Does anybody know anything about record players & vinyl albums?

[ALago1]

Recently when listening to some of my CDs of albums originally released during the age of vinyl, I started wondering if the transfer made from analog to digital altered the quality of these works and the way the artists originaly meant them to be heard.

Believe it or not, I've never heard a record player and have no clue what it sounds like compared to cassettes and CDs. I would love to hear a classic Beatles album using the original meidum it was supposed to be played through.

Does anyone still listen to this format and in fact prefer it to other formats? I've come to notice that in my area records are making a slight comeback, with local music stores even putting out limited displays of new artist's vinyl releases.

If someone has some websites with information about this subject I'd be so grateful. I think I'd be interested in making a nice purchase. Thanks!

[Lars39]

1. I suddenly feel very old.

[ALago1]

4. LOL I'm sorry

Hey, I'm 23 so records were long gone by the time I started getting into music.

Your wisdom would be appreciated though :)

[flamingyouth]

5. No kidding - me too.

I just sold a whole bunch of LPs and singles. They were part of my late husband's collection. I still have about 1,500 singles and LPs left but sold about 5,000, I'd guess.

I love the warm sound of vinyl, myself.

[CanuckAmok]

8. Dammit!

I wish I had known, FY... I could have had a peek at some of those.

[flamingyouth]

10. They're coming tomorrow for the bajillion CDs

With that $ I'm going to tile my basement floor.

[babylonsister]

6. Me, too! I remember my parents' 78s! nt

[havocmom]

7. Recently pulled out an old LP to play for a special youngster.

Her eyes got big and she said "That's a HUGE CD!"

She's just 5.

[no name no slogan]

17. I hear you there

I only started buying CDs en masse in 1990. Before that, I was a diehard vinyl junkie. I still have piles of it in my basement somewhere.

Hard to believe kids can grow up without knowing what a needle hitting the groove sounds like.... :cry:

[GOPisEvil]

2. Most people who consider themselves audiophiles prefer vinyl.

They say the tone is warmer and a truer reproduction of the sound. Digital sounds too sterile, they say.

I suppose there's something to that, for analog recording.

[Fenris]

3. "Believe it or not, I've never heard a record player"

You're right, I really can't believe that.

I am 21 and I prefer the sound of vinyl.

[ALago1]

9. It's true! n/t

[crispini]

11. I'm not a real audiophile,

but I suspect the sound *is* different -- warmer. I do own an old Victrola and some 78's and the sound is quite noticably different (although the quality is poor). It's amazing to think of -- 100% mechanical and analog all the way. Life is, after all, analog....

[tuvor]

12. Neil Young really hated CDs when they took hold.

A lot of artists said they sounded too cold.

I wonder how much of that has to do with the sampling rate.

[unblock]

13. analog is definitely richer and more realistic

the big disadvantage to vinyl was that, on the typical stereo system, it sounded like someone was crinkling aluminum foil while you played. then there were the skips and pops caused when enough dust settled in the grooves to kick the needle of its intended course.

you could have a crystal clear sound, but you had to have a very expensive, noise-free sound system for that.

cds made that sort of thing go away. suddenly, a very average system had a crystal clear sound, and you didn't have to worry about stuff in the grooves (although you did have to worry about the cd surface warping in the sun or getting smudges and the like.)

but the sound quality is a bit overly clean in the sense that it doesn't sound like the rich, live sound you get when the musicians are actually in the same room. there's a 'tinny' feel to the digital music, whereas the analog sounds is more 'warm'.

nowadays i guess it's possible to have a great analog system for much cheaper than 20 years ago. side-by-side you can easily hear the difference.

[babylonsister]

15. To me the skips and pops were part of their character;

I figured that proved the albums were good because they were played a lot.

[DBoon]

14. Yes I have a huge amount of vinyl

I remember about 1986 or so, all of a sudden all the vinyl vanished from record stores and almost overnight was replaced with CDs.

Advantages to vinyl:

- Durable. I have records I bought in middle school in 1970 that still play well. I doubt any CD would hold up as well.

- Nice, high quality sound - if treated well and played on the right equipment

- Album covers were a visual art gallery for the music. A lot went into album cover design. In the old days, you got extra goodies with albums. "Live at Leeds" came with duplicate concert tickets and stuff. PIL's album was released in a metallic cover. College dorm walls were covered with the posters that came inside of albums.

Advantages to CD:
- You don't have to flip them over after 20 minutes.
- More physically durable than records
- You can rip them to digital formats easier.

I think of an album as an art form. A CD is more of a disposable commodity.

[Cornjob]

16. Certain vinyl LP labels were wonderful!

Particularly Columbia Masterworks, Mobile Sound Labs, etc.

The real problem with vinyl recordings was mass pressing. Too many popular discs were pressed too fast and had remnants of the release agents all over them. That stuff was miserable to clean off.

Back then, I had several audiophile turntables with fabulous cartridges.

With the right LP, the whole set-up sounded incredible. There was a warmth and musicality that is missing from CD's, but far too often the discs (even brand new) contained pops, hisses, etc., related to poor quality control.

I guess I was one of millions who traded a little warmth for less background noise.

[last_texas_dem]

18. I collect records but prefer the sound of CD's

I'm 21 but practically grew up on vinyl because I love so much sixties and seventies music that this was the best way to go about getting stuff by all the bands I loved. I've been collecting since I was eleven and have literally thousands of 45's and albums. My dad already had a sizeable record collection that I expanded dramatically by just buying up most of what I could find by artists I knew I liked and checking out ones I'd never heard. You can get most non-rare albums from between $1 and $5 (and singles for even less) by checking out garage sales, flea markets, or the classified ads.

That said, I do prefer the sound of CD's to vinyl. I like the crispness and clarity of them and the fact that you can blast them at a much louder volume. Originally hearing something on a record and later hearing it on CD often shows that you are missing out on quite a bit of what is going on in the song if you've only heard it on vinyl. (I have experienced this quite a bit because I'll often buy an artist's work- if it's old enough to be available- on vinyl to check it out and eventually buy the CD if I like it quite a bit.) I do recommend you hear some records, though; it is a different but still cool sound- the "warm" description is very fitting. And there is something to be said for the light crackle of a well-played but not trashed record, especially if it's a good "oldie" or classic rock song.

[unblock]

20. it's different with classical music

there's a much wider dynamic range for classical music and the digital format just doesn't seem to capture it properly. a full orchestra sounds MUCH more realistic on vinyl.

if you're listening to guitars that have been heavily filtered and processed and a synthisizer that's digital already, and maybe even digital drums, then sure, a cd is great.

but for a string section and woodwinds and even brass, vinyl is so much better.

[madrchsod]

19. just bought a bunch of

speakers,recievers and vinyls on ebay. with a good turntable and needle,amp,and speakers the new 180 gram vinyls sound so much better than cd`s.

[Igel]

21. CDs will have less hiss, overall, and

usually if they were originally analog (as are all natural signals) they try to go back to the original tapes and remaster them.

One thing that does happen with vinyl is that the highest frequencies are quickly lost: the pressure of the needle, no matter how low, eventually pares off the vinyl. This isn't always a bad thing: there's all kinds of noise that an instrumentalist hears that the audience should never hear. Exactly how the energy loss of the sound in person matches the energy loss from this, I can't guess. It might work out right, or close. CDs at 44MHz sample far above what the usual human can hear, so it captures all the frequencies and the signal doesn't degrade.

Records also don't capture the same dynamic range: it's easier to go from a whisper to a roar on CD than on vinyl. It turns into a function of how big the troughs/peaks can be on vinyl before the needle stops tracking them properly. Really high-end systems to better than low end systems, but few records were cut just for high-end systems. I'm not sure this is always good: the background noise in my apartment drowns out part of my favorite performance of the Sibelius vln concerto, where the pianissimos are so piano that unless I crank the volume I can't hear it--then the fortissimo sections are too forte.

One problem that both systems have, but which was far worse with CDs, is electronic hum. A lot of earlier CD systems managed to have noise introduced by the digital electronics.

One thing I miss, sometimes, is having to turn over the record, or being able to put the needle down easily and quickly just part way through a longer work to hear the same passage again and again. (Let's leave aside that a lot of older albums when transferred to vinyl had the song order altered, or they even remixed the pieces.) Then again, there's this one They Might Be Giants CD that prescribes random play--in addition to the usual songs, at the end there's flurry of 20-40 second mini-things; the idea is that you don't ever hear them as a lump, but mixed up randomly with the other, longer, songs. I've always wondered if mixing and reordering the songs affects how they affect me.

I don't miss having to clean the records or putting up with scratches, so I find CDs just a lot easier to maintain. And, which a kid around, harder to be destroyed. My bootleg Led Zeppelin is all on CD, for which I'm grateful. (I still have a direct-drive turntable and large pile of vinyl in the closet, mostly classical, most never issued on CD.)

[OffWithTheirHeads]

22. If you have ever heard an old "tube" (as opposed to printed circuit)

radio, you would know that the sound was actually better in the old days. On the other hand, you couldn't put 20 hours of music around your neck like with an I-pod. Guess there are just some tradeoffs.

[Squeech]

23. Early CD transfers often sounded like shit

Audio engineering is as much an art as a science, of course. When it became obvious to the industry that CDs were going to become the format of choice, however, the major labels had to play catch-up in a big hurry, and rushed to make big chunks of their back catalog available in the new medium. And many of their first efforts were done vary badly-- junior apprentice engineers just plugged in the machines, set the levels, and apparently went out for drinks while the tape was rolling. And the results were, to say the least, not always satisfactory.

I just read Dennis McNally's Long Strange Trip, his insider history of the Grateful Dead. There's a bit in there where Arista Records was negotiating with the band over whether they were even gonna bother making any more records, and the label wanted to know if there was anything the band wasn't happy about their business relationship. And Jerry said something about how the CD versions of their old records didn't sound very good, and the Arista guys immediately said Yeah, you're right, and we'll remaster them any time you say, with engineers of your choice. So the execs knew how slapdash the job had been done.

The biggest mistake I made was buying the CD of Alice Cooper's Killer, which I think is a delightful rock'n'roll record. The CD version appears not to contain any guitars! A terrible job.

I have at least 3000 LPs, and at least 2000 CDs, so I think I'm an unbiased obsessive. I think that music that was recorded when vinyl was state of the art sounds a bit better on vinyl, but I really like the convenience of being able to dial up song #7.

[Kali]

24. Tucson has a community radio station that still plays vinyl.

They stream too, at kxci.org, I have NO idea how that would sound like but some of their specialty programs - especially later at night play real vinyl.

If anybody has any experience listening on line maybe you can step into the conversation, I have way too slow of a connection and can pull in the signal through an old tv antenna so I hardly listen to cd's or vinyl anymore. This station is having some political struggles and the daytime music pretty much sucks but after 6 and Saturdays are pretty good. I would be curious what folks think of the stream and the programming as well.

Give a listen then contact the programmers by e-mail (or phone) they get a real kick when they get contacted by folks out in internetland.
Be sure to thell them Kali sent you.

[sendero]

25. This was ...

... a point of some controversy when CDs first came out.

Many audiophiles really hated the sound of CDs.

Now, I'm old enough to remember both, and I had some pretty good equipment for playing vinyl recordings back in the 70s.

I think the first CDs were not too good, but after a few years when the recording engineers became accustomed to the quirks of the medium, CDs are much better than vinyl overall.

[carpetbagger]

26. I agree that vinyl has a "warmer" sound.

It catches the physical sound of the instruments much better than digital formats, especially with strings and woodwinds, including acoustic guitar.

Upkeep, of course, is burdensome. Also, in the 1980's, records were pressed very cheaply, so the sound was often less than ideal. By then, most people who had vinyl would record to cassette for regular use.