What’s the format got to do with it?
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I should’ve expanded, I only just drunk my first coffee of the day and forgot the toast.
It’s one of those records I wanted to buy on vinyl for ages, but prices seemed to either be high and I couldn’t find it in the UK. I don’t buy any records unless I know I listen to them repeatedly and this is one of them.
Plus my hi-fi is pretty pucka, so it sounds great on it! Put it on in the background and do some editing or post shit on the forums or something, since there aren’t any lyrics or anything it’s not too distracting. Plus, it’s vastly different to his other work where there’s a lot more going on.
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I agree it’s a monumentally wonderful album, I just always find it odd when people want a vinyl version of something that was mastered for digital. All that outrage when things were mastered from analogue to digital for CD issues, but nobody seems to mind or notice when it’s done back the way. So much music sounds better on vinyl because it was recorded and mastered for vinyl and only exists on vinyl but this current trend of albums being remastered to suit current vinyl buyers is getting tedious. Fair play to the labels for creating the demand though, it’s probably the last time they’ll be able to rake in the enormous profits they get from vinyl records.
Before you spend £20 on an LP copy of an album you already own, think what that money could get you on Bandcamp, with the vast majority of that money going to the people who made the music rather than some label that’s secretly owned by a major anyway.
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Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m not some audiophile or some music snob (well, most of the time)…
There’s a lot of vinyl out there that you can clearly tell is just a straight rip from MP3. I try to find original pressings unless it means being shafted, but I do know you’re better off not doing so as sometimes those pressings can be absolute rubbish.
I always try to support my favourite bands/musicians via Bandcamp, most of the local band’s music can only found on there. I was hyped to find the entire Cardiacs discography can be purchased on Bandcamp, which is rad to find out considering you’re then supporting Tim’s recovery by purchasing the music on there as well.
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Props.
That’s a really fair and sensible point…
Am I the only one who doesn’t understand the attraction of vinyl? Y’know, the space it takes up, the inconvenience, the weight, the cost? Record players as furniture can usually look cool, but otherwise, not interested.
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Still better than CDs though
Every medium colours the music as does every piece of gear, speaker so no one is ever getting a true representation of how the music was conceived, not even the artist. That said, vinyl is fun sounding, it’s like tea in japan, it’s a ritual more than anything.
Vinyl is mastered differently to digital so if companies still have the original masters of their discography then they’d just press from them, if not they’l get a new plate cut from digi files, which may be inferior or not, that depends on the type of music and how well it needs to be summed in order to create “that” sound it needs. Vinyl is no better than CD, it’s just different and Flac, lossless etc is no better than either unless you’re playing on some serious gear in a serious environment. People who buy flac and listen on their earbuds are just basically taking up 20 times more storage area for no reason.
Why though? What makes it better? CDs are smaller, lighter, cheaper, easier to digitize, less prone to damage. It all sounds the same on decent speakers. It just reminds me of the reasoning behind big pants/small wheels in the early 90s where all practicality and sense was done away with.
This I understand, even if the routine/ritual is impractical.
Sorry, I was being facetious, I don’t have a real reason. I buy vinyl, but only because I have since I was a little kid. I love the sound and feel. But yes, it’s a massive pain in the arse, takes up room, and is generally pointless.
CDs are small, fiddly, rattley, clicky clacky bits of crap, with tiny covers and they look shit.
It’s a taste thing. There are certain types of music that will sound really cool on vinyl and others moreso in a digital format. Stereo width and perception is totally different and the way the sound is “glued” or summed is different. If you wanted your electronic music to sound out of this world, flitting around the stereo image, it’s probably not going to sound better on vinyl, it will be better digitally on headphones. If you want to listen to a band that needs to sound warm and together then vinyl may sound better because of it’s caracteristics.
I’m letting a band use my studio for referencing mixes at the moment and because it’s all been recorded into the DAW and all being processed by plugins etc, it sounds almost too good production wise, too clean, everything has it’s own place. To me and many, this is not a flattering sound, it needs summing and treating to something outside of the computer to “glue” it and make it sound real and give it life. I put it through my analogue desk and tweaked the parametric EQ’s and it jumped into life. Vinyl does not do this of course but it certainly adds that something to certain music.
It’s not a sound ‘quality’ thing for me - my turntable/amp/speaker combo sounds bloody lovely, but I grew up listening to shitty copied cassettes and I still don’t mind the sound of those either. Anthrax’s ‘Spreading The Disease’ album will always sound better on a TDK c90, no matter how many 180-gram reissues I buy.
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Tape is a great sounding medium, really underated but it’s not that practical.
Yeah, if people are buying certain things for “quality” then they are deluded by some kind of snake oil chat.
BUT, quality is subjective.
yeah i really couldn’t give two fucks about sound quality or any of that nonsense. downloading music is great and all as well don’t get me wrong cos i’ve (illegally) downloaded enough to last a lifetime but tbh, i’ve just always really really enjoyed buying records
pranged out that my house was going to burn down or some shit so spent a few months last year adding everything to collection on discogs, was quite an enjoyable process in the end
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Discogs is good fun…apart from when you find out that most of the records you own are worth about a quid, and the only ones that are worth something, are the ones you want to keep
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Same here really, I’ve bought a bit off there but never sold, just used it as a price guide when selling. And yes I go for the median price, not the highest!
It’s rad when you pull out a record you haven’t played for years, scan it into discogs and you find out it’s worth a bit. But mostly, everything’s worth a quid.
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An example of why I like vinyl…
Back in 2004 I went to a record shop in Huntington Beach: Vinyl Solution, chatted to the guy working there for a bit about punk and hardcore while flicking through the records, he noticed me looking at an F-Minus record and showed me this record that I had previously just skipped right over… It was a Waterboys album cover, but with “F Minus” stencil sprayed over it… he told me the story of how they got the vinyl printed but they didn’t have the cash for sleeves so they just did these DIY sleeves with old records.
I already had the album on CD, but I bought it anyway, it’s a cool memory of my trip, and a 1/1 limited edition…
A couple of years later one of the members of F-Minus was touring with a different band and played at a club I was DJing at, I talked to her about this record I had, we had a few drinks and chatted shit about music for a bit…
Not the most interesting story ever, but good memories for me, and a connection between someone I may not have otherwise spoken to, and way better than “I downloaded an F-Minus album once”.
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Oh, is it random not-that-interesting vinyl-related anecdotes time? Okay then.
In the 90s I shopped in Vinyl Exchange, Manchester, every week. I once saw a record in the ‘new releases’ section, it was a sleeveless black disc in a see-through ziplock bag, that looked like it had been run over by a car a few times. Inside the bag was a small typed note, explaining that it was part of a ‘project’ - a certain collective of Manchester musicians were buying records, defacing them, then putting them back in shops for us to find. If you shoplifted the record and contacted the address on the note, you’d get a new record, for free. You had to shoplift it because it wasn’t actually that shop’s stock, so you couldn’t buy it, the only way to get it out of the shop was to nick it. So I very nervously put it in my bag and walked out (I’m not a habitual thief) and took it home and followed the instructions, soon afterwards I ended up receiving a Christmas-themed 7" of glitchy electronic music from an offshoot of Skam Records (paging @anon90826813).
You don’t get that with an mp3.
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