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

 

I say get the CD ... I'm on the way to about 1200 LP's from 2500 originally ... and I am not a collector ... I only have what I love ... end of story.

 

To my way of seeing it, a lot of these gimmicks, are just commercial efforts and if you are a music lover, the gimmicks are not needed and you can get away from them.

 

That's the way I think though ... it's almost like saying that the music is not worth collecting if it had a Hignosis cover, and I can tell you that was not true at all ... from the strangest to the weirdest ... it was all tops ... and some stuff was magnificent and then some ... but to me this was what "art" was about and "expression" ... and these days, in a board like this, there are too many commerical pundits that love to go around saying something is not this or that ... because it is not listed in the top ten, or because it does not have the mandatory 74/69 time required on the verse after the chorus that makes up someone's definiton ... or the one I just saw on Bass Player magazine, just to give you an idea how stupid it can get .... "the minor chords that define jazz ... " like minor chords have not been a part of any other music ... EVER ... I doubt that person has ever heard anything else in his life! See?

 

I say you go for the music ... and unlike the LP's ... CD's are getting a lot more material out there than LP's ever did ... though in the beginning rock and long cuts and experimental musics still had a place for it to come out ... today they do, by themselves and there is no promotion to help you find it ... and in many ways you do not want someone to tell you any of this ... music is best when you can come to it on your own ... an dlearn it by yourself.

 

It's about you ... so if you want to "collect" ... fine ... hope you make enough money! ... but most of those people out there are not about the music and they never were. And there are a couple of things that someone has offered me big money for ... but man ... I guess that I am a stupid sentimental fool ... the music in those is so special to me ... I can't even say yes to getting rid of the LP.

 

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.

If you are buying old records check the surface for scratches ( Light ones will affect the sound and not jump) Deep ones the record is rooted. Make sure that they are level and have not warped and one other tip if the record is old there will most likely be grime in the grooves so a gentle wash through warm soapy water ( not hot you will damage it) with a sponge and get that grime out. Rinse them off and on the dishrack too dry. Sound quality will improve.

 

As for the sound differences I really do not care as cds are just as good these days and are a hell of a lot easier to maintain.

 

One other mention with new vinyl is often the same mix that is put on the cd is the same that goes on the vinyl recorded or scrubbed up digitally. Steve Barrow who ran the Blood and Fire reggae label was amazed at the complaints he had when releases were not vinyl and said it was the same master used for both.

A lot of that stuff was taken off singles that had to be cleaned up,

 

 With the original old vinyl releases done in Analogue there is a difference.

 

You will need a record cleaning cloth and don't forget a soft tootbrush as you will get fluff building up around the needle (stylus) and that for me is the easiest way to get it off with out handling the needle. Always get diamond needles not sapphire as they only last about a 1/3 of a diamond.

 

And don't forget to keep them out of the sun and never leave them in cars they warp. The old trick of placing the record between two sheets of glass to straighten it if has warped does not work

 

Have fun  I still like singles

in a way you almost make me wish the internet was never invented.... When I first discovered TAAB, Selling England or Close to the Edge for example, It was like a new world of greatness, and i was instantly able to start my searches on the internet for other albums of the same era...It was so easy...but somehow too easy if you know what i mean, if the internet wasnt there i think it would have been genuinely exciting to shop in old record stores and eventually come across things that id been hunting for, it certainly would have staggered my prizes!

 

Well this has been very insightful for me, lots of great input, and not only have i had advice about whether to acquire an old player, but also advice on how to select and maintain any records i may purchase! so a hearty thanks to everyone

 

Mike

Slarti, please tell me this is one of your  posts.  Because I'm not about to start rotating my 1000 LP's on any sort of regular basis.  F*ck, might as well get a bunch of hens and turn eggs in an incubator.  And plastic is plastic.  This means my CD's are also slowly, almost in geologic time, forming large puddles at the bottom.  I've got a Bachman Turner Overdrive album I haven't listened to in 20 years hanging about.  Let me verify. 

 

A friend of mine sells records for a lving on ebay and he invested in one of those vinyl cleaning machines. You appy a few drop of liquid, brush it in and allow it to rotate while is sucks all the rubbish out the grooves. I bought a copy of Living In the Past off ebay and the seller had really overatted the condition as it looked filthy. I put it on my mates machine and it came up looking almost new and played much better. Of course it wont work miracles and get rid of scratches.

 

I think they're around 3 -4 hundred quid for a pro one though so unless you're really serious about vinyl probably not worth the money.

 

For a first turntable, I'd recommend the Project Debut III USB - it's a proper turntable, but at a price that is extremely reasonable for what it is and does.

 

Purists wouldn't like it, as it has a built-in preamp - but this is a strength if the rest of your system is halfway modern, and lacks a phono input!

 

The other enormous strength is the USB bit - you plug it straight into your PC and create your own mp3s so you can listen to your vinyls on the go.

 

The biggest disadvantage with vinyl is storage. The other is tracking down particularly rare recordings - it's much easier to find CDs, and easier still to find mp3s of really hard to come by stuff.

 

The advantages are;

 

1) Sounds much better than any other music format except reel-to-reel. No arguments please.

2) Nice, BIG artwork.

3) It's still possible to buy a piece of vinyl in a second-hand shop and discover it's worth 100x what you paid for it - although I agree, with the Internet, people have wised up, and it's much harder than it used to be - but still, collecting vinyl can fund itself, in theory.

 

In practice, I find I tend to hang on to the really precious slabs...

 

 

When you first play a well-mastered Led Zep II on your turntable (and there are loads of different masterings out there, so beware!), you suddenly realise what heavy rock music is supposed to sound like - and Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" does the same thing for Prog.

 

 

Vinyl is enjoying a resurgence as many find the quality of the sound vastly superior to digital technology, but steer well clear of those USB turntables, they are rubbish - a good quality vinyl system of used gear  could be easily put together  for around 400 GBP, and the results will astound you.  check out this site...

 

http://www.vinylengine.com/phpBB2/index.php - http://www.vinylengine.com/phpBB2/index.php

 

 

Sounds good to me. Project make some good turntables.

 

d.o.k wrote: At such prices no one can expect to have the full vinyl quality.

 

"Full" vinyl quality?

 

It sounds pretty close to me

 

d.o.k wrote: Just one thought : does anyone has already checked if these new turntables were at least playing both sound channels at the volume ?

 

Yup - just checked. AOK.

 

d.o.k wrote: To experience the real superiority of vinyl over you have to have quite an expensive stereo system.

 

It is a myth to say you only get what you pay for.

 

A 2nd hand Marshall JCM 800 costing £500 sounds a hundred times better than a brand new boutique amp costing 10x that amount.

 

A 4th press Rubber Soul sounds as good as the first press, yet you can get one for £20 instead of £200.

 

HiFi buffs are always keen to say that their expensive kit is the only kit worth listening to - but in my experience, that simply isn't true.

 

d.o.k wrote:  If you do not, enjoy cds! They're now cheap (how many wonderfull classics for 5 or 7 €/$ on the internet?), easy to store, quality is constant over time, and sound quality is of course excellent.

 

Have to agree to disagree - I don't like the sound of CDs, which is why I prefer vinyl...

 

 

d.o.k wrote: Do I have to mention that by now, nobody has been able to prove that those dvd audio and SACD were providing better sound quality than cd ?

 

Um... I don't think anybody needs to try to prove it - both formats store more data and are therefore more accurate than CD. Fact.

 

IF better sound quality = more accurate reproduction, THEN DVD > SACD > CD > vinyl.

 

 

But even on my cheap steam-powered system, vinyl sounds better - and my wife agrees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mixing and Mastering are the direct responsables of the quality of the sound (if you have a decent recording, of course). The only way vynils sounds better than the digital storage is because there's not filtrations and modification that is what digital process do and the original mix is free of less subjective interference... but what "sounds better" is very subjective... I like it to be a little raw and with the bass a little low, but of course, it doesn't apply to any style and it depends of the producer ears mostly...

 

I'm not fond of mp3, except for the portability aspect - I've never heard a good one!

 

My turntable is a Project - a company that know a thing about record decks, even budget ones - I haven't heard the other USB turntables - who knows, maybe mystic fred is right about them, but he's dead wrong about the Project.

 

It sounds very good into a regular HiFi.

 

The other way it sounds pretty good is when you make a 24-bit WAV recording of a vinyl - I've done a test on an audiophile friend of mine at work - maybe you remember? In a "blind" test, he preferred the 24-bit WAV of the vinyl over the 16 bit version, which in turn he preferred to the CD.

 

I do not honestly know why vinyl sounds better to my ears and to those of other vinylholics (although there are some good arguments out there) - I can see that most scientific data says it should be otherwise and I understand the data. What I also understand is what my ears tell me, which is the opposite!

 

 

mystic fred wrote: ...steer well clear of those USB turntables, they are rubbish - a good quality vinyl system of used gear  could be easily put together  for around 400 GBP, and the results will astound you.  check out this site...

 

 

Actually, my turntable does not sound "rubbish" to me, and I consider my system to be of a good quality overall. The results often astound me.

 

Have you heard every USB turntable and done a side-by-side comparison with a non-USB version?

 

Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ But actually a lot of processing is done when mastering for vinyl ... dampening low frequencies and boosting them during playback, for example. I think that merely digitizing the mix is a lot less intrusive - and ultimately more audiophile in the true sense of the word.

 

halabalushindigus wrote: right but you still don't get the original audio boost from the pressing because the digital remaster is secondary, no?

 

Mastering for an analogue lathe in order to cut a vinyl disc is a completely different process to a fully digital system.

 

You have to be really careful with bass frequencies especially, or you can render the walls of the vinyl so thin that the needle goes through.

 

This is second-hand, vaguely remembered information - there's info on some of the better audiophile sites, like Steve Hoffman's, but I don't have time to trawl it right now!

 

A digital remaster is just that - a remaster of a source. If you're lucky, the source is the original master tape. If not, it could be a 2nd generation, in which case it'll definitely sound lacking, no matter how good the digital process, or worse, mastered from a vinyl copy.

 

No matter how accurate the digital process is, you can't put back stuff that isn't there, and to my ears, most digital remasters have too much gain to compensate for the additional compression. The sound is brittle and lacking in dynamic and tone...

 

But I'll freely admit that could just be me having a completely irrational bias for vinyl.

 

 

I don't consider myself an audiophile - I'm a musician!

 

I like good sounding music, and obviously will choose what I think is best to listen to.

 

At the end of the day, it's the MUSIC that matters, not the reproduction method, mixing, mastering, playing skill or any other nonsense.

 

Good music speaks for itself, and a performer that finds the soul of the music will always delight, no matter how crappy the sound system.

 

I've heard some awesome music on the old wax cylinder and shellac (pre-vinyl) formats - but they're not exatcly hi-fidelity!

 

I've also heard Master tapes (the original 24-track reels, which you CANNOT improve, only modify) of such albums as Dark Side of the Moon, through a professional recording studio monitors - Yamaha NS-10 Nearfields and then ATC SCM 300s:

 

These are considered even by studio engineers to be http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?spkrfull&1268057828 - seriously good speakers .

 

The amps were Crown DC300s for the low end and Crown DC150s for the top end, with an EMC crossover.

 

Good kit, with an authoritative source.

 

  

Mr ProgFreak wrote:   All these problems are not something that the digital format is to blame for. CD, 24bit/96khz, SACD ... you can use these formats to store music that's perfect to audiophile ears. It's all choices made during the mixing/mastering stages that ruin these recordings for you. Hence my question above: Have you listened to recend SW high-def productions?

-------------
The important thing is not to stop questioning.

 

Certainly, in order to make the product compete with other products, a certain level of loudness must be achieved.

 

But don't forget that analog mastering used compression out of necessity because of the limitations of vinyl, and, since mastering is a process that takes many years, if not decades to perfect (I know - I've tried many, many times!), the average home recordist cannot expect to create a good master from a vinyl rip.

 

All you can hope for is a faithful digital reproduction, which will probably be a touch compressed, since out of necessity, you need to keep the levels down to keep the "spikes" - or compress it yourself. Ouch.

 

Clipping is obvious in a waveform opened in something like WavePad - you can see clearly the "shaved whiskers" as I like to call them, as the top of the wave form follows a bizzarre straight edge. This is most clearly seen with Metallica's "Death Magnetic".

 

Compare with my favourite CD remaster, Marillion's "Script for a Jester's Tear". Lots of mountain peaks and deep valleys, with "whiskers" a-plenty.

 

Not all digital recordings are victims of over compression and heavy handedness with the gain - studio engineers are aware of the issues, and I would think that most would prefer to create a nice product than subvert their art and create something as horrible sounding as "Death Magnetic"...

 

Of course, money talks.

 

My money goes to vinyl 98 times out of 100.

 

Looks like someone needs to listen to some original mixes of albums.  Lets take a generic choice of DSOTM, the dynamics and fullness of the original are destroyed by the remastering process.  I highly doubt anyone is going through all the trouble of finding original mixes just to be "cool and trendy".  

Some records, like Converge's "Jane Doe" for instance, in fact benefit from being severely smashed and clipping because it only heightens the artistic intent of the artist.

I'd like to hear that explained, because I fail to see how clipping could ever benefit anything.

 

The reality is that mixes can lose accuracy, if they're "badly" remastered - remember that not every music-buying person cares about accuracy, and prefers dynamics so they don't have to turn up the quiet bits and turn down the loud bits.

 

Then there's the "loudness war", which has been a strong side-topic these last 3 pages, and the FACT that over-compression reduces dynamic range, so no matter how accurate the potential of the medium, many modern CDs lose huge amounts of music (ie, the dynamic, and who knows what else under the distortion caused by over-enthusiasm with the gain which leads to excessive digital clipping) in order to be "1 louder".

 

Clipping = lost data. Fact.

 

The bottom line is that your ears will tell you which is actually best.

 

All science can do is prove related facts, not that one is better than the other. This is an important distinction.

 

 

 

 

vinyl is not a format, it is a religion 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.abc.net.au/iview/?WT.mc_id=CORP_srch_iview&gclid=CJOYv5Pai6ACFYQtpAodi1XWeQ#/panel - http://www.abc.net.au/iview/?WT.mc_id=CORP_srch_iview&gclid=CJOYv5Pai6ACFYQtpAodi1XWeQ#/panel

 

 

There's no easy answer to that one - and one man's "Very Good" is another's "Scratched".

 

That said, I've bought "VG+" albums which have turned out to be "NM".

 

Albums like Relayer exist in vast quantities - many collectors end up with multiple copies, in their pursuit for the nearest-to-perfect one.

 

Also, the only way you can be sure it's the "original pressing" is to examine the little stamp marks in the vinyl - and understand the codes. Then you need to examine the sleeve - quite often people seem to swap a battered original sleeve for a tidier looking later one.

 

Depends on how fastidious you are as a collector, and what you want from the piece you're buying.

 

You should be able to get *a* copy of Relayer for very little money, given how many there are.

 

The most a Near Mint UK First press tends to go for is around £40-50, and the Japanese presses don't go any higher.

 

If you want a first UK press, look out for the textured sleeve, A1/B1 matrix endings on the codes, and the names "Porky" and "Pecko" in the dead wax in the center of the album.

 

Also, to verify that it's hardly been played (and hasn't been professionally cleaned so it only looks like it!), check the area around the spindle hole for little "spider" marks, caused by misaligning the album when putting it on the deck.

 

The more there are, the more the album's been played - this area marks really easily, so it's doubtful that there won't be any. If there aren't, and there is also surplus vinyl inside the hole, then congratulations! You really have found a true "Near Mint" copy, which will play really well.

Vibrationbaby wrote: Searching for that elusive album by that obscure group in record shops, flea markets, junk sales ( although this is a thing of the past with the age of the internet  )  There is a mystique about vinyl. Vinyl albums are more personal I find.