Question Newbies getting into vinyl fad

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There have been a few questions recently on this subforum regarding newbie members wanting to get into vinyl on somewhat limited budgets.
Can anyone explain this phenomenon?
Back when I was a youf vinyl, mainly my father's, was the sole media I had access to until those new fangled cassettes came along as I couldn't afford a feel to feel front end.
Back then vinyl was, in a sense, fairly cheaply available in relation to the kit you played it on.
With the somewhat limited playback potential and current prices of the black disc can anyone explain to me just why someone would want to start from scratch....excuse the pun, nowadays?
Yours, very curious.
 
I agree with @DougK. Anyone who buys vinyl when they don't have anything to play it on are numpties. When the so-called resurgence of vinyl a few years ago, these hipsters had no interest in the qualities of vinyl -- they wanted just to show off to their friends.

That said, my daughter purchased a couple of albums but she uses my table. She doesn't fall into that dreaded category.

Love what vinyl brings to the party: Natural, realistic and organic sound. There are other adjectives I could use such as pit, money and potential.

For anyone wanting to start a vinyl collection from scratch I would say don't bother.
 
I agree with @DougK. Anyone who buys vinyl when they don't have anything to play it on are numpties. When the so-called resurgence of vinyl a few years ago, these hipsters had no interest in the qualities of vinyl -- they wanted just to show off to their friends.

That said, my daughter purchased a couple of albums but she uses my table. She doesn't fall into that dreaded category.

Love what vinyl brings to the party: Natural, realistic and organic sound. There are other adjectives I could use such as pit, money and potential.

For anyone wanting to start a vinyl collection from scratch I would say don't bother.
.......unless your surname is Onassis :)
 

john13

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There have been a few questions recently on this subforum regarding newbie members wanting to get into vinyl on somewhat limited budgets.
Can anyone explain this phenomenon?
Back when I was a youf vinyl, mainly my father's, was the sole media I had access to until those new fangled cassettes came along as I couldn't afford a feel to feel front end.
Back then vinyl was, in a sense, fairly cheaply available in relation to the kit you played it on.
With the somewhat limited playback potential and current prices of the black disc can anyone explain to me just why someone would want to start from scratch....excuse the pun, nowadays?
Yours, very curious.
i believe you have two forms of newbies & not being disrespectful but you have the ones being genuine coming to appreciate vinyl then you have the hipsters doing it for let's say self absorbed arrogance for following recognition on social media, but i would say this let them be what they want just one gripe those who buy vinyl and buy Coseley heaps of junk from hmv and e-bay that's my gripe
 

DCarmi

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The main reason why I am not buying more is not so much price (though £180 would be a bit of a stretch!). It's more I already have a fair amount of vinyl and could do with listening to the ones I already have.

The issue is having hifi and TV in the same room. My listening habits conflict with others watching ones. The fad for "through rooms" was not a good one IMHO.
 
The main reason why I am not buying more is not so much price (though £180 would be a bit of a stretch!). It's more I already have a fair amount of vinyl and could do with listening to the ones I already have.

The issue is having hifi and TV in the same room. My listening habits conflict with others watching ones. The fad for "through rooms" was not a good one IMHO.
the sole reason my hifi system has to be relocated to the master bedroom.... Families eh? :)
 
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The main reason why I am not buying more is not so much price (though £180 would be a bit of a stretch!). It's more I already have a fair amount of vinyl and could do with listening to the ones I already have.

The issue is having hifi and TV in the same room. My listening habits conflict with others watching ones. The fad for "through rooms" was not a good one IMHO.
Not having a wife or kids is amazing for me... do whatever I like, when I like (y) :)
 

Alantiggger

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A few years back now there was a 'snobbery' about owning a record player and playing the old black stuff, I am amazed that you guys haven't yet said ?

This said, I still have my own record players and many , many records and swear that they sound louder and better than any CD I have yet bought.
 

DCarmi

Well-known member
This said, I still have my own record players and many , many records and swear that they sound louder and better than any CD I have yet bought.

Oh! I hope not louder. Many CDs are so over "loud" that they are almost unlistenable to. Hot Fuss by the Killers is an example. Though I never liked the CD enough to buy the vinyl, which is apparently is not so compressed. (Search Loudness Wars.)

Your amp has a volume control for a reason.
 
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Oh! I hope not louder. Many CDs are so over "loud" that they are almost unlistenable to. Hot Fuss by the Killers is an example. Though I never liked the CD enough to buy the vinyl, which is apparently is not so compressed. (Search Loudness Wars.)

Your amp has a volume control for a reason.
Volume control isn't going to help the sound of an overly compressed CD though....
 

Oxfordian

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Not having a wife or kids is amazing for me... do whatever I like, when I like (y) :)

Cannot knock that arrangement :)

I’ve just moved house and got more rooms so I now have a small 9ft by 9ft music room, not the biggest room but just has my gear in it plus a fold out emergency bed when we have both our kids down.

The wife has a tv room for watching her soaps on, we have a lounge for watching tv together or when we have guests and I have my music room, I get plenty of peace and quiet to listen to what every I want.
 

Bsmooth

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I have to say as well lets just say older more experienced person who has dealt with many differernt types of audio equipment in the past, I find this fascination with an lp comeback as interesting to say the least.
I have a daughter who just recently started college. She's now home for the holidays and we went into Newbury Comics where they sell vinyl. She asked me about them, and I said yes you play them on a turntable, and she looks at me with rolled eyes and says you mean a phonograph?/
I told her at one time they were also called Victrola's, record players, phonograph's and Turntables, I'm sure they were called many things.
She thought they were cool, mostly because of the large artwork. I told her though they get warped, they pop and crackle like popcorn, mainly the reason for going to nice quiet CD's(which are now getting obsolete,msaybe they'll have a comeback too). But I also asked her why LP's are so great and she said well they sound good and I also went into how digital vs vinyl debate has been going on for years now..
Then I went into how LP's degrade as you play them more and she asked why. Thats when we got into cartridges, which she had no idea about.
I guess I just don't get it, fascination with vinyl is great and a little nostalgic, but for one I can do without that.
I wonder If 8 tracks and cassettes will make a comeback too ?
 

Rintintim

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I'm also fascinated by the vinyl comeback of the last decade or so. I'm also old enough to have a reasonably large vinyl collection (1000+) and an old Linn (LP12 ittok asaka) Naim setup to play them on, they sound excellent.
I have to say, vinyl can sound wonderful when well mastered and recorded, better than CD in my opinion, however I haven't bought vinyl for a long time. I generally now buy music as file downloads Qobuz etc.
Having worked in and also built a few high end recording and mastering studios, I thought it may be worth sharing some observations and comments and possibly dispelling a few myths.
As virtually all music is recorded digital I really can't see the point of converting it to analogue and putting it on vinyl from a sound quality perspective. Both formats have their own distortions and characteristics both of which have completely different. Copying from digital to analogue and vice versa just adds the two forms of distortion and worsens sound quality. However if it sells then fair enough.
All audio starts off analogue, as sound waves. Analogue recording tried to preserve this as closely as possible, analogue recording and playback systems cannot be perfect, but have no theoretical limit to their accuracy, only pratical limits. Digital systems have practical limits in the A to D and D to A converters and a theoretical and absolute limit set by the bit rate and bit depth of the recording. I was always frustrated at the rapid rise in CD quality recording, it imposed an absolute limits on the recordings, they would always have a bandwidth of 20khz and the low level distortions of a 16 bit resolution (bear in mind the human ear can discern a signal 20db lower than the noise floor) desoite the use of dither.
Working in in the music recording industry as a studio tech engineer theduring 1980s and 90s I thought it may be worth sharing a few observations and facts on the subject.
Firstly, a few techie facts about vinyl and analogue in general; Vinyl, and the best analogue tape machines have a bandwidth of below 20Hz to over 40khz, they can't manage 40khz at anything like full level, more like -20db for vinyl 10db for 30ips tape, but they can do it. CD cannot go above 20khz due to the sampling frequency used. In the case of vinyl, this bandwidth was used to handle the old CD4 quadraphonic system of the 70s where the rear channels were modulated into the frequency band above 20khz. Neumann etc. developed specially shaped cutting styli and amps to cope with the additional bandwidth. Ragarding analogue tape, this was mainly to keep phase shift and group delay at bay, i remember lining up an Ampex ATR124 multitrack recorder and measuring the frequency response, it was 3db down at 40khz at -10db and would record a pretty passable square wave, something no digital system could do at the time, or probably even now.
With regards sound quality, we tried all the digital recorders at the time, including the Sony PCM3324/48 multitrack, but went back to analogue tape for both classical and rock, pop, jazz as it sounded so much better. we just marked the final digital transfer as DDD and no one ever complained. What digital does however allow is multiple generation copies with hardly any degradation in quality, something analogue can never manage. That, plus the public hype is why it was so widely used professionally.
I worked in studios wth vinyl cutting rooms, I've compared the original master with what comes back from the signal from the pickup stylus whilst cutting a record, when well mastered the differences are very small, a slight muddying of the bottom end. That being said, cutting vinyl is a mix of art and science and is easy to mess up, it requires good ears, a technical understanding of the process and lots of experience.
A couple of final observations; firstly, loud CDs and compression, this is often down to ignorant record companies insisting the CD over compresssed dynamically, to be LOUD! A few years back a friend of mine who runs a mastering studio shared his frustration that a record company had complained that 'that CD you cut isn't as loud as the new cd by The Verve, make it louder'. The CD was an acoustic folk band which was very well recorded, he argued for a while, mentioning that the Verve CD was very compressed hence sounding louder and that this wasn't approriate for an acoustic recording. They insisted until finally he got them to come to the mastering studio and listen. He played them both The Verve and the acoustic album back to back. The Verve album was definitely louder until he compressed the folk album. He then played the folk album, switching between the compressed and uncompressed version, the preferred the compressed version as it was louder. He then repeated this, turning the volume up for the uncompresssed version so it matched the compressed one, they then far preferred the uncompressed version commenting that it sounded much better and more dynamic. He showed then what he'd done, explaining that if it sounds too quiet, turn the volume up! It was mastered uncompressed.
Finally, remastering of old recordings. When an album or CD is mastered, the original master mix recordings (from the studio) are level matched and for non-classical albums, eq'd so the tracks match in tone and character, there may also be other processing carried out too so it can be cut to vinyl. This is copied to a new tape called a production master, as it's been copied this introduces a generation loss but is still excellent quality. Then multiple copies of the production master would be made for international distribution,a third generation copy. This is then stored for future use. When re-releases are made it's not unusual for the distribution master to be pulled out of the vault and used again, this is then copied for re-distribution (fourth generation copy). Care will be taken making the mix master and the original production master but not necessarily when making distribution masters, I've heard some truly horrible sounding copies of what were great albums and where possible, I have gone back to the vaults myself to search out the original production master. It was not too unusual to find the original tapes had been lost or damaged beyond use and the re-release then copied from a vinyl pressing! I'm told by those still in the industry that thing are now much worse and the provenance of 'master tapes' impossible to determine.
An example, my vinyl version of Miles Davis' 'Kind of Blue' sounds wonderful. I was playing it in a studio I was working in from my Linn T/T, Naim pre-amp combo whilst checking out the mixing desk. A well know recording engineer wandered in and commented "that sounds superb! what CD player are you pIaying it from?" as he'd not heard it sound so good. His jaw dropped when I pointed to the spinning vinyl on the LP12 turntable. we compared the CD to the vinyl and there was no dispute over which was better. It wasn't until the Hi Res Studio Master series was released that I managed to find another copy of the album that sounded anywhere near as good as the vinyl. I guess all the previous re-releases were from dodgy old multi-generation production copies where no care was taken.
I apologise for the overly long waffle, hopefully someone will find it interesting and useful. Well mastered vinyl in a good system can easily match CD for quality. But as always, the music and the way it's recorded is by far the most important thing!
 

Bsmooth

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Now that is a great post indeed ! Everything wrapped up in a nice little bundle and all so true, If only to read the truth.
Now that I have so much access to so may different kinds of music with Amazon Music its so great to go from old recordings to new ones, and so may styles and choices. Only way to do this before was actually buy all the music, and who has all the money to do that.
Its funny I was listening the other day and my daughter asked how old recordings sounded so good, I was listening to Larry Carlton's High Steppin. I tried to tell her it was all about dynamic range, something that I'm afraid has been lost along with common sense it seems.
As usual I went on and on, sorta of like my forum threads about what it was. I think a few playings of classical music showed it best..
I have to say though after listening to a lot of songs now some just seem lifeless. What comes to mind right now are some of the Doors recordings even in (tada) Ultra HD. They sound dull, its like what did they do ?
I think it was the program Audacity that showed what modern loud recordings look like the best.
All I could think of was my old Nakamichi Cassette recorder trying to get the best copy I could onto my TDK cassettes by only letting the VU meters peak into the red rarely or If ever to preserve as much as the dynamic range of the record as I could.
New recordings its all in the red by modern standards introducing distortion and getting rid of dynamic range completely.
I hope a lot of people take the time and read that post above. Its like everything, you have to put a lot of effort in to get something worthwhile out.
 
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Now that is a great post indeed ! Everything wrapped up in a nice little bundle and all so true, If only to read the truth.
Now that I have so much access to so may different kinds of music with Amazon Music its so great to go from old recordings to new ones, and so may styles and choices. Only way to do this before was actually buy all the music, and who has all the money to do that.
Its funny I was listening the other day and my daughter asked how old recordings sounded so good, I was listening to Larry Carlton's High Steppin. I tried to tell her it was all about dynamic range, something that I'm afraid has been lost along with common sense it seems.
As usual I went on and on, sorta of like my forum threads about what it was. I think a few playings of classical music showed it best..
I have to say though after listening to a lot of songs now some just seem lifeless. What comes to mind right now are some of the Doors recordings even in (tada) Ultra HD. They sound dull, its like what did they do ?
I think it was the program Audacity that showed what modern loud recordings look like the best.
All I could think of was my old Nakamichi Cassette recorder trying to get the best copy I could onto my TDK cassettes by only letting the VU meters peak into the red rarely or If ever to preserve as much as the dynamic range of the record as I could.
New recordings its all in the red by modern standards introducing distortion and getting rid of dynamic range completely.
I hope a lot of people take the time and read that post above. Its like everything, you have to put a lot of effort in to get something worthwhile out.
this has nothing to do with this thread so I am locking it.
 
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