Why do classical fans seem to hate vinyl so much?

I've got a lot of classical music on vinyl, but prefer to listen via CD, mostly for the reasons outlined above: dynamic range, pitch control, surface noise, program. These things are more important (to me) when listening to classical than when listening to other genres. I've got lots of vinyl recordings of keyboard works of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert etc but always play the CD version where possible, because its playback has fewer compromises. Noisy, wobbly piano is something up with which I do not wish to put.

--Geoff

 

I have a large classical LP collection. Why vinyl LP? Pick any number of reasons-sound quality, cost, availability, artwork, librettos and booklet are legible, collectibility and cool-factor. Yes vinyl is noisier. But the sound quality can be amazing. I still love CDs but with some recordings I find I prefer the sound of the LP. Not always. I have many LPs that contain music performances not available on CD. Of course cost has been changing with the birth of large low cost CD classical boxes some containing hard to find heritage performances. Hard to beat. So-it is all good. Happy listening. Regardless of media today is the golden age for classical music fans who collect and listen. One can enjoy a wide collection of music at very reasonable cost in any medium. Of course live performance is still the best! Support the working musicians and go see them when they come to your local hall.

 

Yep; i was going too post people on this very forum are against 45 RPM albums cuz of side flipping, so...

Where did you get your info from that "classical fans seem to hate vinyl so much"?!?!

 

Have to agree, I rarely purchase classical music on vinyl.

 

I'm not doubting you, but even on audiophile forums where vinyl rules more classical listeners seem to prefer CD, and for sure SACD and hi-res digital when it is available.

 

My deep dive into hi-fi and vinyl 15 years ago coincided with a vow to finally carve out room for a proper self-education in classical listening, and the unbelievable riches of great recordings on vinyl, often lovingly preserved in NM condition, that you could find in the used record bins for ridiculously low prices, kept me busy for years. Walking out with a tall stack of masterworks you paid $14 for was like robbing Tiffany. The cover art and liner notes were a huge bonus too.

Sitting on your butt for 74 minutes without having to flip a vinyl side is a highly dubious advantage for a passionate classical fan.

 

My impression is that quality classical pressings are harder to come by. Most of the mass-produced albums' pressings are far from ideal... for lots of reasons... but anyway.
A CD from a reputable label would get you all the musical enjoyment while tracking a comparable vinyl pressing is a chore at the least.
That said, I do own some wonderful sounding RCA & Decca records but I won't bother chasing them. Even the RCA "Living Stereo" SACDs sound just great.

 

Another thing to consider is if you're interested in certain types of the music known as "classical", not all of it was necessarily well-served during the analog/vinyl era. There are tons of moderns and Romantics and the actual classical periods recorded in the heyday of tubes microphones and analog tape recording, but not so much the period/HIP stuff, which is my own interest. That revival in interest in the baroque and Renaissance periods has really largely has existed in the digital era (with a few outliers, such as David Munrow or Harnoncourt). There aren't Living Stereo quality analog recordings of much of that stuff.

Speaker's Corner has reissued a fair number of classical recordings on vinyl, and the Hi-Q label has remastered some of the classical material recorded at EMI. The recording of George Szell conducting Handel's Water Music on Speaker's Corner is quite good.

 

With a click or two on Amazon you can get pretty much every great classical recording ever made on CD for a buck a disc. Or you can trudge around eBay/garage sales/record swap meets for endless hours, rubbing shoulders with grubby weirdos in stained t-shirts while looking for that elusive blue back. Your choice!

 

I buy sometimes old Bartok LP's as I see them in really good shape....or Stravinsky, but a shop like Concerto in Amsterdam flat-out won't let people trade in second hand classical vinyl.
So, the audience these days is really really limited.
I agree about the wobbly piano etcetera...in the old days classical vinyl lovers maybe used 'Lenco-Clean' and an extra rotating brush, but still...

 

Probably a lot less brickwalling issues with classical CDs

 

I personally prefer to order a CD with a click or two & enjoy the music.

 

That's it, most lovers of classical music enjoy the music and interpretation.

 

The posters above have mentioned the two key issues of playing times and self noise of the LP. Of course most classical music listeners did not have good cleaning paraphernalia back in the day other than a dust brush. Also their turntables generally had high rumble or were poorly situated. (I'm speaking of the many I directly saw.) With vacuum cleaning my classical LPs have no problem playing soft passages without intrusive noises.

Sadly the more recent the remaster the more likely the sound has suffered from NoNoise and EQing choices. Of course that has nothing to do with the capability of the format.

 

Your head is stuck in 1987, or maybe 1957. What in the world is "golden age analog classical"? Many would argue, the 1930s or 40s, when Toscanini, Horowitz and other legends dominated the record biz.

But yours is a narrow audiophile focus-- you're not concerned with the music per se, just with, presumably, the Fritz Reiner, Van Cliburn, and Charles Munch catalogs from RCA, Mercury et al. Even in regard to those recordings, extraordinary SACDs are out there from Sony and APO. And if you think you can't get decent reissues of, say, Karajan's or Solti's greatest hits, you're completely mistaken. Check out the exceptional series of DSD-remastered, SHM-SACDs of Karajan's analogue recordings of Richard Strauss, the sound is terrific.

"Tinny" and "bright-sounding" hardly describes redbook classical these days. Recording standards have never been better, and that's not even counting SACDs. Have you listened to what Channel Classics, PentaTone, Challenge, Tudor, Sony, Virgin, MDG, and numerous other labels have released in the past couple of decades?

Now for the bad news: Karajan died, it was in all the papers.

 

I heard some great sounding CDs from lesser known modern labels.
Pavel Hass Quartet on "Supraphon", Collegium 1704 on "Accent", Newer titles on "Chandos" & even some of the modern ones on "Naxos".(!)

& There's always the ECM New Series.

 

I don't think I've seen an LP where the side breaks are in the middle of a movement. It seems a crazy proposition. Surely, the mastering engineer will cut the sides so that whole movements are on one side only.

 

String quartets are definitively a must on vinyl. Listen to Haydn's Op. 76 by Tátrai Quartet (Hungaroton)...a clear winner over CD!

 

We love vinyl but we have a much better selection available on SACD than you rock dudes do.

 

no great mystery why the CD format works better for classical music........surface noise and length of certain pieces of music.

 

Make that one. I gave up on vinyl and sold my Well-Tempered Record Player many years ago, primarily because I found surface noise so distracting. I frequently get shivers from well-mastered classical CDs, SACDs and downloads.

 

Once you got that Shivers factor in place, You know you got it right. Regardless of medium.

 

What a lame statement. Seriously? Besides dragging out the same out dead horse, you're discouraging anybody from getting into classical? You want it to go to the grave with you? If anything, an uptick in interest would possibly get more classical released on vinyl. Unlike say indie rock where new releases on vinyl are expected, you can't say the same for classical, especially a lot of the contemporary groups like Brooklyn Rider or yMusic or the like. Don't fear the hipster.

 

Single disc LP issues of Beethoven's 9th all have a break in the middle of the adagio.

 

Looks like there's a lot of classical music lovers you don't know. Note that I also collect Blue-back Londons, STS reissues, Shaded Dog Living Stereo LPs, usw. Nicely mastered anything works for me, off-center records simply don't happen with digital formats, neither does surface noise.