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Vinyl goes from throwback to comeback


Jahfin

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I'm not sure. It also sucks when it says the sound has been disabled. Why not just take down the entire video? In any event, the video was for Erykah Badu's Honey in case you want to search for it on other sites.

LOL, it's funny when they add vinyl noise to digital recordings.. I prefer the real deal.

Vinyl isn't what I primarily listen to but I don't confine my searches just to the local indie store but since they're the only one in town that's where I'm most likely to find newer titles. There are also several stores that stock used vinyl and CDs so it's also fun to hit those since you never know what you might find. Same thing for yard sales and estate sales.

I agree on all accounts. There's great fun to visit the local stores and I can spend hours going thru' all the records. Still, I wouldn't limit myself to only local stores and flea markets, like some around here has mentioned.

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In my opinion it’s not just about the sound quality but the whole experience of listening to an album on vinyl. It goes like this:

Carefully select album.

Make a cup of tea.

Remove from sleeve and place on the turntable.

Clean album.

Place stylus on vinyl.

Sit back and read through original sleeve notes. (For the 500th time)

Wait for the jump at 1min 46 sec on track 1 where it was scratched when you lent it to your mate in 1981. (Never forgave him)

At the end of side one turn over and repeat all over again. (Might even have a

Hob Nob with my second cup of tea)

Other formats certainly have there place and like most people I actually listen to more music on CDs and Ipods than I do on vinyl. But when time allows there is nothing to beat it. What I find is you actually sit down and listen to the whole album when you play it on vinyl. Ask yourself how often do you ever listen to a complete album front to back on your Ipod?

On the subject of turntables I have one of these:

http://www.project-audio.com/main.php?prod...les&lang=en

They sell for about 120 pounds in the UK. Great sound for the money!

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In my opinion it’s not just about the sound quality but the whole experience of listening to an album on vinyl. It goes like this:

Carefully select album.

Make a cup of tea.

Remove from sleeve and place on the turntable.

Clean album.

Place stylus on vinyl.

Sit back and read through original sleeve notes. (For the 500th time)

Wait for the jump at 1min 46 sec on track 1 where it was scratched when you lent it to your mate in 1981. (Never forgave him)

At the end of side one turn over and repeat all over again. (Might even have a

Hob Nob with my second cup of tea)

That's definitely a huge part of why you choose listening to vinyl. :D

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  • 1 month later...

I prefer vinyl over CD's most of the time. I like vinyl records more because of the sound quality and the packaging. It's mostly the packaging as to why I like vinyl more. CD's are more for convenience and they are cheaper. I think it's fifty-fifty though of what is vinyl and what is CD in my collection. There is also the a collector's aspect to it. Local record store, Salzer's Records has been getting more business for vinyl. Here's a good local news article on the subject. (read a new article today but it isn't online)

"Will you still need me, will you still feed me,

When I'm sixty-four?"

~ The Beatles

Jim Salzer is the age that Paul McCartney teased about in that song all those years ago, and Salzer even keeps on an office shelf a "When I'm 64" card he got to mark his occasion.

But the longtime owner of Salzer's Records and Salzer's Video in Ventura doesn't need any of McCartney's lighthearted help in the lyrics. In fact, Salzer mutters defiantly that he's not old and bristles mildly at the idea that a story about his little empire might sound like an obituary.

Signs would seem to point that way. The trades weep over declining record sales, the compact disc has been buried more times than Jimmy Hoffa and, heck, Salzer still carries vinyl (don't laugh, the reason might surprise you) and still stocks films on that old dinosaur called VHS.

In an era of iPods, downloading, CD burning, cell phone streaming and corporate uniformity, Salzer trundles along as independent and mom-and-pop as a record store in the 21st century can be. There, it's always been about the little touches, the clerks who know their music, the funkiness, the feeling that a visit is an experience of its own and the word-of-mouth that you can always find it at Salzer's.

Those types of things, he vows, will continue, many of them stemming from his proud association with the nationwide Coalition of Independent Music Stores.

Or, as Salzer said: "I never was a chain guy. I just wanted to serve my local community and know the people I worked with."

He's counting on that relationship. He's an alley cat with plenty of scars from 41 years in the business (his first record store opened in Oxnard in 1966), as well as from a colorful life that's ranged from stardom to the school of hard knocks.

He was a pop singer who had the girls screaming for him, and a '60s rock promoter who knew and worked with the Doors, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and other giants.

But he also endured a rough-and-tumble childhood in Chicago, where the family ate cans of ravioli for weeks on end and he got beaten up by thugs. And he has twice lived in back rooms of his Ventura County record stores when things got tough.

So when Salzer says he thinks that he can survive all the techno wizardry that the Digital Age can throw at his business — a fixture at the intersection of Victoria Avenue and Valentine Road since 1972 — it sounds believable.

"The news is typically how much the record business is off by, but that doesn't tell the whole story," he said.

Salzer walked through the doors of his record store and headed for a strange rack. He thumbed through albums from Marvin Gaye and Bob Dylan as well as 50 Cent and other rappers — all new pressings on vinyl.

Vinyl, Salzer said, is making "a huge comeback." He and other stores are selling turntables and needles again. Many albums are being reissued on vinyl, and some new releases also include a vinyl version.

Nostalgia is driving some of this, he said, but so is a purist desire among audiophiles. Vinyl, said Salzer, is "so much of a fuller sound."

"You can hear a guitar pick, or someone take a breath off a horn," he said. "When you close your eyes, you can feel the band in the room, whereas digital is just a wall of sound."

New vinyl sales, Salzer said, are up 20 percent in his store.

Long article read more here

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Nostalgia is driving some of this, he said, but so is a purist desire among audiophiles. Vinyl, said Salzer, is "so much of a fuller sound."

Personally, I've never bought this argument. It seems to largely be just a subjective illusion. I'd very much like to see a controlled experiment conducted to see if self-proclaimed audiophiles could tell the difference between a vinyl recording and a digital recording that has changes to the EQ and distortion levels, maybe snaps and pops added too. I've personally done side by side comparisons to some titles that I had on both vinyl and CD, using an A/B switch on the same entertainment center, and found the CD to sound a lot better.

Sometimes CD mastering is done well, sometimes it's done crappily. When it's done bad, it's usually done hastily to sacrifice dynamics for the sake of increasing the sound volume. But the sad reality is, that's how most new albums are made these days. But the ones that are done "right", sound great. Likewise, typical 128kbps mp3s are not going to sound as full, but if you use a much higher sample rate, you won't notice a loss.

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I love having my iTouch with me! It's amazing to have hundreds of artists and 1000's of songs in my pocket...

But nothing beats sitting in a chair with a slightly worn vinyl record with all the nicks, scratches and pops mixed in with the music.

And, there was such an art to making a vinyl compared to CD's, IMO...

Artist had to choose songs that would be appropriate for the side 1 opening, side 1 closing, side 2 opening and side 2 closing, rather then just a track at the beginning and the end. Some of the best mixes in music history can when there were LP's rather then CD's or mp3's.

Even on my iTouch, I edit the albums so there is a 7 second pause between the sides of an old record, which I figured out was the right time for a pause to flip to side 2, if you will. It makes the music feel right.

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It reminds me of when CDs were new, some labels would record directly from vinyl just to have product on the shelves when everyone was replacing their vinyl collections with compact discs. Strange how things have come full circle and the industry are the very same weasels we've always known them to be.

Actually "when CDs were new" in the early 80s, it was only audiophiles who were buying them. And they were praising them in the same way that you're praising vinyl now. Strange how things have come full circle, and the self-proclaimed audiophiles are the very same nit-pickers we've always known them to be. :D

By the mid 80s, the overwhelmingly popular medium of choice wasn't vinyl; it was the cassette tape. I owned hundreds of them myself. Tapes were small, convenient for travel, didn't scratch, and could hold more music than a record. They could be used to record songs off the radio, make mix tapes, and so on. Their popularity was helped with the walkman and boomboxes. The average music listener didn't really switch to CDs until the early 90s, when they could be made cheap enough for the average consumer to afford. They had the portability like cassettes did, but also had more artwork, usually bonus tracks, the ability to skip/shuffle, etc.

Ever since the days of Edison, scientists have worked at developing technology that best captures the experience of live sound and making it available to consumers. How does manufacturing a product to match the demands of consumers make one a "weasel"?

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Artist had to choose songs that would be appropriate for the side 1 opening, side 1 closing, side 2 opening and side 2 closing, rather then just a track at the beginning and the end.

No, arrangements for a CD also demand ordering all those the songs in the middle so that the flow seems listenable. If anything, this can be more demanding than arranging the songs for a vinyl record or cassette tape, because you have to think of it as one continuous entity instead of two distinct entities (two sides). So the challenge is there; it's just different.

I agree though that many albums that were originally arranged WITH vinyl and cassette in mind, make more sense if you put them in that context. They assume the listener has a pause in between what would have been the last track on side 1 and the first track of side 2.

For example, I've heard from some teenagers who wondered why "Stairway to Heaven" was in the middle of the CD when it seems like it should be the dramatic ending to the album, not go straight into "Misty Mountain Hop". When you think of it in terms of side 1 and side 2, it makes much more sense. Likewise, I think Led Zeppelin III makes much more sense if you think of the second half as "the acoustic side".

By the same argument though, some albums that were created with the CD in mind or were similarly meant to be continuous-sounding (such as live concert albums) don't sound so well when broken up in the middle.

Even on my iTouch, I edit the albums so there is a 7 second pause between the sides of an old record, which I figured out was the right time for a pause to flip to side 2, if you will. It makes the music feel right.

Neat idea! I'll have to try that.

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Not all vinyl releases are equal.......

If you are truly interested in the best sounding editions of vinyl, and CD releases and re-masterings..... then you should pay a visit to the Steve Hoffman Forums. Steve Hoffman has engineered many records and re-releases.

There's a lively discussion from Forum members about LPs, and CDs, and the bane of compression in too many re-mastered discs.

Led Zeppelin II was originally released in October of 1969. I had one of those LPs, as I bought my copy within a week of it's release. It sounded absolutely fantastic and mind-blowing on my parent's Garrad turntable and Koss headphones!!!!

It turns out that that inital pressing was so "hot" that it was not trackable by cheap end turntable cartridges that some kids had back then. Because most cheap cartridges in cheap stereos couldn't handle the loudness, which caused the LP to skip, and this then caused many returns of the supposedly "defective" LP. So subsequent pressings of Led Zep II did not have as "hot" a mix.

And so, there is the never-ending search for the original "hot" pressings of Led Zep II, which were done by Robert Ludwig, and have RL stamped on the vinyl in the "dead wax" area of the LP.

Here is link to the discussion thread on the RL Cut Led Zeppelin II... Enjoy !!

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=73450

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Ever since the days of Edison, scientists have worked at developing technology that best captures the experience of live sound and making it available to consumers. How does manufacturing a product to match the demands of consumers make one a "weasel"?

If you're trying to make the case that those in the upper echelon of the record industry aren't weasels. Well, good luck with that.

To clarify my point it's a proven fact that digital boils down to a series of binary code (zeros and ones) that doesn't fully or accurately capture the full spectrum of sound afforded by analog recording. Yes, great strides have been made in this area since the advent of compact discs but because of it's very nature digital will never come close to reproducing the sound of analog. Neil Young has referred to digital as a "snapshot" of sound for this very reason.

As for the record companies, back in the 80s vinyl was removed from record store shelves in order to make way for a vastly inferior product known as the compact disc. As consumers we weren't even given the choice. We were forced to buy CDs. The same thing is happening now with MP3s. An inferior source of sound is once again being foisted upon us. Everyone from Neil to Lou Reed and T-Bone Burnett have pleaded with the industry for MP3s not to become the norm but since the casual music consumer doesn't give a shit (or worse yet, isn't even aware of the difference between lossless and compressed formats) and they drive the market, of course MP3s are winning out.

Strange how now vinyl is being offered for sale with bonus tracks to help entice the buyer. Sound familiar? Goes to show vinyl should have never even been removed from record store shelves to start with.

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Jahfin you make a very good point.

IMO, the casual music listner isn't concerned with what the quality is of the sound. (Although if you listen more recent popular songs they don't really care what the music sounds like either.) That why itunes gets away with selling songs like they do. The person can buy all the popular songs. I think it's a same to buy music that way because on an album there are songs that the radio doesn't play that turn out to be hidden little treasures.

An example I look at is We Can Be Together by Jefferson Airplane. The only song I had heard from the album Volunteers was the title song, Volunteers. I hadn't ever heard it on the radio. After a lot of digging on youtube I found a live performance of We Can Be Together. Then I bought the album Volunteers and I love the song even more, turned out to be one of my favourite JA songs. People just cut themselves short of good stuff by buying just one or two songs off an album.

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I sold or gave my vinyl away a few years ago. It's fun, cool, in some instances sounds better. But is a bitch to store if you have lots of it and requires extra care I'm not capable of giving these days because I am too busy and lazy to do it. Lots of progress has been made in making analog recordings sound better in a digital format but I don't think it will ever be 100% right. But I'm willing to live with the differences in favor of convience. Besides I think too much is made of the sonic differences. No doubt it exists but the listener has to have the gear and quality vinyl to take full advantage of it, not all vinyl was superior, lots of shitty remasters and flimsy vinyl out there in used shops that isn't worth spinning. To accurately enjoy the vinyl listening experience is more than heading out to Wax Trax and dropping $2 on someone's unwanted junk.

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It's back to being a singles-driven market but as long as vinyl is back in vogue and there are sales of entire records (whether it be on CD or digital only) that means there's a few of us left out there that still enjoy the full album experience.

I definitely understand about the convenience of MP3s, I just don't want them to become the only option available. And even though I do enjoy vinyl, I've never been one to do so at the audiophile level. Every once in a while I just like listening to it. That said, when I'm finally reconnected with my collection I'd like to invest in a nice turntable. Nothing fancy but not a pawnshop find either.

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I love vinyl and if I'm at my dad's it's all I listen to. It isn't a choice at my mom's house because she won't let me have a stereo. I went without a turntable for quite some time and music was different when I didn't have it. To me there is something about a turntable tha makes music come alive. I have a lot of first pressings from various artists and I love to put those copies on because I am hearing the exact same thing that someone heard 40 years ago, and to me that's magical. That's about as close as I can get to being there to experience the music in it's heyday.

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Not doubt the trend to mp3 has affected the album market. However that has always been a baffling thing to me, I am definitely an album person not a singles person. I suppose it has a lot to do with the music I enjoy, the bands I like tend to not be stylistically Top 40, just hearing one song from their album wouldn't get you very far. But I don't know that that's a new thing either. Acts that live and die by the single tend to be pretty superficial so there isn't much beyond that worth hearing. It was like that back in the day too. Songs like "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" by Looking Glass are sentimental faves of mine but I don't think I could get into an entire album of so-so LG tunes. That's why I bought the 45. The mp3 is new technology based on an old idea that has been here all along, we had single cassettes and cds too. Though I think the impact of the mp3 on the album market has everything to do with online accessibility than anything else.

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I love vinyl and if I'm at my dad's it's all I listen to. It isn't a choice at my mom's house because she won't let me have a stereo. I went without a turntable for quite some time and music was different when I didn't have it. To me there is something about a turntable tha makes music come alive. I have a lot of first pressings from various artists and I love to put those copies on because I am hearing the exact same thing that someone heard 40 years ago, and to me that's magical. That's about as close as I can get to being there to experience the music in it's heyday.

I feel the same. Even though CD's and the new technology is great, there is nothing like putting on an album..even with the occasional popping sounds, it still sounds fantastic to me. Just something about it!

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New local news article on the surge in vinyl sales.

Vinyl's uptick is evident in sales of old and new records

Almost a decade into the 21st century, Scott Freeman plunked down his money at the Record Outlet register in Thousand Oaks and walked out clutching two pieces of prized, ancient booty.

It was as if the Simi Valley teen had stepped into a time warp. There in his hands were Harry Chapin’s 1974 album “Verities & Balderdash” and a Pink Floyd “Echoes” compilation album, both on vinyl. There wasn’t a cell phone, MP3 player or computer anywhere in sight.

“It’s better than digital stuff,” said the 18-year-old Freeman, who is studying film at Moorpark College. “It’s not as compressed. It’s better quality. Sure, you are sacrificing portability and convenience, but on vinyl, there’s also more of a connection to the artist. ... It’s something we never grew up with; it’s something new for us.”

Vinyl, that retro darling from a few years ago, is still riding the surge, remaining popular with everyone from young people to high-end audiophiles willing to pay $300 to $800 for a pristine-sounding record. Vinyl shipments more than doubled from about $23 million in 2007 to almost $57 million last year, its highest level since 1990, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

Market players have noticed. Internet retail giant Amazon.com has had a vinyl-only music section since fall 2007. Now, when huge acts such as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen or the Dave Matthews Band release new material, it also comes out on vinyl.

Vinyl, observers note, will not become king again, though its market share has doubled since 1999. But even with that doubling, RIAA figures show it is only 1 percent of the prerecorded music market.

Still, it’s quite the little phenomenon and one of the few music formats in which sales are increasing (the other being downloads).

Vinyl’s current and curious vibe lies somewhere in those albums Freeman held, the scads of Jimi Hendrix’s “Live at Woodstock” that rolled hot off the presses and onto spindles at Don MacInnis’ Record Technology Inc. pressing plant in Camarillo this month, and the customer who recently wandered into Buffalo Records in downtown Ventura.

Old technology, young fans

“I had a girl in here, maybe 12 years old, who bought a couple Beatles albums on vinyl,” owner Eric Kayser said.

It’s a tune being sung widely if not deeply. Back at Record Outlet in Thousand Oaks, owner K.C. Staples said that vinyl versions of The Beatles’ “Abbey Road” and Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” are selling “like crazy.”

“It seems like every week, there’s a mom who comes in and says, ‘My son is interested in vinyl and wants to buy a turntable,’ ” he said.

Much of Staples’ core vinyl crowd are kids from junior high, high school and college — the very people supposedly in lock step with the Information Age’s dazzling digital devices

Long article read more here

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I try to collect vinyl from my favorite bands(Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith), but it's kinda tough to find stuff from those artists because they were/are so popular. Thus, if someone has, say, Physical Graffiti , in good shape, they're going to sell it on Ebay, not donate it to Goodwill. I do, however, try to stop in at various record shops when I have the chance.

:peace:,

Jo

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Vinyl for me, is a way to reconnect with a past life, I guess. My parents always said I had an old soul and even as a kid, I never was interested in what other kids my age were listening to on the radio, I'd rather listen to the oldies station or the singers & standards station. So when I started collecting vinyl, I looked at it as more of a way to get in touch with the bands and artists I would have been into heavily had I been alive at the time. So that's Led Zeppelin, Eagles, Pink Floyd.....stuff like that. I love vinyl for the same reasons that Alicia (lzfan715) does; when I put the album on, I'm putting on an album that was purchased by someone the day it came out and now I have it. Sometimes it still has the price sticker on it and I can see what that person paid for it 1973 or whenever it came out. Also, it's such an antiquated medium to people my age (for the most part) that I feel like I'm part of some special sect of society or something.

For those pooh-poohing digital media formats, mp3s are not the be all and end all. Lossless formats like FLAC are amazing. All my PF boots are in FLAC format and the sound is phenomenal. They don't compress the files like mp3s do, so the file sizes are much bigger and you can hear more detail than you can with mp3. At least, I think so anyway.

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I have some vinyl, but I never really listen to them. It's more convenient to just carry an MP3 player around.

Besides, I don't even remember the last time I actually paid for music. (Shh... )

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I have some vinyl, but I never really listen to them. It's more convenient to just carry an MP3 player around.

Besides, I don't even remember the last time I actually paid for music. (Shh... )

I'm actually the opposite. I'm always listening to vinyl but I never listen to my MP3 player. It just doesn't sound like a record spinning on my turntable. :P

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Vinyl for me, is a way to reconnect with a past life, I guess. My parents always said I had an old soul and even as a kid, I never was interested in what other kids my age were listening to on the radio, I'd rather listen to the oldies station or the singers & standards station. So when I started collecting vinyl, I looked at it as more of a way to get in touch with the bands and artists I would have been into heavily had I been alive at the time. So that's Led Zeppelin, Eagles, Pink Floyd.....stuff like that. I love vinyl for the same reasons that Alicia (lzfan715) does; when I put the album on, I'm putting on an album that was purchased by someone the day it came out and now I have it. Sometimes it still has the price sticker on it and I can see what that person paid for it 1973 or whenever it came out. Also, it's such an antiquated medium to people my age (for the most part) that I feel like I'm part of some special sect of society or something.

For those pooh-poohing digital media formats, mp3s are not the be all and end all. Lossless formats like FLAC are amazing. All my PF boots are in FLAC format and the sound is phenomenal. They don't compress the files like mp3s do, so the file sizes are much bigger and you can hear more detail than you can with mp3. At least, I think so anyway.

I love it for the same reason. I bought last week some of my first vinyls and it was written on one: Happy birthday! We love you. Date: July 12 1980.

LZ IV album. Great gift has received that someone. ;)

I got a discount on vinyls and some of the guys wanted to give me Clapton's and Joe Cocker's vinyls as a gift.

Not to say it's cheaper. Vinyls are no longer produced here and I enjoy searching the town, buying vinyls (not to mention a lot of compliments I got for that) and the feeling you get when people stare at the bags you're carrying... Sweet. :D

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