Vinyl Comeback

[Cornfed Hick]

Someone broke into my car, opened the CDs, saw that they were all heavy metal and the like, and left them alone!  No accounting for taste, I suppose. 

On topic, you can now get very good turntables for a reasonable price.  I got a Rega P1 turntable as a gift, which was only a couple of hundred bucks -- compared to other "world class" Rega turntables that can run in the thousands of dollars.  See linked article:
http://www.soundadviceblog.com/?p=530

 

[Arran_Ramone]

I voted Vinyl. I LOVE vinyl. And yes, i'm only 17, so i guess you could say there really is a "Vinyl comeback". I think it came from my dad, who owns hundreds on Vinyls, really nice to look at and hear when i visit him in scotland.
Apart from that, theres nothing like holding a slab of Vinyl in your hands, especially if its a picturedisc or "Puke" Vinyl or somthing wacky like that- on that front CDs cant compare. Also, just looking at the artwork! My prized Vinyl is a 180g pressing of the Ramones' first album, and although simple, the sheer size and quality of the artwork is just....wow.

However, CDs are a close second- i love having a hard copy of my music, and for some reason i love reading through CD booklets and looking at pictures and finding funny details that may have been put in there. MP3's for me are just a neccesity- listening to music on iTunes and on my iPod.

If anyones interested, the 12"'s i currently own are: Ramones, Ramones: Return to London 1985 (Yellow Vinyl), Dead Kennedy's Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, Nirvana Bleach (Clear Vinyl), White Stripes' Elephant double album and Sex Pistol's Never Mind the Bollocks... 30th anniversary edition with 7" Insert. A small collection at the mo, but i also have various singles etc.

 

[niceguyeddie]

Vinyl isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Clicking a few buttons on the internet to get your music will never compete with the thrill of going into a store and getting a 7" or 12" record out of its sleeve, then rushing home with it (or - more likely in many cases - filing it away unplayed).

My worry is that generations of kids now are going to get to their early 30s having had their music collections wiped out by a hard disk failure. That's sad. Obviously it's more cost-effective for bands these days, but I don't really feel like I've bought something unless I can hold it in my hands. So many things are coming out as download-only, and that's a real tragedy.

 

[Cornfed Hick]

Off topic, but NiceGuyEddie might be the best username on this entire board.  Excellent blending of Maiden and Tarantino.  Good work. 

 

[pilau]

I would like to share my opinion with you and a bit of my professional knowledge

First of all I feel there's nothing like holding an original record in your hands! Now CDs have their booklets which is such a great thing. You get all the vinyl artwork plus all kinds of extras like lyrics and photos. They are compact and easier to store and maintain and have a longer lifetime comparing to vinyl and casetter. Now vinyl records on the other hand have, like others have already mentioned, bigger artwork, and to me, the feeling of an LP in my hands is like "this is the real deal!", I mean it's so vintage and it gives out a whole different value, of prestige.

Now sound wise, there's no comparing, at least today, of the sound quality of common digital formats (even lossless) against analog audio. In any conversion data is lost because in simplicity, the digital format is stored in blocks per second, and the quality is defined by the amount of blocks per second (bit-rate) and by the size of the blocks (sample rate). Here's a comparison of an analog and a digital audio signals, from the Wikipedia page on digital audio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filecm.svg