[JohnnyCanuck]

You youngsters give up too easily.  

 

[GearMe]

After growing up in the 60's, college and military in the 70's, and working for record and film companies and radio stations in the 80's I collected a rather large vinyl collection and many thousands of dollars worth of high-end turntable paraphernalia  In 2005-2006 I sold or gave it all away and joined the digital revolution.  Now my rather large music collection lives on a 9Tb hard drive array and I will never go back to the drudgery of vinyl.  Go for it ye hipsters, and may ye find your holy grail.  But me, I've been there done that and I ain't never going back!  This was one wall...

Same here -- never replaced all of my albums though. Seeing Tubular Bells made me think of that...

 

[swspiers]

After growing up in the 60's, college and military in the 70's, and working for record and film companies and radio stations in the 80's I collected a rather large vinyl collection and many thousands of dollars worth of high-end turntable paraphernalia  In 2005-2006 I sold or gave it all away and joined the digital revolution.  Now my rather large music collection lives on a 9Tb hard drive array and I will never go back to the drudgery of vinyl.  Go for it ye hipsters, and may ye find your holy grail.  But me, I've been there done that and I ain't never going back!  This was one wall...

I seriously used to covet such a wall. Being married to a marine, and moving every 3 years made me get rid of even my CD collection.

 

[JohnnyCanuck]

  Same here -- never replaced all of my albums though. Seeing Tubular Bells made me think of that...

 
I have both the CD and the album that I bought when it was originally released.  The vinyl version still sounds better.

 

[valiant66]

And that's why we backup everything on an offline cold hard drive. My internal storage is my main storage and a 3TB external hard drive is my backup. Replace after every 3 years

Based on my experience a single backup is insufficient.
 
I've rebuilt my computer (sans data - we'll see what THAT's going to cost!) so it has a boot drive and a backup drive in the chassis, I've got a separate external drive, and I've made arrangements with a buddy that we'll get together once a month and exchange backups to provide off-site backup. Also, a good excuse to share good scotch with a good friend I don't get to see in person enough.
 
And my internal boot drive is 4tb. The one that crashed was 3tb. There's no way to back that up to the cloud. I had a Backblaze subscription for 6 months - in that time it backed up less than a quarter of my data and I got angry calls from my bandwidth provider telling me I'd gone over my allocation.

 

[valiant66]

 

  I sank probably hundreds of hours into metadata on my iTunes collection

 
Unless you are completely married to the Apple ecosystem, I would highly recommend not using itunes to organize your music library. Save your metadata to the actual song files themselves with an external tagging program if you have to.

I'm not "married" to the Apple ecosystem, but I find it convenient and by-and-large simple to understand and use. I haven't found anything better than iTunes for music organization, and specifically find the Genius playlist feature compelling.
 
I hate what they've done with the interface over the last three revs though. I was/(am?) obsessive about album art, and they've made it harder and harder to manage that with every rev.

 

[Ableza]

I seriously used to covet such a wall. Being married to a marine, and moving every 3 years made me get rid of even my CD collection.

I moved thousands of LPs back and forth across the country at least three times in my 9 years in the Navy. 

 

[valiant66]

 

   
I lived in the UK back in the day, and I read the hi-fi (what they called it before someone invented "audiophile") magazines. Some highly respected bespectacled boffin opined (and I believed him, based on personal experimentation) that the highest fidelity musical experience available to the house-bound was live FM.
 
 ...

 
The BBC used 13 bit 32 kHz (later 14 bit 32 kHz compressed to 10 bits) digital channels to distribute the signals to their transmitter sites, starting in 1972. Enthusiasts who called CD a step backwards from analogue had been listening to digital for years...
 
The BBC PCM/NICAM Story

Interesting. Thanks for the link!

 

[Armaegis]

 
I'm not "married" to the Apple ecosystem, but I find it convenient and by-and-large simple to understand and use. I haven't found anything better than iTunes for music organization, and specifically find the Genius playlist feature compelling.
 
I hate what they've done with the interface over the last three revs though. I was/(am?) obsessive about album art, and they've made it harder and harder to manage that with every rev.

I haven't touched itunes in years specifically because of how limited my control was over my library. I switched to JRiver and while it has a higher learning curve, the full control it grants me is vastly superior.
 
I'm unaware of what options are available for Mac however.

 

[valiant66]

Well, in the spirit of retail therapy, I dropped the dime on a Modi 2 Uber. My old Museatex Bitstream DAC only does 44.1 or 48, so we'll see what all the fuss is about this newfangled 24/96 and 24/192.
 
Actually, I guess it's a double dime because between the added Pyst USB cable and international shipping to Canada, I'm looking at around two c-notes.

 

[BackToAnalogue]

  An interesting write-up on the surge in vinyl sales and the struggles of the industry to cope with demand using aging manufacturing equipment...
 
The Biggest Music Comeback of 2014: Vinyl Records
Sales of LPs Surge 49% but Aging Factories Struggle to Keep Pace
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-biggest-music-comeback-of-2014-vinyl-records-1418323133?mobile=y&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB11008785394923453828404580286740594635852.html

I agree this is very interesting. It is a definite trend. I hadn't heard of an 11 yr old asking for a record player but I know of lots in the 18-30 age group who have done recently. When 11 yr olds start wanting one then it may have moved into the next stage of growth.
 
I have read a few other articles like this recently.
 
If any of you have started to buy new LPs in vinyl format again recently like I have, then I expect that you have also noticed that the quality of the pressings (and so obviously the mastering as well) is really high. I hear virtually no 'vinyl roar' on these at all, even on the run-in it at the start of the record. The fact that we all know unconsciously that we always hear this 'roar' first whenever we play a new record is part of the 'wow' effect the first time we hear a CD (almost certainly Mark Knopfler if you are over 45), it just starts without any warning and that is very effective and enjoyable.
 
The standard of the LPs I have bought this year (Tom Petty, Ryan Adams, Hurray for the Riff Raff, OCMS, Led Zep re-issues, 'Mr Shaky' - Live at the Cellar Door etc)  is as high as it was for first pressings in both the UK and USA (and several other countries, but collectors value these ones most) until around 1973. Then the deterioration in standards began. Those of you who think that vinyl is crackly, sometimes even fuzzy or 'sibilant', sounds like it has 'static' on it, sounds muddy etc are almost certainly absolutely right about that. You have probably only heard the shoddy product that they started to ship out from 73 onwards. By the late 70s some pressings, particularly of big sellers that were long past their first pressing run, were really appalling. I have kept hold of several of the worst examples that I have found in collections because one day I would like to be able to give a talk about this. I wasn't very aware of this at the time when it was happening because, as a real 'muso' who bought stuff when it was released or from second hand shops if it was older, most of my LPs are first pressings. But I always knew that anything on CBS or RCA UK (though I think RCA US may have been even worse) after 73, always sounded a bit lacking at best and bloody awful quite often.
 
An interesting question to ponder.
 
If the above is all true;
 
from this article we also know that they are using exactly the same pressing equipment, (the last Master cutting machine ever made was made in 1980), in the same plants, using the same material (vinyl) as they did in the 80s and 90s;
 
so what is the reason for this huge difference in product quality?

 

[madwolfa]

  I agree this is very interesting. It is a definite trend. I hadn't heard of an 11 yr old asking for a record player but I know of lots in the 18-30 age group who have done recently. When 11 yr olds start wanting one then it may have moved into the next stage of growth.

 
I'm 30 and I'm definitely buying a record player at some point in future (when I get some extra space). But I'm not looking for any improvement in sound, I've just enjoyed LPs a lot as a kid and feel nostalgic...

 

[JohnnyCanuck]

   
If the above is all true;
 
from this article we also know that they are using exactly the same pressing equipment, (the last Master cutting machine ever made was made in 1980), in the same plants, using the same material (vinyl) as they did in the 80s and 90s;
 
so what is the reason for this huge difference in product quality?

 
When the beancounters took over the audio industry back in the 70s (which coincided with America's first oil shortage) there was a switch from using virgin vinyl to using recycled/reclaimed vinyl in the pressing of the discs.  To compound this they went to ever thinner vinyl all to save costs.  None of these moves were good from a sonic point of view.
 
Current vinyl releases are typically 180 or even 200 grams which reduces warps and those companies actually doing the pressing today CARE about the end product.
 
The mastering machines in use today are completely rebuilt with current state-of-the-art (tube) amplifiers, they are not the 'same' machines as were used in the 80s.
 
The biggest difference, IMO though is the tremendous increase in quality of the replay equipment.  Even the entry level turntables and phono preamps today are light-years ahead of what was available back then.

 

[madwolfa]

  so what is the reason for this huge difference in product quality?

 
I guess two words - Quality Control... 

 

[Eee Pee]

  If any of you have started to buy new LPs in vinyl format again recently like I have, then I expect that you have also noticed that the quality of the pressings (and so obviously the mastering as well) is really high.

 
I've gotten some really poor sounding and some really good sounding vinyl recently.  Seems pretty random, but I bet it could be tracked down to where it came from.  And if it's consistent, well then... I'll have learned what not to buy!