Seriously considering walking away from vinyl

You doubt that used CDs will sell or that those who have CDs aren't willing to part with them even to support their child's education?

The original post is related to needle dropping anyhow.

 

This sounds familiar!!!

 

The only people that can sell enough records to pay for college own record stores. This is a small solution for a big problem. Even if you have 5,000 LP's that are desirable to others, selling them down for full retail will take many, many months if not years and will generate $500 a month if you're lucky. This would also require the amount of time that comes close to a real job. Sell them as a lot and you are looking at 25% of retail if you are lucky and that is unlikely to cover a quarter or semester of tuition. If it cost you $100,000 to collect 5,000 LP's, you might get $25,000 from someone buying them for their store. Not a small amount of money but not enough for a degree.

It is noble to sacrifice to help with such an important investment but not really practical.

If you are tired of fooling with records, by all means, sell them. I frequently buy records and fully support others in their decision to unload collections. I would really consider what you are getting in return for giving up years and years of curating a collection. Just because you spent enough money to pay for college doesn't mean that is what you will be getting in return.

 

No idea what the cost is in the U.S. but my daughter will owe around £50,000 after her 3 year degree and obviously more if she does the post grad choice. Oh for years of free education, my collection obviously wouldn't have funded that! Better say no more, or I'll be breaking house rules.

 

I was thinking the same thing! Me and a friend took his dad's Healy for a ride one day (top down), during some slow cruising it overheated, we parked to let it cool down then it wouldn't start AND it started raining, the top had not been up in years, while in a panic to put the top up my friend ran across the street to the parts store for ether spray. Well,we got the top up,sprayed the old Webbers, and she started. Man that was a cool car and one of the coolest days ever. Sometimes it's worth it

 

And never look back.

 

Yeah, it is curious that vinyl is the hassle, yet all of the trouble relates to digitizing it.

 

On second read, this particular part stands out as a real head-scratcher:

Are we discussing record collecting or compulsive shopping? Especially considering the sub-plot in this scenario of being short on money for tuition. Just how many records are we talking about here?

 

Guess the OP will be buying the Purple Rain Deluxe Edition on CD, come early 2017.

 

I'm thinking that's a semester at best.

 

What you talking about, you sound like my daughter, we live in the UK, you'll be saying trash can next. Old fart party member talking

 

The OP is in the US.

 

I own around 1300 records, and I'd never consider anything more than keeping the hobby humble, just purchasing them, cleaning them, and playing them. I recently purchased around 55 records to better reflect my changed listening tastes, but I think I'm pretty much done with that. Now I can start pulling and hopefully selling the records on CL that I won't be listening to. That's enough work for me, no more complications, please. Life's too short, for me literally. I have bone cancer, and probably have a few years to live. I tends to focus the mind.

 

Simple, yon need to upgrade. Tell your daughter shes not going to college

 

My best wishes to you, for whatever that's worth in as much as we don't know each other, and I hope there's comfort in the music you enjoy.

 

I did this with my CD collection. Who needs cd's when you have mp3 files ripped of the same discs.

 

Really, everyone should look at things that way. Is what you are doing, worth exchanging that much time out of your life to do it?

Since we all only get one chance at life. Does it make sense to do something, anything, that is not really important, when you can be doing something else.

I have nothing against "needle drops" as they are referred to today. Before I used to put on a record, put a cassette in the recorder, and make a tape for the car. didn't think anything of it. It didn't take any more time to do it, than to write this paragraph. I just did it while listening to the record anyway.

After trying a few needle drops back when I owned no digital music and the music I had, was all new all newly acquired records. I quickly came to the conclusion, that this took a lot of time.

As I began acquiring CD's, I found it didn't take that much time to rip a digital copy from them, so that is what I do.

Today, I have enough of both to satisfy my listening needs. If I want to listen to a record, I put one on the vintage Dual 1229 TT. If I want to listen to digital media, I do that.

Since I work where I live (managing a motel), I prefer to stream most music that I listen to (from commercial services).

It did take some time, getting my equipment figured out. Always a step here ans a step there... But, all along they way, I feel that I have been able to enjoy the music, as I am doing right now.

Though, not retired, I try to limit my remaining life to doing things that are worth, what I am exchanging (part of my life), to achieve them. I listen to music, because I choose to exchange part of my life to do so. This is for the rewards that it gives me personally.

It is better, that you know where your priorities lie.

 

There are many who take pleasure in the tedium oft times necessary to do something right (or what is perceived to be right). The size of one's music collection, irrespective of medium, isn't necessarily indicative of the amount of time wasted. I would say that it is critical to keep an open mind and to exercise curiosity. It is certainly possible to be "doing it wrong".

 

Back to the OP's problem - needledrops.
I suspect the problem is with the mixer or a cable.
What mixer are you using?
Have you tried taking it out of the chain yet?
Does playing records sound fine?

I just listened to a needledrop of Talking Heads Fear Of Music and was shocked at how much better it sounded than the digital versions - including the remaster.
The vinyl has depth and detail strangely missing from the digital.
This isn't always the case, of course, but be keep it in mind.

 

Wow, cool, so you have an apartment inside a motel?

 

Amen. Pretty much my story to a 'T' when I got back into records about 6-7 years ago after a close to 20 year hiatus. At first I was chasing some sort of perfection, and my wife walked in, saw my frustration, and said "if it's perfect and sterile you want, why not just listen to CD's?" Woke my a$$ right up, and I took the same approach you've taken, with the only goal being to recreate what made listening to records such a joy as a kid. When it stopped being about the system and went back to being about the music, the fun of the hobby (for me, anyway) returned..

 

So I just hopped online and came to the forum. Wow - lots of responses here. A few clarifications for those many questions:

1. I do needledrops because my turntable is collected to me computer - not my stereo. There was a time I had a dedicated music room, but then we had a third daughter. I gave that room to her so each of my kids could have their own bedroom. My life is crazy hectic and the only opportunity I have to listen to the vinyl I have is on portable devices. I have Bowers and Wilkins speakers on my desk at work that sound amazing with the music coming from my iPad. 256gb of 24/48 lossless needle drops! I also connect it in my car (I know not the ultimate place to listen, but I drive a lot and have a good system). Then I can also plug it into my home stereo and listen there. That is very seldom done though - usually while we are working around the house, which does not lend itself to critical listening.

2. I realize there is no way to pay for college with my vinyl. I have built this collection for decades, and when the hoped-for scholarship didn't come through, I looked at my wife, pointed to the vinyl shelves, and said "There's a lot of money there". At $50k per year, there is no way to pay for it from vinyl. Nor can we pay for it from our savings (we already paid for our first child's education). So far I have raised several thousand dollars, and I have a lot more to sell. At this point, every bit helps.

3. I am going to take the Behringer 802 mixer out of the chain to see if that helps. Perhaps minimizing the signal chain will make a difference... I will report the results.

4. I wrote this last night because I was incredibly frustrated with another problem to appear out of nowhere. So frustrated I came to this site to vent because I knew there were people here who would understand. It felt better when I let it all out - even though it was with a keyboard. Thanks for being my therapists!

5. The size of my collection is the result of 35 years of collecting. You know us collectors - we know when something is limited and we know we better buy it while we can. However, for whatever reason I like to keep my records mint, so the one play to needledrop covers that. Then they go unplayed for years (decades?)...

 

I have different issues with vinyl....storage space.

One of these days I'll need to sell most of these, just to get my physical footprint reduced. Not today, hopefully not in the short-term either. But in a decade or so I could see that happening. And like the OP, I'll have my rips which sound pretty good to these old ears of mine.

 

(this is more off-topic than hardware, but it jumps out at me)

Shouldn't the burden also be on your child, at least somewhat? It's one thing if you have the resources to pay where you aren't dipping into emergency funds. But if you are selling your vinyl collection I'm assuming you're scraping the bottom of the barrel somewhat.

I have a child in college btw, with another one coming up next September. I've already told them both that we'll help pay as best we can....but if they decide that the 60k a year school is what's best for them, they'll just have to get student loans. Perhaps that's a bit selfish on my part, but I think I'm also teaching them an important lesson on the how to manage expenses...one day I won't be around to help them so they need to start learning these skills. And they are technically adults now.