Vinyl Gets Its Groove Back

Man, I would love to see vinyl come back. The sound quality is far superior to all this digital crap, though in this age of iPods I'm not so sure quality matters that much anymore.

Vinyl never went out in underground circles. It's getting spotlight because underground is getting trendy, but even after that passes the people that have been listening to it will continue listening to it.

This is true, but I'd love to see it make a widespread comeback. For a number of years, the record companies were still offering the option of vinyl or CD, but once CDs caught on, it was only a handful of artists that still offered vinyl, and hardly anyone in the mainstream.

So now we have a generation of people who have had no exposure to vinyl and know nothing about it's quality.

Well, as a vinyl collector myself, I'm seeing an increase in NEW vinyl. Quite a few independent labels like Chicago's Thrill Jockey Records, Milan Records, Quannum Records, Daptone Records, Matador, and many, many others are pressing new vinyl. Additionally, I'm seeing new runs of vinyl from the "Big 3" as well-- you can get most of the Reprise catalog from Neil Young on vinyl, and Lost Highway seems to do a brisk business with their vinyl releases of Ryan Adams. I know that Sony released Christina Aguilera's Back to Basics on a very limited 180g pressing, too. The nice part of all of this is that the labels-- when they press new vinyl-- are doing the heavier weights for the audiophile interest and are able to charge a premium for it.

Thrill Jockey has been including a free-download of 320Kbps mp3's along with their vinyl pressings. Even though the pressings tend to be limited, they are only $10-- $2 cheaper than the CD version, and you can feed your iPod as well!

It also seems that used record stores are doing pretty well with used titles. I've had good luck at Half Price Books getting my favorite 80's releases on vinyl.

Mike Roeder
"It's Time To Play B-Sides"

To my mind the bigger difference is not the vinyl / CD sound but the production styles and their interaction with CDs. For example CDs tend to sound unnatural in the higher frequencies, to my ears, especially in loud volumes (I mean near 0dB on the source). But nowdays producers eliminate the overhead (used to be 20dB I think) down to only a couple of dB, by compressing heavily and ramping the volume up. Gotta sound loud on the radio. Damn digital distortion sounds like crap especially on a less than perfect player, too.

But convenience won out. More storage capacity, durability, versatility (you can play CDs in the car)... People sacrificed good sound for those reasons.

And it's still happening. You can now put an enormous amount of music into a box smaller than a pack of cigarettes and take it anywhere.

Just don't expect good sound.

Most people's record players were pretty crap, too. Nowdays the average quality is probably as good, or rather it's flawed for different reasons.

Most people's record players were pretty crap, too.

True, I guess, but I'm speaking as an audiophile. I have a Bang & Olufsen base with a Grace tonearm and a high-end Audio-Technica cartridge, though I don't have access to it right now...

*grin*