Vinyl..................?

[fenderbender]

Got into the Mini disc after it was on the market for a couple of years -loved the sound -great stereo spread etc
the discs were pretty cheap on line -but that is now past tense
I have about 100 LPs on mini disc in a bag in the bottom of a press somewhere-
I still have a couple of players -Sharp & Sony-but history they are now.

Some guys still use them to store their backing tracks on gigs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniDisc

[Oldrottenhead]

i love music i don't care what format it comes in. i saw a todd rundgren lecture online about mastering for vinyl and there are lots of issues about length of music depth width of the groove etc. that affect bass end and high end. and also where it was printed, gawd i spent a fortune on japanes imports back in the day. lol.

[AndyR]

I challenge anyone not to do an A/B test vinyl versus CD - let alone MP3's, same recording and switch between the two. I found that CD's loose so much - and even more so between and CD and an MP3 -  but the convenience is amazing with MP3's

The thing is, though... they're not the same recordings are they? Unless the mp3 is lossless, it's got a lower sample rate than the file on the CD - so there's less information to reconstruct the audio and the stuff coming out the speakers is more of an approximation.

And version that ended up on the vinyl had to be mastered differently than the version that went on the CD, otherwise it won't work proper - the bottom end has to be cut off otherwise the grooves are too wide and bump into each other, and theoretically it can cope with less top end than the digital delivery. So, for a commercial release, it's likely to be a "different" recording (same mix, mastered differently) on the vinyl and CD.

In the early days of CD, they did put out existing products using the versions mastered for vinyl - those will be lacking in boom and ting because the digital thing doesn't colour the sound like a turntable and stylus does. But then they figured out that there's a load of stuff missing on the vinyl masters (cos the system can't take it) and this stuff does not have to be removed when mastering for CD ... and digital-audio-converters have vastly improved since the start.

What you're getting out of a CD is actually more... but less the colouration that a stylus and turntable add to it (that wasn't in the music in the first place!! - it's not what came out of the studio speakers when the magnetic tape was running).

It really is "you pays yer money and takes yer choice" - both methods (vinyl and CD) have pros and cons. But, regardless of what we think we can hear, we're getting more of the original music on a digital reproduction (with a decent sample rate - eg wav on CDs) than on a needle and groove system... first, because the digital can take more of the music than the vinyl can, and second because it's not adding the "sound" of the record player.

I've wondered about switching back to vinyl - it was a fab experience, the sleeve, the smell, etc, etc... But what about the pops and crackles? Haven't even mentioned those yet. And also the cost of the things and quality control - there aren't so many vinyl cutting plants anymore, the economy of scale isn't there anymore, and there seems to be a higher percentage of duff pressings than there used to be back in the day...

And where's the record player going to go (and the shelves of records, for that matter!) - the missus ain't gonna buy into "well we could get rid of one of the sofas..."

I'm sticking with CDs for the moment, because I like owning a physical media, but increasingly they don't get played day-to-day - they get ripped the minute I buy them, and I listen on a small device or on a computer. I've only just noticed, but a lot of folks into a "record collection" like I am seem to have gone this route some time ago - all their physical media have been copied onto hard drives and they listen from that through their "stereo" set-up (if they even have one!!).

Some kids is buying vinyl because it's cool. But most kids don't even know what a stereo is - they listen on iphones and laptops. They don't feel the need for a physical copy of an album, and they're increasingly expecting the music to be available for free.

Vinyl will keep going like it does at the moment for a good while. CDs will keep going for a good while too, maybe less long than the vinyl though. Music is now delivered digitally, we ain't going to go back on that, and CD happens to be just one way of doing of delivering and receiving it.

[Oldrottenhead]

I do miss gatefold sleeved and the trainspotter in me loved  all the info with mp3s I struggle to know even the name of the band I'm listening to

[Hook]

im a talk radio kind of guy

[alfstone]

I do miss gatefold sleeved and the trainspotter in me loved  all the info with mp3s I struggle to know even the name of the band I'm listening to

Yes, James, right, BUT actually the trend is exactly the one Andy described so well. Another consequence...what about hi-fi? It has become a very small market...while we all, when we were young, were looking for the best ampli, the best stylus, the best loudspeakers and so on, and audiophile shops were rather common, now, that most of listening is via mp3 (with their limits), the concept itself of "high fidelity" sound is nonsense...

Everything changes...

Alfredo

[IanR]

Imagine carrying around a turntable and vinyl disks to listen to while travelling on a train or a tram.

I too was a hi-fi nut back in the 1980s and spent all the money I earned in Summer jobs (whilst at Uni) on buying better hi-fi components to listen through during the cold months of studying.  I stopped buying hi-fi about 25 years ago and still have all the components I collected then, and all of the them are working (just).  Today, I almost never sit down on the couch to listen to a record (CD or Vinyl).

These days, I carry over 5,000 songs around in my bag when I'm travelling (for about 90 minutes each weekday) and listen via headphones.  Its isn't audiophile but it's good enough.

[AndyR]

^ Yep, that's what I'm doing...

I have to admit (like most of us here I guess), as a musician, it's always been about the music to me. Yeah, I REALLY wanted to see my stuff on a black plastic spinny-thing with my name on the label , but it never happened, and I find myself surprised now at how important that seemed to me.

But other than that and fond memories of gatefold sleeves and stuff, all I've ever really wanted is the music, sounding as good as possible (and that's a very personal thing to all of us, there is no black and white good/bad really - to me it means warm and enveloping with a damn good scrunch to it! ), in as convenient and accessible a form as possible.

I'm old enough that I still want to "own" my copy of the music, I don't trust this cloud and on-demand thing. But that could change if I discover it gives me a new, and reliable, level of convenience.

[Geir]

what Andy said !

[Blooby]

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