when your Hobby starts to make you angry.

I do buy old and some new vinyl.
As long as they don't sound like a war field I'm happy.

Sometimes not always, when I burn a vinyl to cd I'll clean it up with software.

Time taking but worth it.

 

I wonder if some of this has to do with the backlog at the pressing plants. It could be that quality control has suffered as they churn out product quickly in order to get to the next job. I'm just guessing here.

 

I went thru a stretch when nearly 90% of what I bought was defective in some way, so I just stopped buying new vinyl except in rare instances. I stick with used lp's and have very rarely gotten burned.

 

I tend to buy second hand and take a good look. To be honest if it looks ok but sounds poor a good run under the tap often does wonders. If it's new vinyl I tend to read some reviews before buying. I have become wary of some labels. I actually used to get more annoyed when my CDs used to skip.

To be honest if it gets you down stop buying, it's all about the fun.

 

Patience pays. The best recommendation I can give is don't buy anything new on vinyl until you see feedback on it. This forum is very helpful in that regard. Sure, it's hard to wait when there is a release I really want, but I'd rather let someone else take the risk before I do. I just can't deal with the frustration anymore. There was time a couple of years ago when it seemed like every 2nd or 3rd LP I bought had some problem. At least now when I buy something new on vinyl I have an idea what to expect, and have had almost no problems with the new vinyl titles I buy.

 

when your Hobby starts to make you angry?

It's time to find another hobby.

 

I sympathize,bro.Vinyl records are not for perfectionists.I usually had to take them back.They start to degenerate as soon as you take them out of the sleeves.
The LPs from my beautiful and expensive Beatles Mono Box attract all the dust in the neighborhood and now are clicking and jumping all over the place.You just have to lower your tolerance levels.
But music isn't a hobby.It's an art form.
Hobbies are things like trainspotting,audiophilia and possibly contributing to this forum.

 

A few main gripes on the subject...

1) The LP Product Itself :
Poorly pressed, mastered, pops, clicks, scratched re-seals, poorly packed shipments, continual Company mistakes on new releases, quality control in general, etc..

2) Non-Stop Milking :
The often ridiculous non-stop issues, reissues, every decade annv. re-releases, etc..

3) Cost to Quality :
The ever aggravating price to quality issue in general...
the continual releasing of product remixed with 3 - 4 versions of the song, often with little to no input from the artist.
This did not stop with the 12" singles years back... it is still happening! We think we 'need' them to complete some vinyl self-inflicted disease.

4) Simply owning way too much product than I ever have time to fulling indulging in..

I could probably go on, but I'm aggravated and angry enough thinking about this thread!

 

The "exclusive" versions of albums available at various retailers, each with one or two songs you can't get elsewhere (the Monkee's "Good Times!" is a recent example).

The result being that if you actually want all of the songs released, you need to purchase multiple versions of the same album.

 

If you think you're wasting money on vinyl, my recommendation is stop wasting money on vinyl.

 

Are there decent used record stores in Rome, or elsewhere in Italy? I've had great luck vinyl shopping in the UK and in Amsterdam on recent trips, so for certain European cities at least there are benefits to shopping locally.

 

I've had good luck with vinyl reissues pressing quality wise, just a couple of bad ones over the past few years. That said, nearly every one has been surpassed sonically when an original in good condition has become available.

 

Agree, making/playing music is indeed an art form. But, listening to it???

 

LPs were always dicey and variable with regard to quality and reliability straight out of the sleeve. There are, in my opinion, certain types of music that sound better on vinyl than on CD (some jazz and classical music). That being said, the differences are slight. There was a reason people rushed to CDs when they were introduced.

 

CDs are more a convenience to me than anything else. I started buying CDs with the introduction of iTunes. Having that huge list of songs at my fingertips which I could then put into playlists (and burn if I wanted) was a game-changer for me. I'm not super fussy about sound quality. I just really love owning LPs. If I hadn't grown up with them I probably wouldn't care.

 

I think a great majority of rock recordings from the analog era will sound better on original vinyl than CD, with the right pressing and in good condition and with decent equipment to play them on. The differences can sometimes be profound. This of course requires persistence, cost, access, and so on, all of which make digital alternatives more practical. I spent over 20 years listening only to CDs and I love the format, especially for classical. I bought my first turntable in ages a few years ago and rediscovering hundreds of albums on vinyl had been enormously gratifying. The hunt is part of the fun, but I'm admittedly very lucky to live in a city with lots of good used record stores.

 

I've learned to spend my money only on the things, including vinyl records, that are worth it to me.

 

Local shops here are pricey (€30-40 for NM records). I've had luck purchasing from stands and thrift shops in the past: under the dust layer I managed to find decent pressings for a good price, but recently I mainly get junk. What's more, there are mainly Italian pressings, whilst British, US or German pressings are much harder to find.
A few years ago I went to Vienna and I recall it was much easier to find nice pressings at a good price.

 

I like how you can play a cd over and over agains and it still sounds the same.

 

I have 2000 cds and 2000 lps. I listen to the lps 90% of the time. I love the whole process. If the cds were worth anything I would sell them.

 

I have had a few disappointments with vinyl since I got interested in it again (mainly skipping and one off-centre but Amazon replace or refund records with no quibbles; the other thing was a couple of records that each had a vinyl fragment wedged in a groove). The main attraction for me is kind of nostalgic and I agree with Buggyhair – if I hadn't grown up with vinyl I doubt I'd be interested now. But I am and I almost always prefer vinyl to digital.

Don't get angry about it. Like someone else said, it's an imperfect medium. If a record skips or the surface is so damaged that the crackle affects the listening experience then I can't be having with it but I've started cleaning them and that's brought back to life many records that I'd stopped listening to because, previously, they crackled too much. I don't know about surface noise: I occasionally notice it between tracks but not often and it doesn't put me off. I wouldn't get angry, though. If a record is new and I'm not happy with it I send it back; if it's second-hand, well, that's the chance you take.

You take your chances with second-hand records but why wouldn't you be able to return new records if they're faulty?

 

I just find it amazing that some of you buy and buy until you accumulate burdensome amounts of records. Why?

I started my new collection when I graduated high school and in forty years I've only amassed around 600 albums. The thing is, they are albums I really wanted so I still treasure all of them. Perhaps if you feel like buying something in the future you might just take the time to ask yourself why you want to buy it and what is it really worth to you to do so? Are you buying because you really want the music or to just be buying something?

As far as buying off center albums and poor quality pressings, that I can understand. Noone wants to buy something that they really do want only to wind up with something that is subpar or just plain junk. In that regard I have been very lucky. I have three faulty albums total. Don't ask me why. It just happened that way.

 

Used record shops can aggrivate with their greed. Many of the stores in my area nickel and dime people selling lps to them, then they price them way over price guide values. Say they get a record that values at $15.00 in mint condition they will price it at $40.00, but they gave whoever sold it to them .05-.10 cents for it. That is a load of B.S.!

 

Same deal with me. I've got around 600 CDs, maybe 200 SACD/DVD audio/high Res files, and 1000 or so albums, and do about 90-95% vinyl listening. I just like it better in all ways.

I also get most of my new vinyl from Amazon. Very painless to return if they're damaged or warped.

Used vinyl has always been a crapshoot though, you're gonna get burned occasionally, but the good finds far outway the burns...