The invasion of unwanted vinyl records ....

lumphammer2

Everywhere I go to shop ... I am confronted with 50%+ of the store taken up with unwanted and ridiculously expensive vinyl LPs ... Golden Disks and local stores alike .... it is the same story .... CDs and DVDs get less space ... on TV shows they show these vinyls every time the musical guest is on ...

To me these yokes are the most useless antiquated overrated pieces of junk revived by the industry for some reason unknown to me ... I see no one buying them and the staff in Golden Disks blaming Covid Brexit Ukraine etc when I ask for something on DVD or CD they don't have in stock ... it is all forcing these stupid vinyl records on us .... but I am having none of it and will not buy anything on these stupid outdated idiotic yokes ... meanwhile you can get exactly what you want on Amazon ... no wonder everyone's shopping online ......

SuperBowserWorld

Can't you make flower pots out of vinal records ?

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058270464/the-invasion-of-unwanted-vinyl-records

Wait till they revive the wax cylinder. You'll be driven demented altogether by their outdatedness

Anesthetize

The vinyl revival made sense 10 years ago. Music was becoming increasingly less tangible and emphasis on sound quality was becoming less and less. It started with mp3s and the advent of streaming services such as Spotify accelerated it. The vinyl revival was the counter-reaction.

It made vinyl more attractive to music collectors, who wanted something more interesting than CDs. They were still relatively affordable at the time, I remember getting quite a few records from Tower for well under 20 euro.

But then it became a victim of it's own revival. Pressure on record-pressing factories meant supply not meeting demand, and driving up prices. Now a few years later, we still have overly-expense vinyl sitting on the shelves of Golden Discs and Tower Records.

CDs will always be the best format for music in terms of trade-off between sound quality and convenience. Long live the Compact Disc.

Strumms

Too expensive, too much effort involved… skipping tracks, changing sides etc, need way more room for storage…

i bought some of my favourite albums on vinyl about 8 years ago to put in frames as a sort of wall art decorative collage collection that worked out rather well… a few older ones appreciated nicely and I’ve others in boxes which are worth a few bob.

ive an aunt who was a singer back in the day and rubbed shoulders with the Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Shirley Bassey… her children wernt interested in that genre of music beyond in a general sense … so the aunt was keeping vinyl of theirs, all that stuff for me until my American cousin got wind and managed to wangle most of it…she’d my uncle wrapped around her finger… knowing her, and how flighty she was / is …years later it probably ended up on eBay.

L1011

I have quite a lot of vinyl. However, the move for everything to be on vinyl first is very annoying

There are very few decent mastering engineers left, so lots of new vinyl releases are absolutely bloody awful - worse than listing on youtube on a phone.

This, for instance, was so badly mastered I bought it on CD. Maybe that's the point - get two sales!

EmmetSpiceland

Golden Discs is not the shop I would be going to for buying vinyl. It’s the sort of place where people who don’t really have a clue about music would go.

Don't Chute!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119835188#Comment_119835188

Howlin Wolf, Muddy Waters, Gang of Four, The La’s. Just some records I’ve bought in Golden Discs, is that not music?

Count Dracula

Vinyl encompasses a deeper more textured sound, which synthesizes harmoniously with production techniques from a contrasting respective of musical genres.

It can record and expel greater quantities of sound at every percentile of its' relative decibel. I think the ratio is 37/29 in favor of vinyl over digital. It always wins.

Digital sound cannot replicate its authenticity. Real music lovers prefer the depth in sound a vinyl recording can reproduce. It really is that straight forward.... or devilishly encountered if played backwards.

Musical preference and entertainment garnered from it is entirely subjective to its listener, however the quality and science of its' amplification is entirely standardized. You simply will hear a better sound on vinyl, cackles and all.

I might remark that this may change in the future, I assume that musical recording techniques will evolve, but as things stand the best sound is vinyl.

https://anchor.fm/46-30/episodes/Episode--1-e1bo9i

Two lads playing vinyl. It goes off the rails a bit, but some of the tracks are amazing.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119835545#Comment_119835545

Absolute tosh. A CD can encompass a greater dynamic range than vinyl because there isn't the limitation of the physical room for the groove to move side to side. In order to make a vinyl pressing you have to compress the dynamic range to reduce the amount of groove excursion just so you can get the length of a musical piece onto the disc. It's called the RIAA bias curve, where trebble is boosted and bass is compressed as it takes up the most space in terms of groove wiggle. The phono stage of a preamplifier has a reverse bias built into it's circuitry to uncompress the audio. I have to laugh when people talk of a'natural' or 'pure' vinyl sound when it's been messed with, a lot.

A preference for vinyl sound is simply a preference for it's technical limitations that lead to a technically more compromised sound. This was shown when recoding engineers took vinyl recordings, recorded them and burned audio CDs from the recordings. They then set up a blind listening test where the original vinyl and burned CD were played back on the same reference quality system and people, including vinyphiles, were asked to distinguish between the two. They couldn't. I have direct experience of this as I used to record my vinyl to a DAT deck and then listen to them. One benefit of this was doing a time consuming 'master clean' to get as much dust off the LP as possible, not to mention skipping tracks I didn't like and making tape mixes of different LPs.

A CD can therefore sound exactly the same as vinyl, so it's not a limitation if that sound profile is preferred. Digital audio is like a superbly made transparent glass bottle. It doesn't sound like anything. What you get out of it is wholy dependent on what you fill it with - fill it with a vinyl recording and that's what you will get back out, fill it with a well mastered recording with headroom and no compression, and that's what you get back out; fill it with a hugely copressed track for maximum playback volume and no headroom and that's what you get back out.

The supposed criticisms and sound preferences that are used by some to criticise CDs are in fact misplaced criticisms of the quality of the mastering of the content stored on it.

You don't get people blaming the inadequacies of wine bottles for how the wine tastes, it goes without question that if you put Penfolds Grange Hermitage into a bottle, then what you pour out of it is going to taste rather nice, but put rubbish into it and that's what you are going to get out again.

I for one do not miss one bit, squeezing the trigger of a zero-stat gun repeatedly over a spinning LP to flood it with negative ions to dampen the ststic charge so the several minutes of carfully sweeping a carbon fibre brush across the surface would actually be able to shift some of the dust out of the grooves, loosened of their static charged attraction. And then of course, carefully positioning the stylus of the moving coil cartridge that cost more than a CD player, only to hear the dust such a process sometimes couldn't shift.

Count Dracula

You could have stated everything you educated me with above, with far more distinction... and it may have been a more comfortable read, if you had managed to exclude the first two words of your diatribe.

Vinyl not only has a deeper sound, it also exudes more resonance which adds to a greater listening experience. That's a fact.

Modern digital sounds forced. You cannot reciprocate the immense intensity of a bass boomer in a crowded skank house with a digital format, vinyl is built to flow through a bass boomer, all grooves aside.

Furthermore all the best music has been made in an era when vinyl was both necessary and relevant. A 70's rock band should be heard full blast on vinyl, remastered digital is pure gimick, just my humble opinion.

Music is a beautiful form of artistic expression, enjoy it anyway you can. Preferences are everywhere.

endacl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119835136#Comment_119835136

Not sure mastering genius of any level could rescue source material provided by Ash...

Former Former Former

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119835188#Comment_119835188

I'm not sure if this is a joke, I really hope so.

I bought an album on vinyl in Golden Discs this week. I wanted this album. Golden Discs is the nearest record shop to me. They had it in stock. I bought the album in Golden Discs.

What am I doing wrong?

Allinall

Shops called Golden Discs and Tower Records selling records?

Well I never.

blade1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119835821#Comment_119835821

Some people look down on others because of where they shop or whether or not the music they listen to is "real music".

There's a name for these people.

Dickheads.

AMKC

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119835690#Comment_119835690

Music is a beautiful form of artistic expression, enjoy it anyway you can. Preferences are everywhere.

It certainly used to be but it's a dieing bred now. Honestly does anyone even care or know what artists are in the so called charts these days? I know I for one do not have a clue as far as I am concerned the real charts died when Apple came and destroyed music with there devices.

There was a time when I could easily tell you every artist in the the top 20 and if they were any good or not.

As for which format is best for me it's CDs. I grew up on CDs. I still remember my Brother bringing home his Philips multi CD player it could load 7 CDs at a time and the sound was amazing some years after that he got one that could do 3 or 4 times as many CDs but sadly it did not last.

As for the Philips one well I have that now it still works at least it did a few years ago as I have not used it in years sadly as its quiet bulky. I must take it out and see is it still working.

Bit cynical

With streaming and downloadable music, sellers of physical media have to provide a contrasting product. Small formats like CDs don't really cut it in that and hence the move to vinyl. I don't purchase vinyl records myself but I can see the attraction. You are buying a piece of visual art as well as a sound format of moderately good quality.

blade1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119835992#Comment_119835992

Stuff like this doesn't come cheap but as a package it's stunning imo.

kazamo

Vinyl is back because they make more money out of it.

Just looked at the Golden Discs website. Dermot Kennedy on CD is €14 and on vinyl it’s €30. Beyonce on vinyl is €75 which is truly staggering. The CD version is €15.

Record Labels are harping back to the good old days when they had a captive market pre streaming and on line shopping when they could charge whatever they liked. They want their cash cow back.

For Forks Sake

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119835545#Comment_119835545

..

newirishman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119835545#Comment_119835545

That is quite some funny waffle, and of course by and large incorrect.

Here’s some good starting point: https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)

The only thing that vinyl has is that the cover and booklet is bigger, and the tactile difference.

Anything you stated about the sound being ‘better’ is wrong.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119835545#Comment_119835545

You know that any music made in the past, oh, 40 years will have been stored as linear PCM - the format on a CD - at some stage (of not all stages) between production and pressing?

Vinyl needs specific mastering to make it sound at its best, which is only going to be as good as a CD sounds. If its not done right, it sounds like absolute crap

People are buying it again for the experiential elements - not for the sound quality. Lots are listening on mono speaker, circular stylus, ceramic cartridge suitcase systems too - so they're not even getting close to the pressed quality. Have heard those systems that have clearly had no working RIAA equalization too.

NIMAN

I blame hipsters.

kneemos

Music was good though when you had to pay for an album.

Free access has ruined innovation and progress.

For Forks Sake

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119836165#Comment_119836165

,,

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119835188#Comment_119835188

Fancy yourself as a bit of a BP Fallon sort do you, Emmet?

EmmetSpiceland

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119836208#Comment_119836208

God no, Doc. I wouldn’t dare compare myself to the great BP.

A lovely, knowledgable, man. Have met him on a few “occasions”, always has some great stories.

Did you know he penned the lyrics for the song ‘Flight of the Ibis’ on the album by ex-King Crimson members Ian McDonald and Michael Giles?

Count Dracula

Its the same with getting to eyeball a bit of pornography.

Years ago procuring porn was a public exercise. Entering Your local dirty movie store, with your hood on as you walked to the door and rang the bell like a creepy outcast.... then selecting your sexual preference and banking on that particular human on the front cover doing the trick for you back home. Finally the cringey purchase with the smiling video shop attendant, looking you up and down like you were some sort of degenerate pervert not fit to see the light of day.... with a smile and thankyou. I used to hate the awkward polite auvrevoir to the fucker as you pan faced your way back out the shop as if nothing happened.

Then the exciting journey home....

Modern music lovers could not possibly appreciate decent music these days. Especially considering the snorgasbord buffet of Scat, Clusterphuck , anal pegging , deep throating collage of shear sleaze available on their laptops today. They don"t even have to leave the room. I don't know how the youth of today handle their guilt.

If I wanted to listen to the new Clash album I had to establish where it was being released and then, when it was?I needed the cash and more importantly i probably needed to order it.

That meant something whilst pulling off the outer sleeve and quickly gawking at the inside cover art before gently placing a sporless needle on your groove of choice, full blast of course, none of your surround sound shight either, i used to love fiddling with the direction of speakers to develop the biggest wuff off the phuckers.

Graphic equalizers are for knobends.

Dial Hard

I saw an interesting Twitter thread recently by a recording engineer explaining why CD is the closest you'll get to what they want you to hear. I'll see if I can find it.

Count Dracula

I have thought that through. I reckon that modern generations are suffering from acute audio deficit ( AAD).

They are the victims of their own modern lifestyle ,whereby they have been cajoled by tech execs into believing that digi tech is better because it is newer. They embellish this via other media like online reviews, or a mock ad spread in GQ by Steinhauser. Some sexy couple lounging half naked in a trendy living room leaming their arses against an oak finishef Bang and Olafffffffson.

Gobshights altogether.

Their ears are spoiled on contemporary hogwashed handout. They have never queued outside for tickets or smoked in a bar, like actually inside one. The modern ear is deprived stimulation via lack of effort, you can't even tune a distorted radip any more.

Older listeners have better ears. That is why they appreciate the stronger sound that vinyl delivers.