70s prog on vinyl

Dick Heath wrote: Tapfret wrote: I re-record all of my CD's with pops, hisses, scratches and compress the dynamic range before I convert to MP3 so they all sound more like vinyl. Forgive me asking, but why? They didn't recorded it like that, they wouldn't have played it live like that. As written elsewhere, compression is means of fitting more than 15 minutes per side, in the form of a mechanical analogue signal - i.e. the groove on each side of the LP. The sub-30 minute, early  Beach Boys LPs weren't normally compressed since there was little  need. The 12" singles tended to have the best audio range if a tune was about  4 minutes or less - unless compressed for radio broadcast purposes (e.g. for stations with AM  or poor quality FM).

jammun wrote: It occurs to me I may have been a bit harsh with regard to the good points of vinyl.  For my collection, at least, yes the sound quality is no longer what it once was, though it remains, for lack of a better term, more "organic."

This is a good word to define the analog sound: it has flesh, mateer, opposed to the thin, edgy numeric sound.

Edited by oliverstoned - August 27 2007 at 15:51

I agree with your last sentence.

CDs technically have a better dynamic range than vinyls, but they often tend to be overcompressed, especially a lot of remasters. That's not really a prog-problem though, as prog albums tend to be mastered and remastered by non-senseless engineers.

The ageless discussion ... for more than 20 years people have argued about this and the battle continues. To those of you who are sure that vinyl is superior to CD: Why then is CD today the standard format even for those genres which are far from mainstream and where most of the fans (customers) are audiophiles ... such as classical and jazz? If vinyl was so obviously superior to CD none of them would have purchased CDs ... but they did.

I don't think that vinyl is in any way superior to CD ... on the contrary, it's inferior in almost every way, you just have to look at the technical specifications. But of course this does not imply that CDs sound better than vinyls ... as many others have said it really depends on the mix/mastering.

Last year I bought a record player and started to acquire records ... some used ones from the 70s, but also many new ones with recent music - yes, many artists/labels still release vinyls, especially in the prog/metal/independent genres. I must say that the records really sound differently compared to the CD - but I wouldn't necessarily say that they sound warmer or less "numerical".


Edited by MikeEnRegalia - September 09 2007 at 02:14

^ the sound quality of vinyls also heavily depends on how often they were played ... even with a perfectly aligned stylus and proper care/handling a vinyl disc degrades each time you listen to it. 

I'm only saying that with vinyl you have to be careful because each disc can sound differently, while with CDs they all sound 100% identical (unless they're different re-masters of course).

^ another serious disadvantage of vinyl - pitch fluctuations. Apparently you can reduce them by using very expensive record players, but you can never completely remove them. It's particularly annoying with Post Rock or Ambient/Electronic albums, which usually feature long drawn chords. 

If you listen to a pre 1973/4 vinyl pressing,9 times out of 10 it will sound better than anything pressed or re-pressed during and after those/that year(s).

The 'oil crisis' hoiked up the price of oil and vinyl albums and record sleeves became 'sub-standard' because of this.The pressing plants pressed thinner,lighter albums and singles and the sleeves were either printed on thinner cardboard, double sleeves became single sleeves and 45's came in either plain white sleeves or in some sort of flimsy,plastic based material.

RCA tried to pass the pressings off as a new 'invention' called 'Dynaflex'. If you see a second-hand album with 'Dynaflex' printed on the label,think twice about buying it.The quality was usually poor.

Albums became practically like wobble boards and could almost be bent in half.Pink Floyd's WYWH was released in the wake of the 'oil crisis' and,I believe, holds the record for the most returned record owing to it's skipping because of sub-standard materials/pressing.
Ironically,They didn't skimp on the materials sleeve-wise for WYWH.It came in a black plastic outer-sleeve and inside,other than the inner-sleeve,they repeated the DSoTM packaging by including posters and stickers/decals.
EMI must have had their own oil fields just for album packaging. Shame that they couldn't have been more generous when it came to the thing that mattered;the record it'self.

Edited by Man Erg - September 09 2007 at 03:16

Atavachron wrote: ^ and it only got worse by the early 80s when LPs had become practically floppy-- even bootlegs were better pressed

Absolutely.RCA's green label releases were a joke.You almost had to put something like a steam iron onto the the player arm to stop it from 'jumping'.