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» Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE   » Community   » Film-Yak   » Vinyl record sales increase (Page 2)

 
This topic comprises 8 pages: 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8   
Author Topic: Vinyl record sales increase
Allison Parsons
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 630
From: East Peoria, IL
Registered: Oct 2004

- posted 06-10-2008 07:13 PM      Profile for Allison Parsons   Author's Homepage   Email Allison Parsons   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Mike,
Both. The majority of our store LP sales are under the age of 25. Most have either found a cheap turntable at a garage sale, or got their parents. I don't know too many that are in for the sound quality, but there are some. There is definatly a 'cool' factor when it comes to the youngin's owning vinyl. You can hold up a iPod and claim that you have 10,000 songs, but it's much cooler to show your friends your LP collection [Smile]

The older customers are the audiophiles. There are a few that are uber annoying and are pickest damn people ever. All of us here just enjoy music, we don't want to be pestered over someone chatting our ears off about his/her high-end stereo equipment. I love it when the older crowd that have never been in here before, venture over to the vinyl and say "I didn't even know they made vinyl anymore!" Then they start talking to you about what they use to own, that's fun to hear.

We just got this in last month. It's the AC/DC box set on vinyl. Only set you back $230.00 [Smile]

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Bruce Hansen
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 847
From: Stone Mountain, GA, USA
Registered: Dec 1999

- posted 06-10-2008 07:43 PM      Profile for Bruce Hansen   Email Bruce Hansen   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I wonder if vinyl is being recorded properly? In recent years CDs have been recorded hotter and hotter, because every producer wants their stuff to sound the loudest on the radio. The problem is that in digital recording, "0" is a brick wall. If anything tries to go beyond "0" it gets clipped, and causes distortion. If vinyl is being recorded at the correct level, then it would sound much better then a CD. If that is the case, you could buy the vinyl record, record it to a CD, and have a CD that sounds much better than the CD you could buy in the store.

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

- posted 06-10-2008 07:53 PM      Profile for Joe Redifer   Author's Homepage   Email Joe Redifer   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I used to like AC/DC and even had most of their stuff on vinyl, but I don't think I've ever liked them to the tune of $239.00. I did go to one of their concerts when I was 7 or 8, though.

Also it doesn't matter how loud you record/mix your music, it'll all sound the same (re: compressed to hell) on the radio anyway. They pass everything through a compression filter for that reason. But I agree, recordings over the last 10-20 years have been too loud and distorted.

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Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99

- posted 06-10-2008 08:24 PM      Profile for Brad Miller   Author's Homepage   Email Brad Miller       Edit/Delete Post 
Case in point, I purchased a Goldfrapp album on CD and later found out Dan Lyons had purchased it on vinyl. (I didn't even know it was available on vinyl.) His transfer to CD on a side by side comparison sounded better.

Allison, feel free to post a link.

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Allison Parsons
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 630
From: East Peoria, IL
Registered: Oct 2004

- posted 06-10-2008 08:59 PM      Profile for Allison Parsons   Author's Homepage   Email Allison Parsons   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Thanks Brad. By the way, we had her newest LP, but we sold 2 copies in like a day and haven't had a chance to get it back in. I don't think we ever sold one of her (Goldfrapp's) CD's!

Here is our eBay store Everything is listed in categories, and then subcategories.

And yes, I know my cropping of some of those pictures sucks. After puttin up about 20-30 LP's a week, you start not to care as much as you did before haha.

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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!

Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999

- posted 06-10-2008 09:20 PM      Profile for Steve Guttag   Email Steve Guttag   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Yeah...it certainly isn't a simple matter of CD versus vinyl. It really is a question of mastering of each. CDs seem to be getting louder and more compressed, as others have noted. I have no idea how current vinyl masters are done or the quality of the pressings.

I know some of my older vinyl sounds better than the current CD offering of the same title.

Now much of my vinyl is half-speed mastered (some mobile fidelity but also by other labels....my Pink Floyd - The Wall is a Japanese import, half-speed, virgin vinyl...it was/is notably quieter/better than the mass-produced versions that were flying off the shelves in the late '70s. Somewhere I also have a CD version of The Wall...The vinyl stands toe-to-toe with it. Little Feet - Waiting For Columbus, MoFi "original master recording" absolutely is a superior product than its CD counterpart.

I think CD's get a bit of a pass because they are much more hassle free (no cleaning rituals like there were/are for LPs with disc cleaning, and stylus cleaning) and there is an inherent cleaness to them. Unilke Bill though...while I have rarely had problems with the Bass on CDs...I've often had problems with the treble on CDs...often sounding very harsh and unnatural. Early CDs were notably bad in this respect.

Is it me or have CDs really gone down in quality (mastering)? It seems like they didn't know how to master CDs originally so they make poor CDs when they first came out....then they figured out how to master them...and now they seem to think "autolevel" works for everything so you get a compressed piece of crap master.

Steve

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

- posted 06-10-2008 09:48 PM      Profile for Mike Blakesley   Author's Homepage   Email Mike Blakesley   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I think probably the coolest vinyl item I have is "Lotus," by Santana. It's a 3-record set, recorded live, never released on vinyl in the U.S. that I know of. It was originally a Japanese release, which is where my copy is from. When completely unfolded, the packaging covers about 4 x 5 feet of space. It's available on CD, with the foldouts sort-of reproduced, but the effect is just gone with the smaller size.

quote: Steve Guttag
Is it me or have CDs really gone down in quality (mastering)?
It's not you. Mastering engineers have gone nuts with volume. They had to use restraint in the good old LP days or the stylus would jump out of the groove. (Of course back then they sometimes used TOO much limitation.)

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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!

Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999

- posted 06-10-2008 09:54 PM      Profile for Steve Guttag   Email Steve Guttag   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote: Mike Blakesley
They had to use restraint in the good old LP days or the stylus would jump out of the groove.
Perhaps I should introduce you to my Telarc Digital mastering of the 1812 Overture (on Vinyl)...the groove looks almost like a zig/zag when the cannons are fired! I have that pressing on both conventional Telarc but also on a UHQR.

Steve

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Jon Miller
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 973
From: San Diego, CA, USA
Registered: Sep 1999

- posted 06-10-2008 10:01 PM      Profile for Jon Miller   Email Jon Miller   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote: Bruce Hansen
In recent years CDs have been recorded hotter and hotter, because every producer wants their stuff to sound the loudest on the radio.
This YouTube video graphically illustrates the "loudness war" issue in a very good way, showing what disappears from the waveform when compression is used. It suggests one more way the recording industry is shooting itself in the foot, producing CDs that sound no better than MP3 recordings.

If the same compressed masters are being used for limited-edition vinyl releases as well as for CDs, it's bordering on fraudulent. I would expect much more for something relatively harder to find (vinyl) than the still-somewhat-commonplace CD.

quote: Steve Guttag
Perhaps I should introduce you to my Telarc Digital mastering of the 1812 Overture (on Vinyl)...the groove looks almost like a zig/zag when the cannons are fired!
Like this? [Smile]

-

The Telarc guys sure created quite a turntable torture test. Some turntables just can't handle that dogleg groove.

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

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From: Denver, Colorado
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- posted 06-11-2008 12:05 AM      Profile for Joe Redifer   Author's Homepage   Email Joe Redifer   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote: Jon Miller
...showing what disappears from the waveform when compression is used. It suggests one more way the recording industry is shooting itself in the foot, producing CDs that sound no better than MP3 recordings.
MP3s do not compress the waveform, they compress (and discard some of) the data used to recreate that waveform. MP3s will still sound worse than CDs even when the CDs are mastered like complete ass.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

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From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

- posted 06-11-2008 01:08 AM      Profile for Leo Enticknap   Author's Homepage   Email Leo Enticknap   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote: Claude S. Ayakawa
Most of my vinyl records are classical. I still have most of my collection which include about 45 complete operas and among them is my favorite , Georg Solti's recording of the complete DER RING DES NIBELUGEN by Richard Wagner.
A copy of that described as in 'moderate to poor' condition went for over £300 on eBay about a month ago! The early RCA Living Stereo releases (non-Dynagroove US pressings) regularly fetch insane prices, too. I've got a couple (Also Sprach Zarathustra with the Chicago SO and Fritz Reiner, and Walton's first symphony with the LSO and Andre Previn) which I found for a quid or two at second-hand shops in the mid-90s. Ironically, I'd started buying second-hand LPs around that time because I couldn't really afford new releases on CD! A copy of the Strauss went for £80 on eBay last year.

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Monte L Fullmer
Film God

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From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004

- posted 06-11-2008 04:53 AM      Profile for Monte L Fullmer   Email Monte L Fullmer   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
A record site that Bernie Grundman began contains new vinyl from session master tapes - in popular and the classical.

I have a few of these Classic pressings in both 180g and the 200g varieties and it's amazing on the quality that was put into these vinyls.

One used to order vinyls from Classics directly until a couple of years ago when Classics stopped selling direct and now go through dealers to sell their vinyls.

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Charles Greenlee
Jedi Master Film Handler

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From: Savannah, Ga, U.S.
Registered: Jun 2006

- posted 06-11-2008 05:00 AM      Profile for Charles Greenlee   Author's Homepage   Email Charles Greenlee   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I love my vinyl. Even if mathematically, the quality is somewhat less than a CD. For some reason, the coloring of the sound and the other qualities make it sound better. My opinion. I'm young enough I had people in High School with me ask what an LP, record, or any other term referring to a phonographic recording, was. But it's still important to me to have a good turntable, and buy whatever I can on vinyl. Yes, cd's are good because they don't degrade, but well cared for vinyl, maybe with something like gruv-glide or the like, can play top notch for quite a long time. I do have a weakness for picture discs. Yes, inferior to the audiophile, due to often inferior materials used, but unique and interesting. They're more something to collect than play, though I will often run them once as a check. I'm not sure exactly why clear and colored vinyls are supposed to be inferior to standard black, or I should say I don't remember. I actually had researched it at some point. I really have to get back to my laser turntable project, just ran out of time, money, materials, and lost my workspace. All the associated junk is now sitting in a box. [Frown]

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Damien Taylor
Master Film Handler

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From: Perth, Western Australia
Registered: Apr 2007

- posted 06-11-2008 05:55 AM      Profile for Damien Taylor   Email Damien Taylor   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I remember reading picture discs were inferior because they lack the carbon black added to regular discs to give them strength... or something.

quote: Leo Enticknap
A copy of that described as in 'moderate to poor' condition went for over £300 on eBay about a month ago! The early RCA Living Stereo releases (non-Dynagroove US pressings)
The Living Stereos sound really nice. On the other hand the much loathed Dynagrooves are simply awful.

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Kenneth Wuepper
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Posts: 1026
From: Saginaw, MI, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

- posted 06-11-2008 06:51 AM      Profile for Kenneth Wuepper   Email Kenneth Wuepper   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Vinyl:
The coloring of the material also hardens the surface of the disc. Clear vinyl is quite soft and pliable while the black additives make the vinyl very hard. The old "picture discs" were also quite flexible while the black filled vinyl was brittle and would shatter if dropped.

DIRECT TO DISC:
This technique was used on a George Wright organ recording where the master of each complete side of the disc was done in one continuous take. The advantage of this system was the total elimination of the magnetic tape intermediate stages of the record making process. These discs had very transparent sound and the only "processing" of the signal was a peak limiter just for safety in keeping the grooves from touching on the loudest sounds.

Columbia Variable Area Discs
I have several old Columbia classical records where they employed a computer to calculate the excursions of the grooves and make adjustments to the pitch of the feed for the cutting lathe. In order for this to work, they sampled the sound for the upcoming groove and then adjusted the space between the grooves so they were not too close. The only problem with this system was that you could quietly hear the upcoming loud passage in the groove preceding its actual playing. It sounds somewhat like the transfer that occurs in magnetic tape when it is stored improperly and there is a print through from adjacent layers of the tape on the reel.

Aliasing
This term is used to describe the beat interference that occurs when high frequency audio signals beat against the sampling rate of the digital audio system. In the Analog to digital conversion as well the succeeding Digital to Analog conversion, this aliasing occurs. Filtering can be introduced to reduce the beat products but that also filters out some of the wanted information. A skilled listener will be aware of something not right but may not know this is what is wrong. Early CD players did not have very good Digital to Analog conversion so those discs sounded less good. They will sound better when played on a modern playback machine with improved Digital to Analog conversion. Anti-Aliasing circuitry is incorporated in all high end digital music instrument products made today.

Hope this is helpful

KEN

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