vinyl revival

[taez555]

Although I agree with Ted that analog still dominated the original recording medium for years (I was learning on 24 track analog in the late 90's), at least for me I'm referring to more of the gradual introduction of digital and synthetic sounds into writing and recording as whole.  Digital outboard effects, digitally synthesized instruments, mixing and mastering being in the digital verses analog realm  (how many 80's and early 90's albums have AAD or ADD noted on their sleeve cover?).    Sure it may have started on a Studer, but it's just those little digital touches throughout that changed the way music sounded.

Vinyl records were dying throughout the 80's, and a lot of those albums being made were meant to be listened to on the new CD format.  Sure there are examples that disprove the theory, but just from my personal collection, stuff like Def Leppard's Pyromania or other albums that leaned on "modern" digital technology don't sound better or worse on vinyl, where as albums that were made in the 70's and stayed purely in the analog realm sound simply amazing.

Of course some sound like crap too. 

 

[labguitar1003]

i just think vinyl sound way better than cds or itunes. I know ill have some guy come on and say that cd are better cause they're new and better quality. to that man i say bullshit cause ive listen to songs off of a computer into $500 monitors and then listened to the record on speakers that werent that high quality and it stills sounds better, its got a sort of warmer tone and feel that i just dig and all my friends and teachers even tell me it sounds better off the record. plus i found songs that i like and recordings that you will never find on itunes or any other site so that adds to the uniqueness of the records.
P.S. on a side note i think just owning the record player has me a better guitarist, by just listening and hearing stuff i havent heard before.

 

[Cagey]

i just think vinyl sound way better than cds or itunes. I know ill have some guy come on and say that cd are better cause they're new and better quality. to that man i say bullshite cause ive listen to songs off of a computer into $500 monitors and then listened to the record on speakers that werent that high quality and it stills sounds better, its got a sort of warmer tone and feel that i just dig and all my friends and teachers even tell me it sounds better off the record. plus i found songs that i like and recordings that you will never find on itunes or any other site so that adds to the uniqueness of the records.
P.S. on a side note i think just owning the record player has me a better guitarist, by just listening and hearing stuff i havent heard before.

Your mind is clearly made up, regardless of the facts of the matter, so I won't argue them. But I'm curious about your last statement about becoming a better guitarist by hearing things you haven't heard before. You mean you're hearing music that's not otherwise available, or that you're hearing sounds you don't hear on CD? If it's the former, I can understand that. The latter makes no sense, though. CDs have far superior S/N ratios, frequency response, dynamic range, etc.

 

[labguitar1003]

Your mind is clearly made up, regardless of the facts of the matter, so I won't argue them. But I'm curious about your last statement about becoming a better guitarist by hearing things you haven't heard before. You mean you're hearing music that's not otherwise available, or that you're hearing sounds you don't hear on CD? If it's the former, I can understand that. The latter makes no sense, though. CDs have far superior S/N ratios, frequency response, dynamic range, etc.
[/quote]

I respect your opinion, its the first one, just listening to songs you cant hear on itunes or other places on the internet and listening some of the breathe taking live performances. an example is i just got the styx caught in the act live and it blew my mind so much that after i got done listening to it it made me not want to go and look up tabs but rather learn the part from ear and in doing so it has expanded my guitar vocabulary (im playing outside of what i usually play) and in the process i have come up with some improv solos to some of their songs, and no cd has ever made me want to do that so thats one of my reasons why i think records are better.

 

[Jusatele]

I still will say the change was around the same time, you can introduce technology but you cannot make people react to it, I think the major stores were still handling vinyl into the 90s
the reason they stop was not demand, but because it took less space to merchandise, face it you can put a lot more product in one area with cds.
I really cannot say which form of recording is better, digital or analog, but I can say that I find it easier to work a anolog tape setup than a digital computerized one, but that is just me, others are just the opposite. Some of my best mixes have been on sound on sound tape machines. not that I did it first pass either.
Yes I love vinyl also but I collect everything new in CD, I do not buy into the download a song method either, I get entire CDs, but that is not a digital thing, that is because I want to support the artist, plus I want to hear what else he had to offer. I thing buying entire albums lets you hear what is more in the artist mind at the time. And yes I have bought some useless junk because of that.
stuff I will not want to admit to later.

 

[Cagey]

Ok, good. But, it's not the CD medium's fault, it's the record company's decision to not make that recording available on a superior format. Apparently, they don't perceive enough of a market for that particular piece to spend the money to make a master they can press up in production quantities. If you've ever seen CDs made, you know that they're almost free to manufacture. Cheaper than vinyl LPs. But, making the master isn't; it's quite expensive. So, they've got some math to do regarding ROI (Return On Investment). If the numbers aren't right, it doesn't get done. That's just business. Doesn't make old albums better, though. It just means some things aren't as readily available.

It's a strong argument for shortening copyright terms, or at least contract terms with recording studios. A lot of stuff gets lost because of that. The artist loses control, the studio doesn't care if there's no money involved, and things simply disappear as a result. It's a waste. Don't you dare copy it, though. They'll sue you for millions in imaginary sales.

 

[labguitar1003]

and plus record sales rose 14% this year so people are buying them and cds were on the fall. so if thats any indication that theyre coming back. Plus i think the artwork of an album looks better on a 12 x 12 than on a cd cover.

 

[Cletus]

Erik, I think the Digital in the studio is where the true Key to this discussion may lay.
unfortunately vinyl and analog recording went out of style at the same time, and analog recording does have a different vibe than digital.

Try listening to anything produced by Steve Albini, works almost exclusively with Analogue equipment.

 

[Cletus]

i just think vinyl sound way better than cds or itunes. I know ill have some guy come on and say that cd are better cause they're new and better quality. to that man i say bullshitee cause ive listen to songs off of a computer into $500 monitors and then listened to the record on speakers that werent that high quality and it stills sounds better, its got a sort of warmer tone and feel that i just dig and all my friends and teachers even tell me it sounds better off the record. plus i found songs that i like and recordings that you will never find on itunes or any other site so that adds to the uniqueness of the records.
P.S. on a side note i think just owning the record player has me a better guitarist, by just listening and hearing stuff i havent heard before.

Your mind is clearly made up, regardless of the facts of the matter, so I won't argue them. But I'm curious about your last statement about becoming a better guitarist by hearing things you haven't heard before. You mean you're hearing music that's not otherwise available, or that you're hearing sounds you don't hear on CD? If it's the former, I can understand that. The latter makes no sense, though. CDs have far superior S/N ratios, frequency response, dynamic range, etc.

Cagey, that is wrong. They are louder, but not better. Please see here: http://sonickgq.xanga.com/501878133/item/

 

[Cagey]

Cagey, that is wrong. They are louder, but not better. Please see here: http://sonickgq.xanga.com/501878133/item/

Your link simply reinforces my point. The author is talking about compression, not a characteristic of the medium. CDs have a wider dynamic range than vinyl, so there's more headroom available before distortion occurs. The engineers may choose to compress the signal and raise its overall level to take advantage of that headroom, resulting in an apparently louder recording. As the author points out, it's not the medium, it's the engineers.

But, not all CDs are recorded that way; quite the contrary. Few of them are, because it sounds somewhere between unnatural and awful. To say that CDs in general are louder is like saying since the first 5 rabbits you ever saw were white with pink eyes, it's reasonable to assume all rabbits are white with pink eyes, even though reality is light-years away from that.

 

[Alfang]

You guys can continue to argue which sounds best all you want,

I think the CD ruined a lot of music, it used to be, we put on an album and listened to the whole side. We got to hear a lot of music from artists that weren't played on the radio.  Then the CD came out, and with a click of one button, you hear the one song that you like and never listen to all the other tunes. Then of course the CD led to peer to peer sharing, and loss of sales for the bands and record labels.

Back in the day, we used to BUILD an awesome sound system, amp, pre-amp,tuner, 15 band equalizer, Big speakers, and at the center of it all was the turntable, with strobe speed controlls and ballancer weights, gimbals etc...
And we cranked it up loud, the hiss of the needle on the record was part of the experience only broken by the start of the next song.

I love all the new stuff, but I sure miss the old stuff too

 

[Cletus]

Cagey, that is wrong. They are louder, but not better. Please see here: http://sonickgq.xanga.com/501878133/item/

Your link simply reinforces my point. The author is talking about compression, not a characteristic of the medium. CDs have a wider dynamic range than vinyl, so there's more headroom available before distortion occurs. The engineers may choose to compress the signal and raise its overall level to take advantage of that headroom, resulting in an apparently louder recording. As the author points out, it's not the medium, it's the engineers.

But, not all CDs are recorded that way; quite the contrary. Few of them are, because it sounds somewhere between unnatural and awful. To say that CDs in general are louder is like saying since the first 5 rabbits you ever saw were white with pink eyes, it's reasonable to assume all rabbits are white with pink eyes, even though reality is light-years away from that.

But the fact is that in order to be louder, which is a thing noted of CDs (don't deny it, just accept reality), they use compression- which makes it sound rubbish.

 

[Cagey]

Just quit listening to rap and hip-hop, and most of your over-compression issues will go away.

 

[Cletus]

Just quit listening to rap and hip-hop, and most of your over-compression issues will go away.

Don't listen to either of those, but I do have ears.

 

[back2thefutre]

I grew up on cd's, I''m getting into vinyls because I want to here a better sound and to get into the whole experience of the culture of the vinyl and 60's and 70;s music. To me vinyl is like drinkin' a fine whisky as appossed to a regular one.

 

[Cagey]

I grew up on vinyl - CDs are the best thing that's happened to recorded music since music has been recordable. I gave away a well-preserved collection of hundreds of albums as soon as I had about half of them replaced on CD. The balance I figured I'd pick up if and when I missed them.

Incidentally, I'm far from the only one who did that, which largely accounts for the drop in CD sales that's occurred over the last 15 years or so. People were replacing their collections all that time, and as they gradually got to where that was done, sales gradually went down. In the meantime, digital distribution has increased, negating the need to buy an expensive disk with 12 crummy songs and 1 or 2 good ones. But, to hear the RIAA talk, it's nothing but piracy, and it's cost 497 million jobs and done 6.2 trillion dollars worth of damage to the economy.

 

[Cletus]

I grew up on vinyl - CDs are the best thing that's happened to recorded music since music has been recordable. I gave away a well-preserved collection of hundreds of albums as soon as I had about half of them replaced on CD. The balance I figured I'd pick up if and when I missed them.

Incidentally, I'm far from the only one who did that, which largely accounts for the drop in CD sales that's occurred over the last 15 years or so. People were replacing their collections all that time, and as they gradually got to where that was done, sales gradually went down. In the meantime, digital distribution has increased, negating the need to buy an expensive disk with 12 crummy songs and 1 or 2 good ones. But, to hear the RIAA talk, it's nothing but piracy, and it's cost 497 million jobs and done 6.2 trillion dollars worth of damage to the economy.

Could that also have coincided with the collapse in the quality of music? Now that is undeniable.

 

[labguitar1003]

its all about preference, some people like cds some like vinyl, there is no right or wrong answer. the fact is that nowadays most music gets good ratings because of publicity and when someone goes and buys a cd thats probably the only song they listen to. now im not from the 60's 70's or 80's but just listening to a whole record introduces you to music that is as great as some of the bands best hits that you here on the radio. this is why nowadays we have people like disney channel stars and one-hit wonders like justin beiber, they have all their success because the stupid record company put so much publicity into one song to make people think its good, so people buy the cd thinking the songs good. listen to the song think its crap but go along with everyone else cause its the "cool thing" . I once read an article about angus young and his view on today's music and he said all we have are washups and one hit wonders cause the record company doesnt care about building fan base or getting good music out there. heck the longer they can hold out and only put one mediocre song on a cd thats full of crap the better for them cause they make money either way, they sell cds because of that one song. Whatever happened to playing to put out hard rocking songs that blew peoples brains with the lead guitar solo and the angelic voices of crazy haired singers. is it really just about the money nowadays?
 
so there is my rant of the day. rock on good people, :rock-on:

 

[Jusatele]

cagey has a point about the replacement and numbers, I must own over 2 thousand Cds, many of them are replacements for vinyl I once owned. I have even found replacements for some cds you would think they never could

Cagey, ever found the replacement for Beautiful Day, Its a Beautiful Day?  I have and the song White Bird still sends chills up and down my spine

Cds are killer because of the format last forever and is a lot more compact. But I can not say if it is actually better than Vinyl, some things can have a lot of value that is hard to define. with a cd a computer reads a number and makes a sound, with a Vinyl record the needle is run down a groove of vibrations and turns those vibrations into sound, sounds to me like the vibration to vibration (SOUND IS VIBRATION) would be better.  But that can also be up to the user who interprets the sound.

 

[Cagey]

You bring up another point that has an impact on sales: attrition. There are some albums I've bought numerous times, such as Robin Trower's "Bridge of Sighs", simply because they got worn out. Don't have to do that with CDs. Buy it once, and barring unforeseen circumstances, you've got it forever. Especially if you do what I do and just rip it to your computer, then put the disk away. The copy sounds exactly like the original, and still does even if you play it 73 bajillion times. As a result, sales go down.