My personal pet theory: CDs were kind of like an in-between format between vinyls (nice and feel good, but inconvenient and not as mobile) and hard digital storage/streaming (zero feeling, because it is just digital files on your storage device or streamed to you, but super convenient on the go). Until we all got devices that became able to stream music or upload music to it, CD addressed the mobility problem. But streaming/file storage is definitely a way more mobile and convenient solution than CDs in every way.
With a more convenient option such as streaming, all the benefits that CD provided over vinyl became meaningless, as streaming/file storage beat it in every aspect. But vinyl still stayed, as it provides something that neither CDs nor streaming/digital file storage can provide. So as CDs got wiped as a medium, vinyl rose back.
I have observed a similar situation in a completely different industry too. More specifically, with book stores. Before big bookstore chains, we had a lot of independent small book stores (following my earlier analogy, the vinyl). Big chain book stores started appearing and dominating, such as Barnes&Noble (the CD), squeezing out smaller independent book stores. Then came Amazon (the streaming/digital file storage, still following my earlier analogy with music), wiped the floor with the in-betweener medium (Barnes&Noble), and the number of small independent book stores (vinyl) has increased over that entire time period as the in-betweener got wiped. For specific numbers, the number of small independent book stores in the US has increased by about 50% over the past decade (from around 1,600 to 2,500)[0].
Unlike with the in-betweener formats, the original ones will always have something to provide that the future iteration of a "more advanced format" (CD=>streaming) won't be able to provide. And with this in mind, I am happy, as it indicates that physical books and vinyls will be here to stay (albeit not for mainstream usage, but as personal preference pieces for enthusiasts). This isn't some hard rule that is guaranteed to be the case forever, but the current numbers and observations seem to support the idea that this trend will likely last for quite a long time, beyond lifetimes of people currently alive. That's just a pure guess based on the gut feeling.
Vinyl was actually (mostly) killed by cassette tapes, then CDs replaced those because of greater fidelity and instant seek times.[0] Though it really took the emergence of writable CDs to totally kill cassettes, since you couldn't replace the 'mix tape' use case until then.
No, cassette audio quality is noticably inferior to vinyl. They had a strength in convenience/mobility. The original Walkman mobile music player was a cassette player. Cassette players were popular in cars, and portable "boom boxes." Most people I knew bought their music on vinyl and made cassette copies or mix tapes to play in their car or otherwise on the go. Cassettes did not seriously threaten vinyl sales at least not that I remember. The vinyl killer was the CD.
With the right tape deck and the right tape formulation, cassettes could get incredibly good, with SNRs over 60dB. Not bad at all considering that vinyl also degraded much faster from playing than tape did.
It's just that a lot of people had cheap tape decks and even cheaper tapes, hence the bad reputation nowadays.
You say that like a lot of records weren't cheap and shitty too. Outliers are always more memorable.
In the end I think portability had more to do with both the reputation and the success of cassettes. Doesn't matter how good the tape is, a walkman in the 80s was never going to sound as good as a hifi, but that's what people wanted.
Convenience, too. This overlaps a lot with portability, but cassettes made it feasible to listen to your music in, say, the kitchen, a picnic, or, most critically I think, the car.
If good sound quality is also within reach then (the various Dolby NR systems helped with that), cassettes made a lot of sense overall.
Well I find it surprising. I was at the height of my music-buying as a teen and young adult in the 1980s/1990s and I never bought music on cassette, nor did any of my friends. We bought vinyl, made our own cassettes for the car, and switched to CD when that format came out.
I'm honestly really annoyed that streaming doesn't have a better cover art story. Like, it seems like it should be such an easy thing to arrange it so if I'm listening to an album I can see the album cover in high resolution and full screen on my device, and afaict Spotify doesn't offer this at all.
If any Tesla engineer is reading this please change it in the Tesla. I want the road on one side of the screen and a big huge cover art of what I'm listening to on the other side, big enough for everyone in the car to see as we drive. It's a huge missed opportunity. Right now we get a tiny postage stamp of the cover art and a meaningless track list in text.
This is why I got into vinyl; I love the art. I have streaming available in every room via Alexa devices but I do enjoy the experience of vinyl when I’m being intentional about my music listening.
Between the art and the tactile experience vinyl requires, I like it for active vs passive listening.
There's something about using Vinyl that's unique among the physical media. I abandoned all physical media early on, I'm thinking like early early 2000s, but the past few years I've been collecting Vinyls. I find it soothing to throw on a record and eat dinner or put together some legos. I can't explain it and I don't think its better in any way other than the comfort it provides me. lol
A friend explained to me recently- if someone comes over to your house, and you want to listen to music, it’s hard to know everyone will enjoy it. If you pick something off spotify, they might not like that kind of music, or vice versa.
But if you have a record collection, they can browse and pick something they know you already enjoy, because you own it.
Idea: A shelf full of just album covers with an RFID sticker inside. Someone picks the one they like and just lays it on top of a nearby table which has a sensor and begins to play the music from Spotify.
If I implement it, I'll probably take the Linux route and use MPD/MPC on my desktop. Or maybe control Clementine through QDBus (since I use this media player on KDE anyway).
The video was playing music and Vimeo took it down due to copyright infringement :(
If I was to do this again I’d do away with the Mac mini and use a raspberry pi plus a Spotify daemon. I still have all the cards I made but no time to figure out the physical stuff anymore.
The "from Spotify" part makes this dystopian. Have the music be local.
Here's a refinement of that idea for vinyl nuts: blank rfid-enabled vinyls that you must physically lower the needle into, which triggers a hard disk recorder to play its saved FLACs. How's that for a "tactile experience"?
(I suspect that a true vinyl nut would hate this idea but not be able to articulate why)
When I host parties I leave an iPad out and let people buy any song they want to play on my dime. People seem to enjoy it and there's lots of different/interesting stuff in my collection now.
I think it's just that CDs were the preferred format for mass consumption over tapes, previously before tapes 4-tracks and back to vinyl when vinyl was the only option. Now streaming serves the purposes of most people for casual listening while vinyl represents what it always has to the niche.
Like a lot of people, I don't buy a lot of music anymore now that streaming is so easy. But when I do buy music, I buy a vinyl. And it's not because of the sound quality, because I can't tell the difference.
I buy vinyl because I like having a large version of the album artwork. Most vinyl albums come with a digital copy of the music, which is what I use to actually listen to the album (if not on a streaming platform). I rarely listen to the actual vinyl version.
There's not really a reason for me to buy a CD. I can just buy the digital version and store it on my Plex server if I want just the music. If I want the physical copy, I want it to look really nice so I go with vinyl.
I don't normally like to do self promotion on this site, but this is the exact reason why me and my team (mostly me) created Vinylr.
Instead of just getting a digital download, we provide a full size copy of the album art minus the actual record, and we give you a slightly lower quality version of the digital download with some random crackles and pops added in with advanced AI to simulate the vinyl listening experience.
For an additional 20 dollars, we cut down a tree and set it on fire for you.
It sounds silly, but I find it extremely comforting to know I can play back my vinyl using entirely mechanical components.
I don't expect the world to forget how to decode mp3s, or even loose the ability to generate electric to power my computers/storage to retrieve it. But, in the event all technology collapsing I've got a vibration trapped in a piece of vinyl, and I can play back by scraping a nail over it. There's something quite beautifully "pure" or simple about this. As much as analogue audio tape is doing similar, vinyl is a physical waveform.
Sure, in any world where this could happen there's going to be far more important things to worry about than playing back Paul Simon, but it seems easier to believe I could build a gramophone from first principals than a CD player. Comforting.
Vinyl is one of those things that is at the limit of human scale but still accessible - without any power you can spin a record and “hear” it by putting your ear near the needle.
Both cassettes and CDs go out of human scale and into technology.
You can't play modern vinyl on a gramophone. Well, technically you can, but you'll just destroy the record. You need shellac records if you want to play them on a gramophone, and the last one was produced maybe in the 40s.
>You need shellac records if you want to play them on a gramophone, and the last one was produced maybe in the 40s.
Some countries like India of the Philippines kept using gramophones into the late 60s. You can get shellac records of the Beatles made in India like this one:
I have a couple of CD box sets that actually are in vinyl sized boxes. War of the Worlds (technically SACD), and a Warp Records collection. I wish it was more common!
Besides the artwork, I buy vinyl because it requires me to be present in listening.
I have to rummage through my collection, pull the record out of its cover (and maybe read it). Then I have to turn it over half way through. Also when people are over I make them do the same. It sparks conversation.
I concede I could do all of those things with digital copies but I don’t. If I’m not working, I largely listen to vinyl only now.
Bandcamo automatically gives you the digital if you buy a record through the service.
Amazon used to have "auto rip" where you could download the digital from Amazon music if you bought some records from them. I haven't seen that in a while though
> And it's not because of the sound quality, because I can't tell the difference.
I like the form factor of vinyls a lot but... What kind of turntable do you need for not being able to tell the difference? I take it you need both a pricey vinyl turntable and recent vinyls? To me playing vinyl is linked to my young self playing vinyl and they definitely had a "vinyl sound": hisses and noises and whatnots.
> There's not really a reason for me to buy a CD. I can just buy the digital version and store it on my Plex server if I want just the music.
What is interesting about this to me is that 99.9% of music mastered and produced in 2021 has a digital step somewhere along the chain i.e. whatever perceived technical advantage the physical medium has in terms of sound fidelity is actually not really there and in any case limited by digital to analog conversion and vice versa. Vinyl as a music format has certain limitations [0] which will mean that even a perfect digital master may have some problems that need to be addressed to not cause problems when pressing to vinyl. I certainly understand the appeal of a nice physical package, though I project that sometime soon, the humble cdr might make a comeback and satisfy that need too. From my acquaintances involved with releasing stuff on vinyl I know that for a few years there have been huge queues and delays at all common pressing plants, which seems to match with the data reported in the tweet.
It's worth noting that these numbers aren't great indicators of sound quality. A 70 dB SNR is perfectly fine for listening to music. Listening and recording environments often have a worse acoustic SNR than that. Instruments are often recorded with converters and digital/analog effects that have a < 100 dB SNR, and they're often further compressed/distorted.
Still, I agree that vinyl is nowhere close to ideal in terms of sound quality. I enjoy it in spite of that.
Yes, it's a garbage number, especially for recreational listening.
The typical home will have enough background noise (HVAC, traffic, wind, etc) that the noise floor isn't especially relevant, but things like a rich midrange and good dynamics certainly will be.
Also, "degrades on each play" is a real overbid these days. Maybe 50 years ago when people used crappy stylii with non-counterwighted tonearms, that was a problem... but a decent turntable with a good cartridge is quite safe. It would take hundreds of plays for noticeable degredation to occur. I might draw a parallel to home users worrying about SSD write cycles - it's much more of a theoretical issue than a practical one.
You see the same stupid "analog is better" shit among photographers, even today.
Digital SLRs (even APS-frame-size ones) surpassed the best 35mm film money could buy (retail or even "professional") in the mid 2000's in terms of resolution at a given ISO, dynamic range, and even focus (a digital sensor can be flatter than a piece of film ever could be, thus ensuring consistent focus across the entire film plane.) I'm sure the boys at the CIA and whatnot had much fancier film for their cameras, but even they went digital a long, long time ago.
Even back in the mid 2000's retail-available sensors were starting to approach theoretical quantum limits in efficiency of turning photons into a state change on the sensor well they strike. These days some cameras are just stunning with what they can do with the tiniest amount of available light.
Digital is cheaper past a fairly low number of photos, has no per-shot expenditure, you can store tens of thousands of photos on something the size of a thumbnail, you get instant review of things like exposure and "did anyone blink", you can instantly back up the photo to multiple sources (most mid to high level digital SLRs have provisions for mirroring photos to a second card), you can do focus stacking and HDR and panoramas so easily many cameras can do it internally, you can instantly transmit the photos around the world as many cameras have wifi built-in and apps for smartphones that work with it, film and print development is slow, cumbersome, very difficult to do consistently and usually involves pretty toxic chemicals and fair amount of dedicated space.
And yet there are still assholes, fifteen years after film was eclipsed, who will stroke their goatee and tell you why their Pentax K1000 with insert film you've never heard of is "better." I can make the stuff coming out of my digital camera look just like the shit coming out of their camera, only in a fraction of the time, for less cost.
I enjoy shooting 4x5 black and white film because of the limitations of the format, not in spite of them. I use a DSLR for paid work. I like to think the time with the 4x5 makes me better at making photos with the DSLR. It doesn't matter if this is true or not.
I love tecnographers to tell me that I am an asshole.
Seriously. Film is a medium. Technical race is over.
Digital coupled with algorithms for "ultimate" technical exposure is the winner. So what?
Film has a natural grain, grain emulation made digitally is obvious for a trained eye. Film has a chemically based development, you can alter exposure in different ways and produce different results. Shooting film makes you a better photographer. Why? Because to produce a decent photo you must know the exposure triangle and focus.
Focus, because there is no computer to help you and make you think that you are "the best" ever, and if you are not - you can always fix it in post. Learning to do all in camera is giving you advantage in expression.
Expression. This is the key word here. The world of humans has become so narrow, so predictable and binary, that we are fighting with our natural human psychology. Under the command of the technocratic elites moving us forward to the ultimate vision of AI overlords and never-ending cycle of unnecessary software and hardware updates. Don't let me start on security. Try to hack my Leica M3 - remotely.
Film is made for print. Printing has a value in itself. And the process requires more skill and knowledge than applying some LUTs or predefined filters.
1000 megapixel cameras with AI will not make you an artist. Connecting to a real human world and caring will make you one. Yes, you can express this with a smartphone camera without a doubt, but the choice of film is similar to the choice of oil painting as a medium.
Or should I be asshole again for not using digital painting as a medium of choice.
You know, painting digitally is so technically superior. You have undo and redo. Layers and masks.
Why live in the past and not embrace the future?
Why learn to play an instrument? The computers are so much better.
P.S.
I responded to your "emotionally" charged opinion with an equal reflection. The main point is that everything has a value as an experience, process and end result. To dismiss someone choices over "technical" logic is a false positive.
Technically educated people can buy a vinyl record. For different reasons, aesthetically or experience based ones. Putting all the eggs in one basket is not a balanced approach at all.
Wow. That’s just laughable. There are some benefits to film, but digital can mimic them all.
With film you have to think about your pictures a little more because you can shoot 400 shots per role. Trivial to use a tiny memory card.
With film, you can put your negatives in a box and never lose them, compared to the hell of always managing digital storage. Surely you can get slides made from digital files.
With film, each type has its own characteristics, all of which are copyable in software.
You'd have to get a pretty expensive digital camera to get as overall high quality photos as a nice medium format (not to mention large format) film camera, to be fair. But only a fool would use film instead of digital for this reason. I just like the hardware more and it's cheaper than an equivalent digital setup.
I think it's still important to distinguish are we discussing process, or end result.
If the end result is for photo to be viewed on monitor, phone, TV, photo album, or say 11x19 poster, I don't know if there's effective difference by the end between a 45MP FX digital, or a medium/large frame film.
The process though is largely different, including the approach and the sensation and the sense of handling. I fully recognize the important of joy of process.
(It's just that, if I swung that way, I'd go all the way and use the twin reflex film camera for a truly different experience :-D. )
I’ve shot medium format, had a lab at home, and now use a Sony a7R IV. The process of developing film was way more fun than my current use of Lightroom, but my $$ conscious self couldn’t stop thinking of how much practice cost. This thought process happened with my woodworking hobby as well :(.
That said, my Sony rivals a medium format in resolution.
If we take joy out of the equation, say we’re doing this as part of a business process, digital is better in all but a handful of cases.
To be clear, I'm not arguing vinyl is a superior format, personally I strongly believe a humble (and typical) 16bit 44.1 KHz "consumer cd" type ready for delivery digital file is for 99.9% of listener use cases completely fine, and in any case far superior over any practical analog medium including vinyl. This is why I added "perceived" to the supposed technical advantages of vinyl. From the audio quality point of view, to me there is no point to using vinyl even if the chain is fully analog. It's just a funny thought to me that whatever claims of analog superiority (however fake or misguided they may be) are undone anyway by the digital part of the chain.
Vinyl is analog, this means it has infinity SNR, the audio store salesman assured me this before I purchased a $20,000+ pickup. You do not understand music, my hdmi cables cost $1,000, so as you can see, I understand music.
"Unlike conventional power cables, which have propagation speeds that are less than 50% the speed of light, the Valhalla 2 Reference Power Cord has a speed of 91% the speed of light."
I've always wanted to ask. Wouldn't putting a standard UPS between the outlet and the equipment solve the problem by powering the device from a battery?
I've often heard the claim that these limitations are the reason why some older record sound better than CD. During the loudness wars CDs were so aggressively limited, all while the bass content was driven up, that these would make a needle jump out of the track. A vinyl master requires more subtle preparation, controlled bass and stereo image, less dynamic compression.
Your first claim I think is better stated that older CDs cut in their time from original sources sound better than similar music with modern processes. For pop, especially.
I seek out early 80's - early 90's CD (with sprinklings in pop to the early 00's).
I tend to follow musicians who are outside of the popular mainstream, such as fiddling, chamber music, jazz, etc. Many of the musicians still bring a briefcase full of CDs to each performance. I have asked them the hypothetical: Suppose I want to buy your recording but want you to get the biggest possible cut of the sale. Should I buy the CD or a download?
Answer: The CD. It is very hard for them to make money from streaming.
Something like that might be happening in other musical genres that I'm not as familiar with. If people are buying vinyl but digital music is effectively free, then of course vinyl will have more sales than digital.
> Answer: The CD. It is very hard for them to make money from streaming.
For what it's worth, and I am not a musician and maybe every deal is different, the people I know who earn a living from playing music have told me that buying the physical CD or buying a digital download from an online store like iTunes or HDTracks nets them within a dollar or two of the same payout.
There's a substantial, as we all know, earnings difference between buying a CD and streaming the artist on a platform like Spotify or Apple Music. But the difference between buying the CD and buying a set of MP3s or FLACs or the like is, supposedly, far smaller.
(If your preferred artist is on BandCamp, I've been told it's even smaller or almost to the point that the CD makes them less money than the download.)
That's what I heard from a musical artist (who is quite successful in their niche), too: The money from streaming is surprisingly little, so fans who want to support them should buy the music in whatever medium (CD, vinyl, download...).
They do put a lot of emphasis on their vinyl records, though. I don't know whether that's because it's also the most popular (you get the big physical disk with artwork and everything and a download code included), or whether that nets them more. I can ask.
As a musician, I've always been just used CDs as a surface for which people can feel good about giving me a bigger tip at the small places I play; lots of folks are fine with high markups on merch, but won't tip musicians at all for some reason.
I've been on vinyl albums... I don't think they are great for a lot of reasons. They do encourage folks to give you money, though. And they certainly show a commitment to artistry that CDs never quite had.
If you just want the music, streaming is better on almost every front. If you collect them and need to move, they get to be super heavy. They are bad for the environment. Your acoustics are probably the limiting factor in your listening environment, so on and so forth.
It's an interesting moment to mark, to me, not because vinyl is selling more, but because the industry is doing so poorly in general that the relatively niche format has overtaken what was the dominant physical medium for decades.
That is to say, this is the point where we might understand physical recording distribution to have finally died.
What you leave out is vinyls are a way to own music, not rent it.
Then, between CDs, vinyl, and tapes, vinyls win out for the reasons you say and more, which generally summarize to ~better artistry/sound.
You don't "have" the music if you're streaming it. You're renting it for $10.99/mo from Spotify, and routinely certain song access will drop from complete records on a streaming service for unknown reasons.
Vinyl is a small but important way to properly incentive property ownership, and and I think that's why it's so popular at its root. Digital access is not digital ownership.
This is probably the main reason I tend to purchase my favorite music as vinyl. It is one of the few formats that is unencumbered by major patents, hardware requirements for the most basic listening, and roadblocks on the decryption/decoding side. If I want to hear a record in the most dire of circumstances, I can manually spin it with my hands and use a needle and paper sheet shaped into a cone. The record is, itself, a visual waveform representation of the music in one of its most straightforward forms.
The power can be out, no batteries around, no computer in sight, and I can still handcrank my music on a portable set. And I own it, DRM-free.
And, as mentioned above, most records now come with a code for a digital copy of the album. Best of both worlds.
"I could listen to it with a needle and paper sheet taped into a cone while spinning the record with my hands" has to be about the dumbest justification for buying vinyl I've ever heard.
The chances of society deteriorating to the point where an mp3 player running off a rechargeable AA battery isn't achievable are slim to none, and even if they do get to that point, I think you're going to be far more concerned about the basic business of staying alive.
Well, the main reason, as I stated, is ideological. That it is not encumbered by patents, like mp3 is/was. The "paper cone" example was the most extreme hyperbole that came to mind. I just think it's neat that I would still have tunes, even in that extreme, unlikely situation.
However, in response to that: This past winter my apartment went without power for over 3 days, thanks to frost damage taking out major parts of our grid. UPC ran out of power in a couple hours, phones near the end of the day, any rechargables near mid-second-day. It was really nice to have the hand-crank player with built-in speaker while huddled up under a heavy blanket and reading. The same experience even more recently while staying at a fairly remote cabin, without streaming, signal, or convenient power. Had board games, a handful of records, and a nice lantern. Good times.
Yeah, there’s a great big chasm between “listening to Spotify” and “the world has descended to caveman days” and multiple options are nice. We’ve been without power for a night and the M18 equipment was nice to have. We’ve been without internet for days and local storage was nice to have.
For "ownership" vinyl does not win over CDs - a format doesn't need special storage, doesn't wear each time you play it, doesn't need maintenance...and has far better SNR and can be easily (and perfectly) ripped to portable data formats.
I found my big CD wallet in my attic full of all my old CDs. It was all dusty and a bit moldy. Decided to re-rip a bunch of the CDs to AAC as I'd originally done so to mp3 at 160kbit way back in the 2000's.
No issues reading any of them.
Vinyl only wins if you're filthy rich because you make money just by having money (yay capital gains cuts!) and you need something to pump money into to impress yourself or your friends.
I imagine it is a lot easier to jack off while looking at a $10,000, thirty pound marble platter turntable hooked up to a $5,000 tube amplifier, than it is the high-end twenty year old CD player you bought off craigslist for $40
Quite overly aggressive. If you're not buying every record just for the sake of buying every record, and mostly just buying a record because you love it, vinyl is by no means for rich people. I'm in the same boat as you - modest income, collection double your size because I've slowly built it out of love over many, many years.
>> Vinyl only wins if you're filthy rich because you make money just by having money (yay capital gains cuts!) and you need something to pump money into to impress yourself or your friends
I got ratioed on this post, which is kinda fun. Hasn't ever happened to me that I can recall.
On one level, I don't agree with you. The ritual of playing records is a real thing. And folks should enjoy what they like.
On another level: yeah.
A record collection is an art collection.
That's okay, though.
I've had both. I prefer my art collection cause it weighs less. Neither are worth anywhere near what I put into them (my musical instrument collection is nice cause at least it keep in line with inflation).
Where I really agree with you: sterophile audio equipment ain't really much. That's different that a record collection though. Most of my record friends have old deep cuts and are playing on $300 players.
If it helps, there was a time around the first decade of this century when you find really, really cool stuff for, like $2/album. It used to be hella cheap to be a record collector.
Now though, especially if you factor in the audiophillic tendencies you point to, it very much has little to do with the medium and much to do with the milieu.
> If it helps, there was a time around the first decade of this century when you find really, really cool stuff for, like $2/album. It used to be hella cheap to be a record collector.
You still can, especially if you keep an open mind and are cool with spending $2 for a record just because it looks interesting but you have no idea what's on it and/or who the artist is. I've found so many fantastic records in the dollar/discount bins in recent years.
So clever, focusing on the hyperbolic sarcastic joke I made instead of my comments about how difficult vinyl is to store compared to a CD, or the fact that you degrade the record every time you listen to it, or the fact that vinyl has a fucking terrible SNR, or how easy it is to perfectly rip a CD to whatever digital file format is popular for the day.
Another thing is that vinyl discs, the actual discs, can be made incredibly fancy. Various colors, translucence, patterns, etc. Just look what kind of vinyls people now offer on bandcamp.
CDs, due to their nature, can't be made as gimmicky, so vinyls are a better conversation item and a better collector value, among other things.
Adam Savage did a pretty cool tour video[0] where he went through the Third Man Record's vinyl production process. It's not a particularly deep dive into the processes used, but it gives a great idea of how much work it takes to publish truly analogue recordings. Plus, Jack White makes an appearance to chat about the ways digital recording shaped music production.
I don't really like vinyl that much either, but I love music and simply can't help but respect the few people dedicated to such an arduous process.
I'm on Spotify and discovered by accident. I did record a few tracks as freelancer for a band, and they put my name there on Spotify so, hey, I have a page ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Vinyl is about active listening. Yes, it's much easier to put on a CD or stream the music, but when I want to sit down and really listen to the music... Vinyl is the perfect medium for that ritual. It's about the more visceral experience, not the fidelity or simplicity.
Some youtube guitar teacher said the streaming generation is even less commited than the CD era. The kids come up with a spotify generated playlist and ask "how to play .. that".
The thing is, it doesn't matter. In the age of the internet any remotely interesting has an order of magnitude more practitioners, just because the barriers to entry are so low.
It's not just the ability to learn. It's true internet facilitates and accelerate this by a wide margin. It's about grit and passion. Something in this whole field has shifted.
I've played with a whole lot of musicians who learned to play in the 50s, 60s, 70s, etc.
I think that if anything has changed, it's gotten better.
Like, the Beatles on Sullivan was a turning point for most of the 70-year-olds I play with. They all quit their music lessons, got into a garage band, and started playing shitty 3-chord rock.
That might setup a situation where "grit and passion" become, uh, marginally more important than the actual music. But making the posturing of the musician more important than the music isn't a big win for the general state of the art.
I initially thought that because the graph cites "Revenues by format" that it likely meant that CDs were still selling more units than vinyl records. But it appears that's not the case. At least according to another RIAA doc, in 1H 2021 they shipped 16.1m CDs and 17m LP/EPs.
Same... Except that in addition to a CD player my car also has its own "jukebox": a HDD on which I can upload either mp3 or wav files (but no FLAC sadly). The nav system shares the same HDD. To me its great: it's just enough technology, while still being off the big nasty Internet grid.
No worries about neither battery levels nor data caps nor corporate surveillance.
I've got a ~10 year old audi with the HDD as well as Dual SD Card Readers. When i first bought it I thought that was absurd, but now that i have it loaded up with multiple 128GB SD cards its actually a pretty good feature.
Most streaming services offer streams that are less than the quality of CDs since CDs are uncompressed PCM. I don't know what compression streaming services use and most people probably couldn't tell the difference between them and CDs. Though, with CDs, you own the license forever, there's no DRM, and you never have to pay again. You can use the music however you want within fair use.
Vinyl record is just a temporary fad. CDs will be the next thing. After all the only advantage vinyl records have over CD's is the bigger artwork on their covers. All the disadvantages: worse sound, scratches, getting worse for each play, storage, maintenance of the record and record player etc. will come back in mind.
People would still like to own their favorite music, however, both because you can't always rely on streaming having the right edition of your favorite records, but also because you can show off your collection as a cultural signifier in your home, - just like books.
The only advantage of vinyl is the older stuff was mastered properly, and people incorrectly attributed the "it sounds better" factor to the medium not the mastering:
This is one reason why I buy CDs from discogs.com - because I can specify which pressing to buy, and avoid the ones that have been remastered 2 or 3 times.
I will also buy from Mobile Fidelity (mofi.com), who sell audiophile heavyweight virgin vinyl and hybrid SACDs.
I think the plus side is also the experience that the format brings. Vinyl present itself as an alternative "romantic" experience compared with subscription services and just like books it has something inherently more relatable as something physical. The waveforms may be decreasing its quality each play but just like every object in the world which is nice.
The sound quality is worse, but that doesn’t mean it’s not preferable. If you listen to music with a decent dynamic range and has some breathing room, then the sonic qualities of vinyl can enhance that.
The same goes for cassettes. There’s been a (small) resurgence of cassettes, mostly from heavier types of music. There’s something about the harshness and hiss to tapes that fits really well with metal and punk.
As to the collection thing - a buddy has a growing vinyl collection and a decent, mid-range stereo that he pieces together. It’s a system much like my dad put together when I was growing up. Listening to music on a real sound system that you’ve tweaked to a particular room is a far more rewarding experience than ear buds or even the best headphones.
I find headphones to be isolating and uncomfortable after a short time. And playing music from a phone speaker is dreadful.
The only reason why sound quality would be "worse" on CD than on vinyl was already mentioned: It sometimes is, or at least used to be, intentionally mastered with less dynamic range. There is no way vinyl can otherwise compete with CDs dynamic range of 96dB at up to 22kHz.
But I get your point, the way a vinyl record and its player make the sound "worse" can potentially enhance the listening experience, even if a sound engineer could have applied the same effect on the audio that got put on the CD.
I'm still not sure if I agree with McLuhan that "the medium is the message", but I think it is definitely at least part of the message. There will always be something special about a first edition, an original manuscript, and hearing music on its native media.
And between headphones, phone speakers, audiophile sound systems, and live music, I choose all of them.
I think that playing music on real speakers and 'for the room' is the actual magic. If you put the same time and energy into just setting up a decent stereo system that works well then the medium doesn't mater.
> The sound quality is worse, but that doesn’t mean it’s not preferable. If you listen to music with a decent dynamic range and has some breathing room, then the sonic qualities of vinyl can enhance that.
So it’s a lot like taking photos with Instagram filters. You are distorting the signal but you think it looks/sounds better.
If the music industry could figure out a model where you bring a vinyl record to the store, and they give you a lossless digital copy, then that would be the best of both worlds. Basically the record serves as a physical license key.
You could also have a smart turntable with a camera on it, that automatically cues the digital version of any known record.
A lot of records come with download codes already.
People who want a physical way of interacting with their digital collection have done things like print tiny record sleeves that contain an NFC chip. Hold the sleeve up to your reader (like your phone) and that triggers the the songs on that record to play.
I started collecting vinyl as a preteen in the mid 2000s because I was (and still am) into rave music and at that time vinyl was THE format to find it on.
I’m not sure if I got in before the greater vinyl revival, but I wonder if it will prove to have just been a bubble, or if there are really enough audiophiles, DJs, etc to keep it going once the hipster chic wears off (if it hasn’t already)
Another theory - CDs popularity was always mainly about convenience and not sound quality. They lose out massively to streaming on this.
Streaming leaves music fans with money left over to spend and they buy vinyl to have something nice looking to put on the shelf (and play occasionally).
Because at a certain bitrate it is impossible for listeners to distinguish it from the uncompressed audio. I think at 160kbit for mp3 damn near 99% of the population couldn't tell even with a very high quality set of gear.
With AAC and other modern codecs it's probably closer to 128.
For me the biggest annoyance is that some bluetooth audio codecs are pretty trash (thankfully most everything supports the ones that are decent), you can't configure any of it or even tell what codec has been negotiated between your phone and stereo, and I don't think any car company publishes what codecs their radios support.
I used to agree with this but even with my (quite old) ears can hear the difference between high bitrate compressed audio and lossless on (eg) Apple Music - I wonder if other aspects of the audio have improved and no longer mask the differences?
There was a foobar2000 plugin that I used for this and I could tell a difference but it was not easy. I had to listen intensely to higher frequencies like hi-hats. If I did not know that I was being tested I would never know the difference.
I collect/archive music in FLAC but convert down to mp3 when syncing to devices.
Apple Music switches between lossless and compressed depending on bandwidth and tells you on the screen whether it's on lossless or not.
I find myself feeling that audio quality mid track has worsened and look at the screen to have it confirmed that it isn't lossless any more. Of course I don't know what the compressed bitrate is - so it could be quite low in these scenarios - but subjectively the quality isn't awful, just a bit worse.
High bitrate mp3 == flac/wav/cd rip in terms of listening experience. I don't get why they would say mp3 was better, is it better because sound quality is essentially equal but is significantly smaller?
I have a lot of vinyl. The consumption of space in my house is a significant problem. The CDs are much less of a problem, and streaming/mp3s are no problem at all.
Several of us in this thread. My reason is simple: I do like the "CD quality" and do like to own my music. I do buy CDs and I do rip them to FLAC (for listening at home and as a backup) and convert them to mp3 for my silly car (which accepts mp3 and wav but not FLAC).
I still own well over 1500 vinyl albums from the 1960s to 1980s. (From a tape mastering service that closed down in the 1990s, so pristine vinyl, radio stations would play the tapes made from the records.) Sentimental value…never played now.
Own lots of music digitally purchased or copied from owned CDs. Over the years most of the transferred-from-CD music has been replaced by purchased digital for the convenience of using iTunes. My iTunes library is very large. I can listen to my library for half a year without ever repeating a track.
I own 1000+ CDs. And I regularly purchase more. Often after having purchased one or more tracks from the album online.
If I find an entire album I really like, I don’t mind the expense of purchasing a CD and online content. But it has to be really good and an artist I want to support.
1. I don’t need an Internet connection to play my CD. A $30 CD player will suffice.
2. My CD will still be making its music freely available for 50-100 years.
3. There is no recurring per-use/per-month fee for playing my CD.
4. No company can arbitrarily make my CD music unavailable.
5. My CD tracks are good enough sound quality for me, except perhaps loudness war legacy tracks. Skip-free, scratch-free, high fidelity, great dynamic range. On a $30 CD player.
6. My CD isn’t part of any playlist market manipulation. My CD isn’t trying to sell me anything other than itself. It’s all about the music, man.
7. I can resell my CD if I so choose to someone else who shares my interest in my CD. After deleting any backup digital copy I may have made of my CD.
8. My CD is part of a simple musical ecosystem. I can take my CD from my home stereo to my portable player to my car player without Internet glitches or firmware updates or software incompatibilities or rights management nightmares.
9. My new CD costs $15-20, as little as $2-3 in boxed sets or used. One time, upfront. Every use for the next 50 years or more costs nothing…it doesn’t degrade with wear.
10. With CD changers, a set of my CDs can provide much of the same functions as online or streaming playlists. For a one-time $150 cost. No Internet. No hassles.
11. My CDs reflect and physically document my (hopefully) evolved taste in music. I do trust other music enthusiasts’ recommendations on what I might eventually purchase, but wouldn’t trust your average SV algorithm for immediate shut-up-and-listen playlists.
I like my CDs. I selectively want to add to my collection. And the relative difficulty in getting used CDs that are out-of-print nowadays suggests that others share my predilection. My CD collection might be worth today more than its original purchase price, or may be in the future if streaming doesn’t clean up its act.
What I want to know is, if CDs are so unpopular now, why is it so hard to find used CDs for sail? I can buy DVDs and BluRays off of craigslist for cheaper than CDs...
Find some used record stores (they usually sell any used media) in your area. You'll usually find prices way below what you're going to find online. Even when the unit price is on par with online prices you're not paying any shipping.
The incongruity of there consistently being anti-plastic and also pro-record articles and comments on HN has me scratching my head. Do people not care that records are made of PVC and that the pressing process results in loads of toxic chemicals or does their weird obsession with a clunky format and bad audio justify all the negatives? I am truly perplexed by this one.
I buy vinyl mostly to support artists (I maintain a streaming account too because it's more convinient), but also because I inherited my mom's collection and my kids will be able to inherit mine. I've got vinyl from 60 years ago that still plays just fine. It's like a book for music really. Plus they look nice. It's a fine medium.
This makes sense. I have not bought a CD in well over a decade, because high bitrate MP3 or FLAC are so much more convenient.
I doubt a lot of people buy CDs because they like CDs. Vinyl is something else, though, especially if you consider electronic music and DJ culture. And then there's people who insist Vinyl just sounds better, which may or may not be a placebo effect. And I remember when CDs became popular, some people complained that Vinyl was just more aesthetically pleasing because of the cover art and picture discs.
So yeah, it makes sense. I guess Vinyl is going to stay around much longer than CDs.
This is changing. You can actually thank youtube and spotify for the win here. Since they normalize volumes, there's no point to try and make things as high volume as possible. you're actually better making a fuller sounding track that uses the dynamic range.
You're right, and that's genuine good work by YouTube and spotify. I wonder, though, if that practice has had any ripple effect into recorded mediums such as cds?
I'm glad you like that particular album. You used the word "trust". Just pointing out that you can't always trust the audio that was cut to vinyl to not just be the same old "loudness war" master.
However, as someone else pointed out, the peak (heh) of the "loudness war" has been over for a while now.
That doesn't mean there aren't new albums (be it on vinyl or CD, or lossless digital) that are still terribly mixed and mastered.
After all, it's easier than ever to get your music to be published these days.
I just ordered a turntable and some records recently, I caved. Not gonna lie, I love the ritual and physicality of it. I'm just going to go bankrupt because I can't help myself :)
My favorite detail about vinyl is precisely the counter-narrative to how CDs were marketed when they first landed: they are impermanent. Playing a vinyl record is a physically destructive process, so every time you listen to a record, that’s the best it will ever sound again. I personally find that alluring; it helps me listen more attentively.
Disclaimer: I no longer own any physical media music; mine was lost years ago, and acquiring more stuff doesn’t play nice with raising young kids.
I thought I'd posted this, but now I don't see it, so:
I bought 100 boxes for shipping records, and listed my collection on Discogs. Now I've used up all the boxes.
For me, I digitized the ones I wanted, and now they're on a microSD card in my phone. That works for me, since I can play it in the car, but I'm happy that someone who really wanted the vinyl now has it. I know I never played them.
A brand new vinyl record? I doubt it's worth it, but hey, if that's what you like, go for it.
How good is the quality of newly reissued vinyl of old material? I'm not making comparisons to digital or CD versions but to old vinyl issues. The reason is that I heard from multiple sources that new vinyl records quality isn't on par with original ones. Did anyone experience that? If true, might it be related to new records being printed off a mastering copy that was intended for CDs?
I know one recent example: Billie Eilish's record was supposed to sound bad on vinyl because it was not mastered for the format. If it happened to her, I'm sure it happens all the time.
Thanks, I hope they don't sound like many records from the mid-late 90s whose duration was aligned to the CD version, around 1 hour, and therefore the print had to reduce significantly the grooves width and space between them to fit the material on a single record. This was accomplished also by lowering the sound level, therefore ruining the already not great signal to noise ratio of that media.
Last I checked (a few years back), vinyl sales were also supply-limited rather than demand-limited, since there was (again, last I checked) a shortage of equipment for producing vinyl records. If the supply capacity had been available, vinyl would have passed CD's a few years ago.
Of course, this year sales of just about everything are supply-limited...
I buy records because I like physical objects and reading the liner notes. I've been listening to music, sitting in the midst of a pile of records, since the 70s.
But I buy CDs too -- mostly used -- because it's a great, inexpensive way to get high bitrate music.
I love vinyl vs. whatever threads. Rationality flies out the window and everyone spontaneously grows golden ears, except they can’t hear pops and hisses with them.
Simply put - nobody wants/needs CDs. They are too bloody fragile and get damaged real fast. At least that's how I remember them based on my experience with them years ago.
So let's say CD usage is going towards ZERO. Vinyl is more of a fad/hobby/experience/collection thingie? So their sale is going up i.e above ZERO?
They do?! I don't remember that. Damaged CDs that would skip or hang were not super uncommon, but they had to take quite a lot of abuse until problems even became audible.
But especially in comparison with vinyl records, which was the context here, CDs seemed almost indestructible. It was one of their selling points: Even visibly fine vinyl records still skip sometimes, while a CD that picked up tons of scratches sitting on someone's desk would still play fine.
Not a big surprise given that CDs have their data with lots of redundance below a protective coat, while on a vinyl record the surface is the data...
I buy them. They get immediately ripped but now I have uncompressed audio originals, compressed versions with the settings I want, and an album's worth of music played in the order intended by the artist. Streaming individual tracks sucks for live albums and concept pieces that depend on the flow between tracks.
I'm honestly shocked that anyone even still makes them. Like I don't even own a device that is capable of reading a CD anymore. I'd imagine 90+ plus of Americans don't.
With a more convenient option such as streaming, all the benefits that CD provided over vinyl became meaningless, as streaming/file storage beat it in every aspect. But vinyl still stayed, as it provides something that neither CDs nor streaming/digital file storage can provide. So as CDs got wiped as a medium, vinyl rose back.
I have observed a similar situation in a completely different industry too. More specifically, with book stores. Before big bookstore chains, we had a lot of independent small book stores (following my earlier analogy, the vinyl). Big chain book stores started appearing and dominating, such as Barnes&Noble (the CD), squeezing out smaller independent book stores. Then came Amazon (the streaming/digital file storage, still following my earlier analogy with music), wiped the floor with the in-betweener medium (Barnes&Noble), and the number of small independent book stores (vinyl) has increased over that entire time period as the in-betweener got wiped. For specific numbers, the number of small independent book stores in the US has increased by about 50% over the past decade (from around 1,600 to 2,500)[0].
Unlike with the in-betweener formats, the original ones will always have something to provide that the future iteration of a "more advanced format" (CD=>streaming) won't be able to provide. And with this in mind, I am happy, as it indicates that physical books and vinyls will be here to stay (albeit not for mainstream usage, but as personal preference pieces for enthusiasts). This isn't some hard rule that is guaranteed to be the case forever, but the current numbers and observations seem to support the idea that this trend will likely last for quite a long time, beyond lifetimes of people currently alive. That's just a pure guess based on the gut feeling.
0. https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2020/02/12/how-indi...