Is vinyl dead ?

07-14-03: 4yanx - I don't think vinyl will DIE.

Glad to see that you agree with me, 4yanx! :)

Twl, thank you for your kind words...and I agree with you as well. ;)

07-14-03: Twl - ...and in the car I use CDs.

And, soon you'll be using MP3's (or some other digital file format) - as many are already doing with the influx of MP3 capable units increasing on the market (for both home and car use). ;)

Wes

First of all, the comsumer was never given the oppurtunity to choose between vinyl and CD. As soon as this musical tradgedy was foisted on the listening public, vinyl was pulled from the bins and destroyed.

I went into the local purveyor of sound one week and there were literally millions of LPs there. Two weeks later I went back and they were in the process of repacking all their LPs and replacing them with those awful silver discs. CDs at that time sounded absolutely awful, now they are just not as good as LPs.

JVC, who had just invested millions on new presses and lathes dismantled them and refused to sell them to prospective buyers. Why would they not want to at least make back some of their investment by selling what they were not using? I don't like the X-Files, but something is a little fishy here!

Anyone who wanted to buy vinyl had to hunt like a madman to find anything. SO there never was any competition between the two formats.

Even today none of the big companies track LP sales. For those who bother to do it, they find that last year LP sales were up while CD sales have fallen of dramatically.

Even if that was not true, how many of us would be willing to accept the vote of the uninformed consumer as to what is the better medium?!?

I have a $3500 SACD player and a $3500 turntable/arm/cartridge combo. I'd say that's pretty even! The TT still sounds better, not different, but better!!! Vinyl might not sell as much as CD, but CDs sound dead.

No one was given the choice between vinyl and cd. On the retail side once cds came out the distributors(read labels) would no longer take returns on vinyl. In other words if you bought X copies of vinyl they were yours. On the other side if you bought cds and didn't sell them you could return them for credit. You can see why retailers had no choice but to get rid of vinyl and stock cds.

Egrady,"Vinyl is dead as a mainstream commercial product. 95% of the market, or more, really doesn't care if the Lp sounds better than CD."
Yes Vinyl is dead as a mainstream commercial product.
Vinyl it is now a high-end soft-wear product, that 95% of the mainstream don't care about.
95% or more of the general public either don't care about high-end audio or and I think a larger part of that 95% don't even know of the high-ends existence.

Egrady-"Now is the time to buy a turntable that will last you the rest of your life and does not require the support of a local shop."

I remember in the mid-eighties where "Stereophile" had an article that said that very thing. A couple of my friends went out and bought themselves new lp12's because they were afraid, very soon they would no longer be able to get one.

Now in 2003 vinyl is still alive and very well and growing.
So many new turntables to choose from, a lot more than in the mid-eighties.

You can now get a vinyl rig that is many times better than a lp12, for less money that a lp12 cost in 1985.

So much for the doom's day sayers. We will always have then with us.

Following the thread, logic dictates tubes were dead long long ago; transistors took over the world and provided reliable, convenient sound to the masses. Yeah, there is some damned fine solid state gear out there but I can't imagine a set up without tubes somewhere in the chain. Before we have an epic wake for vinyl think about great inventions that were surpassed by "new, better, cheaper, easier" and then consider what's plainly more enjoyable. In any event I'm glad I've always bucked the hardware AND software trends.

p.s. you have to be tone deaf to think MP3's sound anything like music. No wonder they're free to download at will, no one in their right mind would actually buy a MP3 recording.