vinyl coming back?
From CNN:
Sometimes, nostalgia is BS. In the DJ world, LPs are still going strong, if you are a real DJ you use vinyl. I was having this very conversation with a DJ at the REX club on the night of Jeff Mills. Jeff of course uses CD, I don't even bother with physical I am completely digital with Ableton and what not. But it is funny how many people cling to the old ways. The old ways are even making a come-back.
They claim it is not nostalgia, it is because "vinyl sounds better". Whatever.
This spring, an employee intending to order a special CD-DVD edition of R.E.M.'s latest release "Accelerate" inadvertently entered the "LP" code instead. Soon boxes of the big, vinyl discs showed up at several stores.
Some sent them back. But a handful put them on the shelves, and 20 LPs sold the first day.
Sometimes, nostalgia is BS. In the DJ world, LPs are still going strong, if you are a real DJ you use vinyl. I was having this very conversation with a DJ at the REX club on the night of Jeff Mills. Jeff of course uses CD, I don't even bother with physical I am completely digital with Ableton and what not. But it is funny how many people cling to the old ways. The old ways are even making a come-back.
They claim it is not nostalgia, it is because "vinyl sounds better". Whatever.
Comments
About every kind of genre you can think of from 1990 till around 2002. I kinda got burned out on buying vinyl after that because most of it was crap.
LOL, about the "most of it was crap", yah that is a problem with EDM in general and the reason I like the digital format. I buy a lot I listen and rank and so when it suck I just don't care and not listen to it but it has cost me $2 and it doesn't take space.
On a related note I was talking with the guys from above and beyond and their plan was "CD on demand", so you would listen and print a CD that got shipped to you. I was wondering if the cost of vinyl was worth it, probably not as you would have to create a plate and press the stuff. The benefit though is that you don't deal with the storage of the vinyl, just print from a central location, this way you can have vinyl on demand. I haven't looked at the economics of it and I wonder if there is a viable business model there. In the meantime my money is on ALL digital.
strictly speaking WAV forms are step function approximation of the curves. So while you can never "theoretically"represent the curve the approximation is pretty darn good. Also when rendering the step functions the speakers are by definition "analog" in other words I would be surprised if you can really tell anything about the step nature. Finally I gotta admit that I DO HAVE SOMETHING FOR VINYL, it is the random "scrchhh scrchhh scrchhh" that SCREAM VINYL when you listen to an old record, it feels right. In fact there is function in Ableton LIVE that enables you to add random VINYL NOISE to a record so it sounds "organic". But let's not kid each other, it has nothing to do with resolution but rather is linked to the fact that "wear and tear" on a record sounds good :)
But even if I think just in terms of sound quality, my ears prefer vinyl.
as Elvira is listening to one of my mixes of Shame (disco) on return of the Dragons (techno) she says yelling because she has the headphones on: "IT IS KIND OF SCRATCHY! IS IT SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THAT?" Yes, it is a vinyl source :)