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The darker side of the "Vinyl Revival"

davidavdavid said:
...Is it a mainstream interest? No
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Is Hi-Fi a mainstream interest? No!

Whenever I visit a record shop, I am always encouraged by the amount of young people flicking through the LP racks. Vinyl won't ever reach the volume of sales that it used to have, but I, for one, am glad that it is still around and I always try to support those shops selling new vinyl whenever I visit a town or city that I haven't been to before.

I buy plenty of CDs (mostly from the pfm record shop) and I buy downloads too when there is no physical release, but for me, nothing will really replace vinyl.
 
The interesting thing for me is how poor many modern vinyl albums sound.

I recently acquired an audiophile pressing of Rumours. It's horrid. It has a big lumpy bass sound and veiled undynamic midrange and treble. My original sounds way better, I don't know why I bothered.

I have a few modern albums on vinyl and some of them sound ok ( Quantic Soul Orchestra) and some don't ( Amy Winehouse). Not being of a technical mindset, I have no idea why this should be the case.

The one thing I do know is that I have a decent sound system, and to hear it at its best I need to slap on some decent vinyl from between say 1970 and late 80's. Nothing gets close, except occasionally FM Radio. I have several albums from that period on both CD amd Vinyl and the Vinyl always sounds several magnitudes better.
 
Selective non-journalism. No mention of the new record pressing machines. Sounds as if he is bitter about the end of the days of cd's costing less than a pound to press and selling for fourteen, and massive profits for everyone.

Quality has always varied although minor warps and noise are overstated in my experience. My last weeks issue of Danny Bryant's Blood Money was disappointing as it sounds compressed (and there is quite a lot of surface noise in places), whilst my charity shop copy of UFO's Force it on paper thin re issue from the eighties sounds perfect, dynamic, and absolutely no surface noise (not sure if you would hear it except between the tracks though).

I don't mind vinyl being a minority. As long as there are enough others in the minority that they keep making it then I'm happy.
 
deserter said:
The interesting thing for me is how poor many modern vinyl albums sound.

I recently acquired an audiophile pressing of Rumours. It's horrid. It has a big lumpy bass sound and veiled undynamic midrange and treble. My original sounds way better, I don't know why I bothered.

I have a few modern albums on vinyl and some of them sound ok ( Quantic Soul Orchestra) and some don't ( Amy Winehouse). Not being of a technical mindset, I have no idea why this should be the case.

The one thing I do know is that I have a decent sound system, and to hear it at its best I need to slap on some decent vinyl from between say 1970 and late 80's. Nothing gets close, except occasionally FM Radio. I have several albums from that period on both CD amd Vinyl and the Vinyl always sounds several magnitudes better.
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Interesting post, as I have three old copies of 'Rumours', each playing with excellent s.q., so there was nothing wrong with the original recording/pressings. Much the same can be said for my other Fleetwood Mac albums (esp. 'Tango'); all good.

I've bought a few records these last 18 months; one or two from Amazon and one or two from HMV and a couple from elsewhere on the internet. None has been of top quality and some just passable. I do wonder if some of these are just recorded from the record rather that remastered from the original tapes.
 
puddlesplasher said:
I don't buy new vinyl anymore as the ones I have bought in the last ten years have either been scratched or warped. As much as I love playing vinyl I would rather buy a cd at half the price. As for streaming i can't be bothered with.
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I made a promise not to buy anymore new vinyl because of bad pressing quality but gave in to the new Roots Manuva album. Side A is virtually unplayable, suffering from a horrible dragging/scraping noise on all the tracks. Side B is fine though. At least it came with code to download the album in WAV, so this one will be going back.

It's an absolute lottery buying vinyl.
 
Nothing new there then!

Don't forget there are also those who love the tweakery of the vinyl turntable which Is much more amenable to the DIY guy than a cd player or streamer. You get to play with real nuts and bolts!
 
When we were growing up and collecting vinyl, cassettes, 8-track even! ... didn't we find it fascinating to wind up the antique gramophones of our grandparents and marvel at how the hell you managed to reproduce music from resting what was basically a heavy arm with a nail attached to it, onto a shellac (?) disc? I certainly did ... used to spend hours trying to work it all out. Maybe our kids are looking back in much the same vein? Ahhhhhhh .... the memories and smells come flooding back! :)
 
Mike Reed said:
Martyn, I have an early LP of this; had it for many decades and it's probably my most oft-played record. Wonder if the new 180 gram pressing is of such excellent s.q. (I've seen them in HMV here in Norwich)
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The new LP is very flat, that's the first thing I noticed.
On the run-in there are a few minor 'pops' before the music begins.

The most noticeable thing is the tape hiss on the first track, though after
a few seconds you don't notice it.

It does make me wonder why I sold my 1970 copy...
 
One of the things that vinyl aficionados say they like is album cover art and info on the cover. I get that but let's not pretend that the majority of CDs are anything but very good when it comes to packaging/information.

I was prompted to make this comment as I've just bought Why Should The Fire Die by Nickel Creek. Nice package with a 20-page booklet with all lyrics, who plays what and other info.

No pops or scratches either ;-)
 
HarryB said:
One of the things that vinyl aficionados say they like is album cover art and info on the cover. I get that but let's not pretend that the majority of CDs are anything but very good when it comes to packaging/information.

I was prompted to make this comment as I've just bought Why Should The Fire Die by Nickel Creek. Nice package with a 20-page booklet with all lyrics, who plays what and other info.

No pops or scratches either ;-)
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Yes, but the writing is very small on those CD booklets and oldies have to put their reading specs on to read them.

They can read the nice big fonts on the 12" sleeves though....:p
 
not sure what to make of this vinyl revival
New stuff is quite pricey in my opinion and of varied quality.
Some stuff is v good some not
My The Wall from 1979 sounds better than my friends new 180g one.
Some 180g stuff is not it infuriates me when they give u 2 vinyl with about 3 songs per side. (so u cant call them LPs anymore !)
 
Rob998 said:
Yes, but the writing is very small on those CD booklets and oldies have to put their reading specs on to read them.

They can read the nice big fonts on the 12" sleeves though....:p
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Rob, I'm 60 very soon so I feel your pain. Some are indeed unreadable. Normally it's the arty-farty design and poor font choice rather than text size.

Another down side of vinyl as I see it is storage.
 
highcut28 said:
not sure what to make of this vinyl revival
New stuff is quite pricey in my opinion and of varied quality.
Some stuff is v good some not
My The Wall from 1979 sounds better than my friends new 180g one.
Some 180g stuff is not it infuriates me when they give u 2 vinyl with about 3 songs per side. (so u cant call them LPs anymore !)
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The SQ is generally bugger all to do with whether it's on vinyl or CD. The difference is made further down the line with engineering, production and mastering. The bad ones are normally less bad on vinyl.
 
HarryB said:
The SQ is generally bugger all to do with whether it's on vinyl or CD. The difference is made further down the line with engineering, production and mastering. The bad ones are normally less bad on vinyl.
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Maybe, but I've never experienced compression on LPs; yes, they vary in output, but not very much. Many CDs, on the other hand, are frequency and loudness manipulated to presumably sound more exciting on inferior replay kit. On decent hifi they sound execrable to the point of destroying listening pleasure.
 
I'd like to know why 180g is the best thing yet?

My preferred weight is 120g or less from back when vinyl was expensive due to oil shortage (?!).
Back in analogue days LPs were a more sensible weight, and they sounded better. You didn't have to weigh down your shelves and turntable suspension for no reason.

Just an old man's rant!
 
Mike Reed said:
Many CDs, on the other hand, are frequency and loudness manipulated to presumably sound more exciting on inferior replay kit. On decent hifi they sound execrable to the point of destroying listening pleasure.
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Totally agree. I have a decent system and I have CDs that sound truly awful. But I have others that are sublime. Pisses me off that any artist, producer, engineer or record comany exec would want to put out some of the over compressed shit from the last ten years or so.
 
Minio said:
I'd like to know why 180g is the best thing yet?

My preferred weight is 120g or less from back when vinyl was expensive due to oil shortage (?!).
Back in analogue days LPs were a more sensible weight, and they sounded better. You didn't have to weigh down your shelves and turntable suspension for no reason.

Just an old man's rant!
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LPs were always thinner than the 180 gram thickness of current productions. They did get thinner still in the early seventies oil fiasco, but not really by much. The fifties and sixties records could be fairly thick, though, classical especially; maybe 150g?

Although changes in VTA don't affect the s.q. overmuch, this extra thickness MUST have a bearing on it. I don't know about you, but it's a palaver for me to alter VTA for one play, then change back, so I don't.
 
Not only are some new records mastered from CD, at least one was mastered from a scratched jumping CD! (Steve Hoffman thread).
 
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