This sort of tracks with a thought of mine: Supposedly vinyl is having this big resurgence but my impression from watching Techmoan videos on Youtube is that most modern record players are pretty trash, relying on the same subpar mechanics from the same factory even if they dress up the exteriors. There just isn’t anyone manufacturing quality components which seems surprising if lots of people are collecting vinyl. But less surprising if they’re literally collecting vinyl rather than playing vinyl.
(The same goes for cassette players these days but you don’t hear as much about that and, really, I don’t even get the nostalgia allure of cassettes. Vinyl advocates are all “warm hiss of the record, man” but the primary memories I have of cassettes are mediocre sound and spooling it with a pencil after it gets jammed)
But that doesn’t matter to most people. Sure, some people like to experience their music in a soundproof room with a perfect sound set-up - but most don’t.
Some people enjoy listening to music at full volume in the car, some people like background music, some people like to put on music (recorded perfectly in a million-dollar sound studio) and then sing over the top (a great way for Dads to get the house to themselves), some people like listening to music while they run. People go to concerts - and concert sound is different to recorded sound (not to mention ambient noise from other patrons). It doesn’t have to be perfect.
Music is an experience which can be enjoyed in many different ways, and yes, there is a minimum quality standard applicable. But every different experience can have a different standard. Ease of access to music is probably just as important for many listeners.
This is true. What’s also true, though, is that the basic quality of playback is infinitely better than it was except through the finest stereo systems of old. I constantly hear lyrics of old songs that I never heard when they were new - and that’s certainly not because my hearing has improved. Remastered recordings over even the most basic car stereo systems provide the average listener with better sound today than the vast majority of everyday listening in the 60s or 70s.
Also, my CDs will be playable indefinitely as long as I have the right equipment (and the same is true of the MP3s I’ve downloaded). Streaming services can remove any song at any time, and then you can’t hear it anymore. Yes, that has happened.
That makes me think of K-pop albums. They are elaborate packages containing picture books, postcards, posters, etc., and incidentally a CD. They are coveted collectors items but the CDs are rarely played.
I don’t even own a turntable (which I should probably do something about), but I have a collection of LPs, both vintage and new music. In this day and age where music is readily available to stream for free or for a small subscription cost, if I want to actually buy an album, I want to have a physical aspect of it that I can hold and display and admire, and since new vinyl almost always comes with a digital copy you can download to your devices without the hassle of burning a CD and transferring the mp3s onto your phone, that’s what I go with.
Some of the bands I listen to don’t even release their albums on CD - about five years ago, one group that I’m into released an album exclusively on LP and cassette. (In that case I went with the cassette, as it shipped with a vintage Sony Walkman autographed by the members of the group.)
I also have maybe 200 vinyl but I need a new cartridge for the turntable. I wonder if I could get any money for the discs. Some of course are out of print, not available digitally, but mostly they can go.
I doubt that people these days are buying records as collectibles and not listening to them.
My daughter lives in Chicago, and there are TWO record stores within walking distance of her apartment. The last time I visited her, we went these stores. The stock in both places was a mix of new, shrinkwrapped records and older used ones. They seemed to be doing a brisk business; there were customers flipping through the LPs, just like I remember doing so long ago. It was like we had traveled back in time 40 years.
I didn’t buy anything. When my daughter asked me why, I explained that I hadn’t owned a turntable in ten years, and she was shocked. She said that everyone she knows owns a Bluetooth turntable and she assumed that pretty much everybody did.
I never imagined that vinyl would make a comeback. I remember that in the 1990s, students would come into the university library where I worked and ask if we had this or that album. I’d check the catalog and say, “Yes, we have that on LP.” They’d burst out laughing and say something like, “You guys still have records? What is this, 1950?”
I think, in a way, vinyl is less obsolete than other physical mediums now. CDs get you very similar sound quality to a good streaming service and a fairly small cover booklet if you’re lucky. The main benefit of a CD is that you own a physical copy. On the other hand, vinyl has a significantly different sound to a streaming service and people who like that sound won’t get it from anything other than vinyl. Vinyl has a much larger canvas for cover art, lyrics and so on. A CD is like a boring privately owned Toyota Corolla that has been pushed out by a ride sharing service while vinyl is the cool vintage sports car that leaks a bit of oil and takes more looking after but exudes character. The people who used to own the vintage car instead of the Corolla still own the vintage car. Meanwhile some people dissatisfied with the ride sharing service look at the vintage car compared to the Corolla and think, well, if I’m going to own a car, it may as well be cool and full of character.
There have been automatic transmissions nearly as long as there have been manual ones. Automatic transmissions aren’t an improvement on manual transmissions, they’re a different driving paradigm entirely.
Someone is still buying it, just not the end user. It’s no different than the old days of Blockbuster. The person renting a VHS tape wasn’t buying the cassette, but Blockbuster was.
My 50 year old son and his wife are really into the special release vinyl that relates to movies (soundtracks, in other words). This stuff has wild colors and designs and is expensive, and I’m not sure they even play them. They also piss away more money on plastic “collectibles” than some people make.
I sold part of my LP collection last year. $200 for 60 LP’s. Had I been willing to piss about on a used site I could have got more. But that would have meant having people in & rummaging through to pick what they wanted. I sold them all to a shop that will resell them at retail markup.
I bought a new cartridge a couple years ago. My turntable is old, but good. Also replaced the belts a few months ago. Now I have to replace the belt on my carousel CD player. The drawer is sluggish. I have that carousel multi-disk player but mostly use my single play CD player.
I’m in no way qualified to get into the digital vs. audio wars, but this seems to get you the degrading quality of vinyl with the compression problems of digital via Bluetooth.
I respectfully disagree. I’m almost 60 and so grew up with LPs and 45s. I could pull the clear plastic wrapper off of, say, “Close To The Edge” by YES or George Carlin’s “Class Clown”. If I was in my bedroom, which was always marginally filthy, the very act of removing the plastic wrapper and drawing out the LP disk created enough static draw that there was dust on the disk before its maiden voyage on the turntable.
Scratches? Well, were I in a slightly altered state when opening said LPs the first time, or were I unlucky enough to have a disk slip from my palms ( because we all knew that the only correct way to handle a disk was to hold the edges between your palms for as much of the carry time as possible ) and slide against furniture or onto the floor, scratches would ensue. Unlike the successful application of a CD or DVD scratch polishing kit, there’s no way to polish out a scratch on an LP.
All of this said, the fact that you were getting “virgin vinyl” in earlier years opposed to used or mixed source vinyl later on seems of little consequence in terms of pops or scratches. I readily agree that LP disks DID get thinner as the years went on. Remarkably so. But a surface is a surface is a surface. If someone crafted an LP that could play that was 1 inch thick, it would get just as dusty and be just as prone to scratching as Disk Two of the soundtrack to “Saturday Night Fever”…
It well be that newer mixed-source vinyl wore out faster. I’d love to see some data on that.
