Would vinyl even be invented today?

12-15-14: Mapman
It's 100 year old technology that peaked over 20 years ago already.

New records are being made but prices are high and quality control questionable.

The LP technology may have peaked 20 yrs ago (which I doubt), but turntables now are much better-sounding than the ones from the "golden age." Back then most TT mfrs were CLUELESS about resonance damping and vibration control.

Consider: a Pro-Ject Debut Carbon (which sounds fabulous for its price) is $399. In 1969 my brother paid $79.95 for a 10" platter Garrard rim drive POS. Adjusted for inflation the Debut carbon would be a mere $61.67 including an Ortofon 2M Red, better than most carts we could get back then.

Speaking of inflation, I specifically remember that LPs in 1970 ran anywhere from $3.19 to about $4.77, depnding on the store and the particular record. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $19.52 to $29.19 today, in other words about the same as we pay today for a nice 180g pressing. When you consider that in 2014 the record makers don't have anywhere near the economy of scale working for them that they did in the '60s and early '70s, those prices today are pretty good. Also consider that when CDs got popular around 1987, the basic ones were $15.99, equivalent to $33.42 in 2014, so even by that standard current LPs are a good deal.

There are other analog delivery systems that could be less hassle in certain ways, such as open reel tape. The miracle of LPs is how authentically they can recreate the original sound and emotional vibe while being stamped out at a rate of about one per minute. You can't do that with dubbed open reel tape.

12-17-14: Czarivey
yea dood, we tryin' we're all obsessed with placing a needle, flipping a record that sometimes has only one song on each side or same song with different mixes, scratching it, then replacing this needle, upgrading, cleaning, shelving, storing... wtf? why?

... for the same reason that I long ago realized synthetic blend no-iron shirts weren't worth the convenience. I'll gladly spend 10 mins. ironing a nice all-cotton shirt that will feel good all day the same way I'll take a little time to make sure my records and stylus are clean to have a far more emotionally involving musical experience.

It's the listening, that's why.

BTW, there are many things based on old technology that continue to thrive. Somebody mentioned the internal combustion engine, but it's survived alternatives such as steam power, the Wankel rotary engine, and the turbine engine, all of which generated a lot of press but ultimately came to little in automobiles.

The grand piano of today was pretty much perfected around 120 years ago. A 1900 Steinway 9' grand is competitive with a new one made (the same old way) today. In fact, CBS Musical Instruments tried to improve the Steinway by replacing the 19th century-based felt bushings in the piano action with Teflon sleeves. It turned out the old technology (felt) was superior because the Teflon would make the action stick in humid weather.

The principle of sound energy etching a wax cylinder may be well over 100 years old, but the refinement into the stereo LP (itself now 56 years old) is capable of transporting you to the performance and achieving a great sense of musical satisfaction. It is also able to do it economically and provides a durable, space-efficient (relative to the data density it contains) medium.

There are many things that endure today that were invented in another time, things that might not be conceived of today that were borne of the best technology of that particular time. The LP is the culmination of Edison's original invention 137 years ago. The piano evolved out of other keyboard instruments 200 years ago and developed about as far as it can go around 1910.

If the automobile were invented today, the government would almost certainly deem it too dangerous for public use and prevent it from being licensed and sold, except perhaps to an elite few.

I lived in Boston for about a year, and one particularly cold, blustery day, a co-worker arrived in the morning and announced, "I swear, if the Pilgrims had landed in California, New England would still be uninhabited."

Often situations and things are the result of a mindset, a need, a time, and a place. Change any of those things and the "thing" probably wouldn't have happened that way. The LP is just one of those many things.

The resurgence of vinyl is not about sound quality it is about hipsters being ironically cool.

Distilling the vinyl renaissance down to one minor cultural phenomenon is simplistic and ignores gobs of evidence that moves in several different directions.

At this point, the vinyl resurgence is too big and too long-lasting to be a fad. The vinyl resurgence started getting noticed about nine years ago. Evidence of the resurgence suggests several different markets. Current pop artists are issuing vinyl versions of their albums, mostly from digital sources. One could say that market serves the hipsters.

But what about Acoustic Sounds? It's the biggest single vendor of new vinyl. Or others in the same market--MusicDirect, ElusiveDisc, SoundStageDirect, etc.? $35 reissues of 1958-1964 RCA, Everest, and Mercury classical recordings (and Verve, Prestige, Columbia, and Concord Group jazz albums) are hardly aimed at hipsters. Nor are the new Beatles mono vinyl releases.

Also, since the vinyl resurgence, we have seen McIntosh come out with a turntable for the first time, Marantz came out with its first turntable in a looong time, and the few turntable manufacturers who continued through the dark days have exponentially expanded their lines: Rega, Pro-Ject, Music Hall have all gone from 2-3 item product lines to many times that.

Do you think for a moment that hipsters are fueling the expansion of audiophile turntables, cartridge offerings, phono preamps and step-up devices?

In fact, even vinyl-spinning hipsters couldn't prevent Technics from discontinuing the SL12x0 series of direct drive turntables. It's caused the boutique belt-drive companies to expand their product lines and thrive.

To say it's all hipsters or a consumer-mad society is narrow-focus and dismissive. Most of the turntables come from Europe, even the USA-branded ones. The McIntosh and Marantz models were sourced from Clearaudio. Other makers are Rega, Linn, Naim, Funk Firm, Music Hall, and Pro-Ject. All those makers continued and thrived because European music lovers refused to abandon vinyl. That's not hipsters or consumerism; it's finding the intrinsic musical value amidst decades of digital hype.

The trendy crap is Crosley, Numark, Ion, etc. Those would satisfy the hipster market, but the sonically driven quality stuff is for the rest of us. Let's not forget that the aging baby boom is a lump of 75 million American consumers, and many of us (me included) are having one last analog hurrah of our beloved music while we still can.