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Can anyone explain the vinyl renaissance?

If needed you can clean them up for instance with Audacity for free. So analog and digital processing joining forces so everybody happy.
I will sure give them a ultrasonic clean and then record them. I have clickrepair as well. I will compare one of mine with this rip:

 
I will sure give them a ultrasonic clean and then record them. I have clickrepair as well. I will compare one of mine with this rip:

You compare. Click Repair an Audacity?interesting if you have result please post them.
 
I was thinking about the MoFI controverse regarding producing new lacquers from a DSD digital version. Probably the only way to preserve quality (over time) For many a not done (digital) production proces. https://musictech.com/news/industry...ttlement-over-all-analogue-vinyl-controversy/

Basicly i found quite funny.
Even funnier if it’s true that lacquer cutting systems started to include a digital stage to handle the look ahead for variable width grooves in the late seventies, and that it’s very rare for a tape look ahead to be used when cutting variable width grooves today. Assertions made in the video shared in this post.
 
Generally speaking, I agree with you.

From what I can see, yes there are some vinyl enthusiasts who cite purported better dynamic range on vinyl as one of their reasons for choosing records.

But I think that’s pretty niche, and even among those people only one of the reasons they play records. It looks like the majority of people buying vinyl these days are not audiophiles and aren’t buying records based on concerns like “ higher dynamic range.”

Hell, even I don’t give this much thought, and don’t buy my records based on dynamic range concerns.

I also agree, but I don't think anyone has suggested that the supposed better dynamics of vinyl is the largest reason for the popularity of vinyl records. But there is obviously a fairly large segment of people using that DR loudness-war website and trust all the readings of vinyl rips, but when comparing that segment of people to the big masses buying and listening to vinyl records, they are probably few as most music listeners don’t even know what the dynamics of music even are.

The main reason why many people buy and listen to vinyl is likely way more simple than that. Vinyl is seen at the true way of listening to music by the large masses, and when they are asked what the audiophile music format is, many of them will likely answer; vinyl(!), because that is what many of them think about when asked what audiophiles are using when reproducing the music.



But with that said…

While the large masses may never visit a site like ASR or even thinking about dynamic range of vinyl vs digital, that discussion does have a place here where there is likely a larger percentage of the members that would actually visit a website like ‘DR loudness-war’ (and maybe believe in all the DR measurements they see for the vinyl releases).
 
I also agree, but I don't think anyone has suggested that the supposed better dynamics of vinyl is the largest reason for the popularity of vinyl records. But there is obviously a fairly large segment of people using that DR loudness-war website and trust all the readings of vinyl rips, but when comparing that segment of people to the big masses buying and listening to vinyl records, they are probably few as most music listeners don’t even know what the dynamics of music even are.

The main reason why many people buy and listen to vinyl is likely way more simple than that. Vinyl is seen at the true way of listening to music by the large masses, and when they are asked what the audiophile music format is, many of them will likely answer; vinyl(!), because that is what many of them think about when asked what audiophiles are using when reproducing the music.



But with that said…

While the large masses may never visit a site like ASR or even thinking about dynamic range of vinyl vs digital, that discussion does have a place here where there is likely a larger percentage of the members that would actually visit a website like ‘DR loudness-war’ (and maybe believe in all the DR measurements they see for the vinyl releases).

People are voting with their wallets, which must mean something.

I think there is a hidden assumption that "audiophile" necessarily means "obsessed with fidelity". There are many other reasons one might be a "lover of audio". Taking this into account is a path to understanding the resurgence of vinyl.

It's not nostalgia: most of the people I see pawing the vinyl at hipster record stores and Walmart/Barnes & Noble are half my age or younger--and I have only been ordering off the senior menu for a couple of years. It's not that they don't know what good sound is: Airpods and such are excellent, and even lossy streams have measurably better fidelity than vinyl. There have never been so many people familiar with good sound as there are now. The gear has never been so good, either. I worked in the audio industry in the 80s and after, so I know this firsthand.

The simplest explanation is that a significant number of people like the sound better, for whatever reason. Maybe it's the mastering, on average, or maybe it's an electromechanical filter/sound treatment imparted by the format. But CD sales are way down, and vinyl sales are way up even though essentially unlimited lossless music is available for peanuts wherever one happens to be.

Any theory has to explain these facts.
 
People are voting with their wallets, which must mean something.

I think there is a hidden assumption that "audiophile" necessarily means "obsessed with fidelity". There are many other reasons one might be a "lover of audio". Taking this into account is a path to understanding the resurgence of vinyl.

It's not nostalgia: most of the people I see pawing the vinyl at hipster record stores and Walmart/Barnes & Noble are half my age or younger--and I have only been ordering off the senior menu for a couple of years. It's not that they don't know what good sound is: Airpods and such are excellent, and even lossy streams have measurably better fidelity than vinyl. There have never been so many people familiar with good sound as there are now. The gear has never been so good, either. I worked in the audio industry in the 80s and after, so I know this firsthand.

The simplest explanation is that a significant number of people like the sound better, for whatever reason. Maybe it's the mastering, on average, or maybe it's an electromechanical filter/sound treatment imparted by the format. But CD sales are way down, and vinyl sales are way up even though essentially unlimited lossless music is available for peanuts wherever one happens to be.

Any theory has to explain these facts.
Ok, I'll restate my theory, which actually contradicts much of this.

There isn't, really, a "renaissance" at all.

Vinyl carried on as a subculture all the way from the exodus from selling LPs, to the resumption a decade or more later. Record fairs, collecting, turntable and player sales, general sales of used records and hardware, specialist manufacture of phono stages, remained at, maybe not overly high, but at stubborn levels all the way through the supposed death of vinyl. It never really went away.

The vinyl LP is a cultural artefact. As such, the majority of users are still either from the pre-1990s user base or influenced by them. The renaissance as such is just new vinyl sales catching up with pre-existing use and demand. And some people are adding new stories and ideas to a long standing set of cultural values. It's those cultural values that are reflected in the current situation, not a pure sound quality argument.

We're over-obsessed with the sound quality aspect of the story. Especially when that supposed 50% of buyers who don't own a record player are taken into account.
 
Ok, I'll restate my theory, which actually contradicts much of this.

There isn't, really, a "renaissance" at all.

Vinyl carried on as a subculture all the way from the exodus from selling LPs, to the resumption a decade or more later. Record fairs, collecting, turntable and player sales, general sales of used records and hardware, specialist manufacture of phono stages, remained at, maybe not overly high, but at stubborn levels all the way through the supposed death of vinyl. It never really went away.

The vinyl LP is a cultural artefact. As such, the majority of users are still either from the pre-1990s user base or influenced by them. The renaissance as such is just new vinyl sales catching up with pre-existing use and demand. And some people are adding new stories and ideas to a long standing set of cultural values. It's those cultural values that are reflected in the current situation, not a pure sound quality argument.

We're over-obsessed with the sound quality aspect of the story. Especially when that supposed 50% of buyers who don't own a record player are taken into account.
For a long time, LP sales were mainly used product. Unlike CDs, LPs that are repeatedly played eventually wear out. I know there are those who would contradict me, but most people did not use the sort of gear or practice the sorts of habits that would prevent record wear. And a single play of one of these older discs on a turntable with a damaged stylus would be enough to render the record useless to anyone who cares about sound. The supply of discs eventually had to be replenished. As Galliardist points out, this is not a renaissance but a continuation. And as Galliardist has pointed out, sound quality isn't the most important factor for the continuation of the LP as a format for recorded music.
 
Ok, I'll restate my theory, which actually contradicts much of this.

There isn't, really, a "renaissance" at all.
I believe you’re both wrong.
The renaissance as such is just new vinyl sales catching up with pre-existing use and demand.
If this were the case, then one would expect new turntable sales and used vinyl sales to have been essentially flat, since there has never been a shortage of either on the market. Yet — in the U.S. anyway — both have been increasing steadily over the past 10 years. Leaving new vinyl sales aside, how do you explain those consistently increasing sales in the absence of a “renewed interest” in vinyl records — the definition of a renaissance?
We're over-obsessed with the sound quality aspect of the story
That’s certainly true — recent polling backs up anecdotal evidence that sound quality is not a major driver of the renaissance.
 
Ok, I'll restate my theory, which actually contradicts much of this.

There isn't, really, a "renaissance" at all.

Vinyl carried on as a subculture all the way from the exodus from selling LPs, to the resumption a decade or more later. Record fairs, collecting, turntable and player sales, general sales of used records and hardware, specialist manufacture of phono stages, remained at, maybe not overly high, but at stubborn levels all the way through the supposed death of vinyl. It never really went away.

The vinyl LP is a cultural artefact. As such, the majority of users are still either from the pre-1990s user base or influenced by them. The renaissance as such is just new vinyl sales catching up with pre-existing use and demand. And some people are adding new stories and ideas to a long standing set of cultural values. It's those cultural values that are reflected in the current situation, not a pure sound quality argument.

We're over-obsessed with the sound quality aspect of the story. Especially when that supposed 50% of buyers who don't own a record player are taken into account.

A real estate site I follow has a motto: "In God We Trust. All Others Bring Data."

New vinyl album sales quintupled in constant dollar terms in ten years (chart below, from the best possible source: https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/ ). That's around half of all permanent music format sales, right?

According to another, somewhat outdated, source (I am doing this very quickly, just to confirm what I know from elsewhere so don't expect the latest and greatest unless you're willing to pay my consulting fees :p https://speakergy.com/vinyl-records-sales-full-statistics-report/ ) ... 42% of vinyl album buyers in 2019 were 34 years old or younger, which I can probably prove has shifted even younger since. Note the 6X+ increase in unit sales from the same source.

A lot of that is of course Boomers buying The Best of the Doobies, sure, but I keep seeing groups of teenagers flipping through the vinyl racks at Target, Walmart, etc. and enthusiastically showing each other what they found. It's not Tower Records circa 1982, but it sure takes me back--and surprises me. This goes somewhat hand in hand with all-vinyl 80s nights we have locally (which I will no doubt DJ at sometime soon ...): the crowd runs younger than I expected and I feel somewhat out of place while these punks
music lovers hijack my high school music.

Feel free to produce your own data, I love to learn.
Screenshot 2025-01-13 at 9.39.37 PM.png
 
If this were the case, then one would expect new turntable sales and used vinyl sales to have been essentially flat, since there has never been a shortage of either on the market. Yet — in the U.S. anyway — both have been increasing steadily over the past 10 years. Leaving new vinyl sales aside, how do you explain those consistently increasing sales in the absence of a “renewed interest” in vinyl records — the definition of a renaissance?
New turntable sales reflect the reality that old turntables can and do wear out. I know, it's happened to me. Steady-state demand would indicate slow growth anyway. And audiophiles do suffer from "upgraditus". Retail sales of new turntables bottomed out in 2012, and the notation for the increase in sales is for the retail cost of those turntables. So, inflation is a factor, not to mention the turntables getting more expensive year by year independent of inflation. The question is - have more individual turntables sold year by year?

I don't think we can leave new LP sales behind. I'm not so sure about the sales of used LPs, I gave up on those because I was finding the condition of the older LP just kept getting worse. But I gave up on buying new LPs when they got too expensive and still came out with audible defects. For me, right now, it's just CDs and streaming with the occasional SACD if I have to. It's true that there are some who are interested in LPs for the cover art, that might explain increased sales, if any, of used LPs. I don't think the sales of used LPs is being tracked like the sales of new records are. So that information may not be available.
 
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Retail sales of new turntables bottomed out in 2012, and the notation for the increase in sales is for the retail cost of those turntables. . . . The question is - have more individual turntables sold year by year?
Indeed they have. Going by actual units sold, in the U.S. there were 49,000 in 2012, and from then increased steadily to 82,000 in 2021 (the last year for which I’m finding stats right now). While replacement of worn out turntables surely accounts for some of these sales, I’d have a hard time believing that they’re failing and being replaced at that increasing rate year over year.
I don't think we can leave new LP sales behind.
I don’t either! Galliardist is arguing that they are merely a reflection of long-existing but steady demand finally being met; I believe the demand itself is increasing but am willing to set that aside in the interest of getting an explanation for increasing turntable and used record sales, since those have remained widely available even when new records were not being released at the rate they are now.
I don't think the sales of used LPs is being tracked like the sales of new records are. So that information may not be available.
That data was pulled from secondhand record store reporting, eBay completed sales of used records, and sales on Discogs (not counting records listed in Mint condition as a lot of those were probably new).
 
I believe you’re both wrong.

If this were the case, then one would expect new turntable sales and used vinyl sales to have been essentially flat, since there has never been a shortage of either on the market. Yet — in the U.S. anyway — both have been increasing steadily over the past 10 years. Leaving new vinyl sales aside, how do you explain those consistently increasing sales in the absence of a “renewed interest” in vinyl records — the definition of a renaissance?

That’s certainly true — recent polling backs up anecdotal evidence that sound quality is not a major driver of the renaissance.
Turntable sales in the US stayed pretty flat (I was missing two year's data) between 1995 and 2018, with a temporary dip in 2008-11 (I see @Robin L says "bottomed out in 2012") - oddly those dip years for turntable sales are the years in which new vinyl production restarted on a "larger" scale, and the date most people seem to put on the "renaissance" starting. The key thing that supported the first growth in new disc sales was the existence of a continuing vinyl culture with suppressed demand for new LPs. Much of the subsequent growth is from returning, former vinyl users (there are a lot of them) and from people who were previously exposed to vinyl. The entrepreneurs who saw that opportunity in vinyl wouldn't have gone there if they had had to sell into a vacuum.

My figures are given in earlier posts. I'm not repeating the work now.

The term "renaissance" implies a cultural rebirth. Since the culture never died, and has grown to a tiny proportion of previous use even now among the general population (also remember that LP sales per capita remain well behind the US for the rest of the world), I can't call the growth of the last 18 years (ten is too short, seriously) a renaissance, any more than I could call it a fad.

I was part of the vinyl culture during the supposed dead period particularly until late 1998 when I was in the UK before moving to Australia. I got out late, in 2005, which is just two or three years before the new disc industry really started to appear - so I do know something of what I'm talking about.

I'm not denying some later growth. A number of your figures seem OK if not exactly what I have. I don't actually believe that the growth in numbers of people playing records is as high as some of the numbers suggest, and I believe (despite the "hipster thing") that most growth is still related to an ongoing vinyl culture. I also believe that this isn't over - if there was more production capacity and LP prices fell, more LPs would sell to the current user base regardless of further growth in people starting to play records.
 
…The simplest explanation is that a significant number of people like the sound better, for whatever reason. Maybe it's the mastering, on average, or maybe it's an electromechanical filter/sound treatment imparted by the format. But CD sales are way down, and vinyl sales are way up even though essentially unlimited lossless music is available for peanuts wherever one happens to be.

Any theory has to explain these facts.
what if it's not just the sound, but the whole experience? Putting on a record is a tangible and deliberate act, and the pops and hisses are part of that experience. Playing to the end and flipping it over, and the gradual wearing out of the LPs and stylus make it feel more real. Like choosing to write with a fountain pen. Or bake misshapen loaves of homemade sourdough, or doing your own gardening. Makes you feel fully human and alive.
 
One thing I haven't seen in the information is the population change from 212,000,000 in 1974 to 346,416,944 as of Jan 13th, 2025.
That's 134,416,944 more people. They have to contribute to the sales, along with replacing worn media and purchasing new records.

The population in 1950 was roughly 150,000,000. Close to a 200,000,000 increase compared to 2025. Considering only 13% of the current
population is first generation that's a lot of people with the potential to buy records.

That would change from a renaissance to business as usual for the most part. It just tells ME the number of people that like music per 1000.
It's pretty close to the same, heck it might have gone down a bit via percentages.

Regards
 
One thing I haven't seen in the information is the population change from 212,000,000 in 1974 to 346,416,944 as of Jan 13th, 2025.
That's 134,416,944 more people. They have to contribute to the sales, along with replacing worn media and purchasing new records.

The population in 1950 was roughly 150,000,000. Close to a 200,000,000 increase compared to 2025. Considering only 13% of the current
population is first generation that's a lot of people with the potential to buy records.

That would change from a renaissance to business as usual for the most part. It just tells ME the number of people that like music per 1000.
It's pretty close to the same, heck it might have gone down a bit via percentages.

Regards
Some of my past posts calculated sales per capita for different countries. Compare that to pre CD era equivalents, and the numbers are impressively... tiny.

The numbers that tell us who likes music today? They are the streaming numbers, not the numbers buying vinyl.
 
Some of my past posts calculated sales per capita for different countries. Compare that to pre CD era equivalents, and the numbers are impressively... tiny.

The numbers that tell us who likes music today? They are the streaming numbers, not the numbers buying vinyl.
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An as you compare this format overview you have to take in to account that the newly released music on Vinyl is ( i pressume) a copy of a 100% digital format an for that matter probably also vintage records (released new) that where digitized years ago because the mastertapes or instrument tapes an laquers will not survive over time. It will come close that all formats including vinyl has a digital basis except <70 till mid 80 vinyl releases are truly analog in every step.
 
Wondering if some ASR members also making a perfect digital copy of their Vinyl records.
That is exactly what I do with my vinyl records. Once digitized I never play back the record. I also remove all clicks/pops, the surface noise and eq it with Izotope RX and Ozone. However, I don’t treasure my vinyl. Once digitized I view it as a sunk cost.
 
Even funnier if it’s true that lacquer cutting systems started to include a digital stage to handle the look ahead for variable width grooves in the late seventies, and that it’s very rare for a tape look ahead to be used when cutting variable width grooves today. Assertions made in the video shared in this post.
I do think that is true and a good thing. Cutting engineers and mastering engineers are using Simulathe to create digital samples of what the LP would sound like before even attempting a cut. They provide the digital sample to the artist to obtain their approval, ensuring that time, effort, and materials are not wasted. I posted about this here.
 
An as you compare this format overview you have to take in to account that the newly released music on Vinyl is ( i pressume) a copy of a 100% digital format an for that matter probably also vintage records (released new) that where digitized years ago because the mastertapes or instrument tapes an laquers will not survive over time. It will come close that all formats including vinyl has a digital basis except <70 till mid 80 vinyl releases are truly analog in every step.
I completely agree; however, it's important to note that the digital vinyl master is not always identical to the digital download master. The presence of digital in the production chain shouldn't be a a concern at all.

One of the things that I learned as we explored vinyl vs digital download mastering practices deeper, is that it's actually not that expensive to create a vinyl specific master. So I would hope that moving forward, this would become the norm.
 
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