demand for WikiReaders lately and I was actually worried for e-paper ebook readers until Amazon released a new generation this Fall.
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.
One of the main aspect that interest me in vinyls is the fact that you could not skip a song. You really listen to a whole album. You could discover new songs that you're not used to listen.
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.
From a technological perspective it's interesting to note that vinyl is also a very "open" format in the sense that you can actually (with a magnifying glass) see the physical manifestation of the audio data on the disc, and to be able to play one doesn't require the sort of complex electronics technology that a more modern format like a CD would need. Of course, there is also no DRM.
You don't need a magnifying glass. As a DJ, I used to regularly use the colour changes in the pressing to judge when changes in the music were due to aid me with determining when to queue up the next track and/or perform any complimentary DJing trick.
With recent advances in 3D printing, is there any hope for a home vinyl record press? How much would it cost to cut my own vinyl? (google fails me: [1]) I know very little about the logistics of record pressing.
There is software which will generate the 3D model required from a sound file. There have been records 3D printed [1], but the quality is much, much worse than an actual record.
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.
You will need an atom-scale resolution printer for the the record to sound good really. Or a few atoms :) Even for digital records being transferred to vinyl, the track is circular, so yes, atom-scale printing would be your best bet.
Yes, but this isn't a problem. Nothing is 'lost' with the digital stage. Vinyl sometimes has a different mastering, as you cannot increase the loudness of vinyl by compressing the waveform, as well as the fact that it is often marketed at audio enthusiasts. Aside from the unobjective preferences of some, this is how vinyl can sometimes sound better than the released CD. Nothing to do with limitations of the CD format.
I'm into new dance music, and I think very few people will use an entirely analog setup anymore. Some will record instruments to computers, some will use software instruments, or a combination of the two.
But I don't buy vinyl for the sound, I buy it because I like having a wall full of it.
Yes, but that's been the case for a decade or so already (longer for electronic music, unsurprisingly).
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.
It's a fun experience and the album covers are works of art. My 3-year-old daughter loves to go to her grandparent's house and help put the needle down on Yellow Submarine.
I fail to see how it is like "collecting more games that you will never play." I bought a turntable in 2000 when my Dad offered to give me his classic rock LPs, since he was just going to get rid of them anyway. I have since built up my own collection of both old and new releases.
I work from home and listen to my vinyl all day long.
I also buy digital music and use it when not at home, but I will buy the album again if it means I can have it on vinyl as well.
[+] [-] wheels|11 years ago|reply
- 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.
[+] [-] soylentcola|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Schlaefer|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mrottenkolber|11 years ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] niklasni1|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digi_owl|11 years ago|reply
Could be be looking at a second romantic movement?
[+] [-] thallian|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] huuu|11 years ago|reply
Some releases on Bandcamp: http://bandcamp.com/?g=all&s=top&f=cassette#discover
[+] [-] ssharp|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] hobo_mark|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] midhir|11 years ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] nothrowaway|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandetzel|11 years ago|reply
http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/29-vinyl-records-and-digital-a...
[+] [-] ryandetzel|11 years ago|reply
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. ;-)
[+] [-] mironathetin|11 years ago|reply
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)
[+] [-] warfangle|11 years ago|reply
I still spotify, by I vinyl too :)
[+] [-] andrewguenther|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] k-mcgrady|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jespersaron|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] analog31|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|11 years ago|reply
Once I get rich I'll buy a proper hifi set and a vinyl player and start a little collection. Just for kicks.
[+] [-] listic|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jnaour|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] userbinator|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laumars|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arh68|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.vinylrecorder.com/diamant.html
[+] [-] leoedin|11 years ago|reply
[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.
[+] [-] mojuba|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandetzel|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deutronium|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mojuba|11 years ago|reply
I usually don't trust vinyls that don't indicate their recording/producing/pressing method.
[+] [-] polshaw|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] niklasni1|11 years ago|reply
But I don't buy vinyl for the sound, I buy it because I like having a wall full of it.
[+] [-] laumars|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nickhalfasleep|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandetzel|11 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniDisc
[+] [-] torkable|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] untothebreach|11 years ago|reply
I work from home and listen to my vinyl all day long.
I also buy digital music and use it when not at home, but I will buy the album again if it means I can have it on vinyl as well.