Vinyl sales much ado about nothing?

[Waxy]

But you're happy, aren't you?

As a pig in the proverbial, yes. For me, that's it. Whilst I like to have "a nice stereo" as it gets referred to, I just enjoy the whole vinyl experience. From thumbing through dusty boxes of second hand records, or unwrapping a spanking new LP and reading the liner notes, to that first drop of the needle. I love it. That's why I don't bother contributing much to these type of threads. It harshes my buzz, dude.

 

[BIGBERNARDBRESSLAW]

But you're happy, aren't you?

As a pig in the proverbial, yes. For me, that's it. Whilst I like to have "a nice stereo" as it gets referred to, I just enjoy the whole vinyl experience. From thumbing through dusty boxes of second hand records, or unwrapping a spanking new LP and reading the liner notes, to that first drop of the needle. I love it. That's why I don't bother contributing much to these type of threads. It harshes my buzz, dude.

I'm struggling with your Bristol accent, but I think I know what you mean. *biggrin*

 

[Waxy]

I'm struggling with your Bristol accent, but I think I know what you mean. *biggrin*

Ark at ee!

 

[BIGBERNARDBRESSLAW]

I'm struggling with your Bristol accent, but I think I know what you mean. *biggrin*

Ark at ee!

You've lost me now.

 

[The_Lhc]

?

I'm struggling with your Bristol accent, but I think I know what you mean. *biggrin*

Ark at ee!

You've lost me now. 

Hang on, I'll go and fetch Samson...

 

[andyjm]

FWIW, big story in yesterday's Times about the resurgence of vinyl.

 

[MajorFubar]

I don't think anyone is arguing that LPs can't sound really good, but that's not the whole story. Digital will always have the potential to sound better, simply because technically it has a huge head start. Probably too bad that the potential isn't fully exploited more often.

HiFi is too vague a word and means many things to many different people, but in the strictest definition of the word, vinyl is not 'HiFi' compared to digital sources, in so far as reproducing the master accurately with the closest fidelity/likeness as possible with nothing added and nothing taken away. Vinyl is easily laid to waste by a decent pro-sumer three-head reel-to-reel recorder like a Revox B77, which at least has the potential to sound the same at the end of the tape as it does at the beginning.

Technically, vinyl sucks: the FR is a mess, the DR is appalling (easily bettered by a good chrome cassette), huge compromises have to be made preparing a master that will even cut to lacquer (chiefly at the bass end), the physical methods used to cut it and read it create unavoidable distortion, no two copies of the same LP can ever possibly sound identical due the duplication methods, and if that weren't all bad enough, just playing the things unavoidably wears them away. The fact that some vinyl front ends can and do sound as good as they do is more of a triumph of engineering over woefully inadequate design than a statement of vinyl's 'superiority'.

 

[manicm]

Oh dear, waxing lyrical about how much you hate vinyl, you know what? It is hifi, cos hifi existed before the advent of CD, they had decades to improve the turntable. No-one gives a toss about wow and flutter and distortion and all the other fluff, the thing is with a good turntable you forget all those things, cos the music comes to the fore. To me if a component moves me more than another one musically then it is hifi. If it expresses the music well it is hifi. That's all there is to it.

If digital was so arse-awfully perfect then why are there still terrible CD players around? The bottom rung CA players are awful. In 2003 I bought a NAD C521i CD player and it was one of the worst things I heard - sibilance galore and a narrow soundstage.

 

[bigfish786]

From myself recently.

i thought vinyl lacked in quality and clarity, and just about everything else, till I heard it on a decent set-up. Having only ever heard it on cheap turntables, I was never going to hear it at its best.

Im a vinyl convert, I still buy CDs as well. But I too do think that in the right system, vinyl has some qualities that are hard to beat.

as for CDs they can sound fantastic too, on the right gear.

as long as you are enjoying the tunes, that's really all that matters.

If you are enjoying buying hifi too that's great as well.

 

[Al ears]

Oh dear, waxing lyrical about how much you hate vinyl, you know what? It is hifi, cos hifi existed before the advent of CD, they had decades to improve the turntable. No-one gives a toss about wow and flutter and distortion and all the other fluff, the thing is with a good turntable you forget all those things, cos the music comes to the fore. To me if a component moves me more than another one musically then it is hifi. If it expresses the music well it is hifi. That's all there is to it.

If digital was so arse-awfully perfect then why are there still terrible CD players around? The bottom rung CA players are awful. In 2003 I bought a NAD C521i CD player and it was one of the worst things I heard - sibilance galore and a narrow soundstage.

+1

And he's wrong about 'nothing lost' as well unless you are talking about digitally recording an event from start to finish (which is not always done). As soon as you add anything analogue into the recording chain or are converting an analogue master tape then loss is inevitable.

At its most simplest you can take a pure sine wave and dice it as many times as you want as you would if converting to digital, you are never going to get that pure sine wave again, although you may come close the higher the sampling frequency becomes.

Yep, digital is no panacea, turntables have become so well designed that wow and flutter figures have become not worth mentioning, unlike digital 'jitter' which is commonly stated as a fault.

 

[Frank Harvey]

.The fact that some vinyl front ends can and do sound as good as they do is more of a triumph of engineering over woefully inadequate design than a statement of vinyl's 'superiority'.

I'm not claiming superiority on either side here as both have their positive AND negatives, but if a record doesn't sound very good in the first place, then no turntable, no matter how good, could make it sound good. The fact is, a well pressed record can sound great on a good quality, mid priced turntable - and stunning on a high end one.

 

[Covenanter]

Oh dear, waxing lyrical about how much you hate vinyl, you know what? It is hifi, cos hifi existed before the advent of CD, they had decades to improve the turntable. No-one gives a toss about wow and flutter and distortion and all the other fluff, the thing is with a good turntable you forget all those things, cos the music comes to the fore. To me if a component moves me more than another one musically then it is hifi. If it expresses the music well it is hifi. That's all there is to it.

If digital was so arse-awfully perfect then why are there still terrible CD players around? The bottom rung CA players are awful. In 2003 I bought a NAD C521i CD player and it was one of the worst things I heard - sibilance galore and a narrow soundstage.

+1

And he's wrong about 'nothing lost' as well unless you are talking about digitally recording an event from start to finish (which is not always done). As soon as you add anything analogue into the recording chain or are converting an analogue master tape then loss is inevitable.

At its most simplest you can take a pure sine wave and dice it as many times as you want as you would if converting to digital, you are never going to get that pure sine wave again, although you may come close the higher the sampling frequency becomes.

Yep, digital is no panacea, turntables have become so well designed that wow and flutter figures have become not worth mentioning, unlike digital 'jitter' which is commonly stated as a fault.

Pure nonsense! It is very simple to reconstruct the sine wave perfectly. To think otherwise is to go in the face of science.

There is no jitter from a CD player.

Chris

 

[BigH]

Oh dear, waxing lyrical about how much you hate vinyl, you know what? It is hifi, cos hifi existed before the advent of CD, they had decades to improve the turntable. No-one gives a toss about wow and flutter and distortion and all the other fluff, the thing is with a good turntable you forget all those things, cos the music comes to the fore. To me if a component moves me more than another one musically then it is hifi. If it expresses the music well it is hifi. That's all there is to it.

If digital was so arse-awfully perfect then why are there still terrible CD players around? The bottom rung CA players are awful. In 2003 I bought a NAD C521i CD player and it was one of the worst things I heard - sibilance galore and a narrow soundstage.

At its most simplest you can take a pure sine wave and dice it as many times as you want as you would if converting to digital, you are never going to get that pure sine wave again, although you may come close the higher the sampling frequency becomes.

Most vinyl is cut from digital recordings now, so what does that mean?

 

[MajorFubar]

If digital was so arse-awfully perfect then why are there still terrible CD players around? The bottom rung CA players are awful. In 2003 I bought a NAD C521i CD player and it was one of the worst things I heard - sibilance galore and a narrow soundstage.

Because like anything else, getting the absolute best from it takes care, attention to detail and money, particularly with regards to the analogue section after the CD, HDD or whatever has been read. And yes while some digital players of any persuasion can sound lifeless and dire, I'll see (hear?) the worst digital player you've ever heard and raise you any number of goddamn awful plastic midi system turntables from the 80s and 90s that should never have been allowed to play a record. Oh and just about everything currently made by Steepletone and Crossley.

As soon as you add anything analogue into the recording chain or are converting an analogue master tape then loss is inevitable.

That's definitely true at least. But I'll add to that, there exists no method whatsoever to copy and mass-distribute analogue audio in a way that doesn't lose quality. So at least having converted it to digital as far up the chain as possible, you now have a constant you can losslessly distribute, ad nauseum, potentially forever.

At its most simplest you can take a pure sine wave and dice it as many times as you want as you would if converting to digital, you are never going to get that pure sine wave again, although you may come close the higher the sampling frequency becomes.

No that is incorrect. Nyquist-Shannon theorem proves that 16/44 has the potential to re-create anything you or I can hear, perfectly. Feel free to diss it, but it's a proven scientific theorem, essentially dating back to 1928, not some crazy wakjob's theory who's trying to bolster the defence for CD (difference between a theorem and a theory). You've been reading too many articles showing pictures of step-ladder sine waves and listening to too many marketing spin doctors tell you that HD audio sounds better than CD because the sample rate is faster.

 

[Al ears]

Oh dear, waxing lyrical about how much you hate vinyl, you know what? It is hifi, cos hifi existed before the advent of CD, they had decades to improve the turntable. No-one gives a toss about wow and flutter and distortion and all the other fluff, the thing is with a good turntable you forget all those things, cos the music comes to the fore. To me if a component moves me more than another one musically then it is hifi. If it expresses the music well it is hifi. That's all there is to it.

If digital was so arse-awfully perfect then why are there still terrible CD players around? The bottom rung CA players are awful. In 2003 I bought a NAD C521i CD player and it was one of the worst things I heard - sibilance galore and a narrow soundstage.

At its most simplest you can take a pure sine wave and dice it as many times as you want as you would if converting to digital, you are never going to get that pure sine wave again, although you may come close the higher the sampling frequency becomes.

Most vinyl is cut from digital recordings now, so what does that mean?

Maybe so but last one I got was a direct cut straight to vinyl, and many before that are remastered from original analogue master tapes, you pays your money and.....

 

[Al ears]

If digital was so arse-awfully perfect then why are there still terrible CD players around? The bottom rung CA players are awful. In 2003 I bought a NAD C521i CD player and it was one of the worst things I heard - sibilance galore and a narrow soundstage.

Because like anything else, getting the absolute best from it takes care, attention to detail and money, particularly with regards to the analogue section after the CD, HDD or whatever has been read. And yes while some digital players of any persuasion can sound lifeless and dire, I'll see (hear?) the worst digital player you've ever heard and raise you any number of goddamn awful plastic midi system turntables from the 80s and 90s that should never have been allowed to play a record. Oh and just about everything currently made by Steepletone and Crossley.

As soon as you add anything analogue into the recording chain or are converting an analogue master tape then loss is inevitable.

That's definitely true at least. But I'll add to that, there exists no method whatsoever to copy and mass-distribute analogue audio in a way that doesn't lose quality. So at least having converted it to digital as far up the chain as possible, you now have a constant you can losslessly distribute, ad nauseum, potentially forever.

At its most simplest you can take a pure sine wave and dice it as many times as you want as you would if converting to digital, you are never going to get that pure sine wave again, although you may come close the higher the sampling frequency becomes.

No that is incorrect. Nyquist-Shannon theorem proves that 16/44 has the potential to re-create anything you or I can hear, perfectly. Feel free to diss it, but it's a proven scientific theorem, essentially dating back to 1928, not some crazy wakjob's theory who's trying to bolster the defence for CD (difference between a theorem and a theory). You've been reading too many articles showing pictures of step-ladder sine waves and listening to too many marketing spin doctors tell you that HD audio sounds better than CD because the sample rate is faster.

It's refreshing to know then that you don't need any higher res than vinyl because 16/44 equivalent is just about the upper limit of that conveyed by an average vinyl recording.

 

[Al ears]

Oh dear, waxing lyrical about how much you hate vinyl, you know what? It is hifi, cos hifi existed before the advent of CD, they had decades to improve the turntable. No-one gives a toss about wow and flutter and distortion and all the other fluff, the thing is with a good turntable you forget all those things, cos the music comes to the fore. To me if a component moves me more than another one musically then it is hifi. If it expresses the music well it is hifi. That's all there is to it.

If digital was so arse-awfully perfect then why are there still terrible CD players around? The bottom rung CA players are awful. In 2003 I bought a NAD C521i CD player and it was one of the worst things I heard - sibilance galore and a narrow soundstage.

+1

And he's wrong about 'nothing lost' as well unless you are talking about digitally recording an event from start to finish (which is not always done). As soon as you add anything analogue into the recording chain or are converting an analogue master tape then loss is inevitable.

At its most simplest you can take a pure sine wave and dice it as many times as you want as you would if converting to digital, you are never going to get that pure sine wave again, although you may come close the higher the sampling frequency becomes.

Yep, digital is no panacea, turntables have become so well designed that wow and flutter figures have become not worth mentioning, unlike digital 'jitter' which is commonly stated as a fault.

Pure nonsense! It is very simple to reconstruct the sine wave perfectly. To think otherwise is to go in the face of science.

There is no jitter from a CD player.

Chris

Perhaps that is why just about every device that employs a DAC requires some form of anti-jitter circuitry to be utilised.

 

[britain4]

At least where I'm from, there are a couple of small record shops around here. Go in when it's busy and you will see a swarm of 20-something year olds with big glasses, beards, Casio digital watches and iPhones. Rarely anyone older or less 'trendy'.

I think that's what it is, 'retro' in general has become cool and hipsters are going mad for it. Look at Casio watches, and - a big one for me at the minute - the ludicrous recent increase in retro game prices, and I'm sure that isn't people getting nostalgic for their childhood games all of a sudden. That's just the tip of the iceberg. All the trendy types seem to be going retro-mad and I unfortunately think the vinyl sales are a reflection of this, not anything else.

I am certain it's nothing to do with sound quality - people may bring it up but as mentioned they're probably ripping it to their iPhones from a Crosley.

It'll be cassette tapes next, I'm certain of that, if everyone hasn't got over the whole hipster retro thing by then.

 

[drummerman]

The proliferation of new turntables on the market (and manufacturers supporting the format) is fantastic.

'Hipsters' or not, it will showcase the format to a new generation, encouraging them to go beyond the ubiquitous iphone/headphone combination (nothing wrong with that either). It will ensure more pressings from music companies and guarantee the survival of vinyl for another generation and hopefully beyond.

Why would anyone argue against that?

As I've mentioned before, my brother (hardly a 'hipster') has got into the format a short while ago. He has three kids which will enjoy playing vinyl (when he lets them close eventually) and either inherit the turntable or hopefully buy their own.

My guess ... vinyl will still be here for decades to come.

 

[The_Lhc]

I was wandering around a bootsale yesterday, there was the usual rubbish vinyl on sale as you'd expect and as two teenage boys wandered past I overheard this conversation:
Boy 1: what are those things in that box?
Boy 2: records,
1: what are they?
2: you know like CDs have music on them?
1: Errr, yeah, sort of....
2: they're like that but bigger.

what surprised me about the conversation was not that one of them didn't know what vinyl was, it was that he was only vaguely aware of what CDs were!

 

[MajorFubar]

The proliferation of new turntables on the market (and manufacturers supporting the format) is fantastic.

'Hipsters' or not, it will showcase the format to a new generation, encouraging them to go beyond the ubiquitous iphone/headphone combination (nothing wrong with that either). It will ensure more pressings from music companies and guarantee the survival of vinyl for another generation and hopefully beyond.

Why would anyone argue against that?

As I've mentioned before, my brother (hardly a 'hipster') has got into the format a short while ago. He has three kids which will enjoy playing vinyl (when he lets them close eventually) and either inherit the turntable or hopefully buy their own.

My guess ... vinyl will still be here for decades to come.

Oh I agree. Long may it continue. I love records and everything that goes with them. Actually that's a lie, not everything, I find the cleaning and maintenance a chore, I find the CJSF-level of tweakery required to get the very best from records and turntables a nuisance. But I argue the digital toss only to pull the reins back a bit when some of the more devout 'religiously' pro-vinyl brigade start getting a bit silly about vinyl's pretentions and capabilites.

Digital recording and distribution allows punters to have an exact bit-for-bit copy of the studio master that's sat on the mastering-engineer's computer (but annoyingly, punters often don't end up with an exact bit-for-bit copy, though that's another argument for another thread). No analogue distribution method ever existed that would give punters the ability to reproduce sound anywhere near as good as the original mastertape. It's just that vinyl had the least number of critical weaknesses.

 

[drummerman]

I was wandering around a bootsale yesterday, there was the usual rubbish vinyl on sale as you'd expect and as two teenage boys wandered past I overheard this conversation: Boy 1: what are those things in that box? Boy 2: records, 1: what are they? 2: you know like CDs have music on them? 1: Errr, yeah, sort of.... 2: they're like that but bigger.

what surprised me about the conversation was not that one of them didn't know what vinyl was, it was that he was only vaguely aware of what CDs were!

They must live very sheltered lifes ...

 

[MajorFubar]

I was wandering around a bootsale yesterday, there was the usual rubbish vinyl on sale as you'd expect and as two teenage boys wandered past I overheard this conversation: Boy 1: what are those things in that box? Boy 2: records, 1: what are they? 2: you know like CDs have music on them? 1: Errr, yeah, sort of.... 2: they're like that but bigger.

what surprised me about the conversation was not that one of them didn't know what vinyl was, it was that he was only vaguely aware of what CDs were!

Depressing sign of the times, seeing that we're still waiting for something to replace CDs on a large scale that is irrefutably better. Lossless, unwatermarked downloads of 16/44 (or higher, but that's not needed) would be it, but they're not coming in any large quantities.

 

[drummerman]

I was wandering around a bootsale yesterday, there was the usual rubbish vinyl on sale as you'd expect and as two teenage boys wandered past I overheard this conversation: Boy 1: what are those things in that box? Boy 2: records, 1: what are they? 2: you know like CDs have music on them? 1: Errr, yeah, sort of.... 2: they're like that but bigger.

what surprised me about the conversation was not that one of them didn't know what vinyl was, it was that he was only vaguely aware of what CDs were!

Depressing sign of the times, seeing that we're still waiting for something to replace CDs on a large scale that is irrefutably better. Lossless, unwatermarked downloads of 16/44 (or higher, but that's not needed) would be it, but they're not coming in any large quantities.

It's like everything, once the 'initial' furore and honey moon period has died down, cracks will become apparent.

With still a certain amount of uncertainty about the sustainability of certain streaming services all it will take is for some to go bust (I hope not) and for a few people to loose their saved libraries.

My guess is that CD too will stay with us for a long time to come yet. - Yes, manufacturers have stopped or slowed down making players, predominantly to jump on the streaming bandwagon (nothing wrong with that) but they will return to making cd players at some stage imho, there are simply to many of the little silver discs around plus done well, the format is great (and you have a hard copy).

 

[Frank Harvey]

At least where I'm from, there are a couple of small record shops around here. Go in when it's busy and you will see a swarm of 20-something year olds with big glasses, beards, Casio digital watches and iPhones. Rarely anyone older or less 'trendy'.

I'll be on the lookout for these beardy 20 somethings in store...

I hardly think that generalising a whole format revival based on a single record store is really representative of what's actually happening. Chances are, in one area, you'll more than likely see the same people in most of those stores, and if that area happens to be somewhere like Oxford, you're likely to see a lot of students frequenting them, but that doesn't mean the whole vinyl revival is down to students.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. All the trendy types seem to be going retro-mad and I unfortunately think the vinyl sales are a reflection of this, not anything else.

That's quite a definitive statement. Inaccurate, but definitive.

I am certain it's nothing to do with sound quality - people may bring it up but as mentioned they're probably ripping it to their iPhones from a Crosley.

I can't say that ANY of our customers own anything like a Crossley. Personally, I don't put any of my vinyl onto my iPhone - my iPod Classic has a very large selection of music for longer journeys, and my iPhone has a few choice albums for shorter ones.