Why Vinyl Records Often Get No Respect

[Happy Musicfan]

1) Youtube links with horribly noisy, lo-fi postings of classic material on vinyl in lame condition. For every 10 vinyl YT postings, 10-30% are of adequate quality.

2) Reissues. I was reading the Pink Floyd thread in the other sub-forum. I wonder if those working in the vinyl factories are actually doing *everything* (sequentially, and qualitatively) they were doing in 1975. Somehow, I doubt it.

I love vinyl, but with people repeatedly giving it a bad reputation through incompetence, negligence and ignorance, it seems doomed for the most part. And I'm certainly guilty of being a klutz in the past, damaging the delicate albums I cherish (can you say, 'parties are vinyl records worst enemy' ?)


But then there's the *other* side of the story...

[Kiwi]

I grew up with vinyl records. I still have them all mostly. But nostalgia isn't what it used to be. Anyone who really thnks they are the perfect playback medium for music is wearing rose tinted spectacle and has their head deeply buried where the sun don't shine.

Even fresh new vinyl - you could hear the hiss and micro scratches before the song started. And the wow and flutter was visually obvious, even before you heard those long piano notes.

I don't deny the great music that was released on that medium. But I much prefer to listen to that same music via cleaner digital versions that have been correctly mastered or digital (which admittedly hasn't been done well in the past - but I still prefer my CD collection to my vinyl collection.

Admit it - you are either pining for your youth, or longing for an imaginary time you think you missed out on. The drawbacks of vinyl are not worth it.

[Happy Musicfan]

Originally Posted by Kiwi

- but I still prefer my CD collection to my vinyl collection.

And (even thought it doesn't yet exist) I prefer my lossless .wav package collection and my dedicated .wav file player to my CD collection.




<patiently waiting for format evolution>

[brill bedroom]

Kiwi is absolutely right: I am totally pining for my youth. I am pining for a time when people put on music to really listen to it and not just skip around form track to track absent- mindedly while watching TV, texting, tweeting Facebooking, making dinner for the kids and everything else. Also, the bass sounds a lot better. You can give me the science explaining why I'm wrong, but my ears like vinyl better. Isn't that enough of a reason: because I like it? Bought the last Wilco album by going to the store and buying the album and then thinking about it all the way home, slipped it out of the sleeve and gave it a good sniff and sat in front of my record player with a bottle of wine and listened to it while looking at the cover. It was great. I have listened to it on my iPod a few dozen times since and it's been the same songs, but they didn't hit me as hard.

[piotr]

I like the way they look! ;-)
p.

[raylinds]

I think it is because too many people don't know, are can't be bothered with taking care of their records and setup their turntables. I have over a thousand albums, but use a record cleaning machine and take very good care of my records, and carefully maintain my turntable. Aside from a very occassional tick, no noise here.

Don't get me wrong, I love my digital front end for convenience and parties, etc. But for serious listening sessions I love my vinyl. It is not nostalgic, at all. When CDs came out I gladly ditched records, but that was because I was young and didn't take proper care of my records (or anything else for that matter).

I can understand that people might not want to put the effort into dealing with vinyl, but to say it is always noisey is just plain wrong.

[logicll]

Music was art some people valued this art in the form of Vinyl. The quality of sound was important and people enjoyed the feelings music conjured.

[cavern]

I miss the artwork.I also miss 8track players in my car.

[biggator6]

As a medium.. it's fairly terrible. It scratches easily, is INSANELY susceptible to dust and other contaminants, gets jacked up if there's too much vibration, etc.

BUT.. the upside (for me) is - the loudness wars can't exist on that medium. If they make it too loud - it skips.

I just got the 2 Jellyfish remasters on heavy vinyl.. I still haven't managed to get all the initial dust off of them, so there's a few clicks and pops here and there (though I've got it about 90% gone with a couple of cleanings). And even with the clicks/pops.. they sound phenomenal - and there are DYNAMICS!!! Remember those?

Record sleeves are also nicer to read than CD inserts.

[king2070lplaya]

Last weekend a friend was in town, and we decided to shoot out some vinyl vs cd reissues. We started with the Mahler "Song of the Earth", the Chicago Symphony recording with Fritz Reiner recorded by Lewis Layton.

The first thing that struck me was the drastically different levels at which one could comfortably listen to the medium. The cd obviously has more dynamic range, and you can tell there's quite a bit of master fader wok happening on the vinyl master to keep within that limited range, but in the loud sections on that compact disc I would think "this just sounds like I'm being kicked in te face", very congested sounding and harsh at that peak dynamic.

But then I would quickly switch back to the vinyl to find it even Louder and yet still not even close to the abrasive quality which the cd was exhibiting.

With the vinyl (prepare for subjectivity) even on my less than stellar turntable, the sound is just so warm, it seems like it is hugging you as you turn up the volume, but still oh can hear all of these wonderful clear details. Perhaps this reproduction isn't as accurate as the razor flat cd response, but I much prefer it as a listening format. The crackling can usually be minimized with a nice brush cleaning, and its incredible how your ear tends to ignore those flaws once the incredible music starts in.

[Fletcher]

Originally Posted by Kiwi

Admit it - you are either pining for your youth, or longing for an imaginary time you think you missed out on. The drawbacks of vinyl are not worth it.

Very interesting thought... explain this one to me. I hadn't had a turntable set up in my house since like late 1989 when I moved into a house I'd purchased. Never bothered to set up any kind of music reproduction system at all until like '92 - '93 as we wanted to play CD's for the kids as they were growing up.

My oldest daughter was born in '91... she'd never heard vinyl anything in my house - ever. There were records I had from when I was a kid... they were stored on the 3rd floor of the house where my home office was... 2 floors away from the nearest possible reproduction system [that still didn't have a turntable].

Fast forward to 2006. I'm walking past the kid's room and hear some Zappa playing. I go into her room to try to figure out what's going on... and what do I see? A turntable with a bunch of my albums. I also saw a pretty decent set of KEF speakers I wasn't using... along with a stereo McIntosh amp I hadn't been using... and a custom built Alactronics phono pre-amp I hadn't seen since we moved into the house in '89.

The kid was listening to vinyl records on a fairly decent reproduction system. When I asked her what was up she looked at me like I had 3 heads [and at the moment - I might have] and asked me why I hadn't set up the turntable and why I'd been listening to CD's. I explained you couldn't listen to records in the car... and that the only CD's we'd ever played in the house were of music for her and her sister to listen to as kids. She knew I had a Victrola and listened to records on that... but that was only because I didn't really want any electronics in the way when I wanted to listen to music... blah, blah, blah.

The kid is almost 21 and she's a total vinyl junkie... so, my question to you is... exactly which part of her "youth" is she trying to recapture?

Peace

[PRobb]

Originally Posted by brill bedroom

Bought the last Wilco album by going to the store and buying the album and then thinking about it all the way home, slipped it out of the sleeve and gave it a good sniff and sat in front of my record player with a bottle of wine and listened to it while looking at the cover. It was great. I have listened to it on my iPod a few dozen times since and it's been the same songs, but they didn't hit me as hard.

That might be a bigger factor than the sonics. Vinyl changes the way you approach music. "Listen" becomes an active verb. If there's a piece of my youth I'd like to recapture, that's it. We used to listen to music. As in sit quietly and actually listen.
And I have to believe that knowing there were people who were going to listen closely affected the kind of music that was made.

[kennybro]

Originally Posted by Fletcher

Fast forward to 2006. I'm walking past the kid's room and hear some Zappa playing. I go into her room to try to figure out what's going on... and what do I see? A turntable with a bunch of my albums. I also saw a pretty decent set of KEF speakers I wasn't using... along with a stereo McIntosh amp I hadn't been using... and a custom built Alactronics phono pre-amp I hadn't seen since we moved into the house in '89.

The kid was listening to vinyl records on a fairly decent reproduction system. When I asked her what was up she looked at me like I had 3 heads [and at the moment - I might have] and asked me why I hadn't set up the turntable and why I'd been listening to CD's. I explained you couldn't listen to records in the car... and that the only CD's we'd ever played in the house were of music for her and her sister to listen to as kids. She knew I had a Victrola and listened to records on that... but that was only because I didn't really want any electronics in the way when I wanted to listen to music... blah, blah, blah.

The kid is almost 21 and she's a total vinyl junkie... so, my question to you is... exactly which part of her "youth" is she trying to recapture?

Peace

The fascination of the artwork and spinning LP, where you can actually hold the music in your hand, crosses generations. It's the wonder of the THING itself and the experience of feeling somehow less disconnected from the artist.

My stepson, now in his 30's, is a total vinyl junkie, but he's been that way since he was a kid in the late 80's, when vinyl was just starting to fade away. He's never owned, won't own, an iPod, yet about 10 years ago, he placed, I think 3rd in the nation in a Rhino Records music knowledge contest. The main prize was some crazy $10K digital Rock-Ola jukebox filled with CD's. He sold it within a month.

...And regarding the nostalgia thing, nothing wrong with wanting to re-live a moment in time when I could go to Hegwish Records in South Chicago with a twenty in my pocket and come home with 2 new LP's and a 3rd row center ticket to Floyd at the Auditorium Theater. Those were the days.

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by Happy Musicfan

1) Youtube links with horribly noisy, lo-fi postings of classic material on vinyl in lame condition. For every 10 vinyl YT postings, 10-30% are of adequate quality.

2) Reissues. I was reading the Pink Floyd thread in the other sub-forum. I wonder if those working in the vinyl factories are actually doing *everything* (sequentially, and qualitatively) they were doing in 1975. Somehow, I doubt it.

I love vinyl, but with people repeatedly giving it a bad reputation through incompetence, negligence and ignorance, it seems doomed for the most part. And I'm certainly guilty of being a klutz in the past, damaging the delicate albums I cherish (can you say, 'parties are vinyl records worst enemy' ?)


But then there's the *other* side of the story...

Serious vinyl is available -- typically from Japan and Europe -- but it typically comes at a serious price.

If one wants to prowl garage and estate sales, looking for slices of the past, he may find some occasional records in good shape (particularly on records people bought for aspirational reasons -- classical, avant garde jazz, or other 'difficult' works that people wanted to be into but never quite got there), but, let's face it, most people's record players ground away the vinyl with every pass (and, of course, even very good record players induced wear, but at a far, far slower rate).

And then, particularly in the late 70s and 80s, many mainstream vinyl releases were simply gawdawful pressings. I decided to break down and buy a CD player after I paid a premium for an Eno ambient record on his EG Records label and the surface noise was almost as loud as the music... it was just crap vinyl, despite an elevated price.

But, you know, when I see some plastic tonearm -- held down by a spring -- lowering onto a beat up record in a YouTube vid, I know that that is simply the way that most folks listened to records. But it certainly wasn't the way I listened to vinyl. I bought a high end automatic turntable in high school and never looked back.*



*Well, I kind of looked back, because, despite the then-still-high reputation of the maker, it turned out to be a very poor design with a number of features that went south sooner rather than later. But the tone arm was OK, even if the viscous damping fluid that lowered the arm gently [one of the big features] disappeared and it stopped picking up at the end of records and such. When some jerk stole that 'table, my reel deck, and ~300 of my most recently played records, I switched brands (to Dual) and went with a minimally automated 'table (automatic lift at the end of the disk and maybe arm return; it's hazy, it's been decades.)

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by Kiwi

I grew up with vinyl records. I still have them all mostly. But nostalgia isn't what it used to be. Anyone who really thnks they are the perfect playback medium for music is wearing rose tinted spectacle and has their head deeply buried where the sun don't shine.

Even fresh new vinyl - you could hear the hiss and micro scratches before the song started. And the wow and flutter was visually obvious, even before you heard those long piano notes.

I don't deny the great music that was released on that medium. But I much prefer to listen to that same music via cleaner digital versions that have been correctly mastered or digital (which admittedly hasn't been done well in the past - but I still prefer my CD collection to my vinyl collection.

Admit it - you are either pining for your youth, or longing for an imaginary time you think you missed out on. The drawbacks of vinyl are not worth it.

It's funny, dust, scratches, tape hiss entombed in vinyl, and vinyl hiss were all really familiar sounds to me but there was one sound I'd never really even thought about that sort of slapped me in the face when I finally made the transition to digital: the simple low frequency, broad spectrum sound of the needle in the groove. It was a sound I'd absolutely grown up with and never considered. Drop a needle in a blank groove and just listen...

[BNProductoins]

Originally Posted by Happy Musicfan

1) Youtube links with horribly noisy, lo-fi postings of classic material on vinyl in lame condition. For every 10 vinyl YT postings, 10-30% are of adequate quality.

2) Reissues. I was reading the Pink Floyd thread in the other sub-forum. I wonder if those working in the vinyl factories are actually doing *everything* (sequentially, and qualitatively) they were doing in 1975. Somehow, I doubt it.

I love vinyl, but with people repeatedly giving it a bad reputation through incompetence, negligence and ignorance, it seems doomed for the most part. And I'm certainly guilty of being a klutz in the past, damaging the delicate albums I cherish (can you say, 'parties are vinyl records worst enemy' ?)


But then there's the *other* side of the story...

Things have diffidently changed on behalf of vinyl and are generally now more for collective purposes now more than ever. Though new/recent bands have used them for recording more now I would yet have to say there is an amazing difference in play and etching when it comes to the process of making them now. Instead of the standard 45s, they tend to be a little thicker, and are sped up more from everything I've heard so far. They still do not mix with parties, but when you listen to say Mudvayne on vinyl then listen to stephen wolf, about the only thing different is the thickness of the record its self. let alone your not going to find a stephen wolf record in the same condition as the mudvayne one that you can still find in some stores.

[Solidtube]

Originally Posted by Happy Musicfan

And (even thought it doesn't yet exist) I prefer my lossless .wav package collection and my dedicated .wav file player to my CD collection.

<patiently waiting for format evolution>

What is the difference between listening to .wav files and CDs if they are both in 16 bit/44.1k? The files in a CD are practically .wav. And why would you prefer lossless to CD apart from it occupying less space on your hard disk? If you can accept Vinyls, CDs are tiny in comparison.

[mattqualls]

Originally Posted by Fletcher

Very interesting thought... explain this one to me. I hadn't had a turntable set up in my house since like late 1989 when I moved into a house I'd purchased. Never bothered to set up any kind of music reproduction system at all until like '92 - '93 as we wanted to play CD's for the kids as they were growing up.

My oldest daughter was born in '91... she'd never heard vinyl anything in my house - ever. There were records I had from when I was a kid... they were stored on the 3rd floor of the house where my home office was... 2 floors away from the nearest possible reproduction system [that still didn't have a turntable].

Fast forward to 2006. I'm walking past the kid's room and hear some Zappa playing. I go into her room to try to figure out what's going on... and what do I see? A turntable with a bunch of my albums. I also saw a pretty decent set of KEF speakers I wasn't using... along with a stereo McIntosh amp I hadn't been using... and a custom built Alactronics phono pre-amp I hadn't seen since we moved into the house in '89.

The kid was listening to vinyl records on a fairly decent reproduction system. When I asked her what was up she looked at me like I had 3 heads [and at the moment - I might have] and asked me why I hadn't set up the turntable and why I'd been listening to CD's. I explained you couldn't listen to records in the car... and that the only CD's we'd ever played in the house were of music for her and her sister to listen to as kids. She knew I had a Victrola and listened to records on that... but that was only because I didn't really want any electronics in the way when I wanted to listen to music... blah, blah, blah.

The kid is almost 21 and she's a total vinyl junkie... so, my question to you is... exactly which part of her "youth" is she trying to recapture?

Peace

I'm in this same boat. I'm 24 and ever since I was about 18 or so I've been collecting vinyl.. some new albums from bands but there is a local flea market here and the owner was an old radio DJ. He has $1 45's and $5 LP's, all of them original pressings usually in awesome condition. I've picked up some pretty amazing albums from this guy, lots of CCR, Zeppelin, Vanilla Fudge, Cactus, Rare Earth, James Gang, Hendrix, the omnipresent Herb Alpert (haha), Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and Mountain to name a few. I seriously spent about $150 the first time I ever visited this place. Vinyl rules, but I still listen to WAV's and MP3's on my ipod..

[T'Mershi Duween]

Originally Posted by PRobb

That might be a bigger factor than the sonics. Vinyl changes the way you approach music. "Listen" becomes an active verb. If there's a piece of my youth I'd like to recapture, that's it. We used to listen to music. As in sit quietly and actually listen.
And I have to believe that knowing there were people who were going to listen closely affected the kind of music that was made.

Indeed.

It's sad that there's no value placed on albums (a collection of carefully sequenced songs) as an art form any more. The mp3 "single" replacing the album is really a regressive move back to bubblegum 45s played on crap portable record players. Except the "content" is even worse!

The "long player" record was the musical equivalent of novels. Some records contained just "songs" (short stories) while others where actually sonic journeys that justified the form and medium. That's why I still think it's best to limit an album length to less that 60 minutes broken into two sections (or more) with flow, dynamics and movement and arcs. Of course there was the double album when you wanted to get really conceptually heavy!

As a child growing up in the 70's I really miss the record stores that were bustling with people! The smell of incense, the black light posters, head shop dope fiend devices in the back, yummy girls in halter tops and hot pants with candy flavored lip gloss (see Almost Famous for the kind of girls I'm talking about) flipping through racks of vinyl, people standing in line to get tickets to the next Thin Lizzy or Black Sabbath show. It was a hub of social activity that was much more exciting than downloading music at home or buying stuff off Amazon (I do actually love that though) .

And listening parties! More respect was paid to (all genres) music generally, more adulation for musical achievements and originality. This encouraged other aspiring bands and artists to bring the A game and try to blow your mind or rock your ass with something new and fresh. Music really did seem to be progressing and evolving with the times. Now it seems stuck in stasis. Only aping some of the trappings of that past glory. More about fame and getting paid and celebrity crap. The average 70's teen would laugh at garbage like American Idol thinking it being as cheesy and as square and mainstream as Lawrence Welk or Steve and Edie was in their day.

[theblue1]

Happier times.

I saw Bob Fripp do a Frippertronics instore lecture and performance at Tower on Sunset Strip in 1980. I rode my motorcycle up from Long Beach after work and the store was already crowded. I had to perch on the narrow edge of a plywood record bin, holding onto a ceiling support column in order to see Fripp and his two Revoxes up by the makeshift stage area. I kept expecting to have someone come and ask me to get down but they never did. A great store. RIP, Tower Records.

[Granny Gremlin]

Originally Posted by theblue1

I bought a high end automatic turntable in high school and never looked back.

Some would argue that a (full) auto TT is, by defenition, not high end.

(totally BTW).

Originally Posted by Fletcher

The kid is almost 21 and she's a total vinyl junkie... so, my question to you is... exactly which part of her "youth" is she trying to recapture?

Peace

The young hipsters over-romanticising the past fantasy part

(again soooooo ; I'm only 33 never grew up with vinyl myself but it's the only medium I buy nowadays.... sometimes a cassette from an indie band.... and yeah, I like the way those sound too, and totally admit that that is at least in part nostalgia).

[davidperetz]

i find it hard to believe that anyone sitting in front of a semi decent system will chose CD's or far worse - MP3 over vinyl. there are plenty of issues you can argue about in audio world, but ill risk my bet that in a double or triple blind test, at least 90 percent of common listeners will pick the black vinyl on any silver disc. i'ts people who never heard or simply forgot what good vinyl sounds like that are still arguing about that. just get yourself in front of a player, sit back and enjoy music as it was always supposed to be a little noisy and cracklin but so alive and sensual, it's magic.

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by Granny Gremlin

Some would argue that a (full) auto TT is, by defenition, not high end.

(totally BTW).

[...]

I was hoping by my semantic construction to suggest that it was, at the time, one of the most expensive fully autos you could buy. Not that it was actually any good.

It was my profoundly disappointing clue-in to the reality of the twighlight of British manufacturing. I'd grown up lusting after British sports cars -- my old man had the first MG Type A in southern California and I had fevered dreams about gleaming red XK-E's that I still haven't completely shaken -- but my Lab 80 and later expriences with my friends' Brit sports cars in the 70s put the last nail in that coffin of dreams.

After that, I had a couple Duals that were wonderful 'tables for the money. The only automation they had was auto-shut off. Definitely not high end in the world of manual turntables, of course, but solid, dependable, precision machines.

Now, I do have an audiophile pal with a pretty high end 'table. About $7K used (closer to $10K new). It's pretty cool looking, I have to say. But, while well-designed elliptical styli can get you up over some of the dirt or wear in the bottom of the groove, no table/arm/cartridge can protect against problem media. I was at his crib one day when he pulled out a brand new, 180 gram Japanese pressing that had a distinct scratch that put a pop in about 3 revolutions of the disk. I dunno if he sent it back or not. I hope he did because he usually pays $30 to $35 a disk, I think.

[rolo]

1. If you have a PROPER playback system... good stuff, the sound IS amazing.
I have SACD and DVDA players and I still prefer records... and I am not being nostalgic.

2. Take you head out of the audio fidelity thing for a sec and look at this P.O.V. There is a big vinyl comeback... BECAUSE of the sound of that medium... including the imperfections of vinyl... call it Vibe... heck call it what it is... DYNAMICS! AND there are actually people out there that enjoy vinyl because you are pretty much forced to hear at least one complete side of music without the ability to fast forward. There ARE listeners that would like to enjoy the complete art form created by an.... ARTIST as the artist intended. wow what a notion, huh? You place a record on the table. Set the needle on the vinyl... go sit your ass down and submit to the artist you are listening to WITHOUT your A.D.D. kicking in... listening to 45 seconds of an mp3, then only to forward it to the next artist... listen to 1min of that and so on.

3. The most utilized form of media is MP3 or some variation there of. If you honestly think that MP3's sound better then records, you need to get your hearing checked. Vinyl sales are getting better and better. Indie artists (like myself) are selling vinyl on their sites and get this... MAKING MORE MONEY than selling a cd or a digital download.

4. From an artist's view point... If your album sells via digital download, you'll be lucky to get 4-5 dollars on your end and thats IF the person buying buys your WHOLE album. You may only get a buck if they only buy a few songs. It costs me $7-8 bucks to press a record and thats 180 gram good stuff, with full color on jacket and insert. My records sell for $20 to $25. after the distribution costs and press costs, i am getting $8 to 14 profit. MORE if i sell directly on my site. That's a lot more than cd's and tons more than digital downloads.

5. I spend $100 - $200 on records every month. I cant remember the last time I bought a CD and only did a download thing once last year because the artist only had that form of delivery available.

Life is too short to listen to shi%%y mp3's and Big Biz gave HI FI a shot with DVDa and SACD... the only thing left for me and thousands and thousands of others IS vinyl.

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by davidperetz

i find it hard to believe that anyone sitting in front of a semi decent system will chose CD's or far worse - MP3 over vinyl. there are plenty of issues you can argue about in audio world, but ill risk my bet that in a double or triple blind test, at least 90 percent of common listeners will pick the black vinyl on any silver disc. i'ts people who never heard or simply forgot what good vinyl sounds like that are still arguing about that. just get yourself in front of a player, sit back and enjoy music as it was always supposed to be a little noisy and cracklin but so alive and sensual, it's magic.

[bold added]

You know, I get so sick of that tired claim.

I have around 1200 LPs and 600 CDs and I had my turntable in my old studio (with speakers rated +/- 2 DB from 38-20k Hz), where I basically spent most all of my time, anyhow, and when I had a choice, I picked the CD most every time, with the exception of a couple of albums that had been remastered poorly.

I had been extremely skeptical about digital audio and resisted the move to CDs until '84-'85. You can bet I did my share of comparisons after I started moving into the digital world. Why pay more to buy a CD if it sounded worse, eh? That was not in my game plan.

Nothing has changed my mind. Not listening on my own rig. Not listening to my audiophile pal's $7K turntable through the rest of his ~$40K stereo (which, I have to say, sounds pretty good whatever he puts on).

[PRobb]

Originally Posted by rolo

AND there are actually people out there that enjoy vinyl because you are pretty much forced to hear at least one complete side of music without the ability to fast forward. There ARE listeners that would like to enjoy the complete art form created by an.... ARTIST as the artist intended. wow what a notion, huh? You place a record on the table. Set the needle on the vinyl... go sit your ass down and submit to the artist you are listening to WITHOUT your A.D.D. kicking in... listening to 45 seconds of an mp3, then only to forward it to the next artist... listen to 1min of that and so on.

I still say that's at least as important as the sonics. The LP changes the way you approach listening to music.
20 minutes programmed the way the artist intended the songs to be presented.
Plus the physical experience of taking it out of the sleeve, (hopefully) cleaning it, and then placing the needle. It all draws you in.
The CD is structured to function as audio wallpaper by comparison.

[JP11]

You don't have to have lived in a time to have nostalgia for it..."Midnight In Paris" anyone...

[Granny Gremlin]

I dunno what'chall talkin 'boot - I skip tracks on vinyl LPs all the time

[vernier]

If its recent vinyl, then it was recorded and processed digitally, which makes it "not analog".
.
.

[kennybro]

Originally Posted by theblue1

[bold added]

You know, I get so sick of that tired claim.

I have around 1200 LPs and 600 CDs and I had my turntable in my old studio (with speakers rated +/- 2 DB from 38-20k Hz), where I basically spent most all of my time, anyhow, and when I had a choice, I picked the CD most every time, with the exception of a couple of albums that had been remastered poorly.

I had been extremely skeptical about digital audio and resisted the move to CDs until '84-'85. You can bet I did my share of comparisons after I started moving into the digital world. Why pay more to buy a CD if it sounded worse, eh? That was not in my game plan.

Nothing has changed my mind. Not listening on my own rig. Not listening to my audiophile pal's $7K turntable through the rest of his ~$40K stereo (which, I have to say, sounds pretty good whatever he puts on).

Agreed. It's not so much the sound of LP's that I enjoy. It's the experience of LP's. I honestly think that people who claim LP's somehow sound better (whatever the criteria for that is) than digital are hearing things; at least something I'm not hearing.
When ever critical audio accuracy and clarity is desired, uncompressed digital is the winner for me, hands down, even at 44/16.