Is your Prog Collection too big?

Not big enough !!

I have around 1000 albums and still have a major compulsion to buy music, around 10 to 15 a month. There's so many gaps in my collection of old stuff and so much good new stuff I just love exploring. Space is an issue since I moved to a smaller place but there's always the garage.

Music edited on a computer has zero interest to me.  I like to feel the music in a more human way.. original.. not homogenized with preconceived plugins, digital filters and quantitizing of rhythm tracks.  The compressed digital formats are even worse to my ears.  CD's are horrible.. MP3's even worse. 

My collection is 100% vinyl.  I listen to every record I own from time to time.  My search for music is much more focused upon finding better copies or better pressings of the great stuff the real prog legends left behind for us to discover and enjoy. 

The golden age was very prolific, and there is a lifetime of stuff to listen too if you know what to look for and where to find it.

Most of the new prog I hear is either just rehashing of the old stuff, ideas and concepts.. or over produced computer manipulated garbage that dies on my ears faster than I can switch to a different recording.

I don't want to have to question the honesty of a recording.  Pre digital age I don't have too. 
Most all the modern vinyl releases have been simply dumped from Pro Tools onto the vinyl format.  That makes about as much sense as serving a frozen pizza at a 5 star restaurant. 

I prefer the age of quality over the age of convenience.  GPS to me stands for too lazy to learn celestial navigation and topography. 

Generation lazy followed by generation head down.

I have reduced my purchasing pace a lot, for several reasons, but I still buy a few selected albums a year, maybe between 15 to 30.

Excellent post there ,Surrealist.

Guldbamsen wrote: Isn't there meat in a carbon ara?

Nice macaw!

Surrealist wrote: Music edited on a computer has zero interest to me.  I like to feel the music in a more human way.. original.. not homogenized with preconceived plugins, digital filters and quantitizing of rhythm tracks.  The compressed digital formats are even worse to my ears.  CD's are horrible.. MP3's even worse.  My collection is 100% vinyl.  I listen to every record I own from time to time.  My search for music is much more focused upon finding better copies or better pressings of the great stuff the real prog legends left behind for us to discover and enjoy.  I prefer the age of quality over the age of convenience.  GPS to me stands for too lazy to learn celestial navigation and topography.  Generation lazy followed by generation head down.

I assume that your tongue is at least a little in your cheek? Do you travel by horse & carriage? Do you read by candlelight? Convenient inventions are just that, convenient, there's no need to take the hard road on a point of some backward looking principal.

I totally understand the love of vinyl and would probably be with you if I had the money & time to support that habit. But you don't have an ipod or walkman or any form of transportable music? That essentially mean you only listen to music where you have a turntable, that cuts out a huge chunk of the time I listen to music, in  the car, in the office, out of the house.

The convenience way outweighs the sound quality at least to me, but hell each to their own.

Edited by Nogbad_The_Bad - June 02 2013 at 11:54

This is a great topic!  I tend to be quite compulsive and obsessive about music; what I listen to, how I listen to it, what I own, what format, etc.  I remember in the 80s it was a toss up between cassettes and vinyl.  Then in the 90s it was cassettes or CDs.  Now its vinyl, CD or digital.  It's nuts.  I'm actually at a loss as to what the best format is.  I tried doing vinyl last month and gave up.  The impetus was the fact that lots of new prog and remasters are so loud and ear fatigue has gotten to be a problem.  The other thing was how to decide what to get on vinyl and what to get on CD or download. 

Surrealist wrote: Music edited on a computer has zero interest to me.  I like to feel the music in a more human way.. original.. not homogenized with preconceived plugins, digital filters and quantitizing of rhythm tracks.  The compressed digital formats are even worse to my ears.  CD's are horrible.. MP3's even worse.  My collection is 100% vinyl.  I listen to every record I own from time to time.  My search for music is much more focused upon finding better copies or better pressings of the great stuff the real prog legends left behind for us to discover and enjoy.  The golden age was very prolific, and there is a lifetime of stuff to listen too if you know what to look for and where to find it. Most of the new prog I hear is either just rehashing of the old stuff, ideas and concepts.. or over produced computer manipulated garbage that dies on my ears faster than I can switch to a different recording. I don't want to have to question the honesty of a recording.  Pre digital age I don't have too.  Most all the modern vinyl releases have been simply dumped from Pro Tools onto the vinyl format.  That makes about as much sense as serving a frozen pizza at a 5 star restaurant.  I prefer the age of quality over the age of convenience.  GPS to me stands for too lazy to learn celestial navigation and topography.  Generation lazy followed by generation head down.

In my case and I suspect with many other people as well, there is a certain aspect of it which loosely falls into the "addiction" category. If I am passionate about something, in this case Progressive Music, then I am compelled to explore it to the maximum degree possible and as with any art form or any other worthwhile human endeavor the wealth of great music yet to come is most likely endless so although I too feel the heat from years of collecting and a music library approaching 5000 albums, I just can't stop. What if I miss something? Digital music has proven to be a lifesaver as far as space concerns go and although I was once an avid audiophile who can no longer afford the luxury, I have found that with a good set of external speakers and an equalizer properly adjusted one can more or less come up with sound that's pretty decent though far from perfection. I'd much rather be able to say that I've seen a halfway decent reproduction of the Mona Lisa than to never have seen it at all. I do however see the other side of the "Quality" argument as well.