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Topic: Why do you like Vinyl? (Read 40343 times) previous topic - next topic
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Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #25 –
I like the whole experience. The Saturday morning searching through thrift shops, you never know if you'll find that rare record and when you do you get a little buzz and you can retreat with your find and have a coffee.
Take it home give it a clean and listen. I guess my musical tastes are for older music some of which never found it's way onto CD and anyway I prefer to have the big artwork and an original–it really is 'something' I don't expect everyone to feel the way I do.
For me it's about the search and enjoyment.
YMMV

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #26 –
I rarely listen to my hundreds of vinyl, but I am gradually playing them into my digital library.  I certainly can't afford to mass replace them, and many are simply not available anymore (think 50's releases).  Yes, they have more noise than CD.  Yes, they have pops and ticks.  Yes, my old B&O turntable died, and I don't currently have a good one... 

The current library has 181 gigs of files, 8563 separate tracks, mostly lossless FLAC, and it sounds great.

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #27 –
As someone who grew up with cassette tapes and CDs, I fully understand why some people really enjoy vinyl. From the large-scale cover art, to the ritual of unsleeving the record, carefully cleaning off flecks of dust with a carbon fiber brush, manually placing the needle in the correct groove and the 'warm' sound. It's all about the ritual and enjoyment of playing music. I can see how fussing over an analog format can enhance that enjoyment, it's a hobby. And if you're not playing music to enjoy it, why even bother?

Personally, vinyl doesn't hold any special significance to me apart from its historical importance in bringing music to the masses. I buy lots of CDs, though.

It's only when vinyl fanatics start to claim that records are more accurate or technically superior to CDs that I start to twitch.

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #28 –
I guess it comes down to "playing with it".

First there is getting records. I usually get mine either from 2nd hand shops. Sometimes I'll buy a new album on Amazon though. Most of my records have been passed on to me from my dad.

Listening to them is almost a little event, because there's cueing the needle, then the cover art, etc.

I like refurbishing old records and bringing them back to sound better, by cleaning the grooves etc. It may sound silly to some, but as a hobby, it's interesting.

Watching a record play, is pretty much as interesting as watching a reel-to-reel machine play. It's pretty awesome to look at, and by today's standards, almost incredible, that this mechanical thing actually makes this music.

Well kept, good quality vinyls sound amazing. I grew up listening to CDs, and cassette tapes when I was a small kid. Everything that came before CDs meant very bad quality in my mind. It's quite impressive, that an old 70's LP sounds this good. Surely not as good as a "modern" CD, but for such an old medium impressive. Before I started to get into Vinyl, in my mind everything before the CD must sound like a cheap Dynaflex record or crappy C60 cassette.

To me listening to Vinyl is not so much about quality, as it is about the music itself and the experience.

I love getting records as presents, etc.

The second part of the question was, why do I prefer Vinyl over listening on my computer. I don't actually.
I listen to most of my music from digital media. But listening to a Vinyl every know and then, especially when sitting with friends, etc. that's always nice.

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #29 –
I love vinyl. I also love digital. At least... I do now. I remember the first time I heard a CD and was expecting something marvellous. I heard something massively underwhelming.

Then the record shops (in the UK at least) forced people to adopt CD by relegating vinyl to a tiny browser box in the corner and the record companies also restricted the chance for people to vote with their wallets by ramping down vinyl production to virtually nothing. LPs massacred shellac 78s in a fair fight. The contest between LP and CD was as fixed as a WWE wrestling match.

After a while, CD players started to sound a bit better and I could get a genuine thrill from the sound. I was pretty pleased at last, but it had taken a while.

Then I started hearing about computer audio and took my first stumbling steps. It didn't really grip me 'til I bypassed the computer's line out by using an external DAC, and ditched MP3s for lossless. Revelation! I no longer own a CD player; all discs are ripped as soon as they are unwrapped.

Now the majority of my listening is digital, although quite a bit of it is digitised vinyl. I buy mainly second-hand and find the selection of LPs in any of the shops I visit is so much more varied and interesting than the CD section. And most of the prices are cheap enough that you can take a punt on something that looks interesting and if it stinks, it's no great loss.

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #30 –
Quote from: 2tec on
Quote
Vinyl compared to regular music

By regular, I assume you mean digital.


I wasn't the OP, but to me "regular music" is live performance.  If it's acoustic instruments, then preferably without a sound system.  As they used to say in the Coke ads, "It's the real thing!" 



Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #32 –
Quote from: DonP on
Quote from: 2tec on
Quote
Vinyl compared to regular music

By regular, I assume you mean digital.


I wasn't the OP, but to me "regular music" is live performance.  If it's acoustic instruments, then preferably without a sound system.  As they used to say in the Coke ads, "It's the real thing!"

I have heard some unbelievably bad-sounding live concerts. Nothing is perfect, but in a couple of incidences, I'd have been better off listening to a wax cylinder. Sometimes "the real thing" can be bloody awful and a lot LOT worse than even a bad recording. Of course, on the other hand, there are times when I've been completely blown away by the immediacy and wonder of a live experience.

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #33 –
Quote from: look_Sharp on
I like the whole experience. The Saturday morning searching through thrift shops, you never know if you'll find that rare record and when you do you get a little buzz and you can retreat with your find and have a coffee...


Exactly. It's the thrill of the hunt. Sometimes I'm flipping through some used bin and come across a mint "holy shit!" find, inspect the record for imperfections, and go home smug and pleased with myself for grabbing that original Aldo Nova pressing for chump-change.

When I get home I carbon-brush it on my 'table and gently lower my overpriced cart onto the vinyl. After about twenty stylus-snapping pops, a mere ten minutes into Side A, I'm cursing everyone I recall coming in contact with that day.

Flip the record as "mint" on eBay rinse and repeat. Why anybody cares about boring CDs is beyond me. They all sound exactly the same and are too easily obtained.
The Loudness War is over. Now it's a hopeless occupation.

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #34 –
After growing up with records played on so-so systems i got myself a Goldring GR1.2 10 years ago and got into vinyl a bit - I stopped when the collection was getting too big!

I love the sound of vinyl, but it fills my flat up!

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #35 –
Must say, I am a pretty young guy compared to many of you. I've never seen vinyl IRL except from videos and pictures. Of course, I don't have the same nostalgia, rituals, etc as many of you guys might. To me it's just extra work. I was shown a vinyl rip of some tracks I like and I heard pops and cracks which I felt detracted from the experience. Unless I'm listening to like, 1920s music (a la Fallout3 radio), I don't want those types of sounds in my track.

Do you think the younger generation and future generations will all ditch vinyl and eventually it'll just disappear forever? Or maybe there will also be a group of people that finds it interesting.
Quote from: DVDdoug on
Quote
And as usual, this goes from people talking about why they haven't completely abandoned vinyl to other people talking about how vinyl sucks and they wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole.

I'm pretty sure the OP wasn't asking for the participation of people who hate or no longer listen to vinyl. Why the Vinyl forum is even being paid attention to by such people, I don't even know.
"Why do you like VHS tapes?"  "Why do you like Hondas?"

The question  contains a (potentially) false premise.  The results of this "survey" would misleading if only vinyl lovers respond.

Yeah, I was originally looking for replies from people who like vinyl, just to hear their side of the story.

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #36 –
Don't assume that the older generation is nostalgic for vinyl. I grew up with it and put up with all of its limitations for years, but the day I got my first CD player, my turntable and ALL of my records went into the trash. I have never regretted that.

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #37 –
Quote from: pdq on
Don't assume that the older generation is nostalgic for vinyl. I grew up with it and put up with all of its limitations for years, but the day I got my first CD player, my turntable and ALL of my records went into the trash. I have never regretted that.

A friend of mine did the same and just dumped his big LP collection instead of taking it to the second-hand shop. He didn't tell me until afterwards, and he had some nice stuff I'd happily have taken off his hands. The swine. 

CDs are less hassle, of course, and the advent of the format also coincided with a massive increase in the reissue industry, without which I would never have discovered all sorts of great records.

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #38 –
Quote from: polemon on
... ... ...by today's standards, almost incredible, that this mechanical thing actually makes this music.


It's not as incredible as how a sequence of numerical values makes music! Maybe one of the things about records that people like is the the fact that they can comprehend that the vibration of the stylus in the grooves leads to the vibration of the speaker. It leaves out the electronics completely, but people feel that "analogue" is sort-of more natural. I don't remember if I ever felt like that: I certainly don't now, perhaps because I now admit that I have little real understanding of either system.

Quote from: Dark_wizzie on
Must say, I am a pretty young guy compared to many of you. I've never seen vinyl IRL except from videos and pictures.

Hah! I grew up with shellac! 78RPM.

Not so much because "vinyl" didn't exist in the 1950s (it did, I guess) but more because my parents were not interested in updating the family music.

Quote from: pdq on
Don't assume that the older generation is nostalgic for vinyl. I grew up with it and put up with all of its limitations for years, but the day I got my first CD player, my turntable and ALL of my records went into the trash. I have never regretted that.


A youngster would have given you good money for that!

However little used, I could never bring myself to throw away my records, or my deck. I have LPs bought in the 1960s, played with blunt styli and ceramic cartridges, now completely unplayable, but, they are still like photos in a family photo album.

Yes, there is a lot of nostalgia in why I like vinyl.

In fact, I really, really wish my mum hadn't thrown the 78s away
The most important audio cables are the ones in the brain

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #39 –
My Dad's still got his 78s, and built a double-sized horn for his old gramophone. Even better, we found an old bloke in the next village who made him a whole load of the correct size/shape wooden needles for the pickup. My Dad had run out of them ages ago and so hadn't been able to use the gramophone. He had a Leak turntable that would handle 78s, so we could still listen to the 78s through the regular hi-fi.

The sound through that big horn? Well, it's not hi-fi - not even close! - but it is rather fun for the occasional listen. Just a big, mid-rangey sound that fills the room.

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #40 –
I like this topic!

I don't know if I'm too young for vinyl or not. I'm 28. My mom and her sister had a lot of vinyls, but she took them away wit her so i actually never listened to vinyl during my childhood. My first possession of music comes from compact cassettes. Then i got my first PC, i met with mp3, remember how excited was about the sound of a 128kbps mp3 file.  And it's just like ten years ago when i noticed how good digital can sound with lossless tracks. Nowadays I'm only collecting lossless music.

Vinyl is still make me curious, sometimes I'm searching the net for turntable videos and just watch. I do sometimes thinking about buying a turntable and some vinyls, but in the end I'm always finding it needless. It's more the playback technology which amazes me, not the vinyl collecting.

I think vinyl is something you had to live with to appreciate it's importance, when it was the best thing you can get. I suppose it's the same thing as retro computing. Nobody understands why i love the Commodore 64 so much for example. And if you think about how much powerful and better today's PCs are it seem silly even for me. But what matters to me is the memories and countless hours of enjoyment it gave to me. And it's good to have nostalgy and just turn on the old thing and remember those joyful days of my life as a kid
I have the same "buy it or not" thing with the Amiga 1200 as with the vinyl for example. A classmate of mine had this machine and i was so excited every time i had the opportunity to go and play something on it. It would be good to posses one right now, but then i realize how much i don't know about it, and i don't feel i would really invest time to learn how it was working and what kind of games we were playing together. Though I'm still amazed everytime i see some demos or games running on an Amiga.  The same thing goes for vinyl.

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #41 –
Quote from: JabbaThePrawn on
My Dad's still got his 78s, and built a double-sized horn for his old gramophone. Even better, we found an old bloke in the next village who made him a whole load of the correct size/shape wooden needles for the pickup.
That sounds intriguing. Is it like one of these?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MA957TfmIs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCGqHaEEvWg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdGWCZTUqlg

Cheers,
David.

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #42 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
Quote from: JabbaThePrawn on
My Dad's still got his 78s, and built a double-sized horn for his old gramophone. Even better, we found an old bloke in the next village who made him a whole load of the correct size/shape wooden needles for the pickup.
That sounds intriguing. Is it like one of these?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MA957TfmIs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCGqHaEEvWg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdGWCZTUqlg

Cheers,
David.

I got an error message on the second clip, but my dad's is very much like the one in the third, except it has an electric motor (it probably was wind-up when originally built). One of his 78s is Rachmaninov playing one of his own piano concertos, although disc 1 is broken.

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #43 –
Quote from: darkbyte on
I think vinyl is something you had to live with to appreciate it's importance, when it was the best thing you can get.


Only thing we could get! It was, simply, just the way music came, so we didn't think much about it at the the time.

Actually, that is not quite true, because, if I remember correctly, the "audiophiles" of the day looked at LPs as being second rate: their reel-to-reel tape machines were, to them, the way to listen to music! Tuners and the BBC (yes, I grew up in UK) were also highly regarded and, perhaps, the source of many of their treasured tapes.

Now, in common usage, "analogue," means vinyl disk, and nothing else.

(Sorry, I suppose that has little to do with why you, I, or anyone else likes vinyl, but it seems to fit into the picture somewhere. I hope)


The most important audio cables are the ones in the brain

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #44 –
The stereo LP is such a good medium, it's still in production, despite CDs being a more faithful, higher fidelity replication of the studio recording, superior in every audible way, unless one argues LP's added noise and distortions are "beneficial".

What's interesting is that the improvement in sound that stereo LPs offered, at the time, is actually demonstrated (albeit in a rather embellished manner), on the very first stereo LP! Jump to 7m40s into this video to experience it:
http://youtu.be/iAjM7HqQXFM?t=7m42s

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #45 –
Quote from: Thad E Ginathom on
Quote from: darkbyte on
I think vinyl is something you had to live with to appreciate it's importance, when it was the best thing you can get.


Only thing we could get! It was, simply, just the way music came, so we didn't think much about it at the the time.

Actually, that is not quite true, because, if I remember correctly, the "audiophiles" of the day looked at LPs as being second rate: their reel-to-reel tape machines were, to them, the way to listen to music! Tuners and the BBC (yes, I grew up in UK) were also highly regarded and, perhaps, the source of many of their treasured tapes.

Now, in common usage, "analogue," means vinyl disk, and nothing else.

(Sorry, I suppose that has little to do with why you, I, or anyone else likes vinyl, but it seems to fit into the picture somewhere. I hope)

Reel-to-reel was pretty specialist for most of my formative years. The main alternative to vinyl was the compact cassette. Having had to fill in some paperwork recently, I notice that my ability to gauge how narrow to write to fit everything on the width of a cassette j-card has, sadly, atrophied.

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #46 –
It's all analogue - no DACs in the way! That is, while I save up for a decent Hugo DAC or similar..!

I got a nice Goldring and frequented car boot sales/rummage sales a few years ago - now I can't as I don't have the space for more records!

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #47 –
Quote from: JabbaThePrawn on
Reel-to-reel was pretty specialist for most of my formative years. The main alternative to vinyl was the compact cassette. Having had to fill in some paperwork recently, I notice that my ability to gauge how narrow to write to fit everything on the width of a cassette j-card has, sadly, atrophied.

It was pretty high-end in mine.
The most important audio cables are the ones in the brain

Why do you like Vinyl?

Reply #48 –
Quote from: JabbaThePrawn on
I got an error message on the second clip, but my dad's is very much like the one in the third, except it has an electric motor (it probably was wind-up when originally built). One of his 78s is Rachmaninov playing one of his own piano concertos, although disc 1 is broken.
There's various models pictured here (in an attempt to match the serial numbers to the date of manufacture)...
http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewtopic...=11&t=15383

Plenty of discussion in this forum...
http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewforum.php?f=11

Cheers,
David.