Is it too late to get into vinyl now?

I got back into it in January.

Dived right in, enjoying the hell out of it.

Don't take it too serious and enjoy the ride.

 

To each his own.

The last paragraph of your post is kind of sad, though, to be honest. I shuffle songs when I'm in the car, but that hasn't stopped me from listening to albums when I'm at home. That's part of what I like about vinyl – the whole rigamarole of putting a record on, flipping to the other side, etc. kind of encourages more focused attention.

 

What about vinyl special offers? Back in the old days records prices were supposed to be dropped after a couple of years. What about those fantastic 'Nice Price' stickers? Is a new reissue of Atom Heart Mother destined to cost 25 euros forever?!?

 

I still have a deep attachment to physicality in music, although I like to keep a foot in both the analog/real world of vinyl and discs as well as the virtual world of online and computer file streaming.

The advantages of streaming — for trying new stuff, for providing casual listening the way radio used to do, for instant gratification of the impulse to hear something — are wonderful, but I don’t want to pay the cost of dematerializing all music into a ghostly digital haze of nothing. It isn’t just the physical heft of LP art and the ritual of getting out a record or disc to play, and it’s not some ideological obsession with superior sound über alles — the thing I love about vinyl, SACD, hi-res, and beautifully mastered CDs has to do with presence and focus. When I’m seriously listening I want to feel that the music is present in the room, palpable. 3D, and demanding my attention. There’s something thin and recessive about streaming, and as great as it can be, there’s something about it that inspires a restless impatience and well-known twitchy habit of listening to only part of a track or a few cuts from an album and then restlessly hitting next, next next — the shuffle addict thing you’re describing. It’s not as easy or tempting to abruptly lift the stylus off the record or eject the disc as it is to fiddle with the controls on your phone or music server.

Physical, audiophile music is the antidote to that for me.

 

I purchased the majority of my original vinyl collection in the early to mid seventies.
I paid $4.98 for single LPs and $6.98 for double LPs at the local Licorice Pizza record store.
Today I pay an average of $25 per album.

But consider the fact that back then gas was about thirty cents per gallon, a loaf of bread or a carton of milk cost about
thirty cents and I could go to any major arena sized concert for five or six bucks.

So I guess it all averages out in the end.

 

TeleStrat, I appreciate the inflation-adjustment reality check. I do understand that as a fact, but for whatever reason emotionally I cannot get past thinking that the "right" price for a nice piece of used vinyl is "not more than $5" and the "right" price for new vinyl is max $9, and for CDs, let's say $9 used, $13 new. I know times have changed, but my mentality just hasn't adjusted to inflation.

I too sometimes regret the attention-span madness and lack of focus on albums as unified works the streaming age has injected me with; I'm kind of feeling like it's a full circle return to the days when I was 12 or 13 and didn't have money to get more than at most a handful of new lps a month and it was all about the radio; but it's just WAY better radio feeding me a far wider range of options....

 

I agree that used vinyl should not cost as much as it does. I bought a lot of albums in the seventies but I still have some gaps in my collection that I would like to fill but I refuse to pay what it would cost to fill those gaps. The majority of my original collection is in near mint condition and if I wanted to add to it I would have to pay top dollar for an album in equal condition.
This is the main reason why I only buy new vinyl by recent bands and I leave my original collection as is.

 

A perfect example would be the German band Gift.
I bought Blue Apple when it first came out but I never got around to buying their self titled debut.
Right now Discogs has four copies of the original release (1972) and all but one are well over $300.
The one that is only $107 is the vinyl only with no cover.

 

I think most peeps would enjoy owning a modest table (or a cheap one) and a few LP's. That's all I had when I was a kid in the 70's and I wore those suckers out!

 

Why is his comment sad, because you're more of a whole album listener than a shuffler? Horses for courses I reckon.

For me personally, there are only a few albums, mainly concept type albums, that I can endure listening to the whole thing. And getting up to lift the stylus to skip the inevitable crappy track or to flip the record over is a pita and breaks the listening mood. I like creating my own track lists before a focused listening session, and with over 2000 LPs and CDs now digitised and streamed in high fidelity, I listen to a lot more music than I did in the past. I also like using the random function and hearing songs that I haven't played for decades - and then perhaps revisiting the album.

What's sad about that?

 

What sort of streaming do you mean? Tidal etc?

I rarely use those services but I do stream music through my listening room stereo from a NAS to high quality streaming equipment. My CD rips sound exactly the same as playing the CD from the player and my LP needle drops sound exactly the same as playing the record from my donor T/T. The only thin sound I get is from the few poorly recorded/mastered LPs and CDs I have in my collection.

To quote Chairman Deng, it doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.

 

There are so many homeless bits of vinyl sitting in the bins that need a new home. Many are available for a buck or two that don't have the "audiophile pedigree" but still have the music that some of us that really just enjoy music and don't get all anal about a few random ticks and pops can appreciate.

Please adopt a homeless record today.

 

I don't see how any serious music lover doesn't have a setup capable of playing both vinyl and digital formats. There's always going to be music out there available on only one of the two formats.

 

Sorry... but it's difficult to take someone seriously if they don't know the difference between by and buy!

 

It's like saying you can't read a while book.

 

Yeah I agree, of course in my case it was a typo, but for some retentive types (you?) that also disqualifies my opinion.

 

oh yeah..most definitely........it's too late....do yourself a favour....don't open that box.....

 

The price of an album is usually based on quantity as well as condition. When I used the German band Gift as an example it was a band with a very limited number of albums produced so there aren't that many copies out there.
If you consider, for example, the middle years of Fleetwood Mac there would be many more copies of albums like Future Games, Bare Trees or Mystery To Me. Some of these albums in VG+ condition go for as little as $8 or $10.
I guess whether someone decides to start collecting or not would depend on what they're looking for, what condition they'll settle for and how much they're willing to pay.

 

Love spinning this vinyl.

 

Never too late.

 

My hierarchy of musical presence isn't based on logic.



I listen to a lot of hi-res and 16/44 music piped from computer to DAC to hi-fi and it sounds great. (Also lossy streaming via Apple Music.) But I still feel my collection is grounded by the non-virtual analog actuality of vinyl and physical discs, with their art and liner notes and inner sleeves and and labels and hype stickers and the patina of wear and life lived beyond zeroes and ones.

 

Too late? No! I'm a recent convert myself, and every time i compare the best that CD has to offer to the best Vinyl has to offer for any particular Album, i find the former lacking.

The thing is, when i was a teen getting into the new CD format, i was enjoying the sound quality upgrade from cassette tapes. At no time did i get the opportunity to compare CD to Vinyl. It's taken this long to realise what i was missing out on.

 

Don't do it, its a lot of time and money and its not a perfect format by any means. can it sound good? yes, if you get all the right stuff and that will cost you a ton.. I wasted a lot of money on carts, cleaning stuff. and records that no matter what shape they were in, they had imperfections. stick to cds. a lot easier ..

 

Vinyl is over. Cassettes are in now. Then we move on to 8 Track and then Reel to Reel.

 

Perfect time to get into / back into vinyl. I am noticing a lot more high quality/ first pressings hitting the stores at reasonable prices.... probably because of a combination of streaming services and older record collectors passing away. There is also a nice selection of good performing reasonable priced turntables available ... both new and vintage. For many older titles the sound quality of the original pressings mastered by one on of the legendary engineers will never be equaled. Most can be had for a fraction of the cost of a new reissue. Enjoy.