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Why I don't think I'll ever return to vinyl - brief rant

I am not a vinyl guy. I have a half decent turntable and a half decent cartridge and a mid-fi at best phono preamp.

But I do get the bug every now and again and will buy a vinyl album. These are mostly from new-ish artists. I buy them from their websites hoping to support them. Sometimes I am rewarded. Mac Saturn’s only album sounds really good. The Tesky Brother’s album Run Home Slow sounds amazing and is better than the CD and streaming options. I suspect it is less compressed.

Well, the bug bit again recently and I bought the Red Clay Stray’s double live album recorded at Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. It was $45 on their website. There is no CD for this album. The vinyl is thin. The edges are rough. They had some type of dusty residue on them. At then end of one of the album sides there was a spot that looked like some sort of stain or smudge. I cleaned the records and got all the residue off of them. But the one side with the stain on it, that produces an audible pop, would not come clean. The pop persists. It is at the very end of a song, mostly in the crowd noise but it still sucks.

I contacted ’support’ on their website but never got a reply. No big deal. Its $45 and it supports a band that I like.

But that sure puts me off from buying more vinyl.

n80
audphile1's avatar
audphile1
8,221 posts
 

 

mikempls

45 posts

 

YIKES! Thanks for your perspective @ipluvr. Sounds like I’ve been very lucky in the past. I’ll need to watch carefully what I buy from them in the future.  
 

their customer service is very good. I buy from them all the time and have only a very few LPs were problematic. They were promptly exchanged. 
Label I’m not thrilled with is Impex. Great recording quality, noisy vinyl. Exchanging results in the same exact issue. I stopped buying their crap. Overpriced for the quality you get. 

knotscott's avatar
knotscott
1,415 posts
 

My rig allows both vinyl and digital sources.  The vinyl side has sounded better to me for years, so I made some effort to improve the digital side...new DAC, upgraded opamp, upgraded LPS, and upgraded cables.  The digital side indeed improved, and.it sounds better, but my vinyl still sounds better to me, on my rig.  

With that said, it’s not night and day better....my digital is good enough to satisfy me.  Adding Spotify Premium as a source makes it ridiculously convenient to play thousands of songs and albums.  I still spin vinyl occasionally because I have it, but it’s tough to justify the cost to get good LP sound compared to digital.   

n80 OP
2,167 posts
 

@audphile1 Perhaps you are right. 

@parkergetdean Perhaps you are right as well. But plenty of those responding seemed to understand it perfectly well.

@cleeds Like humor, caricatures often contain more than a grain of truth.

shotime140
3 posts
 

Amazing how many people get their panties in a bunch based on what particular sentence triggers them. Good grief. To the OP, first and foremost, thank you for going out of the way to purchase physical media to support your bands, who I am sure some of whom are not huge household names. Your purchase is very much noticed by these smaller artists!

Unfortunately, not all artists can afford or have the audience to justify a top tier vinyl pressing manufacturer. Which is a shame, but happens. What should not be dependent upon that is their customer service. You clearly have received a bad pressing where something went wrong in the process. It should have been replaced by the seller with minimal issue. This shouldn’t matter if it’s vinyl, cassette, CD, etc. 

Keep supporting your bands and buy their physical media, in any format that works for you!  Happy listening and hopefully better results in the future  

 

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
8,221 posts
 

@n80 I’m listening to The Red Clay Strays “Live At The Ryman” album (2024 release) on Tidal. It’s pretty good! Didn’t know about this band prior to this post. So for this, thank you! 

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