Vinyl

 

im big into my prog these days, especially the 70s stuff. I am also a mere 26 years old. I have therefore never owned an old record player, only cds (gasp!). I was wanting peoples opinions on the difference in listening to these old records as they were intended compared to on CD, For example ive always wanted to hear Thick as a Brick on vinyl..... Is it worth my time getting a record player? or just stick to getting CDs? Thanks for any replies

 

Haha it seems to me that you have an elemant of both sides... as you cant bare to part with your more prized ones.... I can certainly see where you are coming from.

 

And of course the artwork is much bigger on the vinyl editions. I would buy the vinyl version of Yessongs for the Roger Dean cover alone (if I didn't already have it).

I find that vinyl, although it crackles with dust and scratches with age, has a fuller sound and often songs sound slightly faster on vinyl than they do on CD simply as a result of the technolgies being somewhat different from each other. Also, most of the vinyls will not be remasters, so you may find that in some cases the songs have extra parts within them that have been removed or changed at a later date. For example I owned a copy of Ozzy Osbourne's Blizzard Of Ozz on CD and on vinyl, the sound of the guitar and effects put on it were pretty different on the vinyl and also, the rythym section is entirely different on the vinyl because (I discovered at a later date) that because of some kind of legal dispute between the band members, the drums and bass work was rerecorded with another bassist and drummer, thus only the unremastered recordings have the original work, which as a matter of fact, I liked it just as much as the remaster. maybe in some ways the original is even better because you have something a bit different from everone else! Another thing which vinyl has in its favour, is the detail in which one can view the album art. It is far clearer and the greater scale of the vinyl allows for its cover art to make a much more accentuated statement to those who view it than its digital counterpart does. To give another example, it is a very different experience for one who examines the great gatefold cover of Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon on vinyl with every detail of the songs and the album before you with the rainbow heart monitor motif running though the middle of the sleeve in comparison to one who gets the CD copy who reads the liner notes as they would a little book. The latter can still have you engrossed, but it simply does not have the same impact on the viewer. Vinyl also can have some unexpected tidbits of album art waiting for you on the inner sleeve, the thin paper sleeve inside the album cover. I have noticed this alternative placement of art and/ or liner notes to be the case with some of my Def Leppard, Van Halen and Pearl Jam vinyls, just to name a few bands who have done this. And let's not forget picture discs and coloured vinyl specials, they are wonderful additions to the cabinet of any record collector. I say that it is always worth having a vinyl player in the home of any dedicated music fan and I hope this helps you make your decision.