Can anyone explain the vinyl renaissance?

[Galliardist]

Again not an argument over vinyl v CD/streaming BUT to get the best from a vinyl system you must have as near to silence from a t/t. The Japanese d/d t/ts did just this The Kenwood KD/KP series (among others) did just this - wow/flutter 0.02% WRMS - rumble -80dB weighted. These decks came with an excellent gimbal arm that was a doddle to set up. My first experience of d/d t/ts came when I bought a s/hand Technics SL120 that came with a 3009 d/headshell set up at the SME factory in Steyning. This was a shock after using an AR and then Rega 3 t/ts - the silence was literally shocking so much detail had been lost with the belt drive decks.

So many comment about the 'pops and clicks' from vinyl - really! they should have looked after the vinyl better. I'm going to buy a Lapwing to make digital copies of my vinyl and I know it comes with good software to eliminate the problem, it's just that most of my vinyl simply doesn't have this problem.

My reason to digitise, simple, easier to maintain and operate a digital system.

I'm aware of all this. If you haven't seen my earlier posts, I dropped vinyl fairly late, 2006. I didn't digitise anything of mine on the way out for obvious reasons.

I listen and listened then to a lot of solo classical guitar, lute, renaissance keyboard music. There is nowhere to hide with vinyl with those types of music, none of the masking that is accounted for in weighted figures. In fact my experience was the other way round - belt drives often had better unweighted noise figures back in the 1980s as I recall, until you hit astronomically expensive decks. I had no way to the silence you refer to, because... it isn't there. Never really was, isn't today. The rumble filter was my friend for some years.

I travelled a hundred miles by train on several occasions to get to a dealer that not only had a Keith Monks cleaner but knew how to use it, for the worse used discs that I bought.

And as for quiet LPs? At times, when vinyl was being heavily recycled, they could become a rarity. Didn't you have to live with noise sometimes? One of the worst part of owning vinyl, when it came down to it, was the constant returning LPs to shops and becoming a "difficult customer" in the process. I hated that bit.

The only wonder for me is how I lived with vinyl for so long. Then again, I'm now becoming reacquainted with some of the music from the record library that I couldn't buy at the time, which I would absolutely have missed out on if I'd gone CD on day one.

I am an advocate for any route that maximises the amount of music available to a listener, and being adventurous in listening.

 

[MatrixS2000]

So many comment about the 'pops and clicks' from vinyl - really! they should have looked after the vinyl better.

Any vinyl I buy new goes into an ultrasonic cleaner for a 20 minute cleaning first, then digitized on first play. It still has clicks and pops. So care is not the problem, although lack of care can make it worse.

 

[MatrixS2000]

And as for quiet LPs?

I have yet to find one. Some are better than others and some are really bad - for example Tool’s Lateralus. This is a picture disc and the surface noise is really bad. No amount of cleaning could get rid of it.

 

[flightops]

I’m a vinyl “aficionado” and have a reasonable collection of LP’s, but I accept that any expectation that vinyl will have an absence of “artifacts” on playback is just unreasonable.

I also have CD and compact cassette sources. Not really a streamer. I prefer physical media I can touch and own without having to access the internet to enjoy. I don’t rip either, but that's more of a “I don’t want to bother” thing than not wanting to “digitize”.

Heck, I even still have some 8 tracks I occasionally listen to.

Vinyl used to be for listening to what you want, when you want, at home. Then 8-track made it portable, which was fairly quickly killed off by compact cassettes. Cassettes were then killed off by CD, which offered both portability and audio quality. Then came the MP3 era and then streaming. Each has to be appreciated for what it is: different.

Theres no possible way vinyl will ever be as “silent” as cd/digital. Vinyl tends to get “romanticized”, but the simple fact is it cannot and will not be as silent as digital.

The very air that you are spinning that disc through during playback is rife with contaminants (ie:look at the sunshine streaming in through any window) that are either attracted to (ie:static charge) or dropped (ie: gravity) onto the playing surface. Digital is not affected by this minute amount of contaminant, not even a physical CD.

Considering household airborne dust can be 0.5 to 100 microns in size and a vinyl groove can be anywhere around 25-80 microns, it begins to become obvious that completely eliminating “clicks and pops” is an exercise in futility. Even dust dropping straight down on the playing surface can get into the grove and in front of the stylus as it “reads” the groove.

Even my brand new lp’s go directly into the ultrasonic cleaner and they still pick up surface noise before/during playback. Theres no way to avoid it really. You just have to decide how much of it is acceptable to you.

Heck, it can right out of the U/S cleaner and go right to the platter and its going to pick stuff up simply moving it though the air between the two pieces of equipment.

Physical damage is easy to understand in regard to noise. A scratch is a scratch and its expected the stylus will “click” when it hits it. Simple and obvious noise source.

Then there’s always the poor pressing or a poor master possibly introducing other audible artifacts.

I won’t be getting rid of my LP setup and I enjoy “the chase” to get it are clear and accurate as possible, but I also accept that it has limitations. I appreciate it for how it’s different from my digital sources. Both in audio playback “quality” and the “inconvenience” factor.

Now, those digital recordings that introduce “click and pops” in an attempt to mimic vinyl? Well, I just don’t understand that at all…looking to set themselves apart from the rest or trying to be “artistic” I guess. It just baffles me…

 

[aagstn]

So many comment about the 'pops and clicks' from vinyl - really! they should have looked after the vinyl better. I'm going to buy a Lapwing to make digital copies of my vinyl and I know it comes with good software to eliminate the problem, it's just that most of my vinyl simply doesn't have this problem.

My pop and click issues are not with my records I have had since the late 70's and early 80's. Those sound fine other than the normal record surface noise they all have. My pops and clicks were on over two dozen brand new records I just took out of the package. Did I somehow damage them on their first play? I have several friends that love vinyl again and a couple that have spent over a grand on a TT setup. They talk about how good their vinyl sounds. Problem is when I listen to records with them I hear pops and clicks and they simply ignore them and only hear what they want from their records.

I'm all for people enjoying vinyl and music in any way they seem fit. However, I personally had enough with the poor pressing quality and high prices and I happily went back to CD and Blu-ray audio. I'm spending less and I don't have to "take care of them" other than just putting it back in the case when done and I don't need an expensive and fussy playback system. That works for me, but I'm all for physical media and if records are popular I still say it's a good thing. I just hope the labels don't continue to price people out of the hobby.

 

[Robin L]

?

Not sure if you have me confused with someone else? I never said pure analog was better or ever believed that myth. The fact that I digitize all my vinyl proves that out.

You haven't said that "pure analog" was better but there are some very expensive reissues (and a few recent issues, at least as expensive) that boast of being "pure analog". I do not see any advantage in that. As you have already pointed out, there are digital domain noise reduction tools that can greatly reduce surface noise, clicks 'n' pops and so on. But to me all these work-arounds just point out how ridiculous the whole process is. I understand the fantasy that one owns the music (though, legally speaking, they really don't) and the sense of physicality the format offers, but I really am one of those "music first" sorts, just as happy to stream some music I can't touch or "own" as long as I can hear it. And isn't that supposed to be the point anyway? The music?

 

[Snarfie]

Any vinyl I buy new goes into an ultrasonic cleaner for a 20 minute cleaning first, then digitized on first play. It still has clicks and pops. So care is not the problem, although lack of care can make it worse.

How offent do you listen back the digitized vinyl.

 

[MattHooper]

I have yet to find one. Some are better than others and some are really bad - for example Tool’s Lateralus. This is a picture disc and the surface noise is really bad. No amount of cleaning could get rid of it.

Are you saying you’ve yet to find a quiet LP?

If so, that’s fascinating. As I’ve said before, with the vast majority of my records, I don’t hear any record noise while the music is playing.

 

[HalSF]

While it doesn’t explain the vinyl renaissance, that fact that the vinyl renaissance clearly bugs the living daylights out of people find the idea of other people happily tolerating LP noise and the sonic limitations of vinyl playback to be a baffling affront, definitely adds to my pleasure and enthusiasm for the format.

Like sexual congress, vinyl is icky, messy, irrational, measures poorly, and is lots of transgressive fun.

 

[Down South]

Are you saying you’ve yet to find a quiet LP?

If so, that’s fascinating. As I’ve said before, with the vast majority of my records, I don’t hear any record noise while the music is playing.

I bought a lot of 'audiophile' vinyl in the 90s' I wish I had bought more. At a car boot sale in the early 90s I bought an ECM - Making Music - Zakir Hussain/John McLaughlin/Jan Gabarek/Hariprasad Chauprasaria - there is no noise only music, near the end of side 1, Jan Gabarek comes storming in and takes you away. ECM is good way to show how vinyl can take you away.

 

[Mark1]

You haven't said that "pure analog" was better but there are some very expensive reissues (and a few recent issues, at least as expensive) that boast of being "pure analog". I do not see any advantage in that. As you have already pointed out, there are digital domain noise reduction tools that can greatly reduce surface noise, clicks 'n' pops and so on. But to me all these work-arounds just point out how ridiculous the whole process is. I understand the fantasy that one owns the music (though, legally speaking, they really don't) and the sense of physicality the format offers, but I really am one of those "music first" sorts, just as happy to stream some music I can't touch or "own" as long as I can hear it. And isn't that supposed to be the point anyway? The music?

This is why I can totally understand wanting to revive CDs but records not so much. CDs give you the ownership, most of the physicality of records, plus most all the advantages of digital-sound quality, low maintenance, convenience.

I tend to think in automotive terms, I dislike how repair info has mostly went to digital subscription . I would be ok with selling you a physical CD (still digital) of the repair info that has no subscription as opposed to a book (analogous to a record), but that option like with music has been skipped over mostly for subscription streaming.

 

[MattHooper]

While it doesn’t explain the vinyl renaissance, that fact that the vinyl renaissance clearly bugs the living daylights out of people find the idea of other people happily tolerating LP noise and the sonic limitations of vinyl playback to be a baffling affront, definitely adds to my pleasure and enthusiasm for the format.

Like sexual congress, vinyl is icky, messy, irrational, measures poorly, and is lots of transgressive fun.

LOL.

 

[MatrixS2000]

But to me all these work-arounds just point out how ridiculous the whole process is.

To you - because you only listen to classical music, which you already admitted is not limited. So try expanding your listening genres and then it won’t be so ridiculous anymore.

 

[MatrixS2000]

How offent do you listen back the digitized vinyl.

Once digitized, I only listen to the digitized vinyl because there are no clicks, no pops, greatly attenuated to the point of vanished surface noise, etc. You would not know it is a vinyl rip outside of the better DR. Most of my vinyl that has been purchased in the last 10 years-ish has only 1 play on it or 2 if I decided to re-digitize.

 

[MatrixS2000]

Are you saying you’ve yet to find a quiet LP?

If so, that’s fascinating. As I’ve said before, with the vast majority of my records, I don’t hear any record noise while the music is playing.

Sure when the music is playing the surface noise is masked until a quiet portion starts then there it is again. Try listening via headphones and let me know if you think the same. I only listen to vinyl when I am digitizing it and I only use headphones during that process.

 

[Snarfie]

Once digitized, I only listen to the digitized vinyl because there are no clicks, no pops, greatly attenuated to the point of vanished surface noise, etc. You would not know it is a vinyl rip outside of the better DR. Most of my vinyl that has been purchased in the last 10 years-ish has only 1 play on it or 2 if I decided to re-digitize.

Same as some people/friends i know they digitise an listen mostly back over their ssd dac. When listening they offent take out the record sleeve an enjoying the art info the same time. But why want you to re-digitize data loss?

 

[Galliardist]

Once digitized, I only listen to the digitized vinyl because there are no clicks, no pops, greatly attenuated to the point of vanished surface noise, etc. You would not know it is a vinyl rip outside of the better DR. Most of my vinyl that has been purchased in the last 10 years-ish has only 1 play on it or 2 if I decided to re-digitize.

My experience is that I can still spot a vinyl rip through headphones even after removing surface noise and so on: it's far easier to do if there's a digital version of the same track somewhere for comparison, of course, but I've found vinyl rips just by listening to music on streaming services. It's much harder (and probably an irrelevant exercise) over speakers, especially outside of nearfield, unless there's obvious wow, or the LP was badly warped or off centre - and I wouldn't be bothered anyway if I did know.

 

[Holmz]

This is why I can totally understand wanting to revive CDs but records not so much. CDs give you the ownership, most of the physicality of records, plus most all the advantages of digital-sound quality, low maintenance, convenience.

I tend to think in automotive terms, I dislike how repair info has mostly went to digital subscription . I would be ok with selling you a physical CD (still digital) of the repair info that has no subscription as opposed to a book (analogous to a record), but that option like with music has been skipped over mostly for subscription streaming.

OK the mrs went to a concert and picked up the band’s CD.
We were listening to track 15 and it started repeating and the fast forwarding.

Cassette tapes required an occasional pencil to wind it up.

One can talk about the LP artefacts, but those artefacts are every where.

 

[J.M. Noble]

One can talk about the LP artefacts, but those artefacts are every where.

That's true, vinyl's failure modes tend to be more graceful than most other media.

As much as I love Apple Music (especially Apple Music Classical), it has way more issues (audible and otherwise) in practice than vinyl.

 

[Mark1]

OK the mrs went to a concert and picked up the band’s CD.
We were listening to track 15 and it started repeating and the fast forwarding.

Cassette tapes required an occasional pencil to wind it up.

One can talk about the LP artefacts, but those artefacts are every where.

Yeah I wouldn't say CD manufacturing quality or any format is impeccable although I never bought a bad new one. But once you have a good CD it is easier to keep it playing perfectly long term vs record and tape in my experience. I'm .not really against LP sound quality or otherwise just that I think LPs are too much bother to playback and keep in good condition.