When did vinyl stop making sense?

Anything about MUSIC but doesn't fit into the forums above.
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or as a tiny neck pillow 8)

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stanley unwin vs suns of arqa - jaggernaut.

pretty nonsensical :shrug:

https://youtu.be/gObhRxZ-Gdg

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vurt wrote: Sat Sep 28, 2019 1:10 pm or as a tiny neck pillow 8)
A pillow for a tiny neck?

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el-bo (formerly ebow) wrote: Sat Sep 28, 2019 1:17 pm
vurt wrote: Sat Sep 28, 2019 1:10 pm or as a tiny neck pillow 8)
A pillow for a tiny neck?
well it wouldn't make much sense for a giant neck :shrug:

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Forgotten wrote: Sat Sep 28, 2019 12:29 pm
Roman Empire wrote: Sat Sep 28, 2019 12:21 pm Agreed, but we´re not talking about artifacts here, that´s a topic already touched millions of times. The purity I´m talking about is the - almost - endless resolution of analog recordings compared to the x khz / x no. of bits present in the digital domain.
It’s not very pure if you’ve been forced to filter out the low end and artificially boost other frequencies to make up for that loss.

You could argue that CDs are more pure as they don’t have that limitation.

What about 8 track or cassette? Why exclude them from the comparison?
The discussion would be the same, this is about when the market became dominated by recordings where all tracks have been digitally processed.
Best Regards

Roman Empire

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The biggest drawback of vinyl is that once it gets scratched, it scratched.
Other than that......
--After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

-Aldous Huxley

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Portability ...... Some contributions , Id say the Sony cassette Walkman and portable CD Walkman and car CD player , CD burners , killed vinyl and cassette off for years , as did Napster , Limewire , MP3 players iPod iPhone Android and streaming has killed off the CDs , cassettes , and vinyl too ... I stream 100% now , convience and I'm 44 years old , what I hate is some of my old stuff is not on streaming sites ex . Catherine Wheel - Adam & Eve is not on the USA Spotify , Apple , or Google as well as some CD singles etc etc but it's on YouTube and YouTube Music .... I also think the whole needle on a record and the physical format record liners etc etc made Vinyl a comeback especially to young people that never had a physical product of music to look at and hold . A Vinyl record sleeve and cover is something amazing to look at .... also putting the needle down and listen to a whole album is unique instead of skip through tracks and bit giving a song much of a chance to be heard ....Also Polaroid kinda had a thing there too for awhile .

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fedexnman wrote: Sat Sep 28, 2019 2:31 pm Catherine Wheel
blimey, blast from the past. Saw them a couple of times, they come from my way

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I don't know about the industry, but for me, it was when my sister started using my LPs as Frisbees.
Wait... loot _then_ burn? D'oh!

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Sparky77 wrote: Sat Sep 28, 2019 1:54 pm The biggest drawback of vinyl is that once it gets scratched, it scratched.
Other than that......
but then it can become something new...

https://youtu.be/iVyO9BaMvAQ

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There is no “pure” or “correct” way to record anything. Every aspect of the process imparts some sort of artifact regardless of what technology you use. I can put out a little anecdote that illustrates my take on things.

Growing up I was all analog, of course. Born in ‘65, there was no other choice. My father had vinyl, but not much I was interested in, but he gave me an 8 track at one point, so that was my medium. 8 track sucks. As soon as I could, I saved and bought a turntable and began collecting vinyl albums. I loved them... but as time went on it became clear as to how fragile they are. I started making cassette recordings of everything and storing the vinyl as my “archival” copy. By the time CDs came out, vinyl was sort of irrelevant to me. When CDs came out, with their durability, I was ready. They just work better for the way I like to listen to music.

Smash cut to a few years ago. My wife heard me talking nostalgically about records and she bought me a really nice turntable and some vinyl. I was pretty excited about it and I started forming a new little collection. That went on for about a year and I realized that I just rarely had the time to use it. My life with a family is so busy that there is rarely a time when I can sit down and just listen to an album. Most of the time it’s during dinner or parties, family time, etc If there is any “analog magic” in those things, it is masked by the sound of life going on around it. Having to flip albums was a drag with all the dust cleaning, etc. In the end, I sold it and got a HomePod instead. It makes much more sense to how I listen to music in my life. I still buy CDs of albums that mean something to me, and I’ll listen to them when I’m working at home, but the rest of the time I’m either listening via headphones on my phone or via the home stereo setup, which just uses Apple TV and is just easier to do. This way I get a lot more music in my world than when I was using vinyl. If you like vinyl, and I did like aspects of it... the ritual mostly, have at it. Maybe when I’m retired with no child at home I’ll go back to it.
Zerocrossing Media

4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~

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AnX wrote: Sat Sep 28, 2019 2:37 pm
fedexnman wrote: Sat Sep 28, 2019 2:31 pm Catherine Wheel
blimey, blast from the past. Saw them a couple of times, they come from my way
Yeah, I got see them in Nashville TN about 20+ something years ago. .. " Judy staring at the sun " " way down " the Damnbuilders opened up for then and also played violin on some song of Catherine Wheel too , good show .. I might flip to YouTube Music once it gets more Spotify ish . . It's not quite there yet.

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Roman Empire wrote: Sat Sep 28, 2019 12:21 pm
Forgotten wrote: Sat Sep 28, 2019 12:01 pm
Roman Empire wrote: Sat Sep 28, 2019 10:55 am 1. A recording where one or more tracks were recorded solely using analog equipment from source to master, is more "pure"
That’s complete nonsense. A limitation of vinyl is that the more energy in the low end, the more space the grooves take up.

This led to producers mixing in preparation for mastering i.e. having to manipulate the sound because of a limitation of the format.
Agreed, but we´re not talking about artifacts here, that´s a topic already touched millions of times. The purity I´m talking about is the - almost - endless resolution of analog recordings compared to the x khz / x no. of bits present in the digital domain.
I think it's perhaps a mistake to think about this in terms of fidelity. The endless resolve power of analog recordings is purely theoretical. While digital can't ever have infinite resolve power, it can be arbitrarily high. You could have a 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰ yottahertz sampling rate or much, much, much higher. Such sampling rates don't really make any less sense than thinking about analog as resolving to infinity. In terms of both pure and practical fidelity, vinyl became entirely obsolete the moment the first CD was pressed.

For me, the question of when vinyl stops making sense is all about how easy it is to produce and whether people will buy it. It's always made sense for club records (although that's been changing) but it's becoming more and more difficult for independent labels to make due to vinyl's mainstream resurgence. Even in 2009-2010 the label I was affiliated with was experiencing 3+ month lead times to get a test pressing. Record Store Day alone means vinyl makes more sense to independent labels in Summer than it does in Winter thanks to majors booking up the facilities in advance, even back then. I can't even imagine what the situation is like now.

So yeah, I don't really think it's ever been about fidelity. There are a galaxy of things like cost, accessibility, type of record, time of year, personal preferences etc that matter way, way more. It's not even all about fidelity in the digital world. Some people will prefer 192 kHz as a delivery format despite ultrasonics being either filtered out or a straight-up liability on all but the very best gear.

As a consumer today, your choice of format is mostly down to either how convenient it is or how it makes you feel, not how it sounds. Whether that's people listening to 192 kHz recordings on shitty gear or people buying vinyl because they love the feeling, then never playing it and just making use of the download code for the convenience.

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whyterabbyt wrote: Sat Sep 28, 2019 12:35 pm "the medium is not the message"
... xl is.

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It wouldn't have made real sense for me because of the type of involved mastering before you have anything to print copies of, the bass issue for a first example. As a consumer, well, there were things which came out abysmally on CD when it was new, a problem I only half understand and which is apparently solvable. I don't buy hard copies of music any more, don't really care. I don't like things taking up space when it's always at a premium.
Last edited by jancivil on Sat Sep 28, 2019 4:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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