It's a pitty but I'm only 19 years old. But still I think (my experiance ist'n very big but I HAVE IT) vynil is more "romantic" and sound quality is more REAL. Sure, CD - more comfortable to use, less chances to brak it etc. BUT, we have to got a choice betwen this two formats, and now WE DO NOT HAVE A CHOICE, IMHO.

   Does anybody listen music on audio cassete? I'm joking. Persomally I dropt it a year and a half ago

I still collect Lps and the number grows every month. Since I never could give this format up, I decided to do the honourable thing. I invested some money in a top quality turntable, cartridge and also bought a valve pre-amp just dedicated to the turntable. The result is awesome, to the point where I am sitting there in front of the Hi-Fi, smiling like a demented kid in a candy store.

The flip-side though is that whenever I come across a poor quality recording (early Genesis LPs- no treble and far too much bass) the new system will expose all its faults mercilessly. But when it's good (any ECM vinyl will do),the end result is heavenly and far more enjoyable than CDs ever could be.

I, personally collect old records, if not for the cool cover art and lyric sheets, then the novelty. I have a variety of rare records that will be worth some amount of money in the not-too distant future, like a red-vinyl hemispheres, and so on. As for sound, I think CDs have a much finer quality than records, mostly due to the recording methods of the time. remasters eliminate all pop marks and background noise you find in vinyl recordings. however, for the above reasons, I choose to hunt down rare records at antique stores etc. The Novelty never wears out.

It's the novelty of the original sound vs the superior remastering of modern sound...

LP's are something special... But if we're going to talk about special things, my dad's still got 300 odd reel-to-reel tapes that we yank out every now and again for a trip down memory lane...  It's a novelty to say the least...

I still prefer In A Gadda-Da-Vidda on LP than CD, but that's probably because I heard it on vinyl first and considered that the classic sound. Having never been in the situation of rebuying music because I first owned it on vinyl I can't give a compehensive opinion...

However, CD's would be my prefered choice...

On a side note I've been considering whether I should buy Tool on vinyl for a long time...

I still have all my albums including original release Beatles' albums, and of course my old King Crimson and Yes records as well. They've been well stored over the years so I'm sure they are still ok, though none has been on a turn table in 20 years give or take.

As to the sound, hmmmmm that's a tough one. I like things about both media really but it's hard to beat the convenience of CDs. Lots of bands still record to 2" 24 track tape in the studio and transfer it into the digital realm for editing in ProTools and then on to the mix and mastering processes. Analog sounds great is the reason (it's a natural tape compression thing that sounds so good), though digital is catching up slowly.

I traded all my old vinyl in back in 1987 for a song and a few CD's. I had over 700, now I own only one, "Road Games" from Allan Holdsworth. I held onto it because it wasn't released on CD until recently.

I'm with RobJ on the convenience of CD's. I rarely listen to music on a home stereo. I'm either in my car or at my computer.

Now "ARTWORK" is the real deal on the old records. Todays CD artwork is a far cry from some of the gorgeous covers of old. What do you think of the newly re-release KC back catalogue with the larger, more album like, jackets?

I still own my (vast) LP collection, and still listen to some of them.  I agree that, setting aside the issue of "pops and clicks," there is a "warmth" to analog recording using tube amps that is missing from the "clinical" sound of CDs and digital equipment.  In this regard, I don't consider digital recording "better" than vinyl, but simply "different."  Some music transfers well from analog (LP) to digital (CD), giving a cleaner, crisper sound.  However, some does not, and loses the "warmth" of the original recording.

Also keep in mind that there are many albums that have never been transferred from analog (LP) to digital (CD), so those are records I have no choice but to play on my ancient, grumbling, but loyal Technics turntable.

Sez I to myself...

i still listen to and buy both, they both have thier advantages.

http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_topics.asp?FID=18&PN=1 - http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_topics.asp?FID=18&am p;PN=1

Man Erg,

listen, let me carry the burden of all that vinyl, but you have to pay shipping

Aaron

For some of us just looking at our Vinyl collection is nostalgic, wemiss the great art covers and the emotion of searching everything to find some ineterstoing paper bag that protects the album or a panflet with the lyrics.

But honestly I don't miss the scratches and having to buy the same album two or three times because it went almost unlisteneable, neither I miss having to tape the albums to cassetes in order to listen in the car with a much lower quality.

I have excellent memory, and could remember exactly where each scratch was and that annoyed me, still today when I listen some album I'm expecting to listen the place where the needle jumped just to remember it's not a vinyl and feel relief for not having to hear that horrible sound.

So I'll stay with the higher quality of the horrible CD.

Iván

Man Erg wrote: I still have around 2.000 vinyl albums. I play them only every now and then when I'm home alone as my turntable is in the living-room and can be a bit intrusive/anti-social.I have ump-teen CD/MD players scattered about various rooms and can listen to CDs/MDs wherever I like. I think that I'll have to make room in my den/studio for another turntable.Not under the thumb,just considerate.

I have about 1500 LPs and last night I was sampling and recording onto MD selected tracks from a half dozen for possible inclusion on Thursday nights radio show, (it's now difficult to play vinyl in our radio station (especially on a remix DJ's deck - and would iI trust those styluses?). One album in particular by Illusion (largely the original Renaissance line-up), I found unlistenable - too much surface noise. Not scratches, rather Island Records pressing up the 12" with something like recycled vinyl. 'Listen between the scratch, the hiss, the pop' - come on, there wasn't a musician in the studio at the time of recording with a machine for generating surface noise*, it's the crap pressings. Why should I be distract by superfluous noise? As I said before, spend a fortune on the best deck, arm, stylus money can afford and you'll find a crap pressing is the weakness in the set up.

When Australian broadcaster (of ABC) Robert Armstrong, started some of the pioneering work cleaning up old jazz and blues 78rpms in the late 80's, and occasionally daring to make mock stereo recordings too, there were all those 78rpm collectors complained about the loss of this and that, saying things like "nothing like the old original 78 version". But again those jazz and blues master musicians didn't go in to a studio in the 20's and 30's and deliberately lay down scratches and other surface nosie. Besides, listening to the aural quality and range of Armstrong's cleaned up Bix Beiderbeck and then comparing the same recording on vinyl, and you can hear all the instruments on the CD, rather than suffering lost of half in the muck of time on the analogue. [And one day somebody will clean up the best tunes of Blind Lemon Jefferson].

I would would agree that WITHOUT suitable remastering, direct transfer of albums originally released on vinyl only to CD, did give rise to some very tinny CDs. I assume the original mix was made specifically for vinyl, often with top and bottom ends of the aural range clipped to fit the needs of the analogue 12" microgroove pressing. Putting the top and bottom ends back on without remastering/remixing , ready for CD release, meant that often the drum kit shifted from the back of the mix to very colse to the front. That's what happened to the first CD issue of Jean Luc Ponty's Enigmatic Ocean (where cymbals tend to dominate the mix at times). However, the long, early Genesis recordings when first released on CD, with restored top and bottom ends, sounded so much better than the vinyl. And look elsewhere on Progarchives for my reminder about Todd Rundgren's instructions on the back of the Initiation LP cover.

One final comment, I think Maani said that many albums are still yet to be released on CD. True; I have to say many of the LPs in my collection which are still vinyl only, but I have very little desire for CD versions of them because they have passed they sale-by-date in my head. As I said elsewhere I had a list of about 105 LPs I wanted as clean sounding CD versions, (and my tastes are fairly obscure), I think I'm now two short of that number (but it took over 15 years, however). While I'm here, to reiterate: please release Jan Hammer Group: Oh Yeah!

* a couple of exceptions to this statment I've come across:

Al DiMeola/Steve Vai: Race With Devil On Turkish Highway

Shuggie Otis/Al Kooper: Shuggie's Old Time Blues

Sweetnighter wrote: MP3s can go eat my sh*t.

To quote Godley & Creme: 'I Pity Inanimate Objects'

Sigod wrote:

I still have a sizable collection of LP's and 12' material and thay are often played. However I find nowadays that the simple act of turning a record over changes the pace of the album compared to the CD version.

How strange.

No not strange,

CD was divised as a perfect marketing tool to amongs other things 

re-sell all those albums over again

&

 at the same time a convenience tool also.The higher mastering level brought immediate in your face clean sound which attracted the listner immediatly,the rest is history..

Yep all great,just one thing! the digital music medium sounded absolutly dreadfull amongs other things such as lack of hands on,no big nice record cover with full art work etc.

You know people... the amount of times i hear comments such as crackles & pops on my records drive me nuts ! is all bollox.

really is bollox

Comments such as that come from people who never owned a top vinygrinder...i have no crackles on my 30 odd year old albums.

Analog rules believe it.

Karnevil9 wrote: Comments such as that come from people who never owned a top vinygrinder...i have no crackles on my 30 odd year old albums.

KE,

Then you've been amazingly lucky and it sounds like I've been lumbered with an unfair number of very dodgey pressings. Besides nowaday paying 4 figures for a deck, arm and styllus is luxury I for one can't afford nowadays. It was different in 1967, when I reckoned playing 200 quid + put my kit somewhat above average (hell you could buy a good house in Kent for 5000 grand then).

Working in a record shop 30 years ago, I had the chance to find the best pressings from a batch of records received into store and often found no one single pressing was of  good quality - some times I'd wait 6 months before buying hoping a new sub-master might be in use. Decca Records for instance were notorious for bad pressings at the end of the 60's (I dealt with endless customer complaints, who claimed too to have top quality hi fi systems).  Many record companies aimed at satisfying the small (and what they thought as the more discerning) hi fi buff market place, especially classical music releases andand took greater care in those records pressing. Took them a long time that pop and rock fans wanted quality pressings as well.  Deutches Grammophone (part of the Polydor Group?) was long the reference point for high quality recordings AND pressings.

Man Erg wrote: In the mid 1970s,the quality of vinyl became very poor mainly,I believe,due to the 'oil crisis.' I can remember that EMI's and in particular RCA's vinyl quality being appalling.RCA even tried to scam people with their 'Dyna-flex' invention' of almost transparent,wafer - thin,wobble-board vinyl that hopped-skipped and jumped like the proverbial March-Hare.I also remember taking Bowie's Hunky Dory back to be replaced so many times it almost became embarrasing.Pink Floyd's WYWH suffered a similar fate.So much so that EMI had to keep their Hayes.Middlesex pressing plant open 24/7 to replace the dodgy copies.The thing that baffles me is,how much oil was used for WYWH's original sealed 'plastic-wrapper' album sleeve?

I remember RCA importing the American pressing of that Jefferson Airplane album (title?, was it the first JA's own Grunt label release) into the UK, packaged in a brown paper supermarket bag. I was amazed how thin that disc was - weighing an Island Record's pressing of the time and that disc, the latter was approx. a third the weight (British pressing subsequently went that way too). And there were those British djs who went on about the "quality" of that disc, with plainly daft statements, e.g.  'the more you bend and flex the album, the better it sounds'. Strangely 30 years later, that album is sound good on my hifi.

Sweetnighter wrote:

What! I didn't write that KE9!

My mistake.Sorry..sorted.

I had kept mine vinyls (some 1200 at the time I left Canada) in milk crates at a friend's house to bring (import) them back by boat, once I had sufficient space and money in Europe. Unfortunately after some three years, he sold them (he did manage to find good prices, though!) without warning me (because he thought I had forgotten about them) and wired me the money (quite a bit because there were some rare stuff and some first pressings).

It is true that some 40 months in his attic is some time but I was really angry at first, then sad, then nostalgic ,then demoralized, then depressed , then deeply depresse, then slightly suicidal, than I wanted to kill him but ended up drinking a few beers with him the next time I went back to the new world . I still have some 100 vinyls that escaped that sad tale and bought another fifty or so since.

I have re-bought the early Genesis vinyls (Charisma madhatter label ) with special waffled cardboards just to put them on the wall. I once met Whitehead and told him this as he autographed his book, and he proposed to me to buy the re-prints on his website (much better impression he said) .

Metropolis wrote: Yeah, where can you find a house for only 5 million pounds nowadays?

Is that Scottish or English pounds...................... Have to ask have you been watching that series of house make-over programmes, introduced by the two gay property investors (with north of the border accents), who seems to have never done a day's DIY in their lives and always get bitchy on camera to the poor sod doing the dirty work? In part I blame those gentlemen for screwing house prices upwards.................

Well, I have been a vinyl collector since about 1970 when I was 13, and haven't stopped since.  I have about 3000 vinyl albums of all types of music.  There are certain types of music that just seem "right" to still collect on vinyl, and prog is one of them (another is old vintage country western albums).  When I go hunting for prog, I hit the used record stores looking for what kind of bargains I can find.  Some stores know the value of what they have, and charge high prices for rare titles.  Other places stick stuff they don't know about in cheapo bins.  For example, I recently found three vintage old Amazing Blondel albums in a $.99 rack!  They were in great condition, and what a find!  That kind of discovery keeps the vinyl junkie in me thriving.

However, sometimes you just aren't going to find what you are looking for on vinyl.  I recently discovered the absolute joy of vintage Italian prog, and have been buying those on CD.  That's OK.  The bottom line is, the music is what counts.

Sometimes playing vinyl is an inconvenience for me because my only turntable is in the living room where my family congregates a lot.  So I dub most of my prog vinyl to MD, and I can play it in the car, on my MD walkman, etc.  I do a lot of walking for daily exercise, and I gotta have my prog album of the day to listen to on my walk!

Peace,

Ulf