I used to be interested in remastered music, but 1/2 the time it's only louder and more compressed. Finding only a few truly good remastered CDs, it's really a waist of time and money, basicly marketing from the record companies. Getting a different amp or a better set of headphones is going to be 1000 times more profitable than some 2016 brick wall remaster. I like vinyl but all it is is a more natural tone in places and sometimes smoother. Of course they will release these on CD, but they want to cash in on the fact that people will pay for vinyl. Due to In Flames vinyl being rare, they will be a bonus for fans who just never had a chance to play In Flames vinyl, and the novelity of it all.
I used to love my vinyl back in the day, but have no interest now. I look at some of the forums and the price tags that go with a new proper system and I'm like-fork that....I'm good with my digital music and like you say-an investment in your rig is the way to go for a clear sonic upgrade. JMO.
While I certainly agree with your post as a whole, the bold is the reasoning behind my interest in the set. Actually just a few pages back we were talking about how the Lamb of God remasters were just louder and more distorted. I prefer the original of those albums much more. I'll be happy even if I only end up having some sweet metal vinyl to oogle at and show off to my friends who couldn't care less
I used to have a room of vinyl but now only 1/50th. Mind you many are going to get a lot of enjoyment just from opening the box set, looking at the lyrics or photographs and smelling the new ink.
There is also a nice feeling to have only the original tracks as they don't put extra tracks normally on a single 33.1/3rd remaster.
That way you can have the album with the songs like it came out with no need for any live cuts to change the mood of the record. It's an artistic statement thing. And if they do infact sound better then it's a bonus.
Holding the box set is a tactile experience, smelling the ink olfactory and seeing the covers visual. Finally the music is a sonic experience. In a way more than what a digital download offers.
I used to love my vinyl back in the day, but have no interest now. I look at some of the forums and the price tags that go with a new proper system and I'm like-fork that....I'm good with my digital music and like you say-an investment in your rig is the way to go for a clear sonic upgrade. JMO.
I spent about $2K on my vinyl rig as everything was used, though only slightly. Still with 2K I'm still just mid-fi, when you see the vinyl rigs. And those $70K systems do sound better but because of the law of diminishing returns, only a fraction better. In vinyl rigs normally there is a huge jump in quality if your preamp and turntable cost $400 and you jump to 1K. Maybe that same jump goes again from 1K to 2K. But there it is .......you have to spend twice as much to jump up the same amount each time under 2K. At the same time, there has never been better turntables than right now. The turntables are cheaper to buy and sound better for the money than in the 1970s, when vinyl was king. I think vinyl sounds better but I would have been taxed too heavy here on this island to bring it all, let alone the cost of putting in all in a shipping container and sailing it over, if it even in fact made it here. I arrived with 3000 CDs and had a political party member meet me at the airport, because they try to tax you a dollar a CD upon arrival here.
The other thing is that vinyl is a lot of work. Every year you find a record which just autowarps due to some weird pressure placed on it. When you find your newly warped record is when you looked for it and found it. Your expecting to hear it again so to have it be warped beyond playability is a real bummer.
Beyond that, just finding a record your looking for can be tough. All the writing is vertical so you have to turn your head sideways. Normally listening rooms are dim which does not help matters. If you do find the record, God hope it's not a double set as there is a 50/50 chance you will pull out side 3 and 4 and not the album with sides 1 and 2. Oh and by the way before you can even see the record you have to jiggle it out of its sleeve. If the album has a plastic cover you have to at times get around that. Now remember even at this point we are a good 20 minutes away from listening still. You have to turn on the record cleaning machine. There is the speed test to see if your turntable is spining correctly at the right speed. You still need to dust off the turntable too, let alone some folks clean their needle first with a brush and cleaning fluid and that experience parallels circumcision of your first born son.
Now you have to place the record on. Put the weight ring around the edges ( to try and stop that warp, you never knew about). You need to then antistatic the record when placed on the turn table. Most don't know that antistatic record brushes are actually nuclear. Yep......they have enough nuclear material in them to give a person cancer if injested.
Next you put the spindal clamp on. Then finally a drop of the needle and if your not careful one slight move can damage your needle. The first thing you hear is not music but a reminder of that ever present surface noise and some pops. Finally your all done for 15 minutes until the end of side one.
I almost don't want to admit it, but I sold my turntable this week.
Did not get enough use out of it. A lot of vinyls I planned on buying turned out to be the same master as the CD or they were just simply too expensive.
Another (more positive) reason is, that many albums I bought since I got my turntable just sound great just the way they are. Proper mastering and relatively high DR isn't too uncommon anymore, it seems.
So yeah, didn't use it that often and a poor student like me can always use some extra cash.
Funds will most likely go into my Audeze iSine 20 budget.
The other thing is that vinyl is a lot of work. Every year you find a record which just autowarps due to some weird pressure placed on it. When you find your newly warped record is when you looked for it and found it. Your expecting to hear it again so to have it be warped beyond playability is a real bummer.
Beyond that, just finding a record your looking for can be tough. All the writing is vertical so you have to turn your head sideways. Normally listening rooms are dim which does not help matters. If you do find the record, God hope it's not a double set as there is a 50/50 chance you will pull out side 3 and 4 and not the album with sides 1 and 2. Oh and by the way before you can even see the record you have to jiggle it out of its sleeve. If the album has a plastic cover you have to at times get around that. Now remember even at this point we are a good 20 minutes away from listening still. You have to turn on the record cleaning machine. There is the speed test to see if your turntable is spining correctly at the right speed. You still need to dust of the turn table too, let alone some folks clean their needle first with a brush and cleaning fluid and that experience parallels circumcision of your first born son.
Now you have to place the record on. Put the weight ring around the edges ( to try and stop that warp, you never knew about). You need to then antistatic the record when placed on the turn table. Most don't know that antistatic record brushes are actually nuclear. Yep......they have enough nuclear material in them to give a person cancer if injested.
Next you put the spindal clamp on. Then finally a drop of the needle and if your not careful one slight move can damage your needle. The first thing you hear is not music but a reminder of that ever present surface noise and some pops. Finally your all done for 15 minutes until the end of side one.
I can't even follow the technicalities of your explanation-that but it sounds absolutely insane. But, people are passionate about their vinyl regardless. I'm too impatient. I love having my DAC/pre/HP amp and can switch from computer to speakers to headphones; from CDP to digital files on my NAS with my Sonos system with the push of a remote button. The whole thing cost me a few K initially, but I'm done. No prepping. Plug'n'play is where it's at for me. There is something to be said for convenience. But, I knew I wanted to spend no more than 5K for pretty much everything and not sink tens of thousands into a set up-which I don't have incidentally!
Edit: OK I stretched the truth, more than 5 K with my Sonos speakers and HPs, but 5 K for the actual stereo. 5k (over the course of a few years and upgrades) is still a lot of money-but it's five not fifty LOL!
That and I live on a teachers' salary and, my wife hasn't asked for a divorce.....yet
Actually we're good-I use money I make on the side to pay for this stuff.
I almost don't want to admit it, but I sold my turntable this week.
Did not get enough use out of it. A lot of vinyls I planned on buying turned out to be the same master as the CD or they were just simply too expensive.
Another (more positive) reason is, that many albums I bought since I got my turntable just sound great just the way they are. Proper mastering and relatively high DR isn't too uncommon anymore, it seems.
So yeah, didn't use it that often and a poor student like me can always use some extra cash.
Funds will most likely go into my Audeze iSine 20 budget.
I have some records which are romantically superior than the CD. But........with metal it's all about dynamics and authority. Even with the best phono-pre I could afford vinyl has a quietness about it. The weird part is the phono-pre has all these dip switches, good ones anyway. The switches allow you to dial in the cartridge. The whole process is working around grounding to reduce hum, and get the strongest signal with the sound not in distortion. Every time you get a new phono preamp you have to go through this emotional process of getting the dips right, and patience to wait a day and listen to see if you even like the sound. Not to mention that phono-pre makers try to make enough dip switches to allow their preamp to work with the most wide range of cartridges around. Still there is always the idea of noncompatability?
You don't know till you listen for days or weeks. Also vinyl always has a noise floor because the ground hum never truly goes away no matter what you do to ground or power condition. The hum is there in the background and you always have to consider it. Then the surface noise from the mechanical aspect of the fricking needle dragging across the record groove. A better turntable and better needle does get the needle down deeper and gets you a better music to noise artifact ratio but it's up to your brain in the end to mentally filter out the pops and surface noise.
The big secret about vinyl that no one wants to admit is that the happy vinyl users have learned to filter out the pops in the record mentally. This single factor ends up being the biggest disappointment for new vinyl buyers who try old records or even find the pops on brand new record. It takes about a week for your brain to learn to ignore the pops, much like city traffic gets filtered out when living in a downtown apartment.
Now let's not even get started about needle wear. Yep! Needle life spans are measured in hours. That $1500 cartridge has only so many hours of life in it. You then normally pay 1/2 the price to get a new needle put on it after you looked at the tip with a fricking microscope to find out it's now round and damaging your records with every play. Let's not even go into the fact that if your table is not set up right then it itself is lowering the lifespan of your cartridge!
Oh, that record you purchased used that you had in high school? Don't even plan on playing it with your best cartridge. Many record collectors have needle arm setups for new vinyl and a separate needle and arm for old records. So even though you just spent $1500 on your dream cartridge, you can't even use it unless your a fool. Add to that some cartridges cost $25K and 10K for a new needle. Just think of all the amps and headphones you can buy with $25,000.
But in the end this stuff is just like yachts, you pay to play!
So even in the best of conditions your needle is going to wear. But........imagine some change to take place if your cantilever arm gets tilted or bent. So you just purchased a $500 cartridge and notice for what ever reason you cantilever arm is slightly bent. You can maybe send it in for repair? You could be an azz and try to sell it. Or in the end most just have to live with the daily reality that their listening experience is compromised and that not only are they damaging their records but the sound IS and will never be correct on the limited and greatly reduced lifespan of the $500 cartridge. Oh, well the only best way out is to spend $200 and have the cartridge re-tipped and hope to God it does not happen a second time right away. Add to that some carts are more delicate than others. At times to you get a new cartridge and no matter what you do, something is wrong but you don't know what it is? Most all good turntables have the recommended adjustment to get everything going smooth, but some carts and tables just don't get along.
You can now see why the simple aspect of digital is a dream.
But wait until you hear the whole thing and see how far they've fallen this time.
OMG...seriously...these are actual lyrics from the songs. Neverland indeed.
"Just 'cause the hurt doesn't show. There's no way to recover. You broke my heart in two."
"We had this world of make-believe."
"You ripped the heart out. My will to survive."
"I believe that the whole wide world is against me. I, I, I believe that the whole wide world is afraid of me."
"Here in my room behind the wall. I'm outta reach. I don't sympathize."
"Creating dreams from a broken past. It tears a hole and it sucks you dry."
"You're not my friend and I despise you. You are my pain and I adore you."
"I close my eyes and drift away and I'm wondering what you're doing now."
"When I look at you I see me. We will always be part of history."
"There's nothing underneath my skin. This is the life I wanna live."
"What if my dreams don't become reality? Is my life just a big mistake?"
"The older I get, the younger I feel. The younger I feel, the older I seem. The more I feel, ?? seems real. I like to pretend I'm as young as I feel."
At least there are still a few cool moments on the album...but even fewer than the last one.
Jeez. Tonight I was playing the new Korn album in my little brother's car. It got to the part in "The Hating" where he starts screaming. My brother, who was driving, started swaying around. (He likes to make fun of music in over-the-top ways.) He made a left turn onto the busy road we always use to go home, which is always at high speed. Suddenly, a car in front of us stopped because there was a train about to come. My brother was still moving around at the time and I had to yell at him to stop. We hit the car in front of us. The car lurched forward and stopped at first, but we were basically on railroad tracks, so it went ahead. My brother followed, just in time because the gate was coming down. I told him not to let anyone know we were listening to metal, 'cause you know...that isn't going to help you in the context of a traffic accident. Fortunately, neither vehicle was damaged, or so it seems, so we all went on our way unscathed. This experience makes me more wary about playing metal in my brother's car... I prefer that album on headphones anyway.
Jeez. Tonight I was playing the new Korn album in my little brother's car. It got to the part in "The Hating" where he starts screaming. My brother, who was driving, started swaying around. (He likes to make fun of music in over-the-top ways.) He made a left turn onto the busy road we always use to go home, which is always at high speed. Suddenly, a car in front of us stopped because there was a train about to come. My brother was still moving around at the time and I had to yell at him to stop. We hit the car in front of us. The car lurched forward and stopped at first, but we were basically on railroad tracks, so it went ahead. My brother followed, just in time because the gate was coming down. I told him not to let anyone know we were listening to metal, 'cause you know...that isn't going to help you in the context of a traffic accident. Fortunately, neither vehicle was damaged, or so it seems, so we all went on our way unscathed. This experience makes me more wary about playing metal in my brother's car... I prefer that album on headphones anyway.
Jeez. Tonight I was playing the new Korn album in my little brother's car. It got to the part in "The Hating" where he starts screaming. My brother, who was driving, started swaying around. (He likes to make fun of music in over-the-top ways.) He made a left turn onto the busy road we always use to go home, which is always at high speed. Suddenly, a car in front of us stopped because there was a train about to come. My brother was still moving around at the time and I had to yell at him to stop. We hit the car in front of us. The car lurched forward and stopped at first, but we were basically on railroad tracks, so it went ahead. My brother followed, just in time because the gate was coming down. I told him not to let anyone know we were listening to metal, 'cause you know...that isn't going to help you in the context of a traffic accident. Fortunately, neither vehicle was damaged, or so it seems, so we all went on our way unscathed. This experience makes me more wary about playing metal in my brother's car... I prefer that album on headphones anyway.
how loud do you play the music?
I generally agree not to tell anyone that you listen to metal, seems like metal has a bad reputation among a lot of people.
At my workplace, the people that I work with likes to give me this look that I don't like sometimes, happens when they find out that I'm listening to some death metal, or when I express my discontent of modern music after being asked(I don't say anything if they don't ask).
people are so judgemental nowadays, better play it safe.
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