Comments on: LP revival: Fact or fantasy?

Vinyl's groovy, but with sales in the low millions, it's still a niche market. Best-selling LP of 2008 was Radiohead's "In Rainbows," which sold a piddling 28,800 platters.

[forkboy]

Growing up through the 70's and 80's I became obsessed with higher quality audio components. At 16 I took a summer job just to save up enough money to purchase Yahama's CR-240 Natural Sound receiver, NS-4 bookshelf speakers and a YP-B2 turntable. My friends all had crappy all-in-one stereos from Panasonic, etc. and they loved coming round to hear our albums played on my system.

Later I upgraded all my components, but in particular my turntable to the massive and totally Darth Vader like Yamaha PX-3. A 25-pound $700 dollar beast. I took great pleasure getting the device level, the cartridge properly mounted/aligned in the headshell and whatever else it took to get the best sound out of it. It was like a religion: I could spend days tweaking the setup to maximize the sound quality from this beast of a turntable. And I loved every minute of it.

When I purchased my first CD player (and fistful of CDs) I plugged in the appropriate cables, connected it to the wall outlet, turned it on, inserted a CD and pressed play. Instant sound. Far superior signal-to-noise, no speaker woofers moving back and forth silently to the warped nature of vinyl.

I may have loved the set-up of a good turntable, but I'll be damned if I wouldn't rather LISTEN to music than play with a turntable and vinyl. Vinyl, while a nice trip down memory lane in so many ways, is simply inferior in every possible dimension (except album art). Vinyl just needs to die once and for all.

[dingmaster]

The stat says. 89% increase. Even though the total number LP sales is relatively small it's been steadily increased. LP is not for everybody. It is for those who care more about listening to music, rather filling void, even though Steve indicated that it is not a mainstream, which I think is true.
People have diverse hobbies. Nothing wrong with someone spends $5000 for their golf clubs and drivers, as with someone spending $5000 for a turntable and $30 for a new album.
My system is rather modest (about $10,000), and I can definitely say that my most of my vinyl collections (acoustic Jazz and classicals) sound better than CDs.
The commercial music industry would not spend much time and effort to enhance sound format, but they would rather focus on music media which would make them most money, so LPs would still be around after not 5 years, but 50 years.

[jbaesman]

vinyl will survive -- look at it now! people are still making a profit pressing vinyl at such low quantities and will keep it going as long as there a few dedicated folks willing to pay the premium price for the product...

i personally love vinyl, although i use digital more -- the iPod is great for moving music from car to car ( i travel for business and rent at least twice a month), and lugging a turntable to the gym is impossible... that said, there are great recordings out there -- my father's collection of big band 78's are a perfect example...

btw, why not more support for 78's?

[viper396]

Nothing against LP's but the fact is this revival for LP's is just another nostolgia fad. Like any other nostalgic fad that has come and gone, this too will pass.

[trgdr777]

Music is way more than background filler to me, but personally, digital music is more valuable to me than vinyl. I'm in college, so there are plenty of times when I'd like to enjoy my music outside of my home. I also like letting other people listen to my music. If I find some really great music, I want lots of people to hear it. The main reason I love digital music, however, is the discovery component. I can find and purchase new music from different genres and different countries without having to travel to physical locations. A lot of it would be rather difficult (or in some cases impossible) to find as an LP or even a CD in a music store.

I don't think digital music has become this popular because people treat music as some sort of "background filler". Sure there are some that do, but I think these advantages and others (like the ability to pick and choose the songs you'd like to purchase) are the real reasons people choose digital over vinyl. At the same time, that doesn't mean vinyl is dead, and I certainly hope it will be around for years to come.

[techfortat]

I love vinyl. I have my turntable in my pool room and I always play my records while playing some 8-ball. I had downloaded "In Rainbows" when it first came out and loved it, but when I bought the 180 gram lp a year later I could not believe how much better the sound is. I love digital music for working out and long road trips, but nothing beats a great record.
As trgdr mentioned, most of the younger generation today want everything now and don't understand the concept of anticipating something, waiting for it, saving for it, then having to drive across town to hope there was still a copy left at your favorite store! I remember walking to the local record store after school let out when there was a new record I wanted. I often had to wait in line behind 20 other people to get that piece of audio bliss.

[hyme]

Steve Guttenberg, you are an idiot. Thank you.

[blastodon]

pretty much everyone I know buys vinyl. they download most of their music for free, and then buy vinyl of bands that they really like. i don't know anyone who has bought a cd in years, but we all have big record collections. cd's have no real use anymore but vinyl's inconvenience and outdatedness forces the user to interface with the music.

[bstimpy]

I finally broke down and bought a turntable today. I picked up a few classic albums (Dark Side of the Moon, Quadrophena) and Winehouse's Back in Black. I gotta tell you, I like what I heard. Plus the experience of unwrapping the album and checking out the cover was great. With CD's you just rip it open as soon as you can. We didn't kill all the horses when cars arrived, vinyl will find it place in the long term. There will be millions of people who buy vinyl just for the connection to the music, it feels more...human, tactile.

[Lenter101]

It has nothing to do with sound quality. It's about 18 - 25 year olds feeling cool because they embrace an old technology. Wow, look at me, I'm different, I listen to vinyl. Never underestimate the things people will say and do to look cool. Especially the young. This may be on the "Stuff White People Like". web site in the next month. Right there with Sushi, tattoos, The Daily Show, Toyota Prius, etc.

[sting7k]

Yes, Vinyl is back; all the kids and tweens are clamoring for turn tables and vinyl records. Give me a break, anyone is still clinging to it is stuck in the 70s wishing they could still walk around town bare foot. It's 2009, wake up.

[TheUnknownComic]

A good vinyl pressing certainly does sound better than a CD. Some record companies were horrible when it came to the quality of their pressings. Noisy, warped, skips, etc. But a good Japanese pressing was wonderful. There's a recent study that young people prefer the sound of MP3s over CDs, much like, in the "old days" when young CD owners preferred that format over vinyl. Even my cat could tell the difference. Play a real harmonica and she'd run. Play a vinyl album with harmonica and she'd run. Play a CD with harmonica and she'd ignore it. Just look at the samples per cycle on high frequency sounds and you can see why digital is miserable at accurate reproduction. If you've got a 20khz sound being sampled only twice per wave, well, just draw it on a graph...

[pubmat]

You have no idea what you're talking about. There are other aspects of sound reproduction that do not encompass frequency sampling where LPs are inferior. The fact that vinyl's waveform is ANALAGOUS to the actual waveform doesn't mean it is more "accurate" than a CD's. Moreover, accuracy doesnt depend on sampling rate, and it is certainly not better if it is an analogue waveform. There are also other areas where vinyl fall short: ie, interfacing with the tonearm/cartridge, scratches and dirt, and sound reduction due to wear are ALL problems with LPs. And while there are admittedly well recorded LPs, in no way to they "certainly" sound better than CDs, as you describe it. And forget about Bluray lossless and SACD....no contest. LPs are DONE dude, get out of the seventies.

[chili_picante]

@pubmat, so if "accuracy doesnt (sic) depend on sampling rate" then why not sample once a second and save tons of space?

[krzanalyst]

I have been buying vinyl since I was about 10 years old and have continued now for over 30 yrs. I saw the cd come in, in the early '80s and my fellow self styled audiophiles and myself preferred the sound of vinyl over the slightly tinny, steralized sound of cds. I now have about 1500 lps and continue to buy new and used records (usually over my budget) and I do not own a single "store bought" cd. I recently purchased Mark Knopfler "Kill to Get Crimson" double 180 g pressing for $$35.00 (Canadian) that actually came with a cd version thrown in for free! I've never seen that before.

When I seriously want to listen to music I take the time to clean the record and carefully set down the cartridge and sit back and enjoy at least 20 minutes of music without anything else interfering. A decent high end audio system will cost at least $3500.00 if your buying from scratch, but when you get to that level, vinyl will sound better than digital - that's my story and I'm sticking to it! :) (I believe artists such as Neil Young and Eddie Vedder amongst others have agreed with this view.

Long Live Vinyl!

[vinylsloober]

After taking a break from records for about 20 years, I am back. I got all my old albums back out of storage and bought a new cartridge. I still had my old TT from the day but found a great deal on a vintage linear turntable online and grabbed it. I have to say it is much more enjoyable to listen to a record. I have iPods, iTunes and all, but there is something satisfying about the whole process with a record.
And then there is the sheer thrill of the find. I have bought a couple new albums recently, most notably Wilco which also comes with a CD for the car. But the best stuff I have found has been at goodwill. Last week I found a whole slew of new records there all for a buck each. I got several Miles Davis, Brubeck, Thelonious Monk and all were still sealed in plastic!
Sure there is the occasional click and pop from a less than perfect record, but to me the sound on record is just better. I managed to sync up the Wilco CD with the record and did some switching back an fourth. I kept finding myself listening to the record version more often. For those that don't get it, fine stay in CD land, more records for me.