Vinyl record story

[Pilgrim]

I'm aware of the EQ problems with early CDs, and I grant they existed.

But I confess that I haven't ever heard any difference betweeen LPs and CDs, and I've had CDs for 20 years that are still in fine shape. 

Like I said, for me personally, no contest.

[nofi]

the way rock cds are made today is very compressed and mixed very loud . to me it sounds sterile and artificial. i can tell the difference between vinyl and digital and prefer vinyl hands down, for all the reason's listed. and you will never find pot seeds in your cd case.

[Freuds_Cat]

On several tracks, there is no contest; the vinyl tracks are more dynamic, and just plain sound better, but IMO, it's because the subsequent CD releases were mastered by engineers who had much less understanding about what they were doing and not the format itself.

Nail on the head there in my opinion.

I have about 250 LP's and an old JVC system that still sounds great. I prefer CD's for their practicality and lack of dust noise but IMHO for all their extra clarity they do seem to lack the same warmth of dynamics that SOME of my records deliver. The issue of poor re/mastering for CD has never been as obvious to me as on the Grand Funk LIVE double album. I have both original LP's and CD and the difference is chalk and cheese. You definitely do not have to have a trained ear to distinguish a big difference. I dont like mp3's and even on my portable music players I use AIFF. (also FLAC and MPC sometimes due to having friends who prefer these formats)

I'm sure its not just auto suggestion that makes LP's (generally) sound better because there seems to me to be varying degrees of "Better".

[Highlander]

I can sure tell that MP3's sound like crap. 

Robert... you and me need to go for a drive, one dark night; very, very fast...   

[Freuds_Cat]

MP3's?   can someone please explain how taking 90% of a recording away and leaving only that last 10% of the original information doesn't change the quality of the reproduction?

I'm sorry but 128bps mp3s suck very badly to someone who listens to music many hours a day.

[Hornisse]

Robert... you and me need to go for a drive, one dark night; very, very fast...   

I'll use the 8 track player for the drive! 

Actually I had a high end Blaupunkt cassette deck back in the day and using a good quality Maxell or TDK tape I could listen to high quality sounds on long trips (as long as you changed out the cassette after the 90 minutes were up) with music recorded from my LP's.  The best sounding record I bought was a Japanese import issue of Dark Side Of The Moon that I bought at Waterloo Records in 1982.  I immediately put it on cassette so I could listen to it on the run. (or drive)  One of the best sounding LP's was Steely Dan Aja when it came out in 1977.  I guess I was 15 when I got that one.

[Dave W]

MP3's?   can someone please explain how taking 90% of a recording away and leaving only that last 10% of the original information doesn't change the quality of the reproduction?

I'm sorry but 128bps mp3s suck very badly to someone who listens to music many hours a day.

Depends on the encoding. Some 128kbps mp3s are so harsh I can't listen to them through, others don't assault my ears. OTOH if you listen to an mp3 player through cheap earbuds, you may not notice a difference.

I can't explain how. I do know that most people can't distinguish a VBR MP3 at -V0 (~245 kbps) or -V1 (~225 kbps) from the original in ABX blind tests. Again, most people, not everyone.

[Pilgrim]

The theory of creating MP3s is not that hard to explain.

Let's say you're standing in a boiler factory trying to hold a conversation.  If it's very loud in there, you can see the other guy's mouth moving but you can't hear a sound from him.  He is creating sound, but the level of noise in the environment masks it. The theory is that if the sound he is making is discarded from the environment, you won't hear a difference.

OK, transfer that idea to music.  There are always sounds in music that are drowned out by other louder sounds.  If you can create an intelligent computer program that estimates what humans can hear, examines the total sound produced and throws out everything a human could NOT hear, then in theory the difference is not audible. 

Also, algorithms look for sound that continues from moment to moment.  If a sound is sustained, then in theory you don't need to re-record that sound every moment, you just carry over the previous sound.  You have reduced the amount of data by not recording that sound repeatedly.

That's the essence of compression - eliminating redundant data and data you can't hear, and leaving only what you can.  The harder you push compression, the more you force it into the audible space and its effects become more evident.  A lot also depends on how smart the compression program is.

Or at least that's how I understand it.

[SKATE RAT]

uh, i'm gonna go play a record now...........

[Hornisse]

A lot of LP's just don't look as good on CD. 

[SKATE RAT]

is that Slits record any good?

[Hornisse]

I like it but I have to admit I bought it because of the cover!  I've bought a lot of records for that reason.





And RHCP covered Love Rollercoaster from this LP.

[SKATE RAT]

oh i have a few i bought "for the cover"

[eb2]

Geez, I haven't popped in since before Christmas, and look what is going down.

I have a few thousand lps, 45s, 78s, Edison discs and maybe a couple of magazine insert flexi discs.  I also have a Bobby Sherman cardboard disc from the back of a Post cereal box.  I play them, collect them, buy them, and sell them at record shows and on ebay.  I never stopped buying them, and for years had a blast snapping up discs that used to cost an arm and a leg back in the late 70s. Prices fell hard in the CD years.  Now they are really as popular as they were in the early 90s.  Tons of younger kids have turntables and are getting into vinyl (younguns refer to them as "vinyls" which is strange) and I have been doing a nutty side biz selling turntables too.

I also have CDs, and don't argue about the durability factor.  Sure there is the odd disintegrating CD, but for the most part they stay fine, or the stray abused one needs a buff out.  They do break, they do get scratched and ruined, but they sound fine.  Being an anal music guy I get pissed off royally at bad remixes, or just wrong mixes used on CD reissues.  But that is why I kept a lot of lps when I got CDs, and I avoid Rhino comps.  To that end, there are a lot of lps that I have in both stereo and mono. Lp's are a fun thing to have and collect, and there is a growing market for sales.  If I get some beat stuff at a yard sale, I donate it.

But I also have come to grips with the sad state that CDs are a victim of their own success.  They are a digital storage medium, and when you think of them that way they are - as most used music stores have discovered - worthless.  You can bounce the files off of a factory CD onto your hard drive, ipod, or another CD or DVD.  You don't have to compress them into mp3, but for a lot of the crap out there it really doesn't have any musical loss.  Plus if you have bootlegs, no loss.  So, faced with the double whammy of them rapidly becoming worthless from a used standpoint  and that so much is available as down-loads legally or not, I have stopped buying CDs.  I avoid them now.  I keep what I have, and use the ipod. 

Whenever I travel, I make a point of hitting a local record shop, and I am a sucker for a Goodwill or SA.  I haven't seen a decent used guitar or amp in one in ten years.  But I pick up $50 discs for a buck almost every week.  So, to that end I have shifted focus from used basses to vinyl and stereo stuff over the last ten years.  For vinyl it is a lot like used guitars 20 years ago - stuff is out there for cheap.  Last year you could score clean copies of stuff like the tri-color Reprise Hendrix discs and Kinks discs for $25-50.  Now they are double.  Check out the closed prices on original Chuck Berry discs.  When he dies?  Whoa.

If you want to find good vinyl in the midwest, there is going to be a used show in Des Moines in March.  That one is decent. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!   

[lowend1]

Being an anal music guy

You really didn't think that we'd let this one slip through, did you?
What exactly is this anal music?