CDs over LP/records assessment - a must watch for experts and beginners

Either my memory is faulty, or our experiences are from different regions/shops

 

Oh, why is that? New vinyl aside, don't people want to trade second hand records?

 

perhaps from late 70's / early 80's - when Saturn first opened in Frankfurt, most records were sealed

 

OK I was in West Berlin and I frequented a number of different shops. All the ones I remember sold unsealed. A sealed record would have been an oddity to me, maybe I saw them once or twice in a department store.

 

I'm disappointed that no one asked if he's related to Steve Howe.

 

I was a teen and metal head in the 80s and still have nightmares from witnessing young white guys dressed in their Miami Vice pastels, gyrating their hips to Sussudio (the only redeeming thing about this song title is that it ends in Dio However, I do have a sweet spot for his vocal on monster and probably have air-drummed to that kick in towards the end of (In The Air Tonight)...and NO, Phil didn't let anyone drown! Also loved American Psycho's Patrick Bateman's appreciation for Genesis. Lastly, in case you haven't read it: Phil Collins shares thoughts on his music’s role in ‘American Psycho’.

 

Is this the back room of the record store?

 

Forum members have had mixed reviews on the wood glue method:

 

Oh, I can explain it alright. That "sterile" sound, is kind of a more subtle version of the "NoNoise" concept: that "gating" effect that doesn't let the "air" through when you're listening critically. Instruments don't tend to exist naturally in such a space to an ear who has never heard a sound come from complete silence (and never will, really; even the unintelligble hum of living on a planet with 6 billion souls, makes a mark on your hearing, even if it doesn't register with one's awareness). Think of Phil Collins' '80s "gated" drum sound on a global scale; you're not aware of what you're missing when the cymbals don't ring right and the vocal pops don't resonate within the same charactaristics of the sound that it does during the actual plosive.

Diamond-tipped needles scraping through the groove of vinyl does indeed have a "character" to it even the most fastidious audiophile cannot remove from the experience, even if to his ear, there is silence on conscious level. Add to that a hum of a motor, a hum of the electricity through the stylus pickup you don't even know you percieve, and of course you may or may not be aware of those tics and pops from your record surface, but they are a part of the "firmament" within which the sound recorded on the record lives. Add to that the master tape slipping over the tape head on its' way to the cutting lathe, and the infinitesimal "hum" of the electrical equipment competing with the "air" in the studio for being perceived as a "background" for what this pristinely-recorded sound lives in. I contend that it is the unnoticeable blanket of "is-ness" which is too diffuse, too unintelligible, too infinitesimal, to recognize or even notice...but, that is the environment recorded sound poking through that "blanket".

Do you like to cook? Like soup? I make some prety good soups and sauses, and often I chop my ingredients very fine. To the point where you don't know some of them are even in there. Frequently that's not the only thing I'm cooking, and while that may not be a part of the soup, everything going on in my kitchen adds to the soup's taste (or at least the aroma you don't think about when you inhale your first spoonful - it's still there).

You know why the stars are so much easier to see at night, right? Now magnify the effect by looking through the Hubbel telescope orbiting above the atmosphere. There's your difference.

Or the more extreme example: you go to the pound to pick up your runaway dog, and you can hear him barking back there. Know what else you can hear...? Every other damn dog barking right along with him.

In closing, let me just say even I'M zoning-out from my long-windedness.

 

Short. Concise. And soooo spot on.

You ARE aware Lindsey Buckingham has got a restraining order out for you, right...?

 

I visited Hamburg/Ahrensburg in 1982 and all the records were unsealed, with the vinyl behind the counter, as someone else described.

 

raimiz, I'm being totally serious about this. If she saw how happy you were with this gift, and she knows that you don't have anything to play them on, guess what's coming next? Soon, she's going to give you another gift....a turntable from that record store! Many turntables sold in record stores are terrible, and won't sound anywhere near as good as cds. You need to do something to prevent having her show up at your door with a turntable.

 

I can't believe I'm asking this but you know that guy's videos are jokes, right?

 

Well, I have to write some words.
I was a vinyl maniac for almost 30 years. There was nothing better available for me to listen to music...but the older I become, the more sensitive I become about distortion and stuff going on...and now I enjoy playing well-mastered CDs more than LPs.
Yes, you can analyze hi-rez donwloads for a wider freqeuncy spectrum, but in the end there is no way to listen more than what is on a redbook CD. We are humans (and no dogs or other animals who are able to hear frequencies over the human hearing spectrum)...and it is possible to do a mastering for a regular CD that sounds EXACTLY like the vinyl album (at least for us humans - as a professional sound engineer, I did various comparisons during the years)...but I will continue playing my old vinyl records from time to time for nostalgic reasons...

 

Since I kinda derailed this thread, I guess I should make a few comments about the video.

1: That guy is WAY off on the dates of the start of the loudness wars. It goes at least as far back as the times in which there were juke boxes in bars. The louder a song played relative to the other 45s in the machine, the better chance it would get noticed.

2: Most on this forum really hate the loudness wars. But it has a serious place in audio. As a test, the original poster should take a very dynamic classical cd, and try to listen to it while driving a car. Much of the quiet parts will be missing. A compressed (loud) version would work much better. A huge portion of the digital music market is mobile. Compression (loudness) is preferable in the mobile market. I clearly remember FM 'album rock' stations using compressors before sending out signals, knowing that a big chunk of their market was in a car or working in the garage with the radio on.

 

I completely agree, I think that was the point of the video as well. I wasn't really suggesting a format versus or anything similar, on the contrary I think both should be discovered and played to get the best audio experience possible (and as you said, wouldn't hurt to throw in an analog tape to the experience as long as it's accessible and inexpensive)

 

Yes they do, but they trade them amongst other collectors through FB posts and online marketplace ads and even newspaper classified ads, there are no more stores that carry them unless you request an order, in which case depending on the title it's somtimes twice as expensive as its original (listing) price, weather they are used or new records.

 

To clarify: there is no winner between digital and vinyl as long as digital remains lossless.

 

But, what happens in the regions we cannot hear still influence the parts of the spectrum we can hear.

 

I'll sidestep the format debate but have a couple observations: those of us who grew up with LPs probably didn't think much one way or the other at the time (for me, ca. the late '60s onward) about the merits of the LP. It was the mainstream format for home listening (along with various pre-recorded tape formats).
I think the real deep knowledge of mainstream pressings and the sonic differences among them really came about once vinyl was declared dead; I'm leaving aside, for now, the "audiophile" records that were released as a niche product because those didn't account for much given the sales volume of the record business when it was at its peak. (Sure, I bought almost all of those, but we know from comparisons discussed here endlessly whether an old MoFi stands up to a standard issue pressing, another area of dispute).
For someone coming to the LP format now, I'd almost say don't bother unless you are really committed; yeah, it can be fun, but to get it right isn't just a question of money-- it requires attention to set up, phono stage, and the quagmire of used records, learning the differences in pressings and dealing with condition (and pricing). It's a great endeavor if you are up for it, but for the casual listener, I'd say it is a big commitment, especially if you aren't already invested in it.
You should take an opportunity to hear a first class set up sometime, just to get an idea of how much information can be extracted from the old grooves.

 

But they are funny.

 

Yes! We've been gradually reading and learning everything you need to know to start a record collection, we also have been listing the first records we wanna buy. The turntable would be purchased online of course, and brand new.

 

Cleaning with wood glue is no joke. Have you done it?

 

How easy is it to shop locally for better-than-average turntables in your area, raimiz?