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Post by pinkie on Jan 10, 2015 10:58:48 GMT
As for record sales and SQ - The industry is beginning to recognise there is a substantial niche market that plays vinyl on grounds of superior sound. Are you able to offer any evidence for this, or is that just a romantic ideal that appeals to your preferences? The marketing explanation I offered, accords not just with my understanding of how business generally, and the leisure / entertainment industry specifically work, but also reported press comment. There are posts on this forum about vinyl being purchased to put on the wall unplayed. I cannot think of one person I know who is NOW buying vinyl for HiFi reasons (my wife would be the single exception). I could name 25 people buying vinyl today who weren't 3 years ago, but none of them for hifi reasons. Regarding sound quality - I think the issues are less clear cut. The real divide is analogue and digital. Real music is analogue - an unsampled constantly varying state . (I realise I am caught by the definition I was going to give of analogue as a copy. An analogue is a copy of something). The issue with CD's was they were not analogue. Not that they were not vinyl. Reel to reel studio master tape is not vinyl, but is analogue and has "that sound" as far as my interests and tastes are concerned. Or are we suggesting vinyl has magic oofle dust properties that enable it to surpass master tape? Given that most of the new vinyl is an analogue medium for replaying digitally recorded material - the issue is no longer a simple analogue / digital one. The recent Dave Migden CD - made with analogue techniques has got me thinking about this a lot. Whilst I only have a toe in the water of "state of the art" digital at the moment, at this stage in the game, I have a preference for vinyl - mostly. Is that a "taste", a "colouration" rather than a recognition of accuracy and realism? I think it takes us back to the NLP thread. If both vinyl and cd are analogue/digital hybrids why would I prefer vinyl (and I definitely do). Both have a conversion process to do (RIAA for vinyl, numbers into voltage levels for digital) and both are likely to have imperfections (and digital is not perfect, or all cd players would sound the same - the conversions are done better or worse). Maybe that "vinyl sound" is due to its imperfections being greater at the frequency extremes. Vinyl does a much better job, at least potentially, of being a perfectly accurate copy in the middle. And that 400-1500Hz band which is the easy bit for vinyl is the bit we (or some of us) are most tuned to. Its where vocals , violins and guitars are. Vinyl is probably much more compromised (at least potentially) by conversion inaccuracy in the bass - but whilst bass clues are part of music, they are not that primary focus (at least for me) that the mid-range area is. I think that is why / where electrostatic speakers excel. Also speakers like the Lowthers with no crossover in that region. Puzzling - but fun
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Post by MartinT on Jan 10, 2015 12:26:06 GMT
One of my reference musics is Van Morrisons Moondance. Mine, too! In fact, I forgot to put it in my reference evaluation music list, which I shall do pronto.
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Post by MartinT on Jan 10, 2015 12:31:35 GMT
A few months ago I visited Tony C and was totally blown away around how far he pushed digital with his server it was so musical The very fact that TonyC is able to produce such a level of performance from existing digital files offers us great hope. I do think vinyl will continue for some time but suspect that it exists as much through faddish 'coolness' as well as from us serious audiophiles buying them.
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Post by John on Jan 10, 2015 13:14:13 GMT
I do not understand why anyone would buy vinyl simply because it is cool (I guess each to their own). I totally get those that love the sound however.
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Post by MikeMusic on Jan 10, 2015 13:35:57 GMT
I confess to buying vinyl for 2 reasons
1. I can't get some anywhere else 2. It sounds better than the alternatives, as of 10/01/2015 anyway
It was odd to start buying CDs and it will probably be odd to buy files to store
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2015 13:40:17 GMT
As for record sales and SQ - The industry is beginning to recognise there is a substantial niche market that plays vinyl on grounds of superior sound. Are you able to offer any evidence for this, or is that just a romantic ideal that appeals to your preferences? The marketing explanation I offered, accords not just with my understanding of how business generally, and the leisure / entertainment industry specifically work, but also reported press comment. There are posts on this forum about vinyl being purchased to put on the wall unplayed. I cannot think of one person I know who is NOW buying vinyl for HiFi reasons (my wife would be the single exception). I could name 25 people buying vinyl today who weren't 3 years ago, but none of them for hifi reasons. Why would Universal/Apple go to the trouble of producing AAA mono Beatles if there wasn't a vinyl playing (not necessarily audiophile) market out there that appreciates the difference a good Lp mastering makes? They got a lot of flak for doing digitally sourced LPs and I am guessing the Steve Hoffman forum played a part in this. I actually can't understand why anyone would spend £20-30 on a vinyl Lp just to hang it on the wall and there is little point in paying for expensive pressings if using a 'toy' record player. Of course there is likely a significant number of buyers doing this but they won't be buying vinyl in 3 years time so if record companies are genuine about releasing vinyl long term they need to be aiming at the more serious completist collectors and audiophiles. They cannot afford to be frivolous in vinyl manufacture as they have to book pressing capacity on block a year or more in advance at the present. While there are capacity issues this ensures they are committed to pressing vinyl editions going forward and cannot rely on the coolness factor if they are going to sell this output in the medium to long term. If coolness was perceived as the only vinyl market they would be throwing out exclusively coloured vinyl and picture discs from dubious digital sources. This is clearly not the case to which you can add the output of the specialist audiophile labels such as Speakers Corner, Analogue Productions, and Mobile Fidelity.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2015 13:57:58 GMT
The quote in the Guardian article that I posted basically says that people like vinyl because of the sound. Sure, some people buy vinyl to put on the wall, and why not, it's a very cheap way of getting artwork. Maybe the record companies are all about money, but sound quality drives the spending power, at least I think it does. There are other reasons to buy vinyl - the tactile experience, the "collecting" side, the fact that it is much cooler than playing around with digital files :-).
The real question is will anyone make any new presses or, as others have said, if the "fad" goes cold and all of the current presses become unrepairable, will that be the end of new vinyl? I personally doubt it, and suspect that there is a large niche there that will need to be satisfied.
You can only take digital so far, it will never reach the level of a great vinyl setup IMO. It's like watches, the truly great watches are mechanical and always will be.
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Post by John on Jan 10, 2015 14:07:51 GMT
It interesting that different mediums can bring up such passions. I just love to hear music regardless of the format I am lucky to have a very good TT and whilst in my own system I still have a slight preference for analogue when funds allow I will get a dedicated server that is just stunning.
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Post by MikeMusic on Jan 10, 2015 15:49:39 GMT
If digital cannot overtake vinyl I'm happy.
I've spent too much to want to bin it all !
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Post by MartinT on Jan 10, 2015 19:10:04 GMT
No need, Mike. Whatever happens with digital, your vinyl collection will still sound fine in the future. And it was sounding mighty fine last night.
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Post by julesd68 on Jan 10, 2015 20:14:10 GMT
Are you able to offer any evidence for this, or is that just a romantic ideal that appeals to your preferences? The marketing explanation I offered, accords not just with my understanding of how business generally, and the leisure / entertainment industry specifically work, but also reported press comment. There are posts on this forum about vinyl being purchased to put on the wall unplayed. I cannot think of one person I know who is NOW buying vinyl for HiFi reasons (my wife would be the single exception). I could name 25 people buying vinyl today who weren't 3 years ago, but none of them for hifi reasons. Why would Universal/Apple go to the trouble of producing AAA mono Beatles if there wasn't a vinyl playing (not necessarily audiophile) market out there that appreciates the difference a good Lp mastering makes? They got a lot of flak for doing digitally sourced LPs and I am guessing the Steve Hoffman forum played a part in this. The shady side of this is that major labels (Universal included) are just cashing in on 'audiophiles' a lot of the time by releasing too much new vinyl that is ADD masquerading as analogue. I'm always suspicious when I see 'Sourced from the analogue tapes' on the cover, which often translates as 'digitally remastered'. Yes, they will use the original analogue tapes but chances are it will go straight into Pro Tools and then cut digitally. If it really was AAA they would let us know rather than using these 'euphemisms'. I'm not saying there can't be a place for ADD, but I just wish the major labels could be 100% transparent about this so we know what we're buying. With some of these releases you need to be Poireau to work out what's going on!
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2015 20:51:21 GMT
Why would Universal/Apple go to the trouble of producing AAA mono Beatles if there wasn't a vinyl playing (not necessarily audiophile) market out there that appreciates the difference a good Lp mastering makes? They got a lot of flak for doing digitally sourced LPs and I am guessing the Steve Hoffman forum played a part in this. The shady side of this is that major labels (Universal included) are just cashing in on 'audiophiles' a lot of the time by releasing too much new vinyl that is ADD masquerading as analogue. I'm always suspicious when I see 'Sourced from the analogue tapes' on the cover, which often translates as 'digitally remastered'. Yes, they will use the original analogue tapes but chances are it will go straight into Pro Tools and then cut digitally. If it really was AAA they would let us know rather than using these 'euphemisms'. I'm not saying there can't be a place for ADD, but I just wish the major labels could be 100% transparent about this so we know what we're buying. With some of these releases you need to be Poireau to work out what's going on! They are sort of transparent. You can work it out from the wording. If they are vague and don't give details of how a where mastered you are right to be suspicious. I can usually tell when I listen to the particular record. Having said that I have encountered Warner releases that are cut from a 24/192 transfer at Grundman that are pretty much on a par with the original all analogue release ( mid period Fleetwood Mac and Eagles box sets). A number of Back To Black releases are AAA incl Nick Drake, Fairport, R&L Thompson titles. To confuse matters it's certain titles rather than all albums from a particular artist. I always advise consulting postings made on the Steve Hoffman forum for comments on source and sound of most significant reissues - or just start a thread enquiring about a title you are interested in.
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