Slashdot Log In
Vinyl Gets Its Groove Back
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Jan 13, 2008 01:23 AM
from the what-goes-around-comes-around dept.
from the what-goes-around-comes-around dept.
theodp writes "Time reports that vinyl records are suddenly cool again. Vinyl has a warmer, more nuanced sound than CDs or MP3s; records feature large album covers with imaginative graphics, pullout photos, and liner notes. 'Bad sound on an iPod has had an impact on a lot of people going back to vinyl,' says 15-year-old David MacRunnel, who owns more than 1,000 records."
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Oy vey (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oy vey (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus one big advantage with MP3 over even CD... YOU CAN'T SCRATCH AN MP3. I mean I love vinyl, I always will, I have tons of it in storage, but I'm also a realist. One mishap and you're precious vinyl is fucked for ever. Whenever I hear Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust", even after 25+ years, I STILL expect it to skip during the final chorus because my version got scratched there shortly after purchase. And, of course, MP3 won't break, warp in the heat etc... Vinyl may sound good, but it's a retarded format due to it's volatility.
I've also got CD's that won't play properly due to a scratch being at just the wrong angle etc...
Though I do find it funny that in the late 80's there was all that crap about the ink they use on CD's eating through the CD and rendering unplayable within seven years. Even made the mainstream media. Turned out to be utter garbage, surprise surprise. I've got CD's that are 20 years old and still play just fine.
Parent
Re:Oy vey (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see, to get the BEST sound out of a record, it needs to be NEW and pressed right, then you need a new and high end cartridge on your high end turntable that has lots of mass so that you dont get speed fluxuations. Direct drive with at least 8 pounds of rotating mass is best. now you need the tonearm weight set as light as possible without letting it launch, but not damaging the record.
So finally after spending 3-4 grand to play that record you had better be very still, oh isolate that turntable and not turn it up loud as the vibrations get back INTO the music.
Only raving lunatics think the old albums are better. Cripes I have no intereste in even unboxing that SME turntable from the 80's with it's $1000.00 309 tonearm. Properly mastered CD's on a $99.00 CD player kick the CRAP out of albums except for the very first play.
The problem is there has not been a properly mastered CD released for nearly a decade so most of you dont have a clue as to what a good one sounds like.
Parent
Re:Oy vey (Score:5, Interesting)
This point needs to be driven home. For people looking for high quality qudio, you only need to rewind back to when CDs were released - they were considered an audiophile's medium.
Has it really been ten years since a well-mastered CD was released? I know otherwise. However, my parents came to me shopping for new audio gear. I suggested they bring 20 CDs they knew well to a sit-down listening of what new loudspeakers were available, hoping that one of them would be a "good" recording. Their recordings include a lot of easy listening, jazz, and otherwise off-the-beaten-path music, so I had hope.
Not one of them weren't compressed and limited to the very extreme. Afterwards, looking through their collection of about 200 CDs, there were exactly *two* that respected good mastering - The Soundtrack to the Lion King, and Enya "The Memory of Trees". Two. From the 90's.
Even re-released recordings of *oldies* on CD (my parents being their 70's) were compressed to completely numbing levels.
Anyone thinking they can go to a record store and buy a high-quality product of anything "hip" or "popular" on CD are sorely mistaken.
It's a damn shame.
Parent
Re:Oy vey (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Oy vey (Score:5, Funny)
Me, I like my music like I like my women: sturdy, affordable, and able to hold up to repetitive playing.
Parent
"Suddenly"? (Score:5, Insightful)
The "warmer, more nuanced sound" can be reproduced (Score:5, Insightful)
The LP was just never a very good reproduction of the sound in the studio.
But ok, some people prefer the sound the way it is distorted by reproduction via LP/record player, a matter of taste.
Parent
There is a zero-wear player (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, you CAN get around it if you're willing to shell out $10k+
http://www.elpj.com/ [elpj.com]
Parent
Re:There is a zero-wear player (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:"Suddenly"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Digital is utterly neutral, cold and perfect every time. I'm not sure exactly why, but people seem to prefer live musicians over a CD at any form of gathering even though it'll almost certainly be less perfect than the CD. I'm not talking about concerts which are a social event in itself but all sorts of celebrations and parties that would be just the same without the band. I think it's something of the same, they don't want a perfect rendering of the music, they want a personal one. There's something to a record that you know every nook and scratch on. You just can't that kind of attachment to a CD.
Parent
Re:"Suddenly"? (Score:5, Informative)
The ones I laugh at are the ones who get a USB turntable because they don't like digital sound and want the analog experiance.
They get better sound simply because most vinyl isn't in the loudness war to kill the dynamic range. A CD with about 96 DB of dynamic range should sould better than the about 65 DB dynamic range of a turntable. Unfortunately the advantage of the CD format is often engineered out to sound louder.
The irony is a USB analog turntable outputs a digital signal on the USB cable. Often the sample rate is the same as a CD. Even more often they are sold to the clueless without even listing the sample rate or bits. Quick, can you tell me if this is an 8 bit, 16 bit, 24 bit, sample size at 16K, 44.1, 48, 96, 128 Ksamples/sec?
http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/mp3/90a0/ [thinkgeek.com]
They advertise it on a geek website without posting the important specs.. Guys, what's the wow & flutter and rumble levels?
For me, I'm sticking to my 1980's moving coil linear track turntable with a good reciever plugged into a quality mixer (to set levels) which is then fed into a pro USB a/d converter. I capture at 96KHZ 24bit and downconvert to CD quality to burn CD's. It works for me.
Here is another USB turntable with no specs listed.
http://www.amazon.com/Ion-iTTUSB-Turntable-USB-Record/dp/B000BUEMOO [amazon.com]
and another;
http://www.amazon.com/Numark-TTUSB-Turntable-with-USB/dp/B000G3FNVM [amazon.com]
Here is one that is reviewed and the A/D stats are known..
The sound quality was as good as can be expected from old, scratchy records. The built-in audio card records 16-bit at 44.1khz
http://reviews.cnet.com/turntables/stanton-t-90-usb/4505-7860_7-32417457.html [cnet.com]
Wow, no better than CD quality...
Some of these turntables get poor marks for their conversion to digital quality.
"The TTUSB10 as a Turntable
After my disappointing experience with the TTUSB10 USB turntable's recorded sound quality, I plugged it into the phono input in my stereo, hoping for some sweeter sounds. This time around, the TTUSB10 did not let me down: smooth, rich audio came through the speakers and my test headphones without a trace of the harsh digital noise that plagued my test recordings. It would be a bit of a waste of money just to buy it as a standard turntable, but if nothing else, the TTUSB10 makes for an excellent unit for playing your vinyl music collection on your stereo system."
http://www.everythingusb.com/ion_ttusb10_usb_turntable_13231.html [everythingusb.com]
Parent
Re:"Suddenly"? (Score:5, Interesting)
And where exactly do you think the noise floor of a real LP player is?
That is after all all we are talking about, although I have doubts that that is often appreciated.
Of course, on a modern CD you are missing a lot of the harmonic distortion, random noise, and limited (yes, go look at the actual figures) high and low frequency response of a normal LP, but hey, who needs them.
MP3 is in a lot of ways a good match to vinyl, it actually tracks a lot of the same problems rather nicely.
Parent
Delta-sigma (Score:5, Informative)
That's what the "audiophiles" claim, but that's not the way CDs are recorded. That mythical "number of bits" figure is mostly a marketing argument, digital recordings today are done in a way that eliminates quantization noise in the audible band [wikipedia.org]
Digital recording technology isn't just a fad, if it were a new one would have replaced it by now. Digital is actually better than analog in *all* aspects, if done right. If done wrong, well, does a bad analog recording sound good to you?
The weakest link in sound recording and reproduction is almost always the conversion between electrical signals to sound and vice-versa. When people "compare" digital sound to analog they are often comparing listening to an ipod with earbuds with listening to a $100k analog system. Well, try to listen to the ipod in a pair of these $5350.00 speakers [crutchfield.com] and tell me again again about those "warmer, more nuanced" sounds.
Parent
Ah, the things "audiophiles" claim... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah, the kinds of things that "audiophiles" claim...
Probably the funniest was one on the HardwareCentral forum, which insisted that MP3's sound differently off different hard drives, and of course his superior ear can easily tell the difference between a Maxtor and a Seagate. He actually went into a funny (in a village idiot kind of way) theory about how it's recorded magnetically like on cassettes, and we all know how different magnetic coatings (e.g., iron oxide vs chromium oxide) in cassettes behaved differently in different frequency ranges. So it stood to (his warped lack of) reason that the same would happen to hard drives. Some would have better bass, some would have a greater dynamic range, etc.
Sad to say, no amount of explaining that a 1 is a 1 is a 1 on a hard drive and the MP3 read will be identical on any brand, made any difference. He was sure that that's nonsense, the magnetic coating of a HDD platter has no reason to behave differently than that of a cassette, and most importantly he had convinced himself that he can hear the differences. (Without a double-blind test, though. Funny how many "audiophiles" resent those three words.)
Also in the funny stupidity category, I submit to you such gems as:
- $1000+ power cables, and people swearing that their music sounds better with one,
- specially-tuned wooden volume knobs (no, seriously), and people swearing that their music sounds better with one,
- audiophile motherboards with one vacuum tube at the end of an otherwise 100% digital chain, and again people swearing that their MP3's sound closer to the original with that (never mind that it's really just adding the tube's own soft-clipping kind and harmonics, to those that the digital chain already introduced),
Etc, etc, etc.
It's just the emperor's new clothes story. Except the original story got it wrong. If you tell someone that only some kind of superior beings can see those clothes, or hear the subtle sound differences, they'll actually convince themselves that they really see or hear that. They won't fake it, they'll actually be convinced that if they squint just right, they kinda see the fabulous clothes on the emperor.
And a kid shouting "the emperor is naked", actually won't make any difference. That's actually what they want to hear. Being better is relative. You have to be better than _someone_. For you to be better, someone else has to be worse. So once they got it into their head that they must be one of the geniuses that see the clothes, other people shouting "The emperor is naked!" just provides ample "proof" that yup, others aren't that good.
In fact, here's an even more depressing parting thought: the more blatantly absurd and provably wrong something is, the more vehemently its advocates will defend it.
Parent
By the time you're 20! (Score:5, Interesting)
He turned down the frequency generator to about 10Khz (when we realized it was super loud) and then the volume and told everyone to raise their hand and then lower it when they could no longer hear anything. 90% of the class had their hand down when the frequency generator hit about 19Khz, and the ones left were all girls and nobody lasted to 22Khz.
The other one is high fidelity in cars -- even the nicest "riding" car I've ever been in (Jaguar) still has an audible road noise floor which makes fidelity in the car pointless, especially if you're a wanker in a Honda like me.
Parent
Re: "Digitally normalise" in Audio (Score:4, Insightful)
Its purpose is to make the best use of the available dynamic range. By adjusting the highest peaks to "just below clipping" you avoid using up dynamic range for headroom. Of course this only makes sense if the original recording has a greater dynamic range than the target, otherwise you would just increase the quantization noise along with the audio signal. That is why studios like to use 20 or 24 bit digital equipment.
As an example, assume the sound engineer leaves 10 db of headroom during recording. Then
1) On 16 bit equipment with 96 dB dynamic range, you get an actual S/N ratio of 86 dB. The 10 dB headroom are lost, normalization would be pointless.
2) On 20 bit equipment with 120 dB dynamic range, you get an actual S/N ratio of 110 dB. In this case, you can convert the 20 bit recording to a normalized 16 bit recording that has a S/N ratio of 96 dB. This is how you make the best use of a digital format with limited dynamic range.
On a more personal note, the way you ridicule GP over a few spelling errors deserves modding down as troll. Especially since you obviously don't understand all of the involved concepts yourself.
Parent
Re:"Suddenly"? (Score:5, Interesting)
The enjoyment I get out of it isn't just about the audio quality (although in some cases it is much better on vinyl). It's hard to explain, but the act of digging through a crate full of records, handling the vinyl, dropping the needle, even the light crackling sound you get on old records during the silent moments, it all adds to the experience. It's much more involved than just dropping in a CD or playing a file.
And, as a great bonus, you can pick up all sorts of old music you otherwise wouldn't have heard for pennies at a pawn shop, thrift store, Goodwill, etc. I made a habit of going through the records at thrift stores, buying anything with an album cover that interested me or made me laugh. Most of it was horrible, but for anywhere from 50 cents to $1.99 each you're not out much.
Parent
Re:"Suddenly"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:"Suddenly"? (Score:5, Informative)
That is the real problem. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_wars [wikipedia.org].
If a CD is released without dynamic compression, it will sound fine.
Several years ago, the german HiFi magazine Stereoplay made an experiment to determine if the digitizing as such makes an audible difference. They took a high quality analog recording and played it two different ways:
1) Directly from turntable to amplifier and from there to loudspeaker, no digital equipment involved.
2) Somewhere in between, the signal went into an A/D converter and from there into a D/A converter. The other components were the same as in 1).
In a blind test (cannot remember if it was double blind) the test audience could not determine a difference. The equipment was quite high-quality BTW, they definitely used one of the $20.000 or more rigs that are often quoted as being necessary for hearing the differences.
Also, Vinyl is not immune against someone compressing the digital master before the recording is transferred to vinyl. Expect such stupidity to happen shortly
Parent
Re:"Suddenly"? (Score:5, Funny)
Some people will say it costs too much, but I disagree. Sure, building the audio system of my dreams cost $750,000, not to mention my job, my house, and my marriage. But my system makes Britney Spears sound like fucking Beethoven!
Parent
Re:"Suddenly"? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:"Suddenly"? (Score:4, Funny)
Dunno, but I'm sure those "ohs" and "yes's" and "ja's" sound warmer and more nuanced on vinyl than in some crappy compressed digital format.
Parent
Re:"Suddenly"? (Score:4, Informative)
If it was the same as lossy compression, then that would imply would data on the CD would be uncompressed on playback to provide some resemblance to the original high sample rate master.
This does not happen on CD, as the missing information from the original master is irretrievably lost. There is no decompression on playback, and so no extra information is generated.
If you take a picture and remove half the pixels, you have not compressed it, you have removed half the pixels. This is equivalent to downsampling. There is no way of getting those missing pixels back.
If you use a compression scheme that allows assign more data to those pixels are more important to the way humans perceive images, you have used lossy compression. You can increase the perceived quality of the image after decompression.
Lossy compression also implies a trade off between human perception and available bandwidth. As perception does not factor in linear PCM audio, you cannot say CD uses lossy compression.
Parent
Not surprising... (Score:5, Insightful)
And then the audiophile jargon of "nuanced" etc etc... What a load of crap.
Re:Not surprising... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Not surprising... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's it exactly. A hot CD doesn't do justice to bands like Arcade Fire, so I'm willing to go out of my way to get the vinyl versions of certain albums even if it means I now have to worry about things like dust and needle wear. I'd prefer that the studios just digitally master these things correctly in the first place, but that's not going to happen as long as the engineers feel compelled to make their songs sound the "loudest" on the radio; and that won't stop until we can agree on a way to normalize the volume levels of CDs and other digital media.
There's a great YouTube video on this subject: "The Loudness War" [youtube.com]
Parent
Re:Not surprising... (Score:5, Interesting)
Anybody remember the Telarc digital recording of the 1812 Overture released on Vinyl? They used real cannons and the cannon shots were so loud, they had to dramatically increase the groove pitch in that area of the record to accommodate the waveform. It would have crossed over six grooves or so if they hadn't.
That record was literally a stereo killer. I saw phono cartridges lose the diamond tip or jump out of the groove when it hit that spot. Power amp fuses blew. Speakers were damaged etc. The only way I could capture it to tape was to play the record at 16 RPM, record the tape at 15 IPS and play it at 7.5 IPS (yes, there was a slight pitch shift but so what).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not surprising... (Score:5, Informative)
Most music is recorded digitally and then mastered digitally. The vinyl records pressed use a digital master. Now the digital master used is almost certainly of higher quality than version pressed onto a CD, but still - records are still an analog copy (of the original analog master) of a digital master.
Parent
echo....echo....echo (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But punched cards are best (Score:5, Funny)
Newer technologies just don't give programs the same nuanced performance and octagonal algorithms as punched cards. The clean edges of a punched bit totally rule over the bits on magnetic media that require a dedicated computer just to recover them from the noise. All that extra work to reconstruct a bit makes them tired, and fatiguing to debug.
Face it: programs run off hard disks just have grainy memory usage and an indistinct sound stage.
But punched cards are a distraction from the real issue, which is that only a vacuum tube computer can do justice to the best algorithms.
Parent
Man, you did that scarily well. (Score:3, Funny)
-jcr
True in a way (Score:4, Interesting)
These days, people are far too eager to jump into the debugger, or to just try running something to see if it works. This culture leads to a lot of obscure, since the program isn't designed to be correct, and examined critically in an attempt to say with reasonable confidence that it really is correct but is simply run by the developer. The whole "works for me" syndrome.
Parent
Re:echo....echo....echo (Score:5, Informative)
Yup. 24-bit precision gives you almost 17 million values. Assuming a total groove width of 2 mil (50 microns), the maximum excursion is physically bounded at about half that or you'll end up with the cutter over in the next groove... maybe a little more, but not much. So 50 microns of width divided by 17 million gives ups about 3 × 10^-12 meters, or about 0.03 angstroms....
Now, to put that in perspective... The estimates I've seen for the diameter of a hydrogen atom are about 1 * 10^-10 meters, give or take. That would make the resolution of a 24-bit digital signal equivalent to an analog cutter whose resolution is just about a 30th the width of a hydrogen atom... well beyond what the laws of physics allow.
A typical particle of PVC, as best I could ascertain from a quick web search, would be 100,000 times as large. This puts vinyl at about 10-11 bits of resolution, practically speaking. Don't get me wrong, I think vinyl sounds better than CDs in many cases, but that's because of awful digital mastering practices---overcompressing the signal, audio engineers who can't hear above 12kHz doing the mix, overhyped highs and lows to compensate for craptastic sound systems, etc. It's not because vinyl is inherently better; it's because audio production from the vinyl area was inherently better. Don't get me started on the Disneyana AutoTune-until-your-ears-bleed style of recording we're getting out of the industry today. When it comes to an audio delivery format, there's a certain degree of "garbage in, garbage out" at work.....
Parent
Reasonable, but not well informed (Score:5, Informative)
If this equalization were not present, it would be almost impossible for the LP record to exist, as the grooves on a record would have to be so far apart. It would also be very, very hard to get playback equipment to reliably track such a record.
Now, records are not just "cut" in a dumb fashion. Since the 70s at least, mastering equipment has been smart enough to move the cutter head across the record at variable pitch. In this way, passages that had a lot of bass content (and thus produced wide excursion of the stylus) could be recorded at a wider pitch than "average" tracks. In fact, it is this equipment which allowed those "extra long play" records of the late 70s to come into existence. Radio Shack sold a few of these featuring such artists as Arthur Feidler and the Boston Pops, and Earth, Wind and Fire, and these albums could play a half hour or more on each side. This was done by careful equalization and record level settings combined with variable pitch cutting of the master disk.
So far as excursion goes, no, it aint limited at all to anything like 2 mils. If you can find an old copy of Telarc's recording of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite and look closely at the record, you will see places where the groove pitch is about fifty times that! This was considered one of the benchmark tests of the day as many cartridges and tonearms could not play it without skipping. In fact, if you simply read some old equipment reviews of the 70s and 80s you will often find this recording to be one of the standard reviewers tests.
But what you completely missed is electrical noise. See, a standard phono cartridge has an impedance of 600 ohms. A 600 Ohm source impedance, at room temperature, has a fairly well defined noise floor. That is, barring any other source of noise, the simple thermal noise of the transducer itself can never go below a certain level. Given a "0db" standard for most phono cartridges of roughly 4.5mV, the noise floor can never me more than 76db below zero. This was, in fact, the source of some amount of fraudulent advertising during the "numbers race" of the 70s and 80s, when many manufacturers would claim phono s/n rations of upward of 100db. While one can most certainly make a preamp that can prodice this low noise output with a SHORTED input, connecting an actual transducer to the input throws that right to the wind. As a result the FTC mandated phono S/N be specified with a standard input impedance of 600 Ohms.
None of which _really_ means anything. Zero db on a phonograph is not a hard limit (as shown by the Telarc recording) and that noise floor does not mean no information can exist below -76db. But likewise, Digital recordings are not so "hard limited" either. Noise shaping allows much greater than 96db s/n floor across the midrange where it is most needed at the expense of higher frequency noise floor where it is less likely to be audible.
Basically, the difference between these two - outside the distortions implicitly mandated by the RIAA EQ curve and the electronics needed to accommodate it - comes down to mastering. Which adds new meaning to the phrase "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice..." When, in a few years, these kids buying vinyl have grown into twenty somethings with plenty of disposable income and are once again lured into replacing their "old vinyl collection" with new digitally mastered SACD recordings that are cut from the _analog_ masters (that sound good) rather than the CD masters where the signal was digitally comp
Parent
Sure, harder to rip... (Score:3, Interesting)
I am sure the fact that records wear out with repeated plays also contributed to their excitement over this trend. But hey, records are something I can't make at home. I would be more than happy to see the music industry shrink away to one that only manufactures records. At the moment they seem to manufacture mostly ill will.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This is true... to an extent (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with claims like this is that they're not falsifiable in any meaningful way. Of course it can be argued that vinyl is "warmer" and more "nuanced" - all depending on your definition of "warm" and "nuanced". What is true is that when accurate reproduction of the source sound is the goal, digital is used nearly exclusively.
This is entirely separate, of course, from the issue of the quality of compressed sound files, such as those most commonly found on iPods. Depending on the algorithm and the amount of the compression used, it can certainly have a dramatic influence on the sound quality - in some cases making it clearly lower quality than records.This article is a bit late (Score:5, Interesting)
When I first started out, all the DJ's across Trance/House would only DJ with Vinyl and CD's were unheard of. In the past 12-18 months though that's all changed. Vinyl sales are down as DJ's and enthusiasts are all moving to CD's. CDJ's are now excellent quality and offer much more dynamic mixing abilities with better effects, beat matching and looping and sampling.
At the same time, tracks being produced are instantly available on MP3 which allows DJ's to purchase fresh hits the day the producer is happy with it, other then having to wait for tracks to be pressed to vinyl.
I believe this trend has followed Europe where they have been progressively been moving away from Vinyl in the past 2-3 years.
Vinyl is still excellent, I still love to collect it, but technology has finally caught up in the club scene where MP3 and digital music now offers much much more advantage to the DJ, especially in price. Buying 5-6 new records per week to play in clubs is expensive, when you can buy the same tracks for 3-4 dollars each online and burn them to CD.
One Cannot Identify With An Infinite Supply (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone has a thousand albums on Vinyl, it's a different story. You think something of him. Maybe good, maybe bad, but you can expect him to rather deeply identify himself by his music. Each record was individually chosen, to the exclusion of others. Time was invested, thought was expressed, identity is reflected.
And that, of course, is what not just Vinyl, but the entire shared music experience is really about. Music is more than bits. Music is more than waves of air lapping or pounding at one's eardrums. Music is, or at least can be, about identity. That a fifteen year old kid is desperately trying to assert his should surprise absolutely nobody here.
For sound quality... (Score:4, Funny)
The Wisdom of 15-Year-Olds (Score:4, Insightful)
That's crap. How about rewording it to be a bit more truthful (and accurate): 'Highly-compressed, far less than CD quality sound, on an iPod has had an impact on some people looking for alternatives, including vinyl,'
This kid may have 1000 records, but that pales compared to 100,000,000 iPod sales and still growing.
Besides, portable music is the Big Thing. How are you going to play that vinyl on your portable music player? In fact, it's hard to even find a great turntable at an affordable price any longer. It's not like the old days when a couple hundred bucks could buy a great Dual 1237. Mine still sits next to my computer -- and isn't for sale!
Pro Audio Kettle^WPower Cords (Score:3, Funny)
The Vinyl 'user Interface' Is What's Special (Score:5, Informative)
Now, there are many attempts to replicate the interface, either with the giant jog wheels on the CDJ's or vinyl control discs sending control signals to computers (Serato/MsPinky/Final Scratch) but while these bring advantages to the equation - mnamely being able to carry a larger selection in your record bag or laptop's disc - they still fall short of the pure vinyl experience in subtle ways.
Now I can listen to practically any track ever recorded, on demand and for free at sites like imeem.com [imeem.com] when I love music I want the physical artifact and a vinyl version always gets more love from me.
Oh and vinyl is robust, I have 10 year old CD's that are turning brown and won't play, but I have 50 year old vinyl that still works just fine.
Accuracy and Vinyl (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll say one last thing. People put down vinyl because it's not as accurate as digital. But accuracy is impossible to achieve in the sense you're going for. When artists record and master music, they listen back to it in a variety of different ways, certain speakers and settings which you have no idea of. And even if you knew, that still doesn't mean you can accurately reproduce what the artist/producer/engineer intended because they are frequently working in "translation" where they are listening back with a certain sound system, but they are actually keeping in mind what it will sound like on other sound systems, with no one way being defined as the exact way it should sound; they weren't intending anyone actually to listen to the music with a pair of studio monitors, even though that's how they were listening to it. So what then could possibly be the "accurate" sound? It's best not to get bent all out of shape over these things I think. The nice thing about vinyl is that you can buy some good albums for cheap at used record stores, but I suppose it depends on what you like, but anyone with a general appreciation for music who isn't too particular can find some good music on vinyl for real cheap.
IAAAP (I am an audiophile) (Score:4, Interesting)
Put one some music, preferably recorded live. Something with a single instrument--like guitar, violin, or sax. Make sure its something without amplification. Play it at a volume that gives you the illusion that the instrument is in the room. On a decent system and a good recording this shouldn't be too hard.
Now here is the test. Step into the adjacent room. Ask yourself if the illusion still exists. Does it sound like there is someone playing the guitar in the next room? Or does it sound like it's coming from a box?
Most setups fail this test. They will sound "boxy" somehow. My setup passes this test with flying colors. It wasn't that expensive put together. I don't have tube amps (distortion), turntable (more distortion), nor $5000 cables (useless). What I do have is a faithful reproduction of sound that was recorded. When listening to CD's, most distortions I notice these days are poor mixing, poor miking, poor eq, dynamic compression, and other terrible things done during production. And my speakers faithfully reproduces these without "warming" them or "soothing" them or something.
Oh, and vinyls sound like crap on my system.
Yeah, once (Score:4, Interesting)
The only thing that's making vinyl sound good to 15-year-old kids is that modern producers are by and large shite button-monkeys who compress the fuck out of everything so it'll sound good when ripped to mp3 and/or played through tiny earphones or club sound systems.
The sort of engineers and producers who would care enought to produce a vinyl LP these days would probably also make damn good CDs.
TWW
The trick to getting seriously good audio (Score:4, Interesting)
Stop paying $10000 for a 'sound system' and wanking endlessly on Slashdot about specs and which recording sounds better. Get yourself a $100 electric guitar and a simple but good headphone amp. A $1 LM386 audio amp IC and a couple of resistors/capacitors from a trashed stereo works fine.
Download some tab files of your favorite songs (the ones that you were going to use to judge the quality of your $10000 stereo system) and some MIDI files of the same songs (if you can find them still on the web).
Learn to play them on your guitar.
It takes a little time, sure. But the results are often feel better than endlessly listening to the same recording on a $10000 system (even with Monster cables).
And I assure you that you will be hearing parts and intricacies of the music that you didn't notice before learning to play the songs yourself on your own instrument. Even if you're listening on a $5 garage sale cassette Walkman.
Music is subjective. It is what you make it to be. 20-year-old Eddie Cochran, John Lennon, Eddie Van Halen, or Carlos Santana didn't need $10000 sound systems to make incredible music. Neither do you.