Turntables - help me understand the appeal?

[Hypnotoad]

I truly enjoyed the sound quality (vinyl-zealots who say digital can't 'play music properly' are so full of sh*t)

As are the digital-zealots who say vinyl is an inferior medium.

I store my music files on an external hard drive in Linux ext4 format. So I can have multiple soft links to the same actual file or directory, each under a different name or categorization scheme, without duplicating the actual FLAC files.
Thus I could find that one Beethoven & Schubert CD by Beethoven, by Schubert, by Symphonies, by 19th century, by favorites, by instrumental, by large ensemble, or however many independent parallel ways I want to organize it.

I have an old PC as a music server (no internet connection) and have two main folders FLAC Music & MP3 Music, then in those folders I have a separate directory for each artist. So I have Beatles albums in FLAC format and looking for Abbey Road, it would be FLAC Music/The Beatles/Abbey Road, I use Audacious and never have playlists, don't like them at all so I just cut and paste the Abbey Road folder into Audacious and all the tracks are in order. I'm a simple soul and like it this way, don't want to stream music, it's as you would play a vinyl album, but don't have to swap sides half way though.

 

[Sal1950]

I listen to mainly rock, blues, and country, some ole habits have died hard while one or two linger on.
I couldn't wait for the day I finished doing needle-drop recordings of my 40+ year library of LP's and put the money from their sale along with my LP gear in the bank. Don't know if it was out of being lazy or listening habit, but I did all my needle-drop recordings to one file per LP side. Shortly after, I did the same ripping all my CD's to FLAC files. No matter what the source, I still listen to a whole album at a time, that's a 70 year habit I doubt will ever die. Now with the advent of streaming here, I don't remember the last time I played one of those needle-drops, the sound quality of the streamed digital file surpasses the sound of them. After decades of listening to the LP and later it's ripped file, I know where just about every snap, crackle, and pop is, along with the level of surface noise, etc, and it's a breath of fresh air to be rid of them. There are few if any of the albums I listen to where any lost DR from the wars would tip the scales back. Now a days it's a rare album release I'll purchase the CD or a HD download for over the streamed version.
The majority of optical media I've purchased in the last few years has been in 5.1 multich bluerays, the sound of the masters by Alan Parsons, James Guthrie, AIX, etc is amazing. A shame there is so few of them in my genre of listening.

 

[Sal1950]

As are the digital-zealots who say vinyl is an inferior medium.

That's just a fact, and by a wide margin, as any number of measurement proves.
Get over it.

 

[MattHooper]

As are the digital-zealots who say vinyl is an inferior medium.

The difference is, the "digital-zealots" are correct.

(In that, in terms of fidelity, dynamic range and other parameters, the objective case can be made for the superior capability of digital; it can't be made for vinyl. Any attempt to paint vinyl as technically superior is inevitably a tortured bit of rhetoric).

 

[levimax]

That's just a fact, and by a wide margin, as any number of measurement proves.
Get over it.

I just helped a friend move a bunch of stuff he had in storage for many years including boxes full of CD's (and laser discs). All CDs were pre loundness wars with many classic titles and no remasters. I have been ripping and listening to them and comparing them to different versions I have ( vinyl, hi-res, Tidal, ) . While on paper of course CDs are "better" the differences between formats are dwarfed by the diifereces in masterings. For classic rock titles both vinyl and CDs are very hit or miss. I would not want to be limited to any one format. Most impressive CD I found in the boxes is lynyrd skynyrd second helping Japan for US early MCA. I have multiple versions of this album never knew it could sound so good.

 

[Hypnotoad]

The difference is, the "digital-zealots" are correct.

(In that, in terms of fidelity, dynamic range and other parameters, the objective case can be made for the superior capability of digital; it can't be made for vinyl. Any attempt to paint vinyl as technically superior is inevitably a tortured bit of rhetoric).

Never said vinyl was superior so please lets not start a vinyl vs digital peeing contest, its a waste of time, many people like vinyl and prefer it right or wrong, many like digital and prefer it right or wrong, I have heard my fair share of bad sounding vinyl and my fair share of bad sounding digital.

 

[MattHooper]

Never said vinyl was superior so lets not start a vinyl vs digital peeing contest, its a waste of time, many people like vinyl and prefer it right or wrong, many like digital and prefer it right or wrong, I have heard my fair share of bad sounding vinyl and my fair share of bad sounding digital.

I didn't say, or mean to suggest at all, that you said vinyl was superior.

But no one on this forum makes the silly claims I mentioned, that digital is incapable of properly reproducing music. It seems to me everyone here - understandably given the nature of this forum - understands the technical superiority of current digital technology over vinyl.

Whereas you said that people who say vinyl is an inferior medium are "full of sh*t." You can't naively write something like that here and not expect any blow-back given essentially the entire user base would agree vinyl is an inferior medium (in terms of accuracy).

 

[Hypnotoad]

Whereas you said that people who say vinyl is an inferior medium are "full of sh*t."

And yet you don't expect a reply when you state the same thing about digital?

Let me put is this way, if we looked at racing a Ferrari and a Rolls Royce, the Ferrari would out corner, outperform the Rolls Royce in every department, yet many prefer the Rolls Royce. It's the same with vinyl, some even prefer cassettes, it's not just a matter of what measures better. You can print out measurement and hold them up to your ear and hear nothing (that's a joke). But seriously because something measures worse doesn't mean it's inferior when it comes to listeners preferences.

I apologize if I offended anyone.

 

[MattHooper]

And yet you don't expect a reply when you state the same thing about digital?

I don't expect anyone on this forum to be claiming that digital digital can't 'play music properly' - do you?

So no, I don't expect that comment would cause a p*ssing contest here at all.

Let me put is this way, if we looked at racing a Ferrari and a Rolls Royce, the Ferrari would out corner, outperform the Rolls Royce in every department, yet many prefer the Rolls Royce. It's the same with vinyl, some even prefer cassettes, it's not just a matter of what measures better. You can print out measurement and hold them up to your ear and hear nothing (that's a joke). But seriously because something measures worse doesn't mean it's inferior when it comes to listeners preferences.

I apologize if I offended anyone.

If you had read my posts in this thread, you'd see that I've been defending vinyl and mostly on the grounds of listener preference (among other reasons).

So I think you are making some erroneous assumptions about my stance on the vinyl vs digital question.

But I don't make ignorant claims about the technical superiority of vinyl.

Understand the context of my quote. There are vinyl lovers who make seriously ignorant claims against digital music, the hoary old example being for instance "digital sounds less natural than vinyl because digital doesn't capture the whole musical waveform, only bits of it." Which is technical nonsense. But you see this a lot among the type of vinyl-zealots my quote referenced: they mistake their own preference for vinyl <--- perfectly valid for the individual - with what they take to be some objective superiority of vinyl. So they make up all sorts of technically erroneous ideas for why digital "just can't reproduce music naturally or faithfully or in a satisfying manner, like vinyl can." I see this all the time (and was just recently debating this against someone making just such a claim on another audiophile forum). It's both technical nonsense, and also a nonsense claim about the general character of digital. Because the vinyl zealot prefers vinyl, he imagines that digital simply can't be a musically satisfying medium, where in fact many or most audiophiles happily enjoy their digital sources, if not preferring them to vinyl. Most of the world gets along happily listening to digital. There is no inherent "anti-music" quality to digital that the vinyl zealots imagine. So that's the nature of the "vinyl zeolot" claims i was addressing.

The fact there are people who enjoy vinyl (as I very much do!) would be fine. It's just that there is a lot of nonsense that tends to accompany the vinyl revival and naturally, bogus technical (and otherwise) claims about vinyl - or digital - rankle a community like this one interested in objective facts and promoting an understanding the technical aspect of audio.

Now, I'm going to go back to spinning some great vinyl on my rig ;-)

 

[JJB70]

And yet you don't expect a reply when you state the same thing about digital?

Let me put is this way, if we looked at racing a Ferrari and a Rolls Royce, the Ferrari would out corner, outperform the Rolls Royce in every department, yet many prefer the Rolls Royce. It's the same with vinyl, some even prefer cassettes, it's not just a matter of what measures better. You can print out measurement and hold them up to your ear and hear nothing (that's a joke). But seriously because something measures worse doesn't mean it's inferior when it comes to listeners preferences.

I apologize if I offended anyone.

That's not comparing like with like. The Ferrari is a high performance super car made for speed, the Rolls Royce is a luxury limousine. There will be plenty of measurements where the Rolls Royce is well ahead of the Ferrari (quieter, more space, luggage capacity, number of seats etc). In this context comparing the two is more akin to comparing Beethoven's 9th symphony with something like Michael Jackson's Thriller, both are music, both at the pinnacle of their respective forms but both completely different and existing in separate genres. Vinyl, optical discs and stored files are music carriers performing exactly the same function. Therefore they are directly comparable in a way that is meaningless in the case of much of the music they carry.

 

[DKT88]

Putting the issue of sound quality aside, I still suggest that is a false dichotomy - that the appeal would only be between 'nostalgia' or trying to be 'cool.'

And I'd suggest that most people getting in to the vinyl resurgence are not operating out of either motivation, or certainly not exclusively. Remember that millennials are a large driver in the resurgence of vinyl and they generally did not grow up with vinyl as their prominent music carrier.

Rather, many have been finding out that there really *is* something they value in the physical format of vinyl and turntables. Not only the appreciation of the artwork and aesthetic value, but enjoying owning and using a turntable, and finding that owning and using records fundamentally changes a dynamic in how they listen and think about their music.

It certainly has had this effect for me. When I had my older turntable and used to occasionally spin one of my old dusty records, nostalgia was certainly a big part of that as I was born in '63 and grew up playing records. But the more I got in to it, got a better table, got in to buying more new releases and building a new collection, it has really changed my listening habits and thinking about my music collection. There's just a lot of elements about my vinyl collection that make it a far richer experience than the invisible little 1s and 0s on my hard drive and tapping play on my iphone. And that is what many people are discovering who get in to vinyl.

But that all depends on one's interest. Spinning the occasional vinyl album isn't really the same as being captured by vinyl enough to really make it more of a focus in your music collection. But to those who have put more effort or focus in to vinyl/turntables, there's much more about it than just nostalgia or cool factor.

I agree, there's more to enjoying records than those two things. Put on Abby Road 180gm when I got home from work today and it sounds damn good. The ritual was satisfying.

 

[Sal1950]

I agree, there's more to enjoying records than those two things. Put on Abby Road 180gm when I got home from work today and it sounds damn good. The ritual was satisfying.

 

[DKT88]

4000 LPs in stock. Itaewon, Seoul.

 

[Hypnotoad]

I agree, there's more to enjoying records than those two things. Put on Abby Road 180gm when I got home from work today and it sounds damn good. The ritual was satisfying.

It's all about what satisfies you.

 

[Hypnotoad]

This is why I ditched Windows as when I played digital it was marred with Snap, Crackle and Pop.

 

[Sal1950]

It's all about what satisfies you.

Actually it's not.
From the very beginning it's been all about advancing The Art of High Fidelity
Vinyl quit being a contender in the SOTA 4 decades or more ago.
It's no more a contender today than a Edison cylinder player or metal wire recorder.
But if your happy with such sub par reproduction, so be it.

 

[Hypnotoad]

Actually it's not.

Actually it is, unless you live in NK everyone has a choice to what they listen to and how they listen to it, if it was only about the "highest" fidelity we would all be mortgaging our homes and buying million dollar + systems. If OCD types want to obsess over specs let them, but real music lovers sit back and enjoy the music.

It's no more a contender today than a Edison cylinder player or metal wire recorder.

You could add CD Players to that as well.

 

[MRC01]

That's an ironic position because vinyl costs much more than digital to achieve a given level of sound quality. Digital enables you to have near-reference sound quality without mortgaging your home and buying a megabuck audio system.

I'm sympathetic to the position that vinyl can sound good; I enjoyed a great sounding vinyl system for years. But it was expensive and high maintenance. One aspect of vinyl is that the cheap systems are so bad, as you go up in price the quality improves in a measurable and obviously audible way. As opposed to digital, where the first $100 can get get you better than 95% of studio quality with rapidly diminishing returns from there.

Real music lovers find a way to enjoy the music no matter how it was recorded or played back. Berman's Liszt etudes are fantastic but the Russian recording from the 60s sounds terrible. The Pro Arte's performances of Haydn's string quartets are sublime, but recorded in the 1930s, they are nowhere near "high fidelity". Happily, we get the occasional great recording AND great performance, like Lupu playing Schubert's Impromptus on Decca from the 1980s.

 

[Hypnotoad]

I'm sympathetic to the position that vinyl can sound good; I enjoyed a great sounding vinyl system for years. But it was expensive and high maintenance. One aspect of vinyl is that the cheap systems are so bad, as you go up in price the quality improves in a measurable and obviously audible way. As opposed to digital, where the first $100 can get get you better than 95% of studio quality with rapidly diminishing returns from there.

I agree 100%, like I said in a much earlier post that vinyl is a lot of work and can cost a fortune, but for some it's a labor of love, I would never recommend anyone go into vinyl these days without knowing all the drawbacks. I have recently retired my turntable and now use a PC as a music server with a USB Dac and really enjoy it, due to not only the sound quality but the simplicity of it.

Real music lovers find a way to enjoy the music no matter how it was recorded or played back. Berman's Liszt etudes are fantastic but the Russian recording from the 60s sounds terrible. The Pro Arte's performances of Haydn's string quartets are sublime, but recorded in the 1930s, they are nowhere near "high fidelity". Happily, we get the occasional great recording AND great performance, like Lupu playing Schubert's Impromptus on Decca from the 1980s.

Exactly, I have albums that are totally inferior recording wise but played them over and over just because the music was so great. Another thing is that classical music in general sounds better IMO than rock/pop music, if it was only about the sound quality then everyone would listen to classical.

 

[Deleted member 65]

Deinstalled my Sony PS-8750, don't listen to vinyl anymore. Great player and rare as hen's teeth - http://www.thevintageknob.org/sony-PS-8750.html. Got all original parts including cart w. replaced Shibata stylus, serviced w. new capacitors & IC. Original Sony mat scrapped, oil stiffened due to old age, Herb's mat now.