Can anyone explain the vinyl renaissance?

[daftcombo]

Some recordspressed on vinyl are still not available digitally, and never will be except in the form of vinyl rip.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Physical media has substance. I think some people are sick of streaming. There is something to say for the vinyl experience. Not quality, but ritual.

I was an early adopter of file based music since I was on a 'plane every week and swapped a flight case which had been full of cassettes and then CDs for an iPod. It was a huge step up in my quality of life.

Now I have retired and intend to never go to and airport again I have gone back to physical media, 99.9% of the time CD but the odd LP when the recording I wish to listen to is on LP.

 

[dkinric]

Posted a similar thread previously, turned in to a 56 page discussion:

Turntables - help me understand the appeal?

I recently put together a nice 2.1 music only system ($3K USD range) and use streaming (Spotify HQ and Qobuz

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[bkdc]

Nostalgia. Like wanting to use a more expensive mechanical watch when a quartz or atomic clock is more accurate and does it better. The audiophile industry needs to sell more overpriced mechanical doodads to combat cheap quality digital. One could reproduce the effects of a turntable with digital filters. Distortion sounds great on crappy old masters.

 

[MattHooper]

Are you familiar with the work of Philip K. Dick? I guess his best-known work is the movie Blade Runner. The source material for the film is the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". The book differs from the film in a number of ways. There's more of an emphasis of replicants and simulacra other than the skin jobs. One of the concepts PKD plays with is the notion of the simulacrum substituting for the "real". In the "future" of this novel, "real" pets are a thing of the past, people's pets in the novel are most likely to be replicants. There would be a special rarity for organically created animals in this environmentally depleted world, a special status. A window into the past, as it were. But people have the pet replicants because they too are a window into the past.

An LP is an antiquated simulacrum. While the simulacrum of digital record/replay is, at least in theory, superior as a reflection of the original musical event, there are flaws in LP reproduction that can be interpreted as more "organic", and more alive. The fact that LPs audibly decay if played frequently amplifies that sense of an LP as more "alive" even while it is clearly more distorted than its digital source. There are other aspects of LP replay that create the illusion of being more alive, particularly in the way a turntable acoustically interacts with its environment and itself [pre/post groove echo]. Even though LP replay and Digital replay are both limited by such things as microphones used, or the acoustics of the room the music was recorded in, for some LP replay feels more alive. Part is probably an illusion, but there is a generally observed sonic difference.

That's interesting, Robin.

That actually reminds me of music on the radio - e.g. the car radio.

These days being able to have practically any song or album on demand - e.g. in my car "Siri play X song," is awesome in it's own way.
But there is something it misses about the old days of listening to the radio. When a song you loved came on the radio - especially if it was some new song that had just started to catch on - it was like "Oh I love this song!" and you crank it up. You weren't in control so there was this element of surprise or being happy for a song being played. But also more than that, I always felt there was also something vaguely communal about the radio. It wasn't just you listening to the music - it was being broadcast to a large listening audience. In that sense there was a "live" sense to listening in to a public broadcast with the background context of sharing the experience.

Even when it became fairly easy to play music in our car - cassette, then CDs, then hooking up an ipod - I always noticed that I got a little more kick out of hearing a song I loved showing up on the radio.

 

[rDin]

You do realise that your claims have no basis in reality at all? This is what many vinylphiles tend to believe without any kind of evidence.. If you have the evidence, please present it (n.b. preferring vinyl is not evidence for your claims).

As you are clearly not interested in a good faith conversation, I won't reply to your many ad hominems. Instead, blocked.

 

[Frank Dernie]

There is a wide spectrum of people who listen to recorded music and a wide spectrum of the interest in the equipment to play it on.

My wife is a professional musician and conductor, she is happy to listen to everything on her laptop speakers since the musicianship/ musicality is perfectly well reproduced there if the bass and treble are lacking.

The guy in the next room to me in my second year at Uni was the opposite.
He was passionate about the equipment, avidly read all the magazines and bought the latest and greatest (this was 1970 so LP only) he had almost as many test records as LPs. Luckily for me, very much less well off than him, he was delighted to play any of my records on it, though there was always a risk of him jumping up to make an adjustment part way through when he had heard an imperfection.

Most of us are not that near the end of the spectrum but IME the vinyl lovers are more at the equipment end and the music lovers more at the listen to the music I want on anything that is available end.

My wife wouldn't choose to listen to an LP if you paid her! I OTOH have 4 record players and a lot of LPs bought before CD existed, I am very experienced in record player setup but hate doing it. I probably play about 1 LP a month.

Anybody thinking that musicallity resides in equipment rather than the musician has their head firmly shoved up their backside IMO.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Even when it became fairly easy to play music in our car - cassette, then CDs, then hooking up an ipod - I always noticed that I got a little more kick out of hearing a song I loved showing up on the radio.

I only listen to radio in the car. I concentrate on driving not what to listen to next and how to search for it.
I also like both the surprise and the possibility of unexpected new stuff I like.

The radio station I listen to in my car is compressed dynamically which is fine in the car, though the channel sounds awful at home.

 

[pinpoint_oxford]

I concentrate on driving not what to listen to next and how to search for it.

Me too. Unless it's a long trip and I have some podcasts or albums to queue up, I don't want to fuss with anything while I drive so the radio is fine.

To the point of the post, I think younger people are getting into records since they're past the passé phase of technology and are entering retro chic. Old timers like me have always enjoyed them I guess.

 

[Cote Dazur]

Anybody thinking that musicallity resides in equipment rather than the musician has their head firmly shoved up their backside IMO.

Thank you for putting thing in perspective, musician and the way it has been recorded has an order of magnitude more importance than what is used to replay the material. Hence despite measuring something different is not so important if you are into music listening. I guess if one is into sound listening, the experience is different and measurements might be crucial.
Some people, including myself, listen to music on vinyl for many excellent reasons resulting in a pleasurable experience, we try to repeat. Other people, not so much. The number of people enjoying vinyl, after a steady decline is back raising again.

 

[danadam]

This, I agree with. For me, digital has the *potential*, but the current implementation is flawed; mainly in the delivery and the reconstruction, but also in the original quantisation (particularly with 44.1).

@JeremyFife was clearly talking about mastering:

Crap mastering of digital music, dumbing it down in the search for "loudness" and shiny, short term, impact wastes that potential and makes me want to weep!

you seem to be talking about some supposed technical flaws. This doesn't sound like agreement to me, but rather like taking his phrase "potential" and interpreting it your own way.

 

[Robin L]

There is a wide spectrum of people who listen to recorded music and a wide spectrum of the interest in the equipment to play it on.

My wife is a professional musician and conductor, she is happy to listen to everything on her laptop speakers since the musicianship/ musicality is perfectly well reproduced there if the bass and treble are lacking.

The guy in the next room to me in my second year at Uni was the opposite.
He was passionate about the equipment, avidly read all the magazines and bought the latest and greatest (this was 1970 so LP only) he had almost as many test records as LPs. Luckily for me, very much less well off than him, he was delighted to play any of my records on it, though there was always a risk of him jumping up to make an adjustment part way through when he had heard an imperfection.

Most of us are not that near the end of the spectrum but IME the vinyl lovers are more at the equipment end and the music lovers more at the listen to the music I want on anything that is available end.

My wife wouldn't choose to listen to an LP if you paid her! I OTOH have 4 record players and a lot of LPs bought before CD existed, I am very experienced in record player setup but hate doing it. I probably play about 1 LP a month.

Anybody thinking that musicallity resides in equipment rather than the musician has their head firmly shoved up their backside IMO.

I do some audio work for a little band that plays for elementary school assemblies on Zoom. I have to situate a microphone or line in front of around six or seven performers. We made some recordings, having a nice large diaphragm condenser microphone for lead vocals, everybody else either gets a Shure 58 or a line into the mixing board. Took the recordings home, EQ, limiting and compression. I'm listening at home with a pretty nice desktop system. I'd say the recording's semi-pro, got a good vocal sound, cut back the bass so it doesn't overwhelm the mix. But the band's leader plays people that track via her tinny sounding smartphone, and she's happy to show off the track sounding like that. The sound reminds me of when I was a kid and had a pocket transistor radio for top 40 [then including the Beatles]. I might have wanted better sound, but I was thrilled to have the music with me back then. Sounds like Miriam is on your wife's side of the spectrum. The track in question has a 12-string guitar part, sounds like the Byrds, seems to work on an old-fashioned transistor radio, or the close approach to that sound on the speaker of a smartphone.

 

[Frank Dernie]

This, I agree with. For me, digital has the *potential*, but the current implementation is flawed; mainly in the delivery and the reconstruction, but also in the original quantisation (particularly with 44.1). All areas which can impact final sound quality. Flawed enough that I prefer vinyl, with all it's limitations as my playback medium of choice. Digital will get there one day and this conversation will end.

And just to clarify; I'm primarily talking about all-analogue vinyl. Digitally mastered vinyl is much less interesting.

From a factual point of view there is nothing audible on an LP which can't be completely recorded onto a 16bit/44.1 sample rate file, and this has been the case for 30 years, I have tried it.
The dynamic range of LP is about 11-bit, so 16 bit is more than enough and although young people can hear up to 20kHz and LPs are capable of recording well above that frequency it is at a low level because of cutter limitations so none of it is audible because of our ear's sensitivity requires high frequencies to be very loud to be audible.

I don't take issue with anybody's sound preference but the first digital recorder I used, a StellaDAT about 30 years ago, was indistinguishable from the microphone feed and that could not be said about any analogue system I had ever used up to then. The accuracy of digital recording to the microphone feed is incontrovertible.

Cartridges have widely varying frequency responses and (usually) just audible levels of distortion though, so a record player can be "tuned to taste", digital you are stuck with a flat frequency response and low distortion.

All 4 of my record players sound different. All my DACs sound the same unless I use one of the eccentric reconstruction filters.

 

[Aerith Gainsborough]

So FOR ME, vinyl provides a significantly richer overall experience in terms of collecting and listening to music. I love the physical form, the art, holding albums in my hand, I love owning a neato turntable, I feel more connected to the music "physically" owning it, playing vinyl leads me to relax and focus better on just listening to music, and I get fantastic sound quality in the bargain.

I thank you for the well written explanation of your feelings on the matter. It's always interesting to see what makes other people tick.

Totally understand one could "dull" to music that is omnipresent.
While I personally don't need any rituals to ground myself and listen exclusively and attentively (I just need the bloody time and quiet to not feel the need to multitask... difficult enough >.<), I can see how the preparation act can actually help in that regard.

Also: yes, turntables look cool .... and you can let LEGO men ride the carousel while playing music!
*ducks and hides behind sand bags*

 

[telemike]

It makes tons of sense to me

First, if you are trying to make sense of the vinyl renaissance, you are least likely to get an accurate answer from someone who doesn't care for vinyl. We tend to be pretty poor at understanding why other people do things that we personally don't care for, and thus tend to resort to more facile "explanations" (e.g. "it's just a hipster thing" or whatever).

So...from someone who IS in to vinyl, here's my explanation (which I've given before since this question comes up every once in a while).

I was almost all digital music since the late 80's, and later ripped all my CDs to used a music server. I also added streaming. Now I could stream to my hi-fi system from the convenience of my listening sofa using my ipad or iphone. The world was my oyster! Endless choice at my finger tips. What could go wrong about that?

Well, human psychology can get in the way. It's like asking "Hey, you love the chocolate cake made by your favorite bakery, right? Well, how about having that EVERY DAY? Why wouldn't that be PERFECT?" It's a "seemed like a good idea at the time/be careful what you ask for" scenario.

I found myself constantly surfing music, as I would the internet, flicking to the next song, saving favourites I rarely re-visited, because there was always something new at my fingertips. I rarely listened to a full album. I had "Music ADD." I felt more disconnected from the music.

Further, digital music is absolutely ubiquitous: it's coming out of my desktop computer, my phone, from our smart speaker in the kitchen, our car. It's just constantly there and available and especially with streaming it's like music has become more like wallpaper, something in the background. Something cheap, endlessly available. Less special.

I found getting back in to vinyl solved my "music ADD." When I put on a record I feel more focused on the task of just listening to music. I virtually always get through an entire album side, and usually the full album. So while person A who isn't in to vinyl may find the "effort" a "distraction" to the music, person B may find it actually aids their focus on the music. I'm in the latter category.

I find I enjoy the physical aspects of actually holding the music in my hand when I pick up a record. Of seeing it transcribed in the grooves. Conceptually, it's really cool. A vinyl record in my hand can bring on nostalgia (e.g. one of the records I still own from my youth) or it can have "the thrill of the new" - a pristine, newly pressed, gorgeously packed just-released soundtrack in vinyl for instance. Holding a brand new beautifully designed album provides me FAR more pleasure than just tapping the screen yet again on my iphone.

And the fact it costs more for an album, as well as tracking down music on vinyl I want, means my music collection is more closely curated. I'm more connected to my music collection, I know it better, and I only have music I love.

I also like how buying new vinyl means more money going to the artist, rather than the pittance they get from streaming. It's one reason my brother, like so many musicians these days, is selling his music on vinyl. He can actually make a bit of money for his work. Most bands now want to release their music on vinyl. It's not only that they can make more money selling vinyl vs streaming. These days even many young musicians say that for them, holding their completed album in physical form, on a vinyl album, feels like the ultimate sense of "completion" and satisfaction. Rather than the music simply being sent off in to the digital ether. Humans have connections to physical things. Many young people who only ever interacted with music as 1s and 0s are discovering how this can change their relationship to their music.

And...turntables! Turntables are just COOL! (If you are in to them). I went all out and bought a neato turntable and it gives me an aesthetic, conceptual and tactile "kick" every time I use it. I get to interact with this cool object every time I spin music. Which, again, just pressing another button on my computer or swiping another "screen" is hardly a thrill these days.

In fact, playing vinyl allows me to unplug from the digital world. I'm on computers all day long, my phone tugging for attention all day long. Listening to a record is like taking a break from interacting with yet-more-god-damned-screens. Like reading a real book instead of picking up the ipad again.


Finally there is the sound.

Vinyl tends to sound different than digital. When I had my original modest turntable, I enjoyed the sound of vinyl as a different alternative to digital. When I upgraded my turntable vinyl sounded even better...fantastic actually. It sounded for the most part super clear and vivid, like my digital music, but also with a slight bit of "texture/tone" to the sound that I actually often preferred. Not always, but surprisingly often. (I have a good digital set up, Benchmark DAC 2L etc). PLUS, the way you can fiddle with the sound - different cartridges, cartridge settings, impedances and all that, scratches the "fun to tweak" audiophile itch in me, where my digital front end is just sort of set-and-forget.

So FOR ME, vinyl provides a significantly richer overall experience in terms of collecting and listening to music. I love the physical form, the art, holding albums in my hand, I love owning a neato turntable, I feel more connected to the music "physically" owning it, playing vinyl leads me to relax and focus better on just listening to music, and I get fantastic sound quality in the bargain.

Plus...I still have my digital to stream whenever I want to. (Which I still do).

As for the wider revival: yes there is a certain portion of "some people getting in to it because it's cool now." But for the most part you will find many elements of my experience repeated over and over from people who have got in to vinyl, whether it's long time audiophiles or young people who had become "dulled" by the ease and ubiquitous access to digital music, who find all sorts of pleasure from owning music in a physical form (and supporting artists, etc). If you go to, for instance, the reddit vinyl forums, you'll see posts every day by people just getting in to vinyl - often younger people - and how thrilled they are to own albums, to hunt them down, how much they like their newfangled turntable, etc.

This is why it's gone far past the point of "fad" and has been in an upward trajectory for around 15 years, with no signs of stopping.

Hope that helps you understand why other people are buying vinyl, even if it holds no appeal to you.

My turntable

View attachment 196728

I agree with you. For me nostalgia, physical medium and listening to an album side non-stop with no track skipping or music ADD

 

[deweydm]

Likely more a dead cat bounce than renaissance in the longer term. The objective sound factors--big differences in mix and/or master--that can rationally explain a subjective preference for versions on physical releases (vinyl and CD) are slowly, haphazardly disappearing with streaming.

Couple recent examples of what I mean. Have most of the early AC/DC records on LP, early US pressings, but not High Voltage. Have a 2003 remaster of High Voltage on CD. Not great (unless you like everything equally loud) compared to the other AC/DC albums I have on vinyl. But I don't really feel I need to find an early pressing of this because there's now an Apple Digital Masters version of High Voltage on AM I can stream, and it sounds very good.

And I came across a used but flawless copy of Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot on vinyl. Great price, like 50% of what it's going for on discogs. Bought it. 2017 re master, I think. Sounds lovely. But again, there's now an Apple Digital Master of this on AM. Can barely discern a difference between the LPs and the Apple Digital Master. Latter sounds a smidge more compressed to me, but I'm probably kidding myself about that. (Made no measurements.)

But, I also have hundreds of CDs and LPs that have obviously better mastering to me than the versions currently available on my streaming platform of choice. There's the whole renting versus owning consideration, but I usually tend to check out the streaming version (sometimes versions) available before buying any CDs or LPs now, and often kind of end up regretting the purchase if I don't.

 

[rDin]

@JeremyFife was clearly talking about mastering:

you seem to be talking about some supposed technical flaws. This doesn't sound like agreement to me, but rather like taking his phrase "potential" and interpreting it your own way.

Reread his post and dont recognise your characterisation of my response, however it’s possible I have indeed misread his post. You’ve decided that I have, so let’s leave it at that.

 

[krabapple]

As you are clearly not interested in a good faith conversation, I won't reply to your many ad hominems. Instead, blocked.

You wrote:
For me, digital has the *potential*, but the current implementation is flawed; mainly in the delivery and the reconstruction, but also in the original quantisation (particularly with 44.1). All areas which can impact final sound quality.


I take it, then , that you have no actual evidence for this claim about digital audio being 'flawed' ,except what you 'feel'.

 

[Ken1951]

music lovers more at the listen to the music I want on anything that is available end.

This is me. Big system, small system, car, ear buds - I don't care. Songs give me goose bumps no matter how I'm listening to it. And I ditched LPs ages ago. Nowadays streaming is everything. If people like LPs - good on'em, just not for me ever again.

 

[paddycrow]

I listen to both vinyl and digital and enjoy both. Most of the time, the convenience of digital wins out. I have some old LPs that I can't find on digital, but I own a lot more digital music. To replace it all with vinyl would cost a bunch and take up a ridiculous amount of space.

I have to confess that I've never been able to hear what people describe as vinyl sounding better or being more musical.