# Anyone buy vinyl records now? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 10, 2015, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219 "2015-06-10T23:49:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2015, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/1 "2015-06-10T23:49:11Z")
At a used book store the clerk told me lots of people buy vinyl now. Is that really true? I noticed Barnes and Noble now sells vinyl. I have an old turntable but have not bought vinyl for 30 years. I’m in my 50s in case anyone is curious. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2015, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/2 "2015-06-10T23:50:46Z")
Yes, people still buy vinyl. Some of them are even young folks. It’s enjoying a mild revival right now. Some bands are reissuing old albums, some are publishing new on vinyl. I’ve bought used vinyl for years. Still have to get around to ripping tracks form all of my collection. ---
**Author:** ![campp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@campp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/campp)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2015, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/3 "2015-06-10T23:52:26Z")
Yes. We never went away. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2015, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/4 "2015-06-10T23:54:27Z")
The only ones I know are in their 20s. No idea why they’re doing it. ---
**Author:** ![Wallace\_The\_Lad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/43a26b/32.png) [@Wallace\_The\_Lad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallace_The_Lad)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/5 "2015-06-11T00:34:00Z")
I buy vinyl at 50 cents - dollah a pop. (But at that price you dont get much that is rare.) Im not a vinyl reissue dope. (Anyways, if I do get reissued vinyl, its only in trade. Im no fool to be paying $30-40 for those.) I have -I dunno - maybe 4000 lps in the collectro. To go one further - I play cassettes also. I have a wonderful Advent tape deck. First tape dect to have dolby. If anyone is interested, I could put up an impressive tradelist of duplicate progs & fusions I have. (I will only trade lps within Canada. Otherwise Canada Post makes it impossible.) ---
**Author:** ![Wallace\_The\_Lad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/43a26b/32.png) [@Wallace\_The\_Lad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallace_The_Lad)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/6 "2015-06-11T00:37:06Z")
This question always comes up on fora. But what the question SHOULD be is : “Are you a SERIOUS collector? Do you buy USED vinyl …or just fad vinyl (that you stick up on the wall to impress)?” ---
**Author:** ![zombywoof](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/9e8a1a/32.png) [@zombywoof](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zombywoof)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/7 "2015-06-11T00:44:21Z")
I got a chuckle out of [this recent New Yorker cartoon](http://www.vinylengine.com/turntable_forum/download/file.php?id=15997&sid=8c39d14bf3b879db7ba187059f965573&mode=view). ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/8 "2015-06-11T01:26:47Z")
Still people using fax machines and typewriters too. 🙂 I thought all the US vinyl plants shut down long ago but maybe a few new ones opened up or maybe the stuff now comes from overseas. ---
**Author:** ![Suburban\_Plankton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suburban_plankton/32/219_2.png) [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/9 "2015-06-11T01:54:59Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > The only ones I know are in their 20s. No idea why they’re doing it. We bought one last month (I’m 47). We were in Barnes & Noble, and noticed they had a display of albums and [record players](http://www.amazon.com/Crosley-CR49-TA-Traveler-Turntable-Adjustable/dp/B0000DHVN3). I have a hundred-odd LPs in the closet, with nothing to play them on, so we bought a turntable and a copy of _Ramones_. One thing I noticed was the quality of the vinyl on this record; it was about 3 times thicker than most of the albums I had bought back in the 80s. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/10 "2015-06-11T02:08:02Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > The only ones I know are in their 20s. No idea why they’re doing it. Yeah, I’m 54 and thought we has seen the ass-end of that junk. I’ve actually cut an LP and the compromises necessary to fit music into the grooves of an LP (summing bass to mono, inter-groove distortion, etc.) don’t exist on CD or high-res formats. Now, on the other hand, there has been a terrible trend of CDs and downloads being compressed to sound “louder” (search “Loudness wars”) to cut through the background noise on the radio or for people listening to music while exercising. Some people have mistakenly concluded that this compression is inherent to modern formats. And the people spending twice as much for a current vinyl release expect the music to not be compressed as much. So we now have the bizarre situation where a worse format can sound objectively better than a much better one. And you have people twisting themselves into logical knots trying to come up with explanations for it. One other factor is fetishism. Digital cameras have increased in quality where they exceed the resolution and dynamic range of any chemical format. But there are going to be a handful of people who are always going to insist that there is some intangible quality to the chemical version that the electronic one will never capture. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/11 "2015-06-11T02:34:33Z")
My parents gave my girlfriend a turntable for Sol Invictus. She’s gotten _Sticky Fingers_, _Nebraska_ (I think; some Bruce from before I was born, anyway), a Bowie album I can’t remember (_Diamond Dogs_, possibly?) and bunch of others. She gets used and vintage from various sources here in the city. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/12 "2015-06-11T02:51:44Z")
> [@gaffa](#): > > But there are going to be a handful of people who are always going to insist that there is some intangible quality to the chemical version that the electronic one will never capture. There can be a certain enjoyment from mastering film and its development, special effects, double exposures, and things of that sort. I had great fun with the photography class I took back before digital cameras were a thing. I could see someone enjoying it the way others might playing guitar or doing needlework, as a hobby. And, of course, there’s the fine art thing, just like people are still doing stone lithography (that was also fun). ---
**Author:** ![Accidental\_Martyr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@Accidental\_Martyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Accidental_Martyr)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/13 "2015-06-11T02:52:36Z")
There was an episode of _Maron_ last season that revolved around him getting into collecting vinyl. > **[Marc Maron: crackle and pop – why I'm addicted to collecting vinyl](https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/jun/13/marc-maron-vinyl-collecting-records)** > > The standup, writer, sitcom star and host of the wildly popular podcast WTF explains why vinyl has taken over his life – and wonders whether $15k is too much to spend on speakers I haven’t bought an album on vinyl since I was in high school almost 30 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/14 "2015-06-11T04:31:51Z")
Heh, I’m one of the fools that has [issued vinyl](http://dreamysoundz.bandcamp.com/album/the-apehangars) in the last year. Never mind the 100 or so I usually buy in a year to listen to, I bought 500 of the _exact same record_. If I sell out, I may buy 1000 more. Maybe we’ll put out a different record instead, though. As someone who’s participated in making a record, I can assure you that recordings sound different when pressed onto vinyl. Before you even get to the question of it being reproduced from the physical source and the variances in the equipment used to play it back, the master recording should be eq’d/mastered differently before sending it to the pressing plant. That’s necessary because a vinyl record has a different dynamic range than a digital recording. The digital files we distribute sound good, the record sounds good; I’d be hard pressed to say which one I actually prefer to listen to, but they absolutely sound different. ---
**Author:** ![resentfulviper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a88e57/32.png) [@resentfulviper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/resentfulviper)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 10:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/15 "2015-06-11T10:27:28Z")
We are in our late 40’s and buy vinyl sometimes. We often buy used. I guess there’s the nostalgia factor if I’m honest; and the art work. And if we find a record store we like the vibe of we like to support them. We do buy new as well, but usually just the in doom/psychedelic genre. We’d like to have a nice vinyl collection of those. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/16 "2015-06-11T11:33:03Z")
There’s a record store in my neighborhood. I think I picked up a couple of odd LP’s of local interest–very cheaply. Lots of younger folks seem serious–turntables are also offered. Mine is OK but needs a bit of adjustment–they said I should bring it in so they could fix it. (How many shops actually repair stuff nowadays?) I’ve got an LP collection from the old days. Plus a ton of CD’s. But there’s only so much room–so I really enjoy the streaming music services & often buy MP3’s. But LP’s are not about to disappear… ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/17 "2015-06-11T13:26:56Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > There can be a certain enjoyment from mastering film and its development, special effects, double exposures, and things of that sort. I had great fun with the photography class I took back before digital cameras were a thing. I could see someone enjoying it the way others might playing guitar or doing needlework, as a hobby. People who go back to film and vinyl must live in a far different, far more dust free world than I do. I really don’t miss having to swipe the record with the Discwasher brush in an attempt to get 20 minutes of reasonably “pop”-free music. ---
**Author:** ![Gordon\_Urquhart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/db5fbb/32.png) [@Gordon\_Urquhart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gordon_Urquhart)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/18 "2015-06-11T14:02:39Z")
We have a record player (my wife’s Technics that she bought in high school back in the early 80s) in our basement; it’s connected to a stereo system with four speakers set flush in the ceiling that the previous owner installed during the basement’s original finishing in the early 1970s. We replaced the existing stereo system, along with the 1970’s-era 8-track player/recorder and a 1970s phonograph with a new stereo receiver, CD player and our phonograph when we moved in 13 years ago. We listen to old and new vinyl records all the time – my wife’s 80s New Wave, 50s and 60s jazz and R&B that I’ve bought in secondhand stores and online, and I’ve bought new vinyl from Los Straitjackets, The Sadies, Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison, and The Black Keys in the last year. There’s a sweet spot in the middle of our basement where you can hear the music from all four speakers, perfectly channeled, from all around you. It’s a surround-sound experience, and it’s awesome. We have a CD player connected to it, and I could connect an MP3 player, I guess, but I definitely prefer the sound of vinyl. I swear our vinyl copy of Paul Simon’s \*Greatest Hits, Etc. \*is enchanted – it just sounds _so good_. > [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > I thought all the US vinyl plants shut down long ago but maybe a few new ones opened up or maybe the stuff now comes from overseas. I read [this WSJ article](http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-biggest-music-comeback-of-2014-vinyl-records-1418323133) (or one like it) recently; there are still some U.S.-based vinyl record manufacturers. Apparently in trying to meet the demand for new vinyl record albums, the manufacturers of vinyl records are having some difficulty in maintaining their equipment and acquiring raw materials. ---
**Author:** ![swampspruce](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/swampspruce/32/261_2.png) [@swampspruce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/swampspruce)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/19 "2015-06-11T14:28:54Z")
I’m finally able to buy all the gear I couldn’t afford when I was in my 20s. I bought a Thorens turntable with a Grado cartridge for $25, and was given a Carver amp and preamp, which run through some Klipsch speakers I bought for my first home theatre. Total outlay, $425. The sound, great! Better than my present home theatre system? No. Still fun to play though. ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219/20 "2015-06-11T14:52:28Z")
> [@Wallace\_The\_Lad](#): > > To go one further - I play cassettes also. I have a wonderful Advent tape deck. First tape dect to have dolby. Yeah, there was a threatened revival of cassettes not long ago. Obviously via hipsters. > **[Cassette Tapes Are Almost Cool Again](https://www.vice.com/en/article/cassette-tapes-are-almost-cool-again/)** > > Tapes are due for a midlife crisis. Here’s an interesting article from The Guardian regarding the difficulties of running a factory that does limited run pressings on ageing machines: > **[Vinyl’s difficult comeback | John Harris](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jan/07/-sp-vinyls-difficult-comeback)** > > The long read: Vinyl is enjoying an unexpected renaissance. Can the creaking machinery of the few remaining record pressing plants cope? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-buy-vinyl-records-now/722219.md?page=2)