@terry1229
You my friend have a nostalgia for an older technology.
First, even IF nostalgia were involved, so what? What’s wrong with nostalgia? And if something is servicing a desire for nostalgia, it is of value not a "scam."
More important: No, you have misread the character of my interest and aren’t in a position to know it in any case.
As I said earlier: although years ago I had only listened occasionally to my old record collection, at this point I’m far more fuelled by the novelty and discovery. My new turntable is far from nostalgic - it’s a very modern, high end turntable of a type that never would have even occurred to me would exist when I was growing up. It speaks to me of new technology as much or more than old. Yes it’s a new take on old technology...but so is every new car and that doesn’t make a new car design simply about "nostalgia" because cars have been around for many years.
The vast majority of the music I’m buying is either new vinyl releases, or old genres of music I never listened to, so we are talking "new experiences" not revisiting old experiences.
And I never, ever experienced vinyl sounding this good as it does now on my system. It doesn’t sound so much nostalgic as revelatory.
As to many of the new albums I’m buying being mastered on digital? So what? I’m quite aware of that and it’s fine by me. There are STILL mastering differences that occur for vinyl and there is STILL a difference between how it sounds played on the turntable vs playing the digital version. Is that an additive character? Sure, likely. Fine by me. I like it.
It’s obvious you’re more impressed with the album covers and liner notes.
More impressed than what or whom? If you mean more impressed than you then...yeah, I guess so. But then, that’s what I’m pointing out - that YOU might not care doesn’t mean others don’t value that aspect of vinyl, and vinyl is serving that desire so it’s not a "scam" just because YOU don’t value the physical aspects of vinyl. (And over and over you will see in reports on the vinyl revival how that IS a big part of the appeal for people).
If you mean I’m "more impressed" by the album covers than the sound, that would be "no." I’m incredibly impressed by the sound. It blows me away.
A CD suffers from no such degradation. There is no physical contact between the laser pickup and the disc. What does this have to offer? A disc that will play without any surface noise for hundred of times. Do to the nature of the format, it offers superior dynamic range and deep rich base response. I won’t go into endless technical issues but the end result is that the CD is a far superior format.
You mean...CDs have no ticks and pops? And a preserved CD will play just as clean years later after many plays? You don’t say! The things we learn on audiogon! You’d think that would have been worth being part of the selling point for CDs, so everyone would be aware of such claims!
But after many decades of owning CDs, I never noticed that. I’ll go play one and see if you’re right! ;-)
As for dynamic range, yes CD is *capable* of storing more dynamic range but as you should know, that dynamic range is being taken advantage of in ever fewer recordings due to "loudness war" type compression. That’s why you can find many LPs scoring higher in the Dynamic Range Database site.
Remember: the master for a vinyl is not simply a transfer of the digital master to the vinyl. It’s usually a re-master specifically for the vinyl, and we are usually talking about starting with high-res digital masters.
I’ve read interviews with mastering engineers who say that - especially because the digital version is what is mostly going to be played for the public - they are bid to compress from the original digital master down to loudness-war-type compression for the digital versions. But they happily have more latitude for the dynamic range for the vinyl mastering.
After five plays, you will begin to notice ticks, pops, clicks, surface noise due to the physical contact of the of stylus in the record groove.
If played with little care on a poorly adjusted lower quality turntable...could be. But that’s not necessarily the case at all for records cared for and played on a good quality turntable. There’s a video on youtube where someone took a record, played it 100 times on a cheap turntable and a good turntable, and recorded the sound and also showed the waveforms to compare from the first play to the 100th play. The cheap table did slightly degrade the sound. But the 100th play on the good turntable was virtually identical in noise and sound quality to the first play.
I just received a second hand album from discogs, from the 70’s, and it’s beautifully quiet, as if it were brand new. I have lots of old second hand albums that sound as fresh as new vinyl.
Turntables are flying off the shelves into customers arms. Why is this so? BECAUSE IT IS SELLING and as long as people are buying EVERYBODY IS SELLING.
Well...yes....of course!
And why are they SELLING? What’s missing is any realistic appraisal from you of why they are selling!
Because people really like playing vinyl records. For all sorts of reasons. Usually though it’s because they like the physical and aesthetic aspects of the media, and very often they really LIKE the sound quality. That vinyl may not be as accurate as CD can be on technical grounds does not get around the fact many LIKE the sound of music on vinyl, and the physical aspects, and when people are GETTING WHAT THEY LIKE AND WANT...that’s not a "scam." That’s people getting what they want for their money.
It’s fine that vinyl is not your choice for any number of good reasons you may value. But what doesn’t work is your attempt to wave away OTHER people’s interest in vinyl on simplistic and false claims that they are simply being suckered and scammed.
