Exactly, how much does vinyl suck less than it did 30 years ago? This needs to be quantified.

[Nomid]

Nope, it doesn't really suck any less, there are some technological advances that makes it easier to work with though

But for some people it can be a load of fun, and hobbies are about fun you know?

 

[rdenney]

Has contemporary vinyl album production not improved at all since 1990? Really?

Damn!

So, people who love vinyl are thoroughly analogous to folks that still prefer VHS on a 21” Trinotron CRT (had one of those a million years ago).

Given that vinyl albums cost twice as much (or more) as CDs or Blu-rays with HD video and that digital discs last a lifetime and never wear out (unlike vinyl), why would you buy them? That amazes me.

They want a drastically inferior product that costs 100% more. Well, I learned a long time ago not to argue with fools and crazy people.

Also, hi-res digital in any form can be an exact copy of the original master. You can, with really good speakers, hear almost the exact same thing that the artist & mastering engineer heard in the studio.

Then there’s the last bit: producing vinyl albums involves highly toxic chemicals. Ask the folks in East Palestine, OH how they feel about being poisoned by vinyl chloride.

That people still buy new vinyl albums is not only nonsensical, but also reprehensible. It’s as bad as buying conflict diamonds.

I’m not saying that manufacturing optical discs has no environmental downside, but, hey, do a search on both products about their environmental impacts and vinyl, just like with its audio qualities, is a gigantic loser.

Thanks, all you folks who buy new vinyl albums, for helping to poison our planet!

It appears to me that you don't actually care if vinyl records have improved since the dawn of the CD age--you have determined that producing vinyl records is immoral for reasons unrelated to the sonic qualities one way or the other. And, thus, your original post is hiding an agenda unrelated to the question it asks.

Of course, vinyl records today are no better than they were at their best in the past. Turntables today are no better than they were in their heyday, with one key exception: There are no longer being produced truly incompetent cheap record players--even the modern imitations of vintage record players are in many ways an improvement over stuff at the junk end of the spectrum back in the day. But the good stuff today is much more expensive than competent stuff back in the day, when even good LP playback equipment was in the center of the market and therefore subject to both economies of scale and middle-market pricing pressure. Speakers have likewise increased in price, suggesting that electromechanical transducer systems impose costs that prevent the downward pricing pressure that we have seen with pure electronics, particularly software-controlled electronics.

Where there has been improvement is that playback electronics can do things cheaply that were difficult and expensive back in the day. I'm not sure the modern digital phono preamp is really better than the phono stage built into, say, my Holman preamp from the heyday of LP records, at least when the old stuff is in good repair, but it's certainly more flexible and includes filtration options that required separate equipment back in the day.

I enjoy playing my collection of old vinyl, and from an environmental perspective, playing them rather than throwing them in the landfill seems to me more responsible, as long as we are going to project our personal morals onto the question. On principle, I hate throwing things away that work well or that can be made to work well. I sometimes buy old LPs if they contain music of historical interest or fill a gap in my collection that would be difficult to fill otherwise. But I own ten CD's for every LP and when I buy new recordings, I buy them on CD.

But even CD's are considered obsolete by many these days.

Rick "never recommends that people get into vinyl if they don't already have a collection of LPs they want to play, or just enjoy messing with obsolete technology to make it work as well as possible" Denney

 

[skankhobag]

It appears to me that you don't actually care if vinyl records have improved since the dawn of the CD age--you have determined that producing vinyl records is immoral for reasons unrelated to the sonic qualities one way or the other. And, thus, your original post is hiding an agenda unrelated to the question it asks.

Of course, vinyl records today are no better than they were at their best in the past. Turntables today are no better than they were in their heyday, with one key exception: There are no longer being produced truly incompetent cheap record players--even the modern imitations of vintage record players are in many ways an improvement over stuff at the junk end of the spectrum back in the day. But the good stuff today is much more expensive than competent stuff back in the day, when even good LP playback equipment was in the center of the market and therefore subject to both economies of scale and middle-market pricing pressure. Speakers have likewise increased in price, suggesting that electromechanical transducer systems impose costs that prevent the downward pricing pressure that we have seen with pure electronics, particularly software-controlled electronics.

Where there has been improvement is that playback electronics can do things cheaply that were difficult and expensive back in the day. I'm not sure the modern digital phono preamp is really better than the phono stage built into, say, my Holman preamp from the heyday of LP records, at least when the old stuff is in good repair, but it's certainly more flexible and includes filtration options that required separate equipment back in the day.

I enjoy playing my collection of old vinyl, and from an environmental perspective, playing them rather than throwing them in the landfill seems to me more responsible, as long as we are going to project our personal morals onto the question. On principle, I hate throwing things away that work well or that can be made to work well. I sometimes buy old LPs if they contain music of historical interest or fill a gap in my collection that would be difficult to fill otherwise. But I own ten CD's for every LP and when I buy new recordings, I buy them on CD.

But even CD's are considered obsolete by many these days.

Rick "never recommends that people get into vinyl if they don't already have a collection of LPs they want to play, or just enjoy messing with obsolete technology to make it work as well as possible" Denney

Sorry, no hidden agenda. I was honestly hoping that my post might cause a measurement expose that offered real information about the state of modern vinyl performance. I haven’t listened to a new vinyl disc in 30+ years.

Apparently, it’s unnecessary since vinyl still sucks as bad as ever.

Best possible dynamic range of 55-60dB! Vinyl is really not awesome! Enjoy the suck!

Maybe, in a few years, we can go all the way back to Edison cylinders made from beeswax and read about how great they sound.

 

[krabapple]

Your thoughts?

I love your screen name.

As for the rest , vinyl is basically harmless steampunkery, but try telling a steampunk that they are silly, just try. Apart from that, its saving graces are its luscious cover art, and that sometimes (quite rarely, really, unless you mainly consume modern pop music) it's the only way to get a good mastering.

 

[Pearljam5000]

The biggest improvement to vinyl is streaming
Endless selection, better sound quality and ease of use.

 

[HalSF]

From my perspective the objective improvements in vinyl have been centered on cartridges, phono preamps, and also to a lesser degree on turntables and even record cleaning machines. Or at least these are things that have increased my enjoyment in my second go-round with vinyl.

The wild exaggeration and negativity here that makes it seem like vinyl playback is nothing but noise and crushed dynamics is ridiculous. This needs to be quantified.

 

[EERecordist]

People don't buy vinyl for better audio quality today. They buy it because the physicality appeals to them or they like the look of the turntables. In my town, they are a hipster design object in coffee shops and bars along with vintage silver face receivers.

In my opinion, the playback equipment peaked in the 70s? with tone arms, motors, and cartridges like the Stanton 681EEE and Shure V15 series. Compressors have evolved, but that decreases dynamic range, they will just sound different.

Today's vinyl is cut on 60s-80s lathes and cutter heads. Neumann exited the field in 1993. People rebuild lathes and cutting heads, so they last a while. We will see if new lathe and cutter head companies emerge. There are probably enough lathes and cutting chains around that could be pressed into 24 hour service to fulfill the need. I wouldn't be surprised that the pressing machines are vintage too.

Until measured, I would expect the high frequencies are rolled off to protect the cutter head, just like in the past. That said, a superconducting cutter head might be an (expensive) innovation. Maybe I should patent that!

Back when I was in the industry in the 70s, the story was that Deutche Grammophon would listen to every 50th pressing and if it was bad, throw out the previous 50 then change the stamper. Other record companies would ship 49. So it probably depends on the QC of the pressing factory today, and whether they use regrind.

 

[DVDdoug]

Exactly, how much does vinyl suck less than it did 30 years ago? This needs to be quantified.

I've been curious about that too but I'm not sure if you could "quantify" it... I don't think I bought a record after I got my 1st CD player and I haven't heard any modern ones.

I assumed that the "average record" was better now because consumers are used to digital quality. There were some good sounding records so I knew it was possible to do better but apparently the record companies didn't care, at least for rock & popular records. The rumor was that classical & jazz records were better produced/manufactured.

But even at its best, vinyl is inferior to digital.

One of the reasons that I moved to digital audio from R2R tape is that digital offered greater fidelity and much less noise & distortion.

Pro tape was quite good, as evidenced by later CDs releases of analog recordings. And the dynamic range on tape was improving over the decades. I'd say "acceptable", but digital is technical better, can be edited & copied without generation loss, can be edited in way impossible with analog, and is more economical.

my copy of Sergeant Pepper’s by The Beatles got a huge pop on one of the tracks after only a dozen playings.

My records also "developed" clicks & pops even though I really tried to take care of them. I could "live with" the constant low-level noise, occasional distortion, and frequency response variations (if I had to) but the clicks & pops always annoyed me even though they didn't seem to bother most people. It especially bothered me when it was my record and I knew exactly when that nasty click was coming... I'd be anticipating the click instead of enjoying the music.

 

[Timcognito]

Vinyl never sucked until CDs came along, CDs never sucked until NAS and portability came along. As a hobby vinyl can be a passion just like collecting and restoring old cars as new cars are better is almost every category of performance, safety, luxury and comfort.

 

[NTK]

Shure no longer makes phono cartridges. Is anyone these days doing R&D like Shure did decades ago? If not, where do improvements come from?

https://service.shure.com/s/article/high-fidelity-phonograph-cartridge-technical-seminar?language=en_US&region=en-US

 

[boxerfan88]

optical cartridge.

 

[Chr1]

Vinyl never sucked until CDs came along, CDs never sucked until NAS and portability came along. As a hobby vinyl can be a passion just like collecting and restoring old cars as new cars are better is almost every category of performance, safety, luxury and comfort.

I agree. There is nothing inherently wrong with the whole vintage/retro thing.
Unless someone is claiming it is higher performance.

As stated in another thread here, I have managed to make quite a few good upgrades and some decent money buying and selling vintage gear. Mainly to younger folks wanting retro stuff. Seems it's basically "fashion".
At least it's a bit easier (and safer) to keep a turntable running right.
Not so much with old vehicles and watches, I'd suggest.

 

[JeffS7444]

Unapologetic meat eater slamming vinyl fans for causing environmental woes.

The medium is as limited as it ever was, but more recent phono cartridge designs like Ortofon's 2M series are capable of decently flat frequency response at a reasonable cost, while digital signal processing makes it easier than ever to extract the good stuff, while filtering out the bad.

 

[skankhobag]

You are taking an absolutist approach to vinyl being worse for the planet than alternatives and therefore being "reprehensible".

A position only justifiable IMO if you take the same approach to all consumption - if you are consuming something worse for the planet than available alternatives (eg meat - whose production is vastly worse for the environment than plant based foods), why isn't that reprehensible?

Or is it just that it is something *you* don't want to do that makes it so?

Three thoughts:

• As I previously stated, doing some cursory research doing basic searches, I found a lot of articles about how terrible vinyl record manufacturing is for people and the environment. Looking even harder to find any info about optical disc manufacturing, I couldn’t find anything. That doesn’t give digital discs a total pass since I’m sure they aren’t “green”, but that says a lot about the possible large disparity in how environmentally terrible they are.

• Compare how much the heaviest optical disc package is compared to the exact same release on vinyl. The difference in mass of the end products would seem to be 2-3 to 1 so we’re talking about much higher carbon footprint from every angle.

• I have CDs that are still perfect 40 years later and they play flawlessly. They’re recordings that retain their original fidelity for a lifetime or more. Vinyl degrades with every play. Like an internal combustion engine, its performance decreases with use until it becomes unusable. Don’t believe that? Most diamond stylus used for vinyl playback are recommended to be replaced after 1,000-2,000 hours. Playing vinyl wears out the hardest naturally occurring substance in the universe.

 

[antcollinet]

Or for the cheapskates - use Vinyl Studio to rip and clean and play it from your phone or PC.

Doesn't work for me - at that point I lose all the benefits of playing vinyl - ritual/nostalgia - and might as well stream digital. (Which I do as well of course anyway)

 

[rdenney]

LP's are mostly made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and yes there are some chemicals involved in making it that pose significant risk and require lots of safety equipment. And phthalate leaching is a problem if they end up the landfill (where none of mine have ended up in the last 50 years).

But let's keep some perspective. PVC plumbing products reportedly consume about 30 million metric tons of PVC per year globally. The vinyl LP industry reportedly consumes something like 8000 metric tons globally, or about 0.02% of what the plumbing industry uses.

And there is Google talk of using bio-vinyls for LP production that solve many of the problems with PVC, though I'm no expert in that. I expect there are tradeoffs, but if those are addressed, that might be a key advance in LP record production unrelated to sonic quality.

CD's use polycarbonate--not the same stuff. But it is largely not recyclable and does not biodegrade, so once in the landfill, always in the landfill. PVC can be recycled, though not for virgin applications like LP records.

Vinyl degradation with use is overstated. I doubt any one of my old LPs has been played more than a few dozen times, and only a handful ever were subject to the record player I had as a kid. If I wanted to hear it repeatedly back in the day, I also wanted to hear it in the car and therefore recorded it onto a cassette. Good cassette recordings were no worse than the original vinyl for consumer-level music. Now, I have it recorded onto my phone for repeated playing, particularly in the car. I play LP records in the original only occasionally for fun, so none of my LP's gets played more than a couple times a year. That was just as true in 1979 as it is today. It's not like we were unaware of potential damage back when those LPs were new.

Rick "who has vinyl LP's that are still functionally perfect--within their available performance envelope--after 50 years, and some that are historically rare and therefore good enough after 75 years" Denney

 

[digitalfrost]

I started "collecting" vinyl like 10 years ago, and I poached the good albums from my parents, so I think I have a good overview. I feel that modern needles, especially the Audio Technica Microline make a huge improvement in sound. They are quiet in the groove and with a good record you will barely have any ticks.

That said, it really depends on the pressing quality still. I have some records where nothing will save them, you can clean them all you want, adjust the turntable perfectly and they are just garbage.

I cannot speak for the vinyl experience in the 80s/90s, except for the ****** T4P mount turntable my parents had where the needle was never changed. That was a crackling fest. Nowadays I feel you can get impressive quality, but still the effort and the expense are not worth it at all. It is, in the best sense of the word, a hobby.

 

[Robin L]

How about 50 years ago when "Vinyl" peaked, at least in terms of quality? In the 1970's one could find—if one was willing to look—imported pressings from Japan, the Netherlands and Germany. No warps, few off-center records, silent vinyl. The Japanese pressings were odd. They had the best manufacturing as regards noise floor, disc eccentricity and lack of warps, but the eq for these records tended to have heavily boosted treble. I scooped up a lot of Japanese classical re-issues on Columbia and EMI adjacent labels in my evolving search for "the sound". The series of Jazz titles from Verve Japan has decent EQ and fantastic performances, like the 1950's Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker sessions. I had a Dutch copy of "Abbey Road", silent surfaces and the best mastering I've heard on LP, but it faded out "I Want You/She's So Heavy" and cut out "Her Majesty". Weird. Most of the discs I got from the Netherlands were Philips classical issues, very reliable.

For collectors of LPs who loath all things digital, look for pristine vinyl from these countries during this era, right up to 1979, when digital delay for cutting engineers first came into play. The late 70s brought us the first Telarcs on vinyl and a number of "Direct to Disc" issues, also a number of half speed mastered recordings from some big companies on premium vinyl. These long-playing vinyl discs suck the least of all out of all the LPs I've heard and flipped, at least in terms of sound quality, surface noise in particular. WEA companies—Warner, Elektra, Atlantic, including Asylum and Nonesuch—tended to be the best of the 1970s big-time players in the states with quieter surfaces and fewer outright defects than most other US based companies.

My brother-in-law was in town this last week. Yesterday we went to Rainy Day Records, he picked up brand new, sealed copies of "Kind of Blue", "Take Five", Billie Holiday's "Body and Soul", Ella Fitzgerald's Cole Porter songbook, others. Average price for each disc was about $30. I've owned originals of all 4 of those mentioned, currently have all of them on CDs. The CDs are just dandy. I hope Mike's LPs are ok. Mind you, LPs used to cost around $5 to $10 back in 1975. $5 in 1975 dollars had the buying power of about $30 today.

 

[rdenney]

Robin, I was gifted the Miles Davis Kind of Blue album on new vinyl several years ago, and it sounds really quite good. Better than the CD? About the same, actually, as long as the LP is spotless, though I do realize that there were probably some things done that may be hard to detect without measurement. The original was recorded and mastered on tape, of course, so didn't benefit from digital recording technology, and I don't really know what they used as the basis for the CD.

Rick "was also gifted Dark Side of the Moon" Denney

 

[antcollinet]

I'm currently listening to "The Bix Beiderbeck" collection on a copy I acquired at a charity shop last week for about £2

The guy died in 1931, so the recordings are presumably almost entirely recorded in the 20's.

I can assure everyone here that vinyl is more than equal to the task of reproducing those recordings with no noticeable loss in quality.



Interestingly the waxwing has graded the record as B-. I've no idea if the imperfections are from this particulary copy - or are built into the recordings - most of which are pretty crackly. The noise vanishes in the gaps between tracks.