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Vinyl Poised to Generate More Revenue than CDs


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Vinyl is poised to outsell CDs this year.

 

Granted, CDs are setting a low bar these days, what with streaming accounting for 80% of industry revenues. Still...it looks like "perfect sound forever" is being bumped out of first place by "imperfect sound from the past."

 

Weird.

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I think that the consumer experience is completely different with vinyl. You're encouraged more to listen to a side at a time, and view the liner notes and pictures as you listen.

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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It's also not something you can trivialize by putting on your phone and carrying round in your pocket.

 

It would be interesting to survey vinyl owners to find out how many are playing their records through speakers, and how many through headphones. If more people are listening to speakers, there's probably a social component involved - listening with friends, oohing and ahhhing over the artwork.

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No thanks... By they time I was making my own coin back in early 80s, I bought some records and the quality was TERRIBLE. I had to return Toto IV FOUR TIMES to get a record that wouldn't skip.

 

I owned a whopping 5 or 6 records before I gave up.

 

A few years later CDs came out and I embraced them with open arms. No skips, superior audio quality, takes up less space, no devices with special RIAA preamps needed, nowhere near as sensitive to vibrations. The only minus was you couldn't play both sides :laugh:

 

I will NEVER go back to vinyl at ANY price. Lost my (measly) collection of records in the divorce, don't miss them. Or her.

 

$30 prices for NEW VINYL?!? :lolol::roll::freak: Sure, I'll spend THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS to replace my 400 plus CD collection with vinyl because it "sounds warmer"... NOT! I do not subscribe to the "upgrade treadmill".

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I bought some records and the quality was TERRIBLE. I had to return Toto IV FOUR TIMES to get a record that wouldn't skip.

 

Strange. I have 2 crates full of records and I've never bought a new one that skipped. In fact, I've bought a lot of used records, and none of them have skipped. Did you have a bad turntable? If it's skipping, usually you just need to check the tracking force and anti-skate adjustment.

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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For coffee I have a hand grinder and an aeropot. It"s a morning ritual that I won"t replace with a Keurig. So I get the draw of a fetish.

 

Vinyl, hand-made cigars, mechanical watches, hemp anything, gluten-free, and on and on.

 

The only thing lost with vinyl albums was a convenient place to clean out the seeds.

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I do miss the artwork. I"ve seen some use album covers as wall art and it"s very cool. But it"s not worth the price for me.

"I'm so crazy, I don't know this is impossible! Hoo hoo!" - Daffy Duck

 

"The good news is that once you start piano you never have to worry about getting laid again. More time to practice!" - MOI

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I bought some records and the quality was TERRIBLE. I had to return Toto IV FOUR TIMES to get a record that wouldn't skip.

 

Strange. I have 2 crates full of records and I've never bought a new one that skipped. In fact, I've bought a lot of used records, and none of them have skipped. Did you have a bad turntable? If it's skipping, usually you just need to check the tracking force and anti-skate adjustment.

 

It wasn't the turntable, and I did know how to adjust it. My parents had many records and they played fine.

 

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I bought some records and the quality was TERRIBLE. I had to return Toto IV FOUR TIMES to get a record that wouldn't skip.

 

Strange. I have 2 crates full of records and I've never bought a new one that skipped. In fact, I've bought a lot of used records, and none of them have skipped. Did you have a bad turntable? If it's skipping, usually you just need to check the tracking force and anti-skate adjustment.

 

It wasn't the turntable, and I did know how to adjust it. My parents had many records and they played fine.

 

J. Dan is right, the quality of the vinyl did go down the dumper past a certain point. I bought several albums in the twilight of albums, and the quality for some of them (not all) was indeed terrible. I believe part of the problem was using recycled vinyl, but also, the discs got thinner and often arrived warped from the factory. There was a Bowie I had to return three times before I got one that wasn't warped.

 

Also people don't seem to remember, but the loudness wars were going on with vinyl to some extent. You of course wanted to have like 1.5 grams on your stylus, which IIRC was a recommended value, but that became problematic with some albums.

 

There was a survey a couple years ago that said 50% of the vinyl people bought in the UK was never played. They liked the art, the vibe, and being hip.

 

I was happy to give up vinyl, happy to give up tape, and happy to give up tubes. Good riddance!

 

 

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I think you meant to say that The Real MC was right.

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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A while ago I was at I think the biggest Dutch producer of vinyl albums, to tour the facility, and got to see the mastering booth so to speak, and as it was probably for a long time already, there's the possibility to give them DIGITAL tracks to put on the records. That's not really very sensible, unless there's no good digital playback line, like CDs and a CD player or something.

 

It's still possible to hand to the pressers a TAPE (you know, the reel to reel thing) that you might have made ANALOGUE, possibly with digital effects mixed in, to act as the master, which makes those records non-digital in the main signal path. If all preparations are done well, the music lends itself for it, and the right settings are used, also during playback, the result can be enchanting enough, and a very welcome change from ever harsh digital. I recall owning a number of records in the 80s myself (and of course have heard countless on many different systems) that probably weren't as tight but more bearable than most CDs.

 

I know from my own research that with high grade tools and very much knowledge most people don't know anything much about, it's possible to make digital sound good on a regular quality digital to analogue converter. The preparation to make the DAC work right cannot be easily tooled together, unfortunately, so everything IMO sounds unpleasant when done digital, especially when used on a HiFi stereo comparable system. Tapes would be al right, they could sound ok, but High Resolution audio, say 96kHz/24 bits can work. In the end it might also be possible to make "perfect" DACs, but they aren't there. And only completely straight audiophile recordings would sound perfect on such DACs.

 

T.

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I think you meant to say that The Real MC was right.

 

Yes, but actually, I think both of you are right...Real MC that the vinyl was a problem, your speculating tracking as a possible issue (my loudness wars comment). Someone who used the recommended stylus weight could be sabotaged by records cut too hot.

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It may or may not be the vinyl. There are sounds you can record on tape or digital that cannot be directly translated to a stereo groove because of the phase relationships. So a mastering engineer has to modify the original phase relationship to maintain a groove. Sometimes it works better than others.

 

I remember a certain ELP record I had that would not track even with $1500 worth of turntable/cartridge/tonearm very properly set.

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As an engineer I read a lot of technical stuff. I found a decent copy of National Semiconductor's 1980 Audio/Radio Handbook which had a section on reproduction of audio with vinyl records, and the author frankly said it is a miracle it even works at all.

 

But...what could possibly go wrong with dragging a pointy rock through yards and yards of plastic, with +20/-20 dB EQ going in, and -20/+20 dB going out?!? Seems like a very natural, organic way to reproduce music.

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