How "gone" are vinyl recordings?

[tbn.al]

I still have a very nice turntable attached to my primary stereo rig but hardly ever use it. I have a collection of 600+ vinyl disks which have not been touched in a couple of years. I wonder why I still keep them around. How long has it been since you have listened to a vinyl recording?

[John Caves]

I have a similar "boat anchor" of memories in storage, but I keep them anyway. My 1975 Technics Direct-Drive turntable died. So when we return to Houston next year, I'll look into a new USB table and transfer them to my laptop or mp3 player. Every time I go into a used record store, I say "I have that, and that, and that, and..."

[daveinem]

There should have been a box for "12 hours ago".

[Posaune2]

About 10 years ago, I transferred some of my most prized lPs to CD so I could listen to them more easily. I recently discovered that at least one batch of 50 CDs is now unplayable. (HBB CDRs for those of you who are curious.)

If I had not saved my LPs out in the garage, I would be looking at replacing a bunch of recordings now.

this time, I am transferring directly to hard drives, (uncompressed aiff files) and am thinking that I might finally throw my LPs away, as I do multiple redundant backups of my hard drives.

what do you guys think? time to clean out the garage of the LPs?

[iiipopes]

Do shellac 78's count as prep for a "standards" jazz/dance band concert?

[John Caves]

You can't beat the album cover art! Some of it is worth framing.

[fsgazda]

You can't beat the album cover art! Some of it is worth framing.

[tbn.al]

I have one shellac 78 album. A 1930's 2 record set of L'arlesienne that I rescued from the trash bin of my HS school band in 1960. It has a special place in my heart and my will.

[tubatom91]

Just listened to my mom's original Dark side of the moon and Tom Petty's Damn the Torpedoes last night before bed. My mom looks through the vinyl sections whenever she goes through resale shops, usually $.25-.50 a record. I use a Crosley record player that is about the size of a Bach strad. trumpet case, speakers inside the case, powered by a 12 volt adapter. I think I bought it for a whole $50. Being a 20 year old I can say that there is a huge interest in vinyl inside of my generation especially the classic iconic rock albums (dark side, back in black, etc.). There's nothing like the sound of it.

[John Caves]

fsgazda: I have that one,too!

(Can anyone explain how or where I can find out how to copy a response (with pic) and add a comment?)

[Lingon]

...How long has it been since you have listened to a vinyl recording?...

About 26 hours. Still keeping those old LPs that sounds so well. Especially with a good player together with some nice pickup there seems to be more feeling in the old records. I think MP3s are OK when vacuum cleaning the house, CDs are good for more active listening, very nice, no cracks, no warps etc, but... We like to use old stuff, ophicleides, saxhorns, serpents etc, to play on, so in parallel it is fine to listen to old stuff too.

There seems to be a renaissance for vinyl nowadays. More and more of newly recorded material appears in those few stores that are left. One of the former members of BS&T made a new recording here in Sweden last year. It was released only on vinyl...

[Alex C]

I "disposed" of my vinyl during my divorce. Those recordings are now unreplaceable and I consider it a great loss.

I bought better and better equipment to play vinyl recordings on but I continually heard the pop and scratch that vinyl couldn't evade. It was much more clear on really good equipment. Very frustrating. You can hardly find separate components anymore.

When I heard my first CD, I was struck with how clean it sounded. It was the first time I enjoyed a recording without distraction. Later on I learned that recording engineers were rolling back the bass when they remastered master recordings to go on CD's. The effect deadened the difference between each orchestra's particular sound as well as making the tuba almost disappear as a color.

I used to be able to tell the difference between the top 10 orchestras in the world within a couple of seconds. Now, with the sometime exception of Chicago, they all sound alike. Especially American orchestras.

So, it is a gain-something / loose-something trade off, as most things are. I recently saw a turntable with a USB jack for converting analog to wav. Too late to do me any good.

Vinyl is gone.

[Walter Webb]

I am not done with vinyl, not by a long shot. I retired an old boat anchor with a million miles on it, and bought a new Audio Technica AT-PL 120 turntable and an extra cartridge head equipped with a 78 needle (different cut on the diamond!). Every thrift store or yard sale is an adventure in finding long lost, out of print music. All I can say is, hold your horses, because you could easily fill your house with LPs, 45s and 78s!

Right now I am on a hunt for albums from Kay Starr, a fabulous vocalist who did lots of obscure recordings in LA with Gerald Wiggins on piano and Ben Webster on tenor sax. She was able to sing jazz, country, rock n' roll, all with that husky voice straight outta Oklahoma: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6ulol4thsA" target="_blank

http://www.amazon.com/Audio-Technica-AT ... B00012EYNG" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank

[BVD Press]

I am kind of curious if I am alone in not listening a CD for more than year? I listen a ton on Spotify and that is really about it.

I dumped my last cassette machine in 2010 and at this point the only CD player I have is in a computer.

[Conn 2J CC]

My wife and I have several records from our youth we played on, and I can't be the only person on this board who can say that. Those alone would be worth the price of buying a good turntable. I'm just going to have to do something about that some day.

[toobagrowl]

There seems to be a push back for vinyl recordings amongst audiophiles and people who grew up with them. Vinyl records were mostly before my time, but I have heard some very good ones. I grew up with tapes and CDs and will continue to listen to them.

[Trumgottist]

I was born in 1978, so me starting to buy music pretty much coincided with the introduction of CDs, and I've never owned a vinyl album.

I do like having the physical albums though, and while you can lament the death of huge album artwork if you want to, I don't think the CD booklet is a bad replacement.

The best thing about the digital audio is how accessible it's become to make your own recordings. Pro-level software is now affordable, so if you invest in a decent sound card and a good microphone, your skill is the limit.

[Rick Denney]

I'm pschologically damaged, by the way, that anyone would have listened to his mom's Dark Side of the Moon LP. I am not that old. I'm not! Therapy bills coming your way, Tubatom91.

One can still buy old turntables of reasonable quality, and even more easily buy excellent high-end turntables that are not old (but bring your checkbook). I can still get belts for my Technics SL-20, and as long as that's true, I'll be able to listen to vinyl.

I keep the vinyl, even if I've copied it to a CD, for one simple reason: The vinyl is physical, and there will always be a way to extract the information from it. The physical shape of those grooves will not degrade over time, or at least not very fast, with reasonable storage conditions.

Data files? Not so much. Hard disks store data as magnetic pulses, and those degrade. CDR's record data as laser burned chemical layers, which also degrade (though some stuff is better than other stuff). The original CD's were printed, and retain the qualities of physical endurance that CDR burned at home do not possess. As long as there is software that can read them, of course, which should be true for a long time. I might make CDR's of vinyl for daily listening, but I would not trust music stored on CDRs or hard disks as permanent storage, unless that's all I had.

The expectation by folks these days is that if they lose the material, they can just download it again. That is not true with much that was put on vinyl.

Rick "whose Dukes of Dixieland vinyl albums are still ready to hand" Denney

[Dan Schultz]

A couple of years ago, I bought one of those computer/USB turntables to digitize some Cities Service Band Of America LP's I stumbled across. I specifically wanted a recording of "Big Joe, the Tuba".

I used the turntable once and there it sits... on top of my dresser.

I enjoy a public radio program called 'Old Scratchy Records' and it's was fun to dial in once in a while. However... I've found that most everything I want to listen to is already available in digital format... most of it with the 'clicks' and 'hummms' removed.

[daveinem]

I have a bunch of records that will never be re-issued, and I'm glad to have them to play on my fully functional machine (1985 Thorens with a decent new cartgridge). I love the sound, and I love the act of putting a record on the turntable. Digitising misses the point, I think.