5 ms·

I absolutely despise most of the vinyl community. Don't get me wrong, I love my records. I have hundreds of them and I play them regularly. For some reason, alm

I absolutely despise most of the vinyl community. Don't get me wrong, I love my records. I have hundreds of them and I play them regularly. For some reason, almost everyone I come by has this delusion that vinyl is objectively better than a good digital recording. Anyone who dissents from that narrative gets gaslit: "oh what kind of turntable do you have? oh that's not good enough, there's your problem right there." "what speakers do you have? what about your phono + power amps? oh that's not good enough, there's your problem right there." "how did you place your speakers? oh, you should have them at 45 degrees, not 60." "is it a re-pressing? from whom? oh, there's your problem right there." The end result is a bunch of nerds ruining their credit scores because someone told them they need gold-plated hydraulic bearings in their tonearm to properly listen to their mom's copy of Led Zeppelin IV. Does it sound different? Yes. Does it sound better? If you're really trying to get the most out of the music itself, no. Warm ⊄ good. Vinyl is great because you aren't just listening to music. The medium demands something from you. It's tactile. The album artwork is a complete ensemble, rather than a little icon on your phone. In my case, I had to put in effort to restore the equipment I play my records on, so there's a bit of pride in it. It's a more intimate experience.

xbar 4y ago
Is this not the experience in every human community? For the record, I like your approach to music enjoyment.
dekhn 4y ago
There definitely was a short period in college where I needed to spend money I barely had to upgrade my system. This was when CDs first came out. I could tell, when listening through my stereo (as compared to plugging my headphones into the CD player) that there was a ton of extra noise/distortion and most importantly, a very high noise level (audible hiss). Ended up having to go to Salvation Army to buy a $25 used receiver and the speaker store to buy a pair of $200 speakers before I got decent results. Even after that, I had no end of problems with the analog cable. it took a long time to switch to digital. Nowadays I can get excellent audio quality watching good Youtube videos or streaming from my preferred music site (I only listen through headphones now). I'm super glad I was able to get to the quality level I liked for fairly cheap.
jgust 4y ago
There is a certain ceremony involved with choosing and playing vinyl that cannot be recreated with digital media. That, to me, is the magic. In modern times a full digital setup is going to provide a more "faithful recreation" than anything analog.
- JJMcJ 4y ago
  There is also some with CDs, but vinyl's the real deal. The record cleaner brush. Inspect the needle for dust. Be sure the record is properly seated. Sit back and enjoy.
  - jgust 4y ago
    Just watching the record spin is so incredibly satisfying.
    - JJMcJ 4y ago
      Yes, a connection to the physical world. Sometimes especially on Zoom I look at my cabling and think it's amazing that images of other people and their voices are going through that cable. Only on Zoom and similar video conferencing. For all other uses I don't even think about it.
      - crooked-v 4y ago
        You may find VR social environments interesting.
    - throwaway81523 4y ago
      I'm not going to say the date but my birthday is exactly 4 months before a certain holiday. So some years back (too many, alas), on this holiday and 4 months after I turned 33, my friends put on a party to celebrate both the holiday and my 33 1/3'rd birthday. Naturally, LP records were played.
      - boring_twenties 4y ago
hbn 4y ago
I recently got a record player and have been amassing a small collection of my favourite albums. Including the reasons you gave, my excuse for buying/listening to records is I like having a physical representation of albums I like, and something that won't disappear because a contract expired with a streaming service.
- ryukoposting 4y ago
  Stick with it. I discovered some great music buying random stuff from the <$5 section. You'll meet fun people at the right record stores (if you're in Minneapolis, I have some suggestions). Every once in a while one of your LPs will turn into a nice investment piece. If you haven't tried repairing/restoring your own turntable, I recommend it. The engineering inside all the little mechanisms in an old turntable are fun to tinker with.
JJMcJ 4y ago
I remember when CDs were very very new the first review of them in an audiophile magazine a friend subscribed to. The reviewer was quite unhappy. The next month he reviewed a different player. He basically retracted his opinion of CDs but said the player from the previous month was obviously terrible, at least the particular one that he did his review on, if not the entire brand. And for audiophiles themselves, I notice many of them seem to have very poor taste in music. Like do you really need $50,000 of equipment and sand weighted speakers that weigh 700 pounds each to play 1968 bachelor pad music?
- gerdesj 4y ago
  "I notice many of them seem to have very poor taste in music." Great response and critique until that point. I'm old (52) enough to have seen quite a few media changes too. I recall that when you were off your tits at a party, and discussing music, you tried to find common ground. That could lead to some impressive contortions! Can't say I ever spent much on playback hardware. I generally went second hand for speakers/amps etc. Once the Walkman was invented and then rather a lot of Chinese (and other copies were available) clones appeared then you could ruin your hearing close up with seriously decent quality sound on the move. I was still walking around with a mini cassette player with wired ear plugs in my jacket's breast pocket until around 1993ish. I did lay out something like £200 on a pair of decent headphones for use at home. They make anything from O Fortuna to Ghost Town via say Schehehererherereherezade, Finlandia and One sound rather ... Special.
  - JJMcJ 4y ago
    The term "audiophile" describes someone who indeed spends huge amounts on their audio setup. It is different than someone who appreciates music, which it seems like you do.
- kazinator 4y ago
  I will have you know I have great taste in total harmonic distortion and frequency response!
- CamperBob2 4y ago
madengr 4y ago
noduerme 4y ago
>> The end result is a bunch of nerds ruining their credit scores Hilarious and well put! Speaking as an erstwhile musician, this has been my theory about Guitar Center's business model since the 90s.
drewzero1 4y ago
I love records (78s and vinyl) for the tactile and visual experience-- and the fact that I can get something for a few bucks at the thrift store and not feel too bad about my toddler ruining it trying to put the needle on. To that end I have stuck to cheap, sturdy, school-grade equipment and mostly secondhand records. It's so fascinating to me that an inert physical disc is engraved with sound waves that are reproduced by dragging something along to return them to sound, in the case of the 78s without the need for anything electrical in between. It's an added bonus that it has zero opportunity to inspire screen time for my kid, who absolutely doesn't need to stare at a screen while listening to music.
- Animats 4y ago
  in the case of the 78s without the need for anything electrical in between. For fully mechanically recorded records you have to go back to pre-1927 Edison Diamond Disks. Or the real deal, Edison cylinders. Edison cylinders are actually rather good recordings. The mechanical playback system. with no amplifier, introduced most of the distortion. Modern playbacks, using a modern record pickup with a suitably large-sized stylus, are quite good. Here are some from cylinders made around 1900.[1] Those include Sousa's band playing Sousa's marches, led by Sousa himself. The ultimate playback device is IRENE. This was built for the Library of Congress. It does a full 3D scan of the entire disk or cylinder surface, and a detailed 3D model of the surface is created. That's turned into audio by a program that simulates a stylus tracking through the grooves. IRENE is used on very old, fragile items. It's even possible to put broken shards back together in 3D and recover the audio. For real authenticity, there are reproducing pianos. These are player pianos, but with a better recording system, one capable of recording key pressure while a live pianist played the piano. While the Duo-Art system had binary-coded pressure values, the Welte-Mignon system was analog. Mostly. Here's a Welte-Mignon roll being played.[2] The holes at the outer edges of the roll are encoding the key pressure. The ones in the middle indicate which keys. MIDI, from over a century ago. If you're going to go retro, go all the way. If you just want to listen to music, it doesn't get any better than 24 bit audio. (16 bits may not be enough for really soft passages, where all the high bits are zero and you may be down to 6 bit audio.) [1] https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/photosmultimedia/recordings.htm https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/photosmultimedia/recordings.h... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8K5Yh0aLhA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8K5Yh0aLhA

xbar 4y ago

Is this not the experience in every human community? For the record, I like your approach to music enjoyment.

dekhn 4y ago

There definitely was a short period in college where I needed to spend money I barely had to upgrade my system. This was when CDs first came out. I could tell, when listening through my stereo (as compared to plugging my headphones into the CD player) that there was a ton of extra noise/distortion and most importantly, a very high noise level (audible hiss). Ended up having to go to Salvation Army to buy a $25 used receiver and the speaker store to buy a pair of $200 speakers before I got decent results. Even after that, I had no end of problems with the analog cable. it took a long time to switch to digital. Nowadays I can get excellent audio quality watching good Youtube videos or streaming from my preferred music site (I only listen through headphones now). I'm super glad I was able to get to the quality level I liked for fairly cheap.

jgust 4y ago

There is a certain ceremony involved with choosing and playing vinyl that cannot be recreated with digital media. That, to me, is the magic. In modern times a full digital setup is going to provide a more "faithful recreation" than anything analog.

JJMcJ 4y ago
There is also some with CDs, but vinyl's the real deal. The record cleaner brush. Inspect the needle for dust. Be sure the record is properly seated. Sit back and enjoy.
- jgust 4y ago
  Just watching the record spin is so incredibly satisfying.
  - JJMcJ 4y ago
    Yes, a connection to the physical world. Sometimes especially on Zoom I look at my cabling and think it's amazing that images of other people and their voices are going through that cable. Only on Zoom and similar video conferencing. For all other uses I don't even think about it.
    - crooked-v 4y ago
      You may find VR social environments interesting.
  - throwaway81523 4y ago
    I'm not going to say the date but my birthday is exactly 4 months before a certain holiday. So some years back (too many, alas), on this holiday and 4 months after I turned 33, my friends put on a party to celebrate both the holiday and my 33 1/3'rd birthday. Naturally, LP records were played.
    - boring_twenties 4y ago

hbn 4y ago

I recently got a record player and have been amassing a small collection of my favourite albums. Including the reasons you gave, my excuse for buying/listening to records is I like having a physical representation of albums I like, and something that won't disappear because a contract expired with a streaming service.

ryukoposting 4y ago
Stick with it. I discovered some great music buying random stuff from the <$5 section. You'll meet fun people at the right record stores (if you're in Minneapolis, I have some suggestions). Every once in a while one of your LPs will turn into a nice investment piece. If you haven't tried repairing/restoring your own turntable, I recommend it. The engineering inside all the little mechanisms in an old turntable are fun to tinker with.

JJMcJ 4y ago

I remember when CDs were very very new the first review of them in an audiophile magazine a friend subscribed to. The reviewer was quite unhappy. The next month he reviewed a different player. He basically retracted his opinion of CDs but said the player from the previous month was obviously terrible, at least the particular one that he did his review on, if not the entire brand. And for audiophiles themselves, I notice many of them seem to have very poor taste in music. Like do you really need $50,000 of equipment and sand weighted speakers that weigh 700 pounds each to play 1968 bachelor pad music?

gerdesj 4y ago
"I notice many of them seem to have very poor taste in music." Great response and critique until that point. I'm old (52) enough to have seen quite a few media changes too. I recall that when you were off your tits at a party, and discussing music, you tried to find common ground. That could lead to some impressive contortions! Can't say I ever spent much on playback hardware. I generally went second hand for speakers/amps etc. Once the Walkman was invented and then rather a lot of Chinese (and other copies were available) clones appeared then you could ruin your hearing close up with seriously decent quality sound on the move. I was still walking around with a mini cassette player with wired ear plugs in my jacket's breast pocket until around 1993ish. I did lay out something like £200 on a pair of decent headphones for use at home. They make anything from O Fortuna to Ghost Town via say Schehehererherereherezade, Finlandia and One sound rather ... Special.
- JJMcJ 4y ago
  The term "audiophile" describes someone who indeed spends huge amounts on their audio setup. It is different than someone who appreciates music, which it seems like you do.
kazinator 4y ago
I will have you know I have great taste in total harmonic distortion and frequency response!
CamperBob2 4y ago

madengr 4y ago

noduerme 4y ago

>> The end result is a bunch of nerds ruining their credit scores Hilarious and well put! Speaking as an erstwhile musician, this has been my theory about Guitar Center's business model since the 90s.

drewzero1 4y ago

I love records (78s and vinyl) for the tactile and visual experience-- and the fact that I can get something for a few bucks at the thrift store and not feel too bad about my toddler ruining it trying to put the needle on. To that end I have stuck to cheap, sturdy, school-grade equipment and mostly secondhand records. It's so fascinating to me that an inert physical disc is engraved with sound waves that are reproduced by dragging something along to return them to sound, in the case of the 78s without the need for anything electrical in between. It's an added bonus that it has zero opportunity to inspire screen time for my kid, who absolutely doesn't need to stare at a screen while listening to music.

Animats 4y ago
in the case of the 78s without the need for anything electrical in between. For fully mechanically recorded records you have to go back to pre-1927 Edison Diamond Disks. Or the real deal, Edison cylinders. Edison cylinders are actually rather good recordings. The mechanical playback system. with no amplifier, introduced most of the distortion. Modern playbacks, using a modern record pickup with a suitably large-sized stylus, are quite good. Here are some from cylinders made around 1900.[1] Those include Sousa's band playing Sousa's marches, led by Sousa himself. The ultimate playback device is IRENE. This was built for the Library of Congress. It does a full 3D scan of the entire disk or cylinder surface, and a detailed 3D model of the surface is created. That's turned into audio by a program that simulates a stylus tracking through the grooves. IRENE is used on very old, fragile items. It's even possible to put broken shards back together in 3D and recover the audio. For real authenticity, there are reproducing pianos. These are player pianos, but with a better recording system, one capable of recording key pressure while a live pianist played the piano. While the Duo-Art system had binary-coded pressure values, the Welte-Mignon system was analog. Mostly. Here's a Welte-Mignon roll being played.[2] The holes at the outer edges of the roll are encoding the key pressure. The ones in the middle indicate which keys. MIDI, from over a century ago. If you're going to go retro, go all the way. If you just want to listen to music, it doesn't get any better than 24 bit audio. (16 bits may not be enough for really soft passages, where all the high bits are zero and you may be down to 6 bit audio.) [1] https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/photosmultimedia/recordings.htm https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/photosmultimedia/recordings.h... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8K5Yh0aLhA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8K5Yh0aLhA