When did vinyl stop making sense?
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- addled muppet weed
- 105553 posts since 26 Jan, 2003 from through the looking glass
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- addled muppet weed
- 105553 posts since 26 Jan, 2003 from through the looking glass
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el-bo (formerly ebow) el-bo (formerly ebow) https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=208007
- KVRAF
- 16368 posts since 24 May, 2009 from A galaxy, far far away
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- addled muppet weed
- 105553 posts since 26 Jan, 2003 from through the looking glass
well it wouldn't make much sense for a giant neck
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 1001 posts since 1 Apr, 2002 from Spain
The discussion would be the same, this is about when the market became dominated by recordings where all tracks have been digitally processed.Forgotten wrote: ↑Sat Sep 28, 2019 12:29 pmIt’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.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.
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?
Best Regards
Roman Empire
Roman Empire
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- KVRian
- 963 posts since 29 Sep, 2006
The biggest drawback of vinyl is that once it gets scratched, it scratched.
Other than that......
Other than that......
--After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
-Aldous Huxley
-Aldous Huxley
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- KVRAF
- 3045 posts since 4 Jan, 2005
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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- addled muppet weed
- 105553 posts since 26 Jan, 2003 from through the looking glass
- KVRAF
- 14943 posts since 26 Jun, 2006 from San Francisco Bay Area
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.
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. ~[ ●_● ]~
4th Law of Robotics: When turning evil, display a red indicator light. ~[ ●_● ]~
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- KVRAF
- 3045 posts since 4 Jan, 2005
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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- KVRAF
- 3477 posts since 27 Dec, 2002 from North East England
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.Roman Empire wrote: ↑Sat Sep 28, 2019 12:21 pmAgreed, 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.Forgotten wrote: ↑Sat Sep 28, 2019 12:01 pmThat’s complete nonsense. A limitation of vinyl is that the more energy in the low end, the more space the grooves take up.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"
This led to producers mixing in preparation for mastering i.e. having to manipulate the sound because of a limitation of the format.
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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- addled muppet weed
- 105553 posts since 26 Jan, 2003 from through the looking glass
- KVRAF
- 25051 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
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.