Vinyl record sales 2017

Well, more vinyl produced using digital sourcing, or at least a digital step vs. AAA vinyl.

 

Or both. As in how great my new Beatles mono LPs sound compared to the CDs

 

Thats true and I can't say Ive heard enough to say which one I prefer. I do think if the music was recorded on an analog tape machine than analog should be whats used for the vinyl. I have a few LPs of newer recordings that were recorded digitally, but I also don't have the CD to compare and Im not going to compare an LP with something streaming.

 

Technically it is flawed if the objective is to store sound accurately.

 

Which is where the debate comes in. Having compared analog-sourced vinyl with digitally-sourced vinyl, I can tell you there are both good and bad examples. There are a lot of of good to great reissues that are mastered from hires digital transfers of the original master tapes.

 

The objective is to create something that sounds good. I have many digitally-sourced LP's that sound good. As a person who enjoys music that is where my interest ends.

 

Well, that was the question I asked - Can anyone making these blanket statements give an actual, real-life example?

If not (and so far, it's definitely not), I can only conclude that you're just speculating.

 

I've probably bought close to 200 lp's this year...mostly used though.

 

And out of those "bad examples", I could just as easily speculate that the reason they sound bad has nothing to do with whether they were analog or digital.

 

Fair comment, although there are some vinyl reissues sourced from CDs that wouldn't have been helped by better mastering. Generally speaking, though, I agree – poorly recorded or poorly mastered records are going to sound bad either way.

 

Technically, if you’re not hearing the master tape you’re just jerking around, maaaaaaaaaan.

 

Not doubting it, but I can't think of a single example from my own experience (and I have my share of releases on Sundazed, Plain, 4MWB, Waxtime, Scorpio etc.).

 

4MWB reissues of Pulp's This Is Hardcore is the one that comes to mind for me. Not sure what they did to that, but it's noticeably worse than the CD. I hung onto it until I got Universal's vinyl reissue last year, and the difference was night and day. Maybe it's just incompetence on their part, but I've wasted enough time on Plain / 4MWB to know their records just sound bad.

 

Oh, if its one real life example you want regarding an analog sourced LP compared to a digital sourced LP then I can give you one. Joe Walsh - But Seriously, Folks…. I have an original recording that suffered heat damage and replaced it recently with a newer 180 G vinyl. The new vinyl is practically unlistenable. Think of the worst sounding early CD release of a 70s LP and thats what it sounds like. Screechy high end, sterile, painful to listen to. Nice clean vinyl though. On the reverse side, I also have the new Tusk Lp which was also sourced digitally and it sounds amazing. Better than my original vinyl. I thought you were comparing CDs to vinyl.

 

Not totally true. A record that has been really well cut/mastered can sound much better than listening to the master tape.

 

I heard Fremer say in one of his videos that he calculated all the LPs produced by Americanerican record manufactor and those that ship to America and it was something like 20,000,000-40,000,000 LPs produced. Also Neilson can not keep track of all the used LPs sold, especially those sold at Goodwill or Flea Markets so I am sure it is much higher.

 

My tongue was planted firmly in cheek

 

Your right too many zeros. Should be 0.00026%

 

Only a tiny fraction.

Analogue purism doesn't appear to be the main driver behind the vinyl boom. It appears to be a combination of nostalgia, attractive packaging, the bigger album art, exclusive recordings, fashion, marketing etc.

BTW in the 1970s audiophiles were keen on digitally mastered LPs. And that was actually more rational than today's analogue frenzy.

 

It will be higher quality than a record made from an analogue master, because it avoids the disadvantages of the analogue master tape (hiss, wow & flutter, frequency response), even though admittedly they're not that bad to begin with. That was the point of digitally mastered LPs before CDs came along. Of course when you can have the CD instead there's no point in buying the LP in the first place, not for sonical reasons anyway.

 

A CD made from an analogue master will be a near-identical copy of the master tape, which can be extremely good. An LP can't achieve the same.

 

Actually they used to have car record players in the 1950s.

 

Well aware, but that's exactly come practice today, is it?

 

What he/she said xx

 

I think the most new digitally-sourced LP sounds better than the same digitally sourced cd.The master they use for the cd is more often than not brickwalled to death!! Something you can not do to a Lp master.More dynamic range on the LP now a Days.
I also think vinyl playback sounds more musical and live but that is impossible to find evidence for (my very subjective opinion).And i do know that the cd is in theory way better than what you can do with vinyl.But that does not matter when still no one
is using the full potential of the cd media! So i will keep spinning the wax (pressing imperfections and all).