Thinking of moving to Vinyl

jtsuited

Yup you read it right. I'm thinking of ditching traktor for dj sets and moving to vinyl.

Now as many of you know, I'm very experienced in the whole 'digital' thing. It's not as if I haven't given it a chance. There are a few reasons I'm considering the move.

1. I'm still not entirely sure about mp3 files as a format. It's kind of depressing putting blood, sweat and tears into a release just to see it drowned out by the awful amount of unlistenable garbage that comes out on an hourly basis. At least putting out vinyl is something tangible for your work.
I've a few vinyl releases happening over the next few months, and basically it's where I'm focusing a lot of my efforts. So I may as well start playing vinyl if I'm going to be releasing vinyl.

2. The arguments about the 'possibilities' of digital djing have all been shown up as having no weight by now. Hawtin playing 4 decks of rubbish with a load of crap fx thrown in??? that's the pinnacle?? Re-edits on the fly?? blah blah blah. all good in theory but I've still yet to hear any dj set where the effects and looping was in any way pleasing to the ear (and I've even tried myself a billion times).

3. The sound......I LOVE the sound of vinyl.

And I'm a big software guy when it comes to production. I don't even own one hardware synthesizer anymore. Computers are brilliant.
But.....I'm really really sick of the fatiguing mastering that's going on. And I'm guilty of smashing the fook out of tracks in mastering too. Best thing about vinyl is, you simply can't do that style of mastering. I recently heard Radiohead's In Rainbows on vinyl and the mastering is completely different and tbh I much prefer it.
Limitations are good imo.

4. This one I never thought I'd say. I miss owning the physical thing. And tbh CD's suck. They're soulless and I've never loved a CD. I think in the past I wrote off the value of the physical commodity simply because I never really loved cd's. I do love vinyl though. Even though I've owned very very little in my short life so far.

5. I get too much music. I'm not picky enough in my purchases. My life would probably be better if the download stores charged 4 times the price per mp3. I'd dig a little deeper, and for longer, and basically not waste as much space in my itunes library.
And vinyl seems to be roughly 4-6 times the price of digital. So it'd probably be good for me.

6. The average quality (as in the real average) quality of vinyl releases is infinitely better than the average digital release. And one of the most depressing things about modern times is trawling through just SO MUCH sh1t to find anything decent nowadays. Which kind of leads me on to how this sudden change of heart happened....

I've had to do a promomix lately and I really wanted it to be something that really reflected what I like. I spent hours upon hours trying to come up with a 'crate' of 20 tracks that I really loved. And when I had finally got that list together, I noticed a peculiar thing in the artwork of all 20. It was all in the familiar round vinyl format.
Now comparing that to my general music library and the round format is in the minority. This mathematical anomaly got me thinking.
A quick search revealed that every single one of those 20 tracks were available on vinyl.

And then I guess it dawned on me. I should just move to vinyl.

Thoughts?

VinylJunkie

Hope your selling enough tunes to fund this move

francois

Welcome to the club! you make a lot of good points regarding mp3
Having a physical record collection is great-it implies effort and thought going into your music, I can't understand people who boast about having tens of thousands of mp3's-do they bother listening to them more than once.
Mp3 doesn't compare to vinyl on a decent system
Only hassle is after many years and amassing a large collection is carting it around and trying to keep some form of classification system!
Besides a lot of vinyl can become quite valuable

kmick

Just remember that choice is a factor. There is a much wider choice available on digital than in your local record shop. Also I often download tracks which I never use. You wont have that luxury with vinyl.

As far as I am concerned its all about the music not the medium in which that music is transmitted. There is something about vinyl that digital will never touch but for most people the hassle of travelling to their local shop, picking out a vinyl release for 20 euro which may not even have the mix you like best and carrying it around is just not worth it.

francois

kmick wrote: »

Just remember that choice is a factor. There is a much wider choice available on digital than in your local record shop. Also I often download tracks which I never use. You wont have that luxury with vinyl.

As far as I am concerned its all about the music not the medium in which that music is transmitted. There is something about vinyl that digital will never touch but for most people the hassle of travelling to their local shop, picking out a vinyl release for 20 euro which may not even have the mix you like best and carrying it around is just not worth it.

In fairness you only need a credit card and an internet connection-there are loads of places to get vinyl on the net

mordeith

Its hard to beat the pleasure to be gained from mixing with vinyl. You can't decide to loop the end of track for 2 mins while you get a computer to calculate the BPM of the incoming track. You're under pressure to get everything right, the timing of the mix and keeping an eye on the beatmatching in case it starts to slip a littlen and the then (hopefully) the sense of satisfaction as you nail a mix perfectly (espicially if its a couple of cracking tunes that just get your head going )

jtsuited

kmick wrote: »

Just remember that choice is a factor. There is a much wider choice available on digital than in your local record shop. Also I often download tracks which I never use. You wont have that luxury with vinyl.

.

i pretty much have no intention of shopping for vinyl locally.

milltown

2,3 and 5 I wholeheartedly agree with.

I miss heading into Abbey discs of a weekday afternoon and wrecking Billy's head trying to nail down what sort of stuff I was after, and emerging, blinking in the daylight, three hours later with only three or four records in my bag.

I had to ditch vinyl, and mixing altogether at the time, when I moved into a one bedroomed apartment with herself. Now I've a four bed house with two nippers to trash it so although I've the space now, I haven't the money for a vinyl setup. Midi mixing of MP3s has rekindled my love of good music, and it helps that the kids can't scratch my MP3s.

In the relatively short time I've been back collecting dance tunes I've amassed an enormous amount of sh1te though so I'm with you on that point.

Also, maybe a controversial point but, I'm a bit confused about Hawtin myself. I've never seen the guy live but any vids I've watched have left me very meh. The supposedly mindblowing possibilities of his setup seem to be at odds with what's coming out of the speakers. I guess it's like having a Bugatti Veyron and telling everyone it does 230mph. Really?...When?... How often?

SteveDon

Fair points on moving to vinyl. Personally I wouldnt be able to afford it being a poor student and all.

Have you ever considered doing live sets jt?

MikeHoncho

I would go back to Vinyl myself if I had the space. Still have every record I ever bought just nothing to play them on.

Scubadevils

Yeah its funny, I went through the whole process recently of wanting to buy some digital equipment - many posts in the 'controller' thread and salivating over pictures and specs of various A&H machines... while going through that process it got me tempted to spin the decks again - dug through some tracks I had bought more recently (in the last 12-18 months) and really enjoyed getting stuck in again, actually spent a good three hours playing last weekend.

Anyway, some other financial surprises hit me over the last couple of weeks and I can't afford the digital equipment now for the foreseeable future so I decided I'd shop around for some new vinyl online - there is a huge amount of choice and some serious quality techno being produced so I reckon I'm going to stick with the decks again and started spending a few quid each month on vinyl. I do have the pleasure also of spending time in London and Amsterdam every few weeks so some good choices in both cities for vinyl shopping.

I think the point of having a 'tangible' item for your money is really spot on and there is no comparison to the sound from vinyl.

colin29

If I could afford it I would go back to vinyl in a heartbeat, when my wife and I decided to head to Canada it was just too expensive for me to ship what I had over so I sold it all, I regretted it as soon as I did it, I now only play at home as a hobby so for now I am content but vinyl is always in the back of the mind, I still go into a couple of shops here to see what's on offer (I love nothing better than being in a music store) but all it does is make the want for vinyl grow.

Ryansdaughter

ok, showing my age a little but do people not DJ with Vinyl anymore? Sorry but I never really pay attention when I'm at a gig\club ...is it MP3 all the way nowadays? ( I presume using some sort of mixing software)

colin29

Ryansdaughter wrote: »

ok, showing my age a little but do people not DJ with Vinyl anymore? Sorry but I never really pay attention when I'm at a gig\club ...is it MP3 all the way nowadays? ( I presume using some sort of mixing software)

You still see people using turntables but quite often they are using time coded vinyl to control the music in dj software, alot of purists still only use vinyl.
There are alot of people getting on the dj bandwagon now because it's so accessible, software, controllers and mp3s, it can be alot cheaper than using vinyl and also the software has auto beat matching capabilities so people no longer need to learn to beatmatch, give them a pair of decks two slabs of vinyl and a mixer and you can be guaranteed that they wouldn't have a clue what to do.

jtsuited

SteveDon wrote: »

Have you ever considered doing live sets jt?

that's all i've really done playing out.
but tbh i'm kinda bored of just playing my own stuff.

although it is a good fee earner.

harsea8

Points 3 and 4 are the real sellers for me (the sound and the feel of something tangible). I also have a great fondness for vinyl artwork (be it sleeve design or centre label design) as I think it can really add to the overall appeal.

Also, milltown, I have a couple of destructive nippers myself and I've implemented a 1 metre "exclusion zone" around my decks. Works a treat!!

Scubadevils

Just thinking also, when CDs were first being introduced as the ultimate new audio medium, there was the point then also of losing numerous frequencies compared to vinyl and CD not having as 'full' a sound as vinyl. Funny now nearly 30 years later the same debate is happening in the digital camp.

And as I've said before somewhere here on boards, I have played the exact same track through my main music system from vinyl, CD and a 320 rip - the vinyl wins absolutely hands down in terms of sound quality - you just can't beat the depth of sound from vinyl.

SteveDon

jtsuited wrote: »

that's all i've really done playing out.
but tbh i'm kinda bored of just playing my own stuff.

although it is a good fee earner.

Any sets up on the net for download? If not when you playing your next gig? would love to catch one or your live sets.

jtsuited

SteveDon wrote: »

Any sets up on the net for download? If not when you playing your next gig? would love to catch one or your live sets.

playing a dj set (i think it's a dj set anywho) at the yes festival on paddy's day, and interestingly enough i'm fairly sure I'm on the same bill as yourself for a gig in a few weeks time (was only asked a few hours ago) and that'll be a liveset.

b45

I love playing vinyl , its where the joy of djing lies imo . Its so much more enjoyable to play than cds or off a a laptop but it requires more skill to manipulate so if you havent done it before be prepared to go back to square one for a little bit . People complain about the price but i think quality music is worth 8 -10 euro for an ep/single . And I dont think there are more than 3 or 4 records released a week that are really worth buying , a lot of the time even less than that . So the amount of tunes you buy might go down but the quality will go up .

ED E

Felixdhc wrote: »

Just thinking also, when CDs were first being introduced as the ultimate new audio medium, there was the point then also of losing numerous frequencies compared to vinyl and CD not having as 'full' a sound as vinyl. Funny now nearly 30 years later the same debate is happening in the digital camp.

And as I've said before somewhere here on boards, I have played the exact same track through my main music system from vinyl, CD and a 320 rip - the vinyl wins absolutely hands down in terms of sound quality - you just can't beat the depth of sound from vinyl.

Its all in your head, you want vinyl to sound better:p

Scubadevils

Lethal_Bullet wrote: »

Its all in your head, you want vinyl to sound better:p

Yeah its defo in my head alright, where do you hear the music? :P

seannash

i think it might also do with the fact that your focusing on deep house now which is lends itself much more to a traditional dj type set up.

tech house and minimal were always the ones that seemed to lend themselves more to the ableton/controller vibe.
there doesnt seem to be a need to **** with deep house tracks.just let it play out.perhaps its that fact it has a lot more soul than most other genres

deep house has been kicking about in the underground for a long time but was mostly considered warm up material.its great that its getting prime time slots in more clubs these days.

id personally love to see a vinyl resurgence especially now since im not too bothered about playing out and will only be doing it for my own personal enjoyment at home.

Plus some of the covers on my old vinyl are fantastic to look at

Executive Steve

Only ever played vinyl.

eeloe

I've went through most mediums over the years, and i have to say i'm quite content with my midi set up!
I LOVED my vinyl before i moved to France, but i couldn't afford to bring it with me, so sold it all off!

I got hooked up with CDJ's when i went over, was grand, but an absolute bastard burning cd's and writing slips to go in the cd case...that eventually got pretty heavy also!

What i like about my laptop set up is, that i can bring ALL my music with me, and if someone on before me plays a track that i was going to play, i simply won't play it, i'll find something else.

If you go to a gig, and the guy on before you plays 5 tracks you were gonna play, your pretty limited with what you can do if you only have a small ammount of tracks with you on 12"

Vinyl is hideously expensive, a bitch to carry around the place, and then you'll have the cost of replacing a record if it gets scratched/warped.

SteveDon

jtsuited wrote: »

playing a dj set (i think it's a dj set anywho) at the yes festival on paddy's day, and interestingly enough i'm fairly sure I'm on the same bill as yourself for a gig in a few weeks time (was only asked a few hours ago) and that'll be a liveset.

Ah cool, is that the color tv night? Think hypertic are playing that night also, should be a bit of a laugh, think we are all playing live sets, looking foward to it myself!

Zascar

Kid Handsome, Steve Donaldson and Hypertic all on the same night??? I'm so there...

Actually we could make the boards.ie dance forum meetup on that night and make it very easy... Would be great to have a big group of us along where all of you are playing

When and where guys?

SteveDon

Zascar wrote: »

When and where guys?

27th of March in Wax i believe, yeah it would be great to get all the boardsies down!! Should be a fun night.

VinylJunkie

Sweet, looking forward to this!

jonnny68

Very strange thesedays a digital era kid switching to vinyl but no harm at all i say!

I sometimes regret not stucking with vinyl myself but in a way i am as my preferred set up is Decks (Technics/Vestax) with a mixer and serato live with the 2 vinyls, anyway with work and a young baby,etc i actually don't have time to be playing much when the lad gets older ill go for it again.

Did i hear seannash say that jsuited is now concentrating on deep house, can i ask are you abandoning minimal and tech house (if so why just a question)

This also means that we now both like the same genre of music:eek: ive always liked deep house, it's not prime time music though and i prefer to mix it up with soulful and funky.

jtsuited

jonnny68 wrote: »

Did i hear seannash say that jsuited is now concentrating on deep house, can i ask are you abandoning minimal and tech house (if so why just a question)

haha, nah not abandoning anything just doing a large variety of stuff these days. have a deep house release coming out on Donnacha Costello's Minimise label. So there's a real headspinner for you. Deep House on a label not only known for it's fairly minimal sound but also called Minimise.

As any of the lads here who follow me will tell ya, my sound has got gradually deeper and deeper over a long period of time.

earwiggle

Fair play to you man. You won't look back
It's one thing people complaining about the price of records, but if it's a record you will get repeated use from, it's worth every cent and more. And even if you don't you can still look at it and hold it, and stuff like that

hans aus dtschl

Executive Steve wrote: »

Only ever played vinyl.

Same.

Once you're addicted its game over. Lots of friends changing back from digital setups now.

Zascar

jtsuited wrote: »

haha, nah not abandoning anything just doing a large variety of stuff these days. have a deep house release coming out on Donnacha Costello's Minimise label. So there's a real headspinner for you. Deep House on a label not only known for it's fairly minimal sound but also called Minimise.

As any of the lads here who follow me will tell ya, my sound has got gradually deeper and deeper over a long period of time.

Cool which track is that Jeff?

Executive Steve

jtsuited wrote: »

haha, nah not abandoning anything just doing a large variety of stuff these days. have a deep house release coming out on Donnacha Costello's Minimise label. So there's a real headspinner for you. Deep House on a label not only known for it's fairly minimal sound but also called Minimise.

As any of the lads here who follow me will tell ya, my sound has got gradually deeper and deeper over a long period of time.

Hate to wheel these out but :


http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=60413824&postcount=27

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=60414128&postcount=29

:pac:

Zascar

Haha yeah you were right on the money Steve I remember that post well. I've always played a bit of deep house stuff and started to play a lot more right about then - amazing how prolific it has become in a few short time...

Executive Steve

Zascar wrote: »

Haha yeah you were right on the money Steve I remember that post well. I've always played a bit of deep house stuff and started to play a lot more right about then - amazing how prolific it has become in a few short time...

Just wish i could do stuff like that with the horses tbh

Scubadevils

Yeah I remember reading that too, must scrap my intended techno purchases so! :pac:

hans aus dtschl

Felixdhc wrote: »

Yeah I remember reading that too, must scrap my intended techno purchases so! :pac:

Don't: the hard techno bandwagon will be around in another 18 months don't worry!

joker77

jtsuited wrote: »

...And then I guess it dawned on me. I should just move to vinyl.

Thoughts?

I had a long love affair with vinyl, and it still holds a very fond place in my heart. The reason I stopped buying vinyl, is that music wasn't a career for me, and I couldn't justify the cost any more. It was alright as a teenager going out and spending maybe 50% of my wages on vinyl, but getting into my twenties I just couldn't be doin that. NEVER liked CDs, so there was a bit of a hiatus in my music collecting until I got fully into the MP3 thing.

So 2 things really - the cost, and the space. Vinyl takes up space, and is also heavy - flight cases of 100+ records take a good bit of lugging around.

In an ideal world where I had bags of cash, I'd have a large gaff with enough space to have a large music room with thousands of records, but it's just not really feasible for me.

Scubadevils

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

Don't: the hard techno bandwagon will be around in another 18 months don't worry!

Ah I was joking saying that - I'm a techno fan through and through!

Daroxtar

Vinyl you say?
JT, just go for it. You wont regret it. You'll always have the other equipment for when you want it but you will get such a kick out of using vinyl once you get properly into the swing of it.

brianc27

i've gone through all the mediums over 10 years or so, started off with vinyl, then cd's, then back to vinyl, then onto serato, then traktor, ended up sticking with digital because quite simply vinyl was too expensive, the price of it was just too much, i was spending well over 200 quid every 2 weeks or so at the height of my vinyl buying and i simply could not afford to keep going like that, been using trakor for close to 3 years now and that suits me fine, still head over to a mates every now and again for a mix on his decks just so i dont completely forget how to mix 2 vinyl records together, coz who knows i might go back to it some day.

for some people collecting vinyl is a big hobby and they really look after their records, i never thought myself as a collector and it showed in my vinyls as they were in bits, ripped sleeves, alot of scratched records, most are gathering dust over in my parents now.

i'm of the mindset that vinyl, cd, mp3 is just a medium, its what comes out of the speakers that matters, i dont care what a dj is playing of aslong as it sounds good, but i don't for a second think vinyl is dead and digital is king or any of that boll*x, it just suits me to use a laptop.

FLYNN-DOG

Fair play Jeff, I just reviewed Costello's new LP for IV on Poker Flat - I've always liked the guys sound. My first comment in months, as I've been on boards hiatus due to college.......

jonnny68

Zascar wrote: »

Haha yeah you were right on the money Steve I remember that post well. I've always played a bit of deep house stuff and started to play a lot more right about then - amazing how prolific it has become in a few short time...

is it possible that those who have become bored with minimal and tech house have now latched onto deep house scene (im not talking about anyone in particular just in general) which is why it's suddendly in the spotlight?

As i said ive always liiked it since the early 90's the early stuff on Strictly Rhythm and King Street Records is amazing, Sunday nights around 98/99 in the old Switch in Temple Bar used to be top notch Deep House, i do not believe it's peak time music at all,however when mixed up with Soulful and Funky House it can be superb:)

Executive Steve

jonnny68 wrote: »

Sunday nights around 98/99 in the old Switch in Temple Bar used to be top notch Deep House

"Sunday Central" - that was a wicked night, used to go there pretty much religiously... Then Bubbles split to go up to the Pod to run his thing there his style changed and got much proggier, and the crowds at Central started thinning out too...

jtsuited

Well folks I finally did it. Surprisingly wandered into City Discs this afternoon and found an absolute shedload of stuff I had waiting to be ordered in my juno crate. AND even more surprisingly worked out a good bit cheaper than juno.

Really wasn't expecting to be shopping locally but there ya go. In saying that, it was the last of the dublin record shops i went into and the selection in the rest was just abysmal.

I've always said that if money wasn't an obstacle I'd be all vinyl. And then last week I bought an EP on beatport for 8 euro. Could have got the vinyl from hardwax for 9. That's a friggin no brainer to me.

As I outlined one of the main points of me moving to vinyl was to cut down on the amount of music I was buying, so financially it's gonna work out the same (give or take - I actually spend a lot monthly buying music legitimately).

Now for the audio-nerds amongst you, I did actually buy 2 records that I have on legitimate mp3 already. And I started a listening experiment on some of my fancy studio gear (changing gains and preamps and everything so that i was comparing like with like etc). Holy bejaysus, that experiment didn't last long.

Not only did vinyl sound much nicer, as in warmer yadda yadda but the actual depth in the sound compared to 320 mp3 was frankly shocking to be honest. If you've a proper monitoring setup the one thing you notice with lossy codecs (like mp3/aac/etc) is that while the actual tonal quality of the audio doesn't drop too much, the depth and space just dissappears as the data becomes more and more compressed. Now to those that listen to music on headphones (or on not great speakers in less than perfect rooms) that won't really mean much, but for me that's a huge thing.

Ok so that's the technical stuff out of the way.
The less technical stuff is that it just sounds beautiful. Highs are crisper (and a lot less harsh), mids are warmer, and well i don't think anyone disputes vinyl's strength in the rounded low end.

I knew there was a big difference in sound. But it's only in my sort of lab conditions (as in using my studio setup with clean signal paths and good monitors etc.) that I've realised how much of a difference there is.

I know a lot of people came from vinyl and moved into the digital world, and that I've gone the opposite way so we'll see how I feel after I've done my back in for the umpteenth time!!
But right now, I'm delighted I've made the jump.

seannash

what needles you running with jt.

im returning home after being away for years to a big pile of vinyl in my attic so i might invest in a set of tt's.

not really fussed about being up to date anymore so itll only be for my own use and enjoyment.


bit cheaper than cdjs anyway

joker77

I'm sure you won't look back! (Although it's an expensive indulgence these days)

After all the talk of vinyl here, and some with the lads at the Wax night (and after party), I've decided to dust down the decks out of the storage they're in at the moment and hook them up in the gaff. There's not a lot of room for them, but 'her indoors' has agreed to see about a trial run in the sitting room. (She's a musician herself so she's fairly sound about that kind of thing, will have to see just how much room they're going to take up though).

Spent all yesterday afternoon browsing different sites for buying vinyl, and was very surprised how hard it was to find the stuff I was looking for. I finally got about 90% of what I wanted - between chemical records, juno, web-records, 1 from R&S directly, and the rest from discogs. The auld credit card isn't speaking to me today, got a bit of a hammering...

Looking forward to setting it up during the week or maybe next weekend.

I must check out City Discs next time I'm in town - it's no fun buying on discogs when the release is 4 euro and the shipping is 14!

jtsuited

seannash wrote: »

what needles you running with jt.

im returning home after being away for years to a big pile of vinyl in my attic so i might invest in a set of tt's.

one concorde and one stanton 500.

jtsuited

joker77 wrote: »

I must check out City Discs next time I'm in town - it's no fun buying on discogs when the release is 4 euro and the shipping is 14!

I was very very surprised with the stuff they had in there. They had all the new Dessous stuff, some great dubby deep stuff like Quantec/Echocord, and some other really great stuff.

And it's pretty much a standard 8.99 for most records. Which is slightly cheaper than online (and that's before you take delivery into account). Yer man in there was a top bloke too.