andyman wrote:....... In a few years when I can afford it, i'm more than willing to pay a high price for a good turntable and take care of my collection - it's worth it isn't it?

One of these maybe?

http://www.zerogain.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16350

YO31 wrote:I disagree. In my experience £ for £, superior audio quality is available from viny playback. You CAN get a CD player really cheap, but it will sound shite. This doesn't bother everybody, but if it does then you'll need to spend at least as much on a CD player to match your vinyl system. A phono-stage (another industry gouge, they used to be part of every integrated amp) can be had for much less than 150 - e.g. NAD / Creek. These are readily available on ebay too.

you can get high quality cd players, like the sony sa-cd types for about $300 or less, I believe. most people think these easily out perform budget vinyl playback. I'm talking under $1000. of course it's relative, but for the most part, cd players are the best bang for the buck.

YO31 wrote:Vinyl will wear out eventually, but I still own the very first LPs I ever bought (in 1979/80) and they still sound fine. Many of them were played on some pretty shocking record players too with no obvious side effects. Dust is an issue, so look after them. I try and look after things I've payed money for so this isn't really an issue. It'a actually pretty hard to scratch a record by accident

if this is the true, then this really supports my case. then why do vinyl people advocate things like aligning the cartridge correctly, weight etc? isn't there also the belief that the needle under the weight and friction actually melts the groove? that doesn't sound good. add to that, the actual manufacturing of LPs, which is not terribly accurate either.

This is how records are made:

the original is created on a lathe, which itself not 100% accurate. this is very much an art, that is practiced by a craftsman.

the disk is one of either two materials: copper or shellac.

the copper disk is preferred, since it reduces the steps involved in growing/generations involved in creating the master stamper, since with copper you can directly create the negative stamper.

with shellac, there are 2 extra generations involved to create the final negative stamper.


generally, in large runs, they will grow multiple copies of the stamper. each will be different.

add to this, the wear factor of the stamping run. if you happen to get a record pressed early in the life span of the negative, you will get a very different record than someone who gets one at the end of it's life. This is why first runs of LPs is kind of a misnomer. in a run of say the first 10K copies of dark side of the moon, you may be getting #1 or #9999. the person who buys the second pressing will be possibly be getting a better remastered version, a better cutting if they choose to recut the original, and perhaps a better negative grown from the original.

YO31 wrote:
True, the free lunch is over but it never really existed outside of major cities. Plus, people are still dumping their collections - there seems to be a glut of 1980s - 90s indie around at the moment. Most of it's terrible, but I've found soem real gems for peanuts.

really? I would think that people outside the city would be among the first to jettison their vinyl. I would think most vinyl afficianados are urban in nature.

YO31 wrote:That's how I prefer to listen to music anyway. Actively. Twenty minutes is pretty much optimum human concentration span. Also, I'm sick of so called 'bonus' tracks screwing up the running order of favoured releases.

I once spent days listening to well tempered piano. culturally, I feel this more than makes up for my having never read moby dick.

YO31 wrote:
This is fine if you can tolerate the desperate audio quality of mp3. Personally, I think it's useful for getting a taster but once I know about a recording that I like, I'll try and track down a physical copy.

Unfortunately, although music distribution is now much more democratic, this democracy has unleashed a tidal wave of excrement amongst which, a few gems can be found. I don't think it's any easier or harder to find good music now than in the past - in fact the two major sources of musical education that I had avaiable as a kid no longer exist: Diversity in music broadcasting - and by this I mean getting the unexpected rather than choosing what you already know; and municipal lending libraries.

my point on distribution was not necessarily dependent on the digital file being an MP3, the much derided format. Of course it can easily be a lossless shorten or flac file, if you choose. still, consumers have become addicted to what they have been told is "value" which actually is significantly of less value in comparison to the original performance. you are buying an empty shell of the original performance, (if not musique concrete, which a large portion of rock is).

and lastly I find your statement about open access resulting in a tidal wave of excrement, wholly disingenuous. I would argue that most people on this board probably feel the opposite, that the centralized business first nature of the music industry has resulted in by far more excrement than individual self produced music. perhaps I am being dense, but it appears that you contradict yourself, and I find it kind of difficult to understand the point you are making.

madlee wrote:

you can get high quality cd players, like the sony sa-cd types for about $300 or less, I believe. most people think these easily out perform budget vinyl playback. I'm talking under $1000. of course it's relative, but for the most part, cd players are the best bang for the buck.

I'm not sure how prices translate betwee EU and US but my first CD player was a well rated £200 Marantz job and it couldn't get close to a Rega 2 - which cost £200 at the time. I replaced it with a Well rated £300 Mission player, then added a Meridian DAC. Better, but embarrased by a Rega 3. I could go on, but my point is that in my experience I've always had to spend more on the CD player to get a sound I'm happy with. I think that if you spend a lot, then the differences get smaller, or rather they are just 'differences' rather than inferiorities / superiorities. That said, I've yet to hear a CD player at any price that can ace my Michell Gyro-Orbe hybrid (and that is hardly the last word in Vinyl playback).

madlee wrote:if this is the true, then this really supports my case. then why do vinyl people advocate things like aligning the cartridge correctly, weight etc? isn't there also the belief that the needle under the weight and friction actually melts the groove? that doesn't sound good. add to that, the actual manufacturing of LPs, which is not terribly accurate either

Correct alignment will extract the maximum information from of the goove and do the least damage. However, my point was that even fairly badly treated records have proven to be resistant to significant damage. Whatever the physics of stylus/surface interaction, empirically I have 30 year old sides that still play fine and sound great.

...

madlee wrote:add to this, the wear factor of the stamping run. if you happen to get a record pressed early in the life span of the negative, you will get a very different record than someone who gets one at the end of it's life. This is why first runs of LPs is kind of a misnomer. in a run of say the first 10K copies of dark side of the moon, you may be getting #1 or #9999. the person who buys the second pressing will be possibly be getting a better remastered version, a better cutting if they choose to recut the original, and perhaps a better negative grown from the original.

Sure and this wil depend on how many copies the company try to wring out of a single stamper. I've seen figures as high as 30,000 quoted. However, as a rule of thumb, earlier matrix numbers do seem to translate into a safer bet - or rather later ones are more risky IF you're paying collector prices. For normal £3 - 5 s/h LPs I don't even look.

madlee wrote:really? I would think that people outside the city would be among the first to jettison their vinyl. I would think most vinyl afficianados are urban in nature.

Early adopters are more likely to be urban though, so the big collection dumps tended to be urban too. The vinyl fans I know are people who never got rid of their record players when CD was introduced in the first place and only bought CD when vinyl's availibility started to shrink. The one dedicated record shop within 50 miles of here is 50/50 CD/Vinyl and 50/50 new/secondhand. They still sell casettes and VHS tapes too. There is and always has been a mixed market.

madlee wrote:my point on distribution was not necessarily dependent on the digital file being an MP3, the much derided format. Of course it can easily be a lossless shorten or flac file, if you choose. still, consumers have become addicted to what they have been told is "value" which actually is significantly of less value in comparison to the original performance. you are buying an empty shell of the original performance, (if not musique concrete, which a large portion of rock is).

Maybe you're right about in the case of some consumers. I've never carved things up like that though. For me a record has little or nothing to do with live music. A record can have an aesthetic all of its own, it might represent a collaboration between a band and a particular producer (Bowie/Eno, Iggy/Bowie, etc) that can take previously preformed material to an entirly new place. it can even consist of unreproducible material. Even if it's a live band it is usually an 'impossible' view of a performance (or many comped performances). In fact, turning your argument about value round, I think it's interesting how some bands become tied to the recorded version and are then expected to reproduce the recording live even though they may have never played that version in the first place. To me, a recording is someting quite distinct from live performance. Just my view

madlee wrote:....tidal wave of excrement, wholly disingenuous. I would argue that most people on this board probably feel the opposite, that the centralized business first nature of the music industry has resulted in by far more excrement than individual self produced music. perhaps I am being dense, but it appears that you contradict yourself, and I find it kind of difficult to understand the point you are making.

My point is that there has always been far more music than we can ever have the chance to listen to and the problem has always been one of weeding out the wheat from the chaff. Internet distribution has meant more of both, so although weeding may initially seem easier, the sheer volume of material just rescales the problem. Inventions like Pandora and LastFM don't really help either because they assume that (for example) if I like Shellac I will also like bands that sound like Shellac (usually incorrect). If you have a taste for things that are individually great, rather than from a common genre, you are back to square one. I'm certainly not going to be spending my evening trawling MySpace friends-links in the hope that I'll find something new and exciting. Whilst I think that the boom in home recording equipment has made it easier for us regular folks to record their ideas and it is now possibe to make them 'available' via download, that isn't the same as distribution, since if no-one know's it's there it might as well not be. I can't think of a single band that I've discovered on-line as opposed to hearing live, or being told about then seeking out their work.

Most of my early taste was formed by borrowing records from the public library and making my mind up one LP at a time, talking to my friends, swapping mixtapes and listening to Tommy Vance, Alexis Korner and John Peel in the days before niche broadcasting was relegated to the BBC's schedule margins. I'm not saying that download distribution is in itself a bad thing, but I question the amount of impact it would have had if other routes to new music hadn't been closed off.

I'll end here. I need to turn the record over.

Cheers

John

I prefer the sound of vinyl to CD but I never understood these people that claim that CDs sound like shit...they clearly don't, they clearly sound really good depending on the stereo obviously, but that effects any format. I can understand the comment when directed to Mp3s, in general, unless it's some high quality file they sound annoyingly bad.

This whole pressing issue doesn't effect me too much because none of my records sound bad enough for me to question it.

I prefer vinyl because I think it is the most honest, superior format. Take any vinyl ever made anywhere and it can be played on my fucking table.

The first CDs are becoming unplayable, but the quality of their sound is nowhere near terrible...just not as good as vinyl.

Mp3 files get corrupted or disappear and inevitably become obsolete almost constantly, requiring new programs and codecs, etc. For that reason Mp3s suck...but I can't carry 20,000 7"s with me when I make a long road trip so fuck all this mp3 hating.

Steve V. wrote:I prefer vinyl because I think it is the most honest, superior format. Take any vinyl ever made anywhere and it can be played on my fucking table.

The first CDs are becoming unplayable, but the quality of their sound is nowhere near terrible...just not as good as vinyl.

Mp3 files get corrupted or disappear and inevitably become obsolete almost constantly, requiring new programs and codecs, etc. For that reason Mp3s suck...but I can't carry 20,000 7"s with me when I make a long road trip so fuck all this mp3 hating.

People dilute their listening experience with Ipods and that lark, it's all on random and never listen to an album twice in a row. When you're stuck on a coach for three weeks and you only have one CD or one tape on you you really delve deep into the album and understand it much more. A way better method for falling in love with music.

could someone be kind enough to suggest ways to clean (old) records?

muzorewi's daughter wrote:could someone be kind enough to suggest ways to clean (old) records?

this link my help you out

http://www.sleevetown.com/vinyl-cleanin ... d-cleaning

sphincter wrote:I prefer the sound of vinyl to CD but I never understood these people that claim that CDs sound like shit...they clearly don't, they clearly sound really good depending on the stereo obviously, but that effects any format.

The problem is confounds: Early CD players sounded pretty crappy, in part due to the poorly implemented digital filtering. This has improved massively. Unfortunately, CD mastering has fallen victim to an arms race in percieved volume and mastering designed to minimisethe percieved difference between the CD and a ripped mp3 version or a DAB broadcast, which has screwed things up in a whole new way. CD can sound good and can sound awful - but when it sounds awful it's not necessarily due to intrinsic limitations of the format. Vinyl suffered a similar fate during the last market squeeze (crappy pressings, recycled vinyl).

sphincter wrote:

Steve V. wrote:I prefer vinyl because I think it is the most honest, superior format. Take any vinyl ever made anywhere and it can be played on my fucking table.

The first CDs are becoming unplayable, but the quality of their sound is nowhere near terrible...just not as good as vinyl.

Mp3 files get corrupted or disappear and inevitably become obsolete almost constantly, requiring new programs and codecs, etc. For that reason Mp3s suck...but I can't carry 20,000 7"s with me when I make a long road trip so fuck all this mp3 hating.

People dilute their listening experience with Ipods and that lark, it's all on random and never listen to an album twice in a row. When you're stuck on a coach for three weeks and you only have one CD or one tape on you you really delve deep into the album and understand it much more. A way better method for falling in love with music.

I'll have to agree with you there.