

Vinyl record sales hit 18-year high - sjcsjc
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30216638

======
wheels
There are a couple of things that have pushed me towards buying more vinyl:

\- Increased prevalence of bundling high quality MP3 downloads with a vinyl
purchase. Independent artists often do this and (at least in Germany) Amazon's
autorip also is usually good for vinyl purchases.

\- Flea markets. I often find albums I'd like to own for €3.

I kind of have mixed-mode listening -- in the living room, when guests are
over, it's nicer atmosphere-wise to say, "Nobody's plugging in their
smartphone to play some track from YouTube; we're listening to records." But
on my own, even when I buy CDs (which I still do) I usually rip them and then
listen to them exclusively from my MP3 collection. With the bundling of vinyl
and MP3s, it makes it easy to replace the album that goes in my physical
collection (I have several hundred CDs and about 100 records) with an LP, and
still get the benefits of having high quality digital music. For those of us
that still have a bit of a fetish for physical collections of things (I like
paper books for the same reason), that hits a nice sweet spot.

~~~
soylentcola
Yeah, digital bundling makes a huge difference. Digital files are the clear
overall winner in terms of convenience, portability, and flexibility but even
leaving aside any audiophile debates over sample rate and analog vs digital,
there's something a lot of people enjoy about tangible items, big cover art,
and the feeling that paying (or paying more) is justified when you get a
physical _thing_ as opposed to a bunch of bits. Bundling lets you have it both
ways and since the cost of distributing the digital version is very low, it's
not much of an added cost (even if either way you're primarily paying for the
cost and value of the actual data whether you buy vinyl, CD, or mp3).

------
mrottenkolber
I handle vinyl every week (DJ). Yes its a convenient format, the sound might
be warm. I mostly like vinyl because its half of its own playback device. As a
DJ its definitely convenient to be like "oh I spin this thing and it plays
whatever the needle is on". Vinyl makes for a very nice percussion instrument.

But guys, the worst thing to have when you are moving or there is a flood or
you are broke is vinyl. It's heavy, it degrades (in theory it should last, but
in practice...), it sells bad. Once you have a dedicated room for your vinyl
collection I will believe you when you say you like the format.

Imho the future of vinyl should be a "dubplate"-esque existence. Press them to
play them, throw em out when you no longer need it. A consumption good.
Collecting vinyl is insane, but making use of it is nice. Play it till its
dirty and then get rid of it. I need none of the romance that goes with it.

I forgot to say: There are genres which rely on vinyl for archival purposes.
That's right, we don't have backups. We need a grand plan for safe keeping
past music. There is so much history going away for a fiver... save whats _on_
the vinyl!

~~~
niklasni1
I wonder how much old 90's jungle/dnb and other dance music is just gone
because it only ever existed on vinyl. Such a shame to think about.

~~~
Paul_S
I'm sure there's a 24 bit 96Khz rip from a pristine vinyl disc on what.

~~~
jtmcmc
You would be extremely wrong.

------
thallian
Always interesting is the page on vinyl myths at the hydrogenaudio wiki:
[http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_%28Vinyl%29](http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_%28Vinyl%29)

I mainly use vinyl when I want to do the ritual which can be quite calming.
But normally I listen to my digital ripps of the stuff.

------
huuu
Fun fact: the Cassette is also making its comeback.

Some releases on Bandcamp:
[http://bandcamp.com/?g=all&s=top&f=cassette#discover](http://bandcamp.com/?g=all&s=top&f=cassette#discover)

~~~
ssharp
Anyone complaining about vinyl being a hipster thing can now focus their
attention on cassettes, which have no redeeming value outside of camp and
irony.

Bad sound quality, no easy way to move between songs, tape degrades, mechanics
of players can destroy the tape, etc. etc.

I have fond memories of cassettes -- traveling around with a portable
recorder, recording songs off the radio, making mixes -- but they don't have
much practical value these days.

~~~
MrJagil
"...which have no redeeming value outside of camp and irony"

NO! Wrong!

Sound quality: Cassettes can certainly sound amazing! Here's how to do a
proper transfer:
[http://www.technofileonline.com/texts/howtotape.htm](http://www.technofileonline.com/texts/howtotape.htm)
Further, the highs and lows get certain artefacts introduced through the
format (tape compression, saturation) which can actually _enhance_ the mix
(smoothing out the highs, for instance).

But even more importantly, certain music is _made_ for the format. Entire sub
genres revolve around the low-fi aesthetic that tapes make available. Check
out [http://fangsandarrows.com](http://fangsandarrows.com)

And here's another fact: They are CHEAP to make and FUN to own; thusly, if you
run a small label or is independent, it is the perfect merchandise. Some
people love the artwork (which inspires creativity through it's constraints),
some people love the sound (compared to CDs for instance), some people like
the quirkiness of having it on their window sill and other people just want to
support the artist and don't have 20-40$ for an LP.

And practically, when you play a small gig, you can just throw 10-20 tapes in
your bag, and you're ready to go (unlike with vinyl).

Please buy more cassettes!

(I do recognise all the problems associated with the format, but it has many
positives in 2014 as well, as i hopefully made clear. This was all blood
straight from my heart as i run a small cassette label:
[http://scalatapes.bandcamp.com](http://scalatapes.bandcamp.com) (though the
tapes themselves are still being printed as we speak))

~~~
ssharp
Thanks for your perspective on tapes. I do have a '98 truck that has a tape
player and I hate the tape-to-aux adapter, so maybe I should pick up a few
tapes from you for when I dust off the truck for camping :)

~~~
MrJagil
Haha, that would be an honour! Bandcamp in general is a good source of tapes,
lot's of lovely music that needs more exposure!

And again, [http://fangsandarrows.com/](http://fangsandarrows.com/) is great
if you're curious about sub-communities like these.

------
midhir
I spent my early 20's pressing vinyl in the Czech Republic (anyone who ran a
niche label will know the place :) and shipping it around the world.

To this day it's my favourite format. There's a ritual; going to the vinyl
shelf or bag, taking it out the right way, placing the needle - it primes your
mental state in a way that pointing and clicking just can't.

The margins were super tight on vinyl though. It cost more to produce, package
and ship than CDs - and costs were compounded if you were trading with other
labels. I quit when the music industry went into disarray. One day our French
distributor cleared out their warehouse and we got a shipment and a note
saying sorry - they were selling T-Shirts now.

But it seemed to me that vinyl would endure, maybe even grow as people looked
for something more. I'm so glad to see it has!

~~~
nothrowaway
If you don't mind saying, was that GZ by any chance? :)

~~~
midhir
Yup! :)

------
ryandetzel
"There is a strong suspicion in the audiophile community that LP reissues are
commonly mastered from a CD source. What this means is that, instead of
traveling to a record label's tape vault, finding the original master tapes
and a machine that can play them, and going through the painstaking and
expensive process of transferring that tape to a mastering disc in order to
press LPs, the starting point is actually a CD. And the LP pressing is
essentially an inferior copy of that CD. In these cases, the "warmth" you
associate with the vinyl record is completely up to the distortions added by
the playback process. "

[http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/29-vinyl-records-and-
digital-a...](http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/29-vinyl-records-and-digital-
audio/)

------
ryandetzel
Interesting enough I went over my brother in laws this weekend and sure enough
he has a brand new record player with fancy balancing and strobe speed
selection and a whole bunch of new and old albums. During our meal we listened
to a 40 year old Elton John album which didn't sound horrible but wouldn't
hold it's weight next to its digital counterpart.

Some people say vinyl sounds "warmer" or better and if you're a professional
and you have the right equipment that might be true but for the average
consumer that owns the average consumer electronics in their square rooms with
no sound absorption you'll hear no difference over 192 (or even 128) mp3.

Cal me boring but I'll stick with my Sonos with it's never ending Google Music
playlist over clunky vinyl any day. ;-)

~~~
mironathetin
"Some people say vinyl sounds "warmer" or better and if you're a professional
and you have the right equipment that might be true (…)"

Most likely it is the other way round. A nearby record store made a test a
while ago. They invited an audience and compared vinyl with digital on three
different pairs of equipment. In direct blind comparison, the audience rated
digital better only on the most sophisticated systems (> 10.000 dollar
DAC/record player).

Their result is: if you spend less than 4000 for your player and care for best
sound, go with vinyl. I guess that applies to most of us ;o)

~~~
eterm
You don't need a 10k DAC, I suspect something a hundredth of that would still
have been well rated. DACs aren't complex equipment.

Stick the money on an amp and speaker set that sounds good (that still doesn't
require 10k btw).

~~~
mironathetin
Well, honestly said, the 10k was reported from my memory. The SACD player in
the test was indeed a 10k player.

You are right that good dacs are available for less (a few hundreds). But my
points were the results of the test. I tried to keep out my personal opinion.
Opinions about vinyl or digital usually end in flamewars.

------
andrewguenther
Although I wouldn't necessarily call it a "hipster thing," I agree with the
idea of vinyl as an "antidote to the own-nothing trend."

To me, the transition between vinyl and purely digital music is similar to the
transition from paper books to ebooks, music just had more transitional
states. I think of vinyls as the paper books of music. Sure, they take up more
space, but there is just something about the feel of it that makes a
difference.

------
k-mcgrady
This thread is full of people claiming that people buy vinyl for the 'warm'
sound. For me it's the experience. I have a pretty shit record player and the
sound is not very good. However the experience of actively listening while
looking at the artwork/photos and reading along to the lyrics can't be matched
by digital. Sure I can Google the lyrics and look at the artwork in iTunes but
it isn't the same experience. I listen to music most of the day and that's
done digitally. It's convenient and I have access to everything. But I treat
vinyl like I would treat watching a movie. Something I sit down to do in a
nice atmosphere.

------
jespersaron
I think that from all the modern ways of storing information, vinyl might be
one of the most resilient. Archeologists will dig out and put together pieces
of vinyl on the year 5014, like they do with ancient pottery today.

We probably will be known as "the great lovemaking civilization" despite all
the atrocities commited, because of all the sleazy pop songs pressed on
millions of vinyl records. I bet the ancient greeks would have put much more
effort into factual accuracy of their pottery decoration too, if they only
knew.

------
analog31
I normally don't give in to psychological woo, but I wonder if the medium
affects the quality of the music itself. I'm a performing musician with
virtually no recorded work, but I definitely play better if I know that
somebody in the audience -- even just one person -- is listening.

If nothing else, the analog medium re-creates the historical relationship with
the audience for recorded music. You might not sell a lot of records, but
those who buy your record do so for only one reason: Because they want it.

------
Cthulhu_
I think that because music has become such a common and accessible thing now
(via one-click downloads and everyone having a collection of thousands of
songs), vinyl is making a comback because of its physical nature. It's solid,
large, comes in a nice packaging where you get to hold and admire the artwork,
etc.

Once I get rich I'll buy a proper hifi set and a vinyl player and start a
little collection. Just for kicks.

~~~
listic
I am wondering why other dedicated stuff doesn't seem to have a future despite
its own physical nature. E.g. Chumby shot down, there haven't been much demand
for WikiReaders lately and I was actually worried for e-paper ebook readers
until Amazon released a new generation this Fall.

I admire physical things like LPs, but they are not practival for my liking, I
decided against them when buying my first Hi-Fi system back in 1999 and I
still do now. I think my next Hi-Fi system will be a nice DAC for a computer
(would be nice to find a good one that supports Blueetooth AND USB at the same
time) plus a nice pair of monitor speakers. ADAM A5X's could have digital
inputs, as they have digital amps already anyway, but they don't.

One thing I love about LPs, though, is that they have such huge space for
gorgeous art.

------
userbinator
From a technological perspective it's interesting to note that vinyl is also a
very "open" format in the sense that you can actually (with a magnifying
glass) _see_ the physical manifestation of the audio data on the disc, and to
be able to play one doesn't require the sort of complex electronics technology
that a more modern format like a CD would need. Of course, there is also no
DRM.

~~~
laumars
You don't need a magnifying glass. As a DJ, I used to regularly use the colour
changes in the pressing to judge when changes in the music were due to aid me
with determining when to queue up the next track and/or perform any
complimentary DJing trick.

------
arh68
With recent advances in 3D printing, is there any hope for a home vinyl record
press? How much would it cost to cut my own vinyl? (google fails me: [1]) I
know very little about the logistics of record pressing.

[1]
[http://www.vinylrecorder.com/diamant.html](http://www.vinylrecorder.com/diamant.html)

~~~
leoedin
There is software which will generate the 3D model required from a sound file.
There have been records 3D printed [1], but the quality is much, much worse
than an actual record.

[1]: [http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/129971-vinyl-records-are-
far...](http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/129971-vinyl-records-are-far-from-
dead-now-you-can-3d-print-your-own)

The stylus size on an LP is something like 2.5 thousandths of an inch, or
about 63.5 um. The printer used in the link above (an Objet500 Connex) has a
minimum layer thickness of 16 um. The article talks about 600 DPI, which may
be a horizontal resolution? That works out at around 42 um. The Objet website
just gives a minimum resolution of 16 um.

Either way, when you look on the scale of the needle your groove is going to
have a lot of hysteresis - essentially appearing very blocky. The high
frequency sound components are going to be lost completely.

There will obviously be improvements on resolution. The problem is that to
build something which can accurately make records with high frequency sounds
(perhaps 15kHz), you need to build it to very high tolerances. It's very hard
to make those sort of tolerances cheap.

Some low cost 3D printers have been made which use UV light to cure epoxy
resin layer by layer. The 2D resolution of those technologies is dependent on
the resolution of the UV projector rather than the mechanical tolerances of
the rails and extruder, so there's a lot more potential for high resolution
prints there. The Z direction is still dependent on mechanical movement
though.

------
deutronium
Won't the audio that's pressed onto the vinyl be digitally mastered anyway
these days?

~~~
mojuba
See SPARS Codes
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARS_code#Codes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARS_code#Codes)

I usually don't trust vinyls that don't indicate their
recording/producing/pressing method.

~~~
deutronium
Cheers, I'd not heard of that.

------
nickhalfasleep
It's a fun experience and the album covers are works of art. My 3-year-old
daughter loves to go to her grandparent's house and help put the needle down
on Yellow Submarine.

------
ryandetzel
If you're a real hipster you'd track down Sony MiniDisc's.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniDisc](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniDisc)

