Can anyone explain the vinyl renaissance?

[Newman]

What is this, about the 20th thread that's gone on for 500 posts saying the same shitte over and over.
If I was a mod here, I'd lock every one of them and delete any new ones getting started.
Hint hint @amirm and the rest.

..especially if the title is clickbait BS like "why do records sound so much better than digital?" and "real musicians prefer vinyl".

we all know the reasons why CD were the king for a while. The question is "why, after all that, did LPs come back?"

But that's too easy. Cool, hip, hype, myth-making (Stereophoole mindset), gearhead-ism, retro-ism. So, a 2-post thread then?

With respect, a very large percentage positively revere a guy who advocates adding coloration and time smearing via room reflections, and calling it "envelopment". Pleasant listening, I'm sure, but no more hi-fi than vinyl listening.

Sorry, you are only showing us that your pants are down. It's no secret that you have built an anechoic chamber for a listening room, and, to be frank, you have brainwashed yourself (I use the term non-insultingly, in the sense of 're-wiring') into thinking it sounds far better. Whereas carefully controlled listening tests have revealed that the opposite is true (it sounds better with a certain amount of indirect sound). You have made yourself into what Toole would call an outlier: someone who needs to be excluded from conclusions because of something wrong with them (usually deafness). Basically you broke yourself. It makes for amusing reading when you try to twist reality upside down to suit your re-wired beliefs.
Also, when you say "with respect," and then you say what you said after it, you show us that you only use the term sardonically.

 

[Sal1950]

And if I can repeat once again, I had more than few true records enthusiasts picking digital over records in blind listening and being convinced that what they picked IS a record. Simply expecting that what ever they hear to sound better must be a record.

Yet the public has been brainwashed with anti-digital BS.
Here's the deal, Snake-oil is snake -oil and not just the "general public" but a huge percentage of high-end audiophiles are in bed with the analog nation at Stereophile, TAS and more websites than I can list. This site and only a few others are actually dedicated to moving the SOTA in sound reproduction forward.
Just about everything you vinyl guys here say about using vinyl can and is said about using using very expensive power cords, speaker cable, interconnects, tube rolling, 5% THD 300B SET amps, etc, etc. They're fun to play-experiment with and who are we to tell them they don't hear what they hear, this is a hobby and they enjoy these things.

Over the last couple decades rather than promote whats going on in multichannel, (a REAL improvement over 2ch) they've pooh-phool'd it, going so far as to shitte can Kal Rubinsons "In The Round" column to make ever more room for Fremers Analog Corner, Reichert's Gramophone Dreams, Kaplan's Revinylization, etc etc.
Why? MONEY. Huge profit margin items like 5 and 6 digit turntables, needles, phono amps, record cleaners, much, much more. All of which haven't a snowballs chance in hell of delivering the sound quality of a $200 Chinese DAC
I can't think of a better representation for the term snake-oil than the current promotion of vinyl everywhere we look today. And what goes on here? Many of you are supporting and repeating the same line of BS going on elsewhere with maybe the sole exception of outright claiming superior sound quality. But you find a million ways of hint, hint, wink, wink, of saying "under X, Y Z conditions on a blue moon day, it can sound just glorious".

Why’s Everybody Always Pickin On Me?​

 

[carewser]

Yeesh.

It's like discussing listening to vinyl is akin to recommending recipes for eating babies.

Chill dude

I also listen to full res digital music via my Benchmark DAC 2L and Benchmark LA4 preamp etc. Much of the time I'm listening to a vastly more accurate and revealing system than the average Joe. But I also really enjoy spinning vinyl for the reasons I've given. That ok with you?

It's funny how you mistook my confusion and bewilderment for anger, one F bomb does not mean i'm angry, I drop them with regularity to be honest and emphatic

You said you, "listen to full res digital music" yet still cherish analog which means you've listened to an unblemished source yet you still choose one with flaws. Makes no sense to me. And just because some people liked your post doesn't mean you're right, it just means they can relate to your mental illness

I just noticed in one of your previous posts that you like Rush, and while your ideas about what constitutes hi-fi are clearly askew, the fact you like Rush makes you eminently redeemable

 

[danadam]

Sal, what the hell is a "5.2.4 multich system"?

One with 2 subs and 4 overhead speakers.

 

[Inner Space]

Sorry, you are only showing us that your pants are down. It's no secret that you have built an anechoic chamber for a listening room, and, to be frank, you have brainwashed yourself (I use the term non-insultingly, in the sense of 're-wiring') into thinking it sounds far better. Whereas carefully controlled listening tests have revealed that the opposite is true (it sounds better with a certain amount of indirect sound). You have made yourself into what Toole would call an outlier: someone who needs to be excluded from conclusions because of something wrong with them (usually deafness). Basically you broke yourself. It makes for amusing reading when you try to twist reality upside down to suit your re-wired beliefs.

In fact no carefully controlled tests have compared reflective -vs- nonreflective environments as an initial, basic, step-one A -vs- B proposition, except by inference Lokki's, which saw the majority of subjects agree with me, not you. Plus I readily accepted that the minority found their experience to be pleasant listening, thereby respecting their choice. I merely pointed out that adding tones not present in the original signal is the antithesis of hi-fi.

But yes, I'm well aware of ASR's blasphemy laws (or are they just yours?) whereby anyone who unsettles your beliefs must be attacked as "brainwashed", "needs to be excluded", "something wrong with them", "usually deaf", and "broken". Your desperate insistence on the one true path is interesting, and you make it easier to understand what happens in e.g. Pakistan, about e.g. religion. Or in the old Soviet Union, whereby anyone questioning the state's position was branded an antisocial hooligan. They were actually excluded, usually to Siberia. You want to go that far for a silly hobby?

Instead, why not address my technical question? If it's OK to add tones at the far end of the process, why not everywhere else too?

 

[theREALdotnet]

If it's OK to add tones at the far end of the process, why not everywhere else too?

I certainly lack much insight into music production, but from what I can gather, most music (I care about*) seems to be mixed in a studio environment that is not anechoic, but has very well controlled reflections and short, even reverberation times. If you have the luxury of a dedicated listening room at home then I think it makes sense to create a similar environment. After all, I want to hear the acoustic of the performance venue, not that of my room. Consequently, I treated my room that way, and finish it off with Dirac or some such. I reckon the rewards are great. I do understand that many people listen in shared environments, and treating the lounge room in a family home that way is usually not an option.

Ok, sorry for side-tracking. Back to snap-crackle-pop

* Meaning mostly acoustic, i.e. existing without speakers. I have no idea what goes on when for example a Dua Lipa album is mixed.

 

[anmpr1]

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Speaking of aliens and records, I have a friend who owns a used record store. Really, it's more a 'pop' music icon store. He sells a lot of rock n roll nostalgia stuff, in addition to records. Anyhow, a few years ago I was talking to him, while slumming for LPs, and he mentioned that top musicians are aliens. He told me that Elvis was an alien. At first I thought he was kidding, but you can tell from the look in people's eyes when they are serious.

Well, people believe a lot of weird things, and what does it matter as long as they obey traffic laws, and aren't cruel to animals? So I just let it slide. After all, he gives me a good discount on purchases.

However it is, as a (very less than average) guitar player, I sometimes watch guitar oriented stuff on YT, to get some pointers and tips. I recently came across the following... I began to think, "You know, maybe record store friend was really on to something." In fact, the more I watched, the more I think he could be right! Now I'm questioning both my record and guitar hobby. I really have to draw the line at alien abduction territory.

 

[HermitageBass]

I believe that I'm stating the obvious here.
Vinyl at its best offers a quality of sound that is quite pleasing and enjoyable, in many cases more so than digital. In order to achieve it, one needs a bare minimum of gear: good turntable, cartridge, tonearm, etc.
The records need to be clean and taken care of.
It requires time and dedication. Very ritualistic indeed, but with the proper setup the sound is really something.
The format also allows for a lot of tinkering: switching cartridges and phono preamps is one of the choices for a variety of color.
In a nutshell, the audiophile generally finds the vinyl experience way more interactive, since it easily allows you to be an active part of the sounding result. Streaming seems more of a passive experience in contrast. For a lot of people, that interaction is what being an audiophile is all about.

 

[theREALdotnet]

In a nutshell, the audiophile generally finds the vinyl experience way more interactive, since it easily allows you to be an active part of the sounding result. Streaming seems more of a passive experience in contrast. For a lot of people, that interaction is what being an audiophile is all about.

Translation: vinyl is for gear-heads, streaming is for music lovers?

 

[Godataloss]

Translation: vinyl is for gear-heads, streaming is for music lovers?

If that were the case this site wouldn't exist. There is a huge profusion of digital gear- with far more being manufactured than there is for playing records. Owning and playing physical media is a much greater commitment than streaming.

 

[IPunchCholla]

I just love this thread. People reducing everything to binaries (vinyl or digital), calling people who like something they don’t mentally ill (which, as someone who is and enjoys listening to vinyl AND digital, is kinda annoying). Lots of personal attacks. People who aren’t the site owner insisting what is orthodox….

Two-ish posts that present surveys who is buying vinyl (and don’t completely agree nor capture the used market) and a number of personal anecdotes (many of which are fairly hostile and personally attacked).

A bunch of posts that are insultingly reductive and present no evidence, not even anecdotally, which on a science based is the only thing I would personally ban…

And we are left not much closer to an answer, but with a number of people apparently triggered by the fact that some people enjoy the experience of vinyl even while acknowledging it’s sonic liabilitities.

It’s almost like musical enjoyment might not only be about sound reproduction, but include things ritual, group dynamics, aesthetics, and the idiosyncrasies that make up individual pleasure.

No I don’t have a practical point. But I’m not sure music does either.

 

[killdozzer]

Overloading the thread with pics of girls on the floor is certainly less objectionable than overloading a phono input. Also, notice the girl on the floor, in addition to her record player, has an oil lamp for her after hours lighting. Talk about retro. Totally hard-core.

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[killdozzer]

View attachment 198036

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Now we're talking. This is a huge part of it.

 

[Godataloss]

Here's something that will blow the digitalphile's heads. I purchased a record a week ago of a new-to-me artist that I was really looking forward to playing. In the time it took to arrive to my home, the cost of the next cheapest copy more than doubled in price. There are only a handful of copies even available in the US so it's likely that it will double in value again in a month or two. It arrived sealed so I am now presented with the dilemma of 'should I open it and enjoy it, but thereby significantly reduce it's value, or just stream it'. In instances such as these, I usually put it on the shelf like a fine bottle of wine to be open, gifted or sold on a special occasion and enjoy the feeling of gratification that I traded my pecunia for something of greater perceived value. Strangely this has never happened to me with my huge collection of lossless digital files. #vinylproblems

 

[theREALdotnet]

Like I said, many reasons to buy vinyl, but love of music is not necessarily one of them

 

[Godataloss]

Like I said, many reasons to buy vinyl, but love of music is not necessarily one of them

Glad you have love figured out. Hubris is clearly your superpower.

 

[MattHooper]

It's funny how you mistook my confusion and bewilderment for anger, one F bomb does not mean i'm angry, I drop them with regularity to be honest and emphatic

Ha, ok, no problem.

You said you, "listen to full res digital music" yet still cherish analog which means you've listened to an unblemished source yet you still choose one with flaws. Makes no sense to me.

I cherish both my digital music and my analog.

The reason I cherish both is, first off, because my moving back and forth between them shows me they both sound fantastic. That vinyl often provides me the essentials of sound quality that I care about, just like my digital source.

Putting aside my 2 channel system for a moment: I can enjoy "just the music" on practically any system. I stream music all the time listening on my desktop computer, my home theater, my car stereo, our smart speaker in the kitchen - I even enjoy music I love when it's just blasting out my little iphone speakers.

But I think this question can do with unpacking the goals of this hobby.

The reason I got in to "high end audio" is that I found it could offer more - a good system not only played the music, it added the sensuousness of "good sound quality." So for instance, while I can recognize the sound of a sax with music streaming to my kitchen smart speaker, relative to the real thing it may as well be a kazoo. But on a good stereo system, a sax can be reproduced with more of the scale, power, dynamics and timbral complexity of the real thing. (Not perfectly of course...but much closer). And like many audiophiles I find it very compelling and much more rewarding of careful listening attention. I feel more compelled to sit down and listen rather than just use music as background, because the richness of the sound is rewarding and the music can become even more compelling. This is one way in which one can explain the notion of Good Sound Quality - most people hearing a sax or voice recording played on a tinny-sounding little smart speaker vs hearing the greater richness, clarity, detail and realism from a high end system, would easily select the latter as being of higher sound quality.

I'm sure most here recognize what I'm talking about because we mostly share the same goal: listening to music with Good Sound Quality.
All the talk about measurements and accuracy are ultimately a means to that end. Yes, on an accurate system some content is going to be revealed as "poor sound quality" but if the system didn't also ELEVATE the sound quality, the subjective pleasingness, of a lot of other content, then likely nobody here would care about putting all this time, money and effort in to their sound systems, accurate or not. (If that weren't the case, then this place would indeed be full of "Spock like measurement-fixated analyzers with little interest in how music sounds" - the strawman often cast at ASR. But of course, that's not true for the reasons I'm giving - the reason people care about accuracy/fidelity is due to how it generally makes their music sound better).

So back to sound quality: This week I binged on some of my digital versions of Bernard Herrmann scores. The Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad soundtrack (from a burned CD) sounded utterly spectacular: Strings sounded big, rich, with recognizable bow-on-string texture, his deep woodwinds sounded timbrally rich, like growling columns of air, horns blared with that recognizable combination of warmth, sensation of acoustic power and metallic "blat" of the real thing, echoing off in the distinct reverb of the hall in which it was recorded. All that great stuff that signifies "Great Sound Quality" which can be so thrilling.

And yet when I put on an LP I have of the same score...I could transpose ALL of those sonic descriptions to the experience of listening to the vinyl. It just sounds bloody amazing in essentially all those ways!

At that point, for me, nit-picking technical advantages for digital starts looking like making a mountain out of a molehill. Yeah...they are there.
Yes they are measurable. And yes, they can certainly be heard on some content. But for the most part I get as much sonic thrill from my LPs as I do from my digital content, and the general "sound quality" is more dependent on the quality of the recording, mastering, production etc.
I have good and bad sounding digital albums, good and bad sounding LPs. I don't care how "quiet" the background is on a CD if the sound quality is bad. And I don't care if I hear the occasional tick or pop on an LP if the overall sound quality is great. And each medium can transmit the essential, relevant details of musical recordings. Different recordings on vinyl sound distinctly different from one another, just as they do on my digital source.

So... given I can get thrilling sound quality from my vinyl set up...and then I ALSO gain the elements I've already written about - the ways the physical aspects of the format add to my enjoyment...why in the world wouldn't I also spin vinyl as well as listen to my digital collection?

I just noticed in one of your previous posts that you like Rush, and while your ideas about what constitutes hi-fi are clearly askew, the fact you like Rush makes you eminently redeemable

A fellow traveler to the Fountain of Lamneth! Nice to meet you!

On that note: I've owned all the Rush albums on CD (well, up to Signals), but the re-mastered LP releases sound just spectacular!
I prefer the LPs, personally. I was playing Lakeside Park/2112 off All The World's A Stage and it had a "like I was there" vibe.
And since I grew up with those albums on LP, there is a nice nostalgia factor in holding those classic albums in my hand, playing the record.

 

[levimax]

So... given I can get thrilling sound quality from my vinyl set up...and then I ALSO gain the elements I've already written about - the ways the physical aspects of the format add to my enjoyment...why in the world wouldn't I also spin vinyl as well as listen to my digital collection?

This is the answer to OP's question.. doesn't have to make sense to everyone but it does to many.

 

[Cote Dazur]

Interesting

 

[Robin L]

Interesting