Vinyl

Rottenhat wrote: My vinyls was in the cellar when a terrible accident happened. A freak of nature  flooded (the cellar). And every god forsaken vinyl I stored in the crllar smelled of old mold thereafter.. I took this a sign from God to get rid of those horrible pieces of plastic. And as time went by i somehow managed to fool the old drunken b*****ds at my local pub to take care of the problem. Now all my vinyls are in the caring hands of old long-haired stoners. The end.

My whole house got flooded and a big chunk of my vinyls went underwater.  Apparently they were salvageable.  One of my bosses expressed an interest in them and I let him have them and salvage them.  The covers, which I find more valuable than the discs, were of course ruined.  He hasn't played back any yet, but most of them were pristine.  I played most of them once to make a cassette copy to preserve them from the inevitable needle degradation and mind you I had a top of the line Dual turntable.  Most had been replaced by CDs and I am rather happy with that format.  I've also become a big fan of the "MP3" or as I prefer to refer to it the digital music files.  Having grown up with LPs and 45s I have no particular love for vinyl other than the cover art.  Whatever most vinylphiles hear in the playback I don't.  More power to you though and I wish I could have got my act together to sell the damaged ones before disaster struck.  In any event, I do have a top shelf of keepers and there are a few that I might offer up for sale at some point.


Edited by Slartibartfast - March 11 2010 at 13:19

^ and that's just what you hear when playing CDs or MP3s. But what vinyl freaks also get to hear is crackles, pops, background noise and a variety of distortions.

^ Actually, all vinyl sounds crackly unless you clean it with special devises that cost an arm and a leg. Even new vinyl, which I buy from time to time, sounds like the musicians recorded in the middle of an open snow storm.

Mr ProgFreak wrote: himtroy wrote: Yeah and we get to hear dynamics and a fuller low end too.  I think you're speaking of people listening to vinyl which is in bad shape. When you get down to technical specifications you'll see that vinyl has a much lower dynamic range than CD ...

The idea of "musical" is just stupidly subjective anyway.
The reason why a lot of "digital" (or rather, more accurately, In The Box) mixes sound bad is because of poor gain staging, which results in that squashed, smushed together sound.
People that have a good handle on gain staging can make ITB mixes sound just as big and open as analog mixing.

Mr ProgFreak wrote: himtroy wrote: Yeah and we get to hear dynamics and a fuller low end too.  I think you're speaking of people listening to vinyl which is in bad shape. When you get down to technical specifications you'll see that vinyl has a much lower dynamic range than CD ... this was one of the reasons why CDs were introduced. And a "fuller low end" ... actually vinyl is very poor at recording loud low frequencies, which is why these are artificially reduced for the pressing and then put back in (boosted) during playback. And no, even a pristine vinyl disc will suffer from the problems that I described. Maybe less pops and crackles than a worn disc, but they're there ... and the background noise and distortions are simply part of the design. The background noise is due to the poor dynamic range (turn up the volume on your favorite disc and tell me you don't hear it), the distortions are due to the fact that you're listening to sound printed on a plastic disc circling at comparatively low speed and with poor precision. Good record players can improve on these problems, but they can never completely remove them. And guess what: None of that is ever a problem with digital recordings.

Edited by himtroy - March 11 2010 at 11:20

Assuming you're joking....other wise your oblivious

Certif1ed wrote: Slartibartfast wrote:  Whatever most vinylphiles hear in the playback I don't.    It's called music.

Say no more.  Let  the endless debate continue.  It might surprise to you to know that you can also hear music with CDs and MP3s.

Certif1ed wrote: himtroy wrote: Wow, people keep bringing up the range of the format.  I know that CD's are superior to Vinyl in every way technically.  The mixes that make it onto those CDs however, aren't.  Compression and modern recording crushes the fullness of the low range and the dynamics.     I hate to be the one that's defending digital, I really do - but those mixes are the same ones that go onto modern vinyl (which, it has to be said, despite the "180g" and "half speed mastering" claims do tend to sound horrible compared to their 1960s-70s counterparts. One of the few exceptions was the excellent Akarma range of re-issues, which seem to have caught on and spiralled in value recently, more's the pity).   Metallica's "Death Magnetic" is the saddest story of anything ever committed to this noble media.   The vinyl version is WORSE than the CD.   I'm guessing that this is because the same mix was used, but the engineers then compressed the last remaining gasps of life out of it at the cutting lathe.   The BEST version of Death Magnetic is the one used in the Guitar Hero computer game - compared to the CD, it truly kicks the proverbial anatomical area.   If you like that sort of thing, of course...

elder08 wrote: I'm only fourteen and enjoy vinyl more than cd's and the only way i can distinguish the vinyl sounding better is while listening to cd's you can here a slight digital sound that does not appear on vinyl