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"I Swapped Spotify for Vinyl and It Changed My Life"

pseudoid

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It plays into the notion of ownership that is culturally ingrained in almost all cultures.
Woah!
That is a great philosophical analysis from an audiophile. [like.gif]
I like collecting "things"... Not just limited to a nice local music collection/library and even includes pocket lint!;)
I also like disowning my collections when they get old and can be replaced by better collections.
I did that with my collection of LPs (near 1000) and then did it again with my collection of cassettes (100s and 100s) and then did it again with my CD collection (near 2000).
Long live digital music media collection...
 

Burning Sounds

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Interesting points. Except it seems to me you are battling against the norms built in to human psychology - e.g. "the medium shouldn't influence our experience or relationship to the music." But it DOES. That's how humans are built. It's almost like saying "if a recipe is turning out too sweet, don't attempt to balance it by adding acidity - you shouldn't have to do that, just re-orient your attitude towards the sweetness." Except that's how we are built: adding acidity will influence our perception of the sweetness. Hence good cooks work with this, exploit how our perception works, in cooking.

Same with physical media like records. It's just a fact that for some the physical aspects of the media enrich and enhance their attention and attraction to some of the music. It's not something to get rid of (unless it's deleterious somehow), it's something to enjoy. Just like how reading a real book can, among other things, allow one to unplug from digital life which for some can enhance the feeling of relaxation and escapism from "life being online."

Similarly, you seem to imply that limiting options is automatically a bad thing. But "too many options" aren't always the best thing for everyone.
Limiting options...at least by curating them...can have a salutary effect. Just as I (and that author and plenty of others) found out once we experienced having "limitless" options at our fingertips that diluted our attending to those options. With my LPs they are of necessity carefully curated purchases of music I really love. So my music listening experience is helped in this way. But it doesn't mean the options for music on vinyl is terribly limiting. Far from it: you could spend a lifetime and never explore all of it. As I mentioned in an earlier reply, many young people getting in to vinyl extol music they would never have come across or been driven to discover if left to streaming (and the way algorithms tend to guide one's streaming habits).
Absolutely agree that the medium influences our experience or relationship to music.

I have a digital system that I love - PC (JRiver and Acourate/digital x-over/EQ)>>Okto DAC8>>Hypex-based multichannel amp>>LinkwitzLX521. I have no desire to change or try to improve this system. I simply enjoy listening to music on it. I also have a TT which I use occasionally with an analogue 8 channel x-over/EQ to the same amp and speakers. I don't enjoy that as much as it almost always makes me aware of the limitations of the LP, although some can sound remakably good.

I also have a jukebox - a 1974 Rock-Ola 454 - and I love to listen to 1960s and 1970s singles on this. I love how it looks and how it sounds. Some call it the Star Trek jukebox as the dome and lights appear to float over the main jukebox chassis resembling the consoles on the Enterprise. Yes, some of it is nostalgia, of course. As a teenager in the 60s the jukebox was where I heard much of this music and my jukebox, even with all its technical limitations brings me more emotion and enjoyment to the music of that era than anything else. It's hardly the epitome of high fidelity - it proudly displays the fact it uses an Integrated Circuit -a dual channel 741.

But I'm not limited to the 60 records in the jukebox. A £20 bluetooth receiver enables me to stream any 60s or 70s era single to the jukebox using its amps and speakers. I use this primarily to help me decide which singles I want to buy much in the same way as I use streaming to decide which CDs I want to buy. Physical media still has its place for me..

IMG_20220113_1000.jpg
 

Bob from Florida

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"I listen to music every single day—it’s one of my favorite things in life. I also bought my first turntable a few months ago and have wondered what it’d be like to only listen to vinyl for an entire week. So recently, I did just that and I have a lot of thoughts about the experience.

My history with music is lifelong. As far back as I can remember, I’ve always had some means of listening to it within arm’s reach. I even shamelessly toted around one of those ridiculous binders full of CDs. I was thrilled when I could finally upgrade to an iPod, and I’m pretty sure I actually cried tears of joy when streaming music services were first announced.

But as I’ve spent more and more time with Spotify (and eventually, SiriusXM, Tidal, and YouTube Premium), I think I slowly started to take music for granted. It eventually became background noise to me, like an accessory I had to have yet never paid much attention to anymore. I was thinking about all of this recently, and it hit me how desperate I was to do something about it and reconnect with music."

Read the article - thanks for the link. I have no criticism to offer. Sounds like she found a "variation" she enjoys. All good.:cool:
 

beagleman

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This is not a "problem" unless you make it one. why cant u allow her relationship with music to be her preference without that having to be justified or adhering to your own specific standards?
Because over time, the honeymoon with vinyl fades, and even with very good equipment, you start to listen closer and hear flaws, and noises, and see warps, and hear wow and flutter, and the whole "Fun" thing semi crashes down again.

I had vinyl back in the day, got CD, and then fell into the vinyl is cool again fad and it WAS fun for a few months, but sanity hit me, when I found that Classical music simply was not great to play back on vinyl.

In a way vinyl sounds "Good", but if and only if, you are of the persuasion to be able to listen over or through a lot of minor defects and issues. Some stuff it does not matter, but SOME..omg it just ruins the listening mood.

So out came my CD player, after buying about 30 classicals at a library sale for ONE dollar Each!!

Now I am in heaven again, yet again......
 

pseudoid

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Because over time, the honeymoon with vinyl CDs fades, and even with very good equipment, you start to listen closer and hear flaws, and noises, and see ...and the whole "Fun" thing semi crashes down again.
So out came my CD player streamer DAC, ...
Now I am in heaven again, yet again......
My crystal-ball shows you are on your way to the next musical "heaven", yet again!
You may be a little late arriving but hope it is permanent...;)
 

pseudoid

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Maybe the 7th time?
From what I've read here from the ASR cognoscenti; please make sure your '7th heaven' is not MQA...
 

Cote Dazur

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It's like how a lot of people like to bring "real" books to read on vacation
Thank you for this great analogy, this might be the best way for those that are curious about vinyl to understand and thinking to get into a decent turntable, as contrary to most dac, turntable do not sound remotely like one another, even the same turntable with different settings will be different.
technically a reading tablet is better, but one might prefer a real paper book, like for turntable and digital format, the story is the same.
News flash, as inferior as the digital defender think of vinyl as a playback system, the music is still there to enjoy.
I enjoy both, as my listening pleasure is what drives me, specs?, not so much! ;)
 

drewdawg999

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My Blu-Rays are still playing fine.

Wish I could say the same about my HD-DVDs.

Yeah, I was one of those who gambled early on HD DVD over Blu-Ray and I have a lot of HD DVDs. They still look great, but it turns out many had a sort of 'rot' problem (or something like it), and especially Warner Bros HD DVDs are known to crap out. It's maddening because I have a whole bunch of Warner Bros HD DVDs and now if I want to watch one of those movies I have to deal with the fact there is a good chance the movie will just stop working at some random point. Maddening. (I'm slowly replacing the ones that crap out on me...or not buying them again).

I have HD-DVDs too! Super pissed that Blood Diamond stopped working. Laser rot, just like my LaserDiscs that I still have. HD-DVDs look great but only marginally better than upsampled DVDs I find. I have hundreds, maybe even thousands of DVDs that I can still watch with pleasure. I don't have any Blu-Rays though, and guess I never will (unless Criterions go on sale for like a buck a piece). My Yamaha Aventage player is for upsampling DVDs and playing x264 files off the USB. But that's a bit OT.

Can't believe the bile inspired by the original article here. But I'm with her. Vinyl enhances my love of music. I think it sounds better than digital, so roast me. It's a matter of taste, really. You need to be listening to the good stuff, where an actual entire album is good, not just picking out random tracks. The nostalgia factor doesn't hurt either, since once upon a time music was much more important than it is today. Modern music is largely... piss. I want that time machine back to when music mattered, like when the Stones on tour was front page news. Or when Dylan went electric, it was like the end of the world for those folkie bright eyed teenagers. Or when Miles Davis went fusion... or when Miles did anything for that matter. Those legends made the good stuff, the stuff that was originally released on and intended for vinyl. Music with substance, not just all Bentleys, cash, and ass. It was about sitting down and actually listening to the music. You actually have to listen to it, very closely.

"Vinyl made me be mindful and intentional, traits that modern technology has a way of pushing out of our lives on occasion." Yes, I like that. A bit of mindfulness might be good for some of the know-it-alls on this forum. Mindfulness as in being "more aware of what you're sensing and feeling in the moment without interpretation or judgment." There's something deeper going on with the vinyl resurgence, something beyond fetishism. It's a movement away from convenience and instant gratification, bubble gum pop and gangsta rap. Enough with binary systems, and the great digitization and homogenization of society. It's not just thumbs up or thumbs down, one or the other. It's the grey zone that fascinates and holds all the mystery. Just felt like defending her honor, as I thought it was a good article.
 

mamba76

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If vinyl changes your life you need to get one. Probably just me but I don't understand how the delivery system (other than SQ) changes how one reacts to the music, for me its just about the music. Touching stuff, cleaning a record, looking at glowing leds and tubes or music videos, more distraction than anything else. Guess I'm just used to listening to music with my ears and I don't need incentive to concentrate on the music.
I listened to Graceland by Paul Simon on vinyl through speakers in the garden on a sunny day and there is a whole bunch more fine content on vinyl that so obvious on this album. Really pops and really much more enjoyable than any other format. I was really amazed.
 
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rdenney

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All the rage these days for the younger set: "I collect experiences rather than things." That's a subtext of the article linked in the OP--listening to vinyl records has an experiential quality that listening to streaming does not. Whatever floats the author's boat. But this notion of "experiences" versus "things" interests me, especially when those things are physical recordings and books.

I have been to hundreds and hundreds of live orchestral performances. I've sat in small, smoky clubs listening to jazz on hundreds of occasions. I've been to rock concerts. I've danced the night away hundreds of times in country-western ballrooms. I've roadied for one such ballroom band. I have participated in thousands of musical performances. I spend hours each week playing music with others, and more hours each week preparing to play music with others by playing music at home. Those are experiences.

But how do I access my "collection" of experiences? How do those experiences have value to me as my collection of them grows? This is the question I do not see answered by the younger set--they are like retirement investors still in the accumulation phase. But at some point, they are going to depend on that accumulation to feed them, because collecting new experiences will become increasingly difficult.

Notwithstanding the obvious convenience and clear sonic quality (or at least potential quality) of digital streaming, will that provide a tool for accessing a life of experiences?

I use my library of LPs and CDs not so much as fetish objects, but rather the same way I used my library of books. Just seeing titles on the shelf reminds me of the journey contained in those books, and my own treading along the path they create. See photos on the wall or in albums (yes, we actually keep photo albums), or in photo books and portfolios I have created, allows me to access those experiences afresh. And, often enough, they allow me to access experiences I never had or can't remember and make them my own (even if I'm making them my own again.)

Sure, I could assemble playlists in a streaming service, or let them mine my current preferences to predict what they think I would like; it might spark a memory, which is how we access our collection of experiences. But every one of the CD's in my collection brings me back to the journey I was on when I acquired it, and the medium is as important a part of that access mechanism as is the content. When I pull out Maynard Ferguson's MF Horn 4, 5 Live at Jimmy's, on two vinyl LPs, I'm taken back to the La Bastille Club in Houston in the middle 70's, hearing Maynard Ferguson live in that small room, and then the next day going to the store and buying the album. When I listened to Philip Glass's Glassworks, I'm transported back to the small recital hall at Southwestern University where I heard him live, entering the event rolling my eyes as a skeptic, and leaving it as a committed fan. I bought the album the next day at a record store in Austin. I have hundreds of such experiences. I bought my LP of Glazunov's 5th Symphony, on the Melodiya label and performed by the USSR Symphony Orchestra, in the foyer of the Lila Cockrell Theater in San Antonio, during the intermission of the concert in which the San Antonio Symphony played it. That was maybe 1982, and I'm transported back to that sound even just seeing the album on the shelf. And on and on.

But then I've reached the age when I expect my accumulation to start paying me back. In no way do the obvious weaknesses of vinyl playback prevent me from fully enjoying either the music or the memories they evoke.

That said, I still buy CD's but I don't still buy LP's unless something cheap and unusual comes along that would be difficult to get another way. LP's are mementos to my thinking worth preserving, but they are not imbued with any particular intrinsic value beyond the satisfaction of making them work as well as they can, given the limitations. I suppose we have to include that disclaimer in every post.

Rick "thinking lots of younger folks are learning that mementos and experiences go hand in hand" Denney
 

pseudoid

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I think it sounds better than digital, so roast me. It's a matter of taste, really.
Do you mean that you get a more pleasurable and fullfiling experience from listening to LPs (re: digital)?
My roasting question would be whether you are committing a false equivalence between better sound and more enjoyment... but I won't ask!;)
 

MattHooper

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All the rage these days for the younger set: "I collect experiences rather than things." That's a subtext of the article linked in the OP--listening to vinyl records has an experiential quality that listening to streaming does not. Whatever floats the author's boat. But this notion of "experiences" versus "things" interests me, especially when those things are physical recordings and books.

I have been to hundreds and hundreds of live orchestral performances. I've sat in small, smoky clubs listening to jazz on hundreds of occasions. I've been to rock concerts. I've danced the night away hundreds of times in country-western ballrooms. I've roadied for one such ballroom band. I have participated in thousands of musical performances. I spend hours each week playing music with others, and more hours each week preparing to play music with others by playing music at home. Those are experiences.

But how do I access my "collection" of experiences? How do those experiences have value to me as my collection of them grows? This is the question I do not see answered by the younger set--they are like retirement investors still in the accumulation phase. But at some point, they are going to depend on that accumulation to feed them, because collecting new experiences will become increasingly difficult.

Good post!

I've also thought...not too much...about this concept of "experiences" as it relates to our hi fi systems. It derives from I think the public promulgation, news stories etc, of the new area of "Happiness Research" from which a common theme seems to have arisen: that in terms of happiness it seems our time/money is best spent on "experiences" (whether it be traveling, dining, camping, whatever) more than merely owning material things.

In that context, I've wondered: Where do our hi fi systems fit in?

On one hand they seem clearly material objects. One of those things "money buys" along with cars, watches, big TVs etc. So in terms of allocating money towards happiness, they would seem on first glance to go right in to that category.

But don't they actually provide "experiences" as well? In a sense, my system is never "the same thing every time" like a ring or watch. It's a sort of portal to experiences: being able to experience listening to countless different musical performances, and all their different nuances - getting a lot of what we would from hearing live music. (I don't mean it's indistinguishable, but for lots of types of music...we are going there for the musical performance, and those can be transmitted via our systems).

I can say my hi-fi system certainly seems to constantly make me happy, to satisfy me, insofar as it seems a sort of virtual reality machine whereby I keep getting all sorts of different "experiences."

So maybe it also fits in the "experience" category.

But then...where do you draw the line? Perhaps we could say the same for a big new flatscreen TV. Any entertainment device provides "experiences" of a sort. Lines are blurred.

(BTW, I'm big on spending time/money on experiences myself. I'm not a homebody and always feel like I've "done something more" if I go out on the town, met someone, seen a movie, etc).

As for physical collecting: I have almost 1,000 LPs at this point but I never think of it as a "collection" because "collecting" in of itself for the most part doesn't feel like it adds anything, for me. I own them because I do love the music, and like the music as those physical objects too.
But I don't feel I'm "collecting" any more than I feel like I'm "collecting" things when I go out to yet another nice dinner (I love dining). I feel no particular pride at owning any of my LPs. "Accumulating" might be the better word :)
 

drewdawg999

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Do you mean that you get a more pleasurable and fullfiling experience from listening to LPs (re: digital)?
My roasting question would be whether you are committing a false equivalence between better sound and more enjoyment... but I won't ask!;)

Yeah, I guess that's a better way of putting it. Pleasure and enjoyment are my main reasons for listening to music. Vinyl delivers that to me so I am grateful and like to sing its praises. Whether it's actually better sound is debatable, there are many weaknesses as we all know but overall I believe it sounds more natural and realistic, with more convincing imaging. Depends on what you value in your listening enjoyment, and if that's surgical detail and analytical neutrality that's fine, but that's not me and that's not vinyl.
 

sq225917

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I think the tablet vs paper analogy is a good one.

I'd never read a book on a tablet, the physical medium is part of the act for me.

Next we'll be suggesting that all galleries should make do with prints of fine artworks.
 

BillyChilly

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For those who are all about convenience, you could probably rig up something such that you never need to leave your bed. Hell, we're basically there already. Work from home, date with an app, facetime...
 

pseudoid

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I think the tablet vs paper analogy is a good one.
Is it a good analogy? Really?
There aren't enough trees on this planet to print both ASR and WSJ together.
Unfortunately, trying to digitally read my daily WSJ just don't work for me! Same holds true for magazines/periodicals and maps.
A simple torrent search for "assorted magazines 2022" will yield 100s of them in a 5GB pdf payload (w/100s of seeders/leechers)
I'll have to take my ASR digitally, just to save trees for my WSJ and periodicals.:)
 

beagleman

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Is it a good analogy? Really?
There aren't enough trees on this planet to print both ASR and WSJ together.
Unfortunately, trying to digitally read my daily WSJ just don't work for me! Same holds true for magazines/periodicals and maps.
A simple torrent search for "assorted magazines 2022" will yield 100s of them in a 5GB pdf payload (w/100s of seeders/leechers)
I'll have to take my ASR digitally, just to save trees for my WSJ and periodicals.:)
I think the book versus reading it on a tablet thing, is maybe not the best analogy.

For me I prefer to read a lot of stuff online, but a book for whatever reasons. (mostly visual stuff to me) is just easier on my eyes and easier physically to deal with. No glare from a screen at all and just more pleasurable to see ink on paper etc....
 
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