Why Vinyl Can't Survive

I don't even know what this vinyl discourse is, I don't hang out at urban outfitters or w/e though.

I mean, CDS and vinyl are mastered separately. So when you buy a CD Bookends or something, it's not going to sound the same as the og vinyl. (Not necc. Better! Just different!!). I can't believe I actually have bring that up.

I love cds too. It's all wonderful music.

endless vinyl-fetishists waxing lyrical about their favoured delivery method online or in print for what seems like the last decade.

Nobody does this.

idg arguments about vinyl vs. CDs re: durability. if you take care of either they will last (in general). if you scratch a CD, it's fucked. if you scratch vinyl, it skips. both will last as long as you take care of them. (altho I have had the odd CD that just doesn't wanna play anymore after 3 decades or whatever. not sure what to attribute that to)

In terms of the sound, the warmth that so many people describe vinyl as enjoying just sounds like surface noise to me most of the time, a veil through which detail often has to struggle to emerge

And this is just insane... Like, wow. Get a better turntable? Better needle? Records that aren't scratched?

my workplace right now -- 6 people looking at used records, one person looking at used CDs.

Ian: you are Ian from Academy? How did I just now put that together?

yes, clarke, are you a customer???

I was in last night just before closing with my bro-in-law... Bought some Discharge, Gorguts, and Roxy Music!

One thing that frustrates the bejeezus out of me is poorly pressed current releases, especially on 180-gram or when they're explicitly touted as "audiophile"... And you've got a crackle throughout the entire thing, or audible distortion.

a lot of the time crackle is from static electricity

I always use the little Discwasher anti-static brush before I play anything...

my workplace right now -- 6 people looking at used records, one person looking at used CDs.

― i guess i'd just rather listen to canned heat? (ian), Thursday, February 7, 2013 2:35 PM (8 minutes ago)

Yeah but at the Academy on 18th the inverse is most likely currently true.

One thing for singles lovers to keep in mind is that the last time the industry was centered primarily on singles (mid '60s) a 45 cost about 60 cents which is equivalent to about $4 today. And the b-side was usually filler. So if everyone is willing to pay $4 for a single track download on iTunes then maybe a singles-based industry could work but I don't see that happening.

Yeah but at the Academy on 18th the inverse is most likely currently true.

certainly true - plus lots of people checking out the DVDs.

I still don't get the 'but it's got vinyl mastering!' argument. So...we record onto a hard drive, use digital pre-processors, mix in ProTools then ship out the final mix as digital...and then voila, via vinyl mastering we all of a sudden get sonic awesomeness. I haven't done much A/B'ing myself but I'm going to assume the gains are minimal here. I think most records post-1980 sound terrible anyway on any format, fwiw.

it's more a bullwark against the common practice of brickwall limiting and overly loud mastering that goes on today....

yeah i definitely notice lots of warpage with new vinyl. i think its the demand thing. the pressing plants that are left are working a LOT and i think quality might suffer.

xp Fair enough, but seems like you'd have to know beforehand that care was taken to avoid that. I have modern vinyl that are compressed as hell and it sounds awful.

One thing for singles lovers to keep in mind is that the last time the industry was centered primarily on singles (mid '60s) a 45 cost about 60 cents which is equivalent to about $4 today. And the b-side was usually filler. So if everyone is willing to pay $4 for a single track download on iTunes then maybe a singles-based industry could work but I don't see that happening.

― wk, Thursday, February 7, 2013 2:47 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't think an argument was being made in favor of singles vs. albums. It certainly doesn't have to be either/or (for consumers, that is).

And yeah, it's too late for the industry to start on $4 singles downloads; it wouldn't have been too late if they'd consistently released $4 CD singles in 1997 or whatever. Or if, at the dawn of file-sharing, they'd gotten in front of the situation instead of being dragged behind it with ever-increasing speed.

i love a lot of pre-CD digital classical vinyl from the late 70's and early 80's. and audiophiles like them a ton. but if something is recorded digitallynow i have no problem just having the cd. plus, with albums being so long now i'll definitely listen to the cd more. when i was buying rap albums that were 3XLP i ended up not playing them much. or i would just play a side or two.

i own almost no heavy metal vinyl from the 2000's. too expensive and i'm usually fine with the cd version anyway. and most were recoreded digitally. (and a great percentage of them don't sound all that hot no matter how you play them. but i can overlook the in-the-red shit if its music i like.)

One thing that frustrates the bejeezus out of me is poorly pressed current releases, especially on 180-gram or when they're explicitly touted as "audiophile"... And you've got a crackle throughout the entire thing, or audible distortion. The second LP of Kaputt by Destroyer (my copy at least) is pressed for shit. That drives me nuts. Did that happen as much in the 70s heyday? I mean, I feel like all my old stuff sounds pretty swell when it's in good shape.

this is a windmill I'm always tilting at but the place to look first for bad vinyl sound is the mastering job. the cutter and the plant can only do so much with the mastered recording they're given, and practically everybody skimps on that end. people send final mixes off to the plant and let some guy they've never met or seen master their recordings, but mastering is a crucial step, especially as regards the vinyl. there are only a few really great mastering dudes left, a couple in the US and one or two in the UK iirc. Plenty others who I'm sure would be great if the artists/producers were at the sessions but again a lot of people just send stuff off to be mastered which is imo insane.

yeah i think now a lot of bands just think its cool to put out vinyl but they don't really have anything to do with the final product.

but i do see actual physical problems with new vinyl that doesn't have anything to do with the music and it makes me think that things are rushed because demand is so high.

a lot of people just send stuff off to be mastered which is imo insane.

mastering engineers seem to actively discourage attended sessions though?

in the 70s people would return defective stuff to stores and the stores would sell the returns to middlemen/the mob and the middlemen/the mob would just reseal them and sell them back to stores as dollar bin stuff. everyone was happy.

I don't think an argument was being made in favor of singles vs. albums. It certainly doesn't have to be either/or (for consumers, that is).

I was responding to his claim that "The music industry wants us to worship the LP rather than the single in order to draw more money out of us, and the esteem within which vinyl is held is a part of this mythology." I disagree with that and I'm arguing that the music industry wants us to focus on the album rather than the single because it's the only way that selling records can be a viable business. It sort of is either/or, because the question is whether or not a singles-oriented industry can really survive if album sales continue to plummet and the price of music stays at an all time low. And if not, I don't think mythologizing the album is some kind of greedy, nefarious conspiracy.

And yeah, it's too late for the industry to start on $4 singles downloads; it wouldn't have been too late if they'd consistently released $4 CD singles in 1997 or whatever. Or if, at the dawn of file-sharing, they'd gotten in front of the situation instead of being dragged behind it with ever-increasing speed.

You really think that $4 CD singles could compete with free downloads? Napster started in '99 and iTunes in 2001 so I don't think the industry was that far behind the situation.

also i'm seeing more instances where the vinyl master is used as the digital master too, probably because people don't want to have to pay extra for different versions (and there's no way of getting around the vinyl master if that's what you're putting out), and because the vinyl master sounds good. i know that's true of some friends' records on Not Not Fun for ex.

yeah i definitely notice lots of warpage with new vinyl. i think its the demand thing. the pressing plants that are left are working a LOT and i think quality might suffer.

i was shocked on the beatles thread re a comment as to a lot of mispressings re the recent vinyl boxset.
given the premium price and flagship product status, i would have thought emi et al would have pulled out all the stops to make sure this one hit the audiophile spot.
clearly this wasn't the case, and i suspect the point re the lack of pressing plants is a key factor here ..

given the upsurge in demand for vinyl, have any new pressing plants opened, or, is the industry still relying on remainders of the old network ?

i think existing place have started running more shifts, like night shifts and stuff, heard something about some eastern european new plants supposedly coming online

"to focus on the album rather than the single because it's the only way that selling records can be a viable business"

selling singles was a viable business for decades. i still think it could be. if you could buy a taylor swift cd single at the check-out line at a grocery store for 2 or 3 bucks i would totally buy one. i love singles! and i'm not the only one. they just took the option away! there was no choice involved. that's what sucks about it.

i'm seeing more instances where the vinyl master is used as the digital master too

yeah this happens. because vinyl mastered versions do tend to sound better, aren't brickwalled etc

quality would almost have to be lower with pressing plants. everyone who was good at it went out of business or died years ago. need some hipster record pressers. stop making candles, make quality records.

and enough with the heavy vinyl. would buy more new stuff if people would just do regular normal weight record pressings and charged me 15 bucks. this 30 dollars for a new album thing is crazy.

stop making candles, make quality records

kinda surprised this hasn't happened actually. seems like so much of the vinyl on the market is pressed in like one of a couple places in eastern europe iirc

when i was shopping around for my last record i was surprised by how many U.S. plants there were to choose from! i think a lot of new places have opened in the last few years.

180g records just makes shipping cost more nevermind the lp costing more too.

Throws off my vta too. So important.

good news imho, Jordan!

xp

For once, Cleveland has something good! http://gottagrooverecords.com/

Local 7" and 12" pressing plant, in its 4th year of operation. IME their stuff sounds terrific.

selling singles was a viable business for decades. i still think it could be. if you could buy a taylor swift cd single at the check-out line at a grocery store for 2 or 3 bucks i would totally buy one. i love singles! and i'm not the only one. they just took the option away! there was no choice involved. that's what sucks about it.

The record industry was a pretty small business back before LPs took off, and singles were about 4x more expensive in the mid '60s than they are now adjusted for inflation. You can already buy Taylor Swift singles on iTunes and it's the artists and labels who had their options taken away by Apple when they were forced to make all tracks available a la carte.

You really think that $4 CD singles could compete with free downloads?

Definitely not. That's why I used 1997 as the point at which $4 CD singles might have been viable for the industry as a means of heading off file sharing, which was about a year away.

how would that have headed off file sharing???

By making singles available (which they weren't, which is why people started looking to file sharing).

yeah i just go to youtube if i wanna hear a single. i don't buy anything. but i would have kept buying physical singles.

my conspiracy theory was always: cd singles got long! like, album-length in some cases. and record companies couldn't have people put 2+2 together. why am i paying 20 bucks for this 45 minute album when i just bought a 35 minute single for 4 bucks?

Totally. I have some "singles" that are longer than some "albums."

scott when you say you bought singles did you mean 7"s or cd singles?
in the 90s I bought tons of both. Used to get them for 99p or £1.99. Even if i hadnt heard them Id buy them if they looked good or if i had read about them in the music press. OK so i ended up with some crap singles but for 99p it didnt matter. And sometimes I'd end up with some crackers like supergrass caught by the fuzz for 99p

a lot of people just send stuff off to be mastered which is imo insane.

mastering engineers seem to actively discourage attended sessions though?

― keef qua keef (Jordan), Thursday, February 7, 2013 3:46 PM (30 minutes ago)

the ones who are running factory shops discourage it, but a quality engineer will be open to it, folks like jeff lipton @ peerless actually *want* you to be there:

If you are able to attend the mastering session, we highly recommend that you do. Your feedback will be invaluable in assisting our mastering engineers during the session. We do not penalize artists or stakeholders for attending sessions. However, we realize that attendance is not possible for all clients. We will do our best to make the experience as personal as possible for those who are unable to attend. Since we work with artists from all over the world, many of our sessions are unattended.

the 2 cd singles thing with different bsides was annoying though.

tbf mastering sessions can be amazingly boring