Saw an article today on Google News that for the first time in more than 2 decades, LPs were out selling CDs...I would be surprised if that applied to classical music. But, of course, I don't know...
Whether they are or not, I am not sorry I have hung on to my nearly two thousand LPs and two Bang and Olufsen turntables...though, I must admit, I almost never have a chance to go back and listen to them.
I have kept hold of my thousand LPs and also my B and O turntable. So you are not alone.................
I chucked mine out years ago - scratches, swishes, end-of-side distortion and all. And good riddance. No more trying to listen to long stretches of Tristan through snaps, crackles and pops, etc...
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0c/2e/f6/0c2ef6758c11c86cdf380089e4a5968a.jpg)
The sales of LP will almost certainly be of pop music in which the aforementioned problems hardly matter.
oh yes I have mine also with my turntable. I still listen to a few LPs every weekend.
I Couldn't part with the lps. Some were terribly hard to come by...
RE the snaps, crackles, and pops.
Just pretend you're listening to Tristan next to a crackling campfire. Very bucolic. Works for moi.
But not for me. LPs as a recording medium for classical music have had their day. I've kept a few that have sentimental value, but I've long since replaced them all with CDs.
I have only LPs and downloads, not CDs. The ambient noise on vinyl as well as the analog quality is appealing.
I have been very careful almost from the start of collecting LPs using linear tracking tone arms and turntables. At the time, I had no idea CDs were coming and thought I would be listening my LPs for the next four decades so I made the effort. Also stored each LP with a plastic cover over the cardboard disk jacket. I also have used Diskwasher and a static comb and I have had very few snap, crackle and pops. Nowadays, I have no time for my LPs but they are in good shape and will go to my children, both good string players, one professional, one amateur.
I must say though that I never found the sound on vinyl superior to what I heard on CDs. Could be my ears, or it could be that subjective feeling akin to high joggers and cigar smokers often describe...
I can think of at least 100 plus reasons why I have kept my LP's even though some have ended up as digital d/l's or CD's. A lot of them never made the transaction to digital - let's see: some Supraphon's of Blodek, Kittl, Martinu, a lot of Melodia's like Rozhdestvensky conducting Spendiaryan, bunches of RCA's like Toscanini Dukas Ariane et Barbe-bleue suite, Columbia's, EMI's, the list goes on.
I'd much better listen to any of them forgoing all the snap, crackle, pop, skip, struck grove, etc. then the latest wiz bang flavor of the month conductor's distinctly nuanced and uniquely articulated (or is it the other way around) interpretation of yet another iteration of the basic 50 repertory performed by most trendy HIP, chamber, or regional orchestra around. Fellow curmudgeons will understand.
Quote from: jasthill on Sunday 13 September 2020, 03:51
I'd much better listen to any of them forgoing all the snap, crackle, pop, skip, struck grove, etc. then the latest wiz bang flavor of the month conductor's distinctly nuanced and uniquely articulated (or is it the other way around) interpretation of yet another iteration of the basic 50 repertory performed by most trendy HIP, chamber, or regional orchestra around. Fellow curmudgeons will understand.
I suspect most members of this forum would agree. Certainly, it's better to own a snap-crackle-pop LP version of a favored or historic recording, than it is to *not* own a cd version of the same thing. But let's compare apples to apples, oranges to oranges. Take any favorite recording which is available in both formats: would you rather have/play a cd or an LP?
My best buddy in Scotland, who owned an electronics business for decades, absolutely insists that the sound from vinyl is superior to sound from a cd. We kid each other about it (as we do with pretty much all-things-British vs all-things-American), but I keep sending him study after study, which concludes that *if* LP sound has any superiority to that of cd's, it's far too subtle for the normal human ear to detect. I'm perfectly open to being proven wrong on this, but I'm skeptical. My suspicion is that any difference in the sound originates more in the specific listener's brain than in his ears. ;)
In my own case, I've progressed from LP's to cassette tapes :o to cd's, and now I have all 108,000 cd tracks digitized & in the cloud, which I can play in the whole house speakers (or anywhere in the world, for that matter) with a few mouse clicks or phone taps. So, with the assumption of no difference in sound quality, I find this immeasurably superior to LP's, at least in a functional way. (Especially if one is worried about an earthquake tremor while that phono-needle is doing its thing on treasured, historic vinyl. I only mention because I went through all the Southern California earthquakes of the 70's, the 1989 San Francisco one, and the 6.7 in Hawai'i in 2006, shortly after we moved here. When people find out that they're following me around, they tend to back away slowly.... :o)
I may be wrong but I don't think any new recordings of classical music are being issued on vinyl. Pretty soon there won't be any on CD either
I'm firmly of the view that the superiority of vinyl over digital is in the ear of the beholder. For some, LPs as artefacts have nostalgic, aesthetic and what might be called "ritual" appeal (all the things needed to keep them in good condition and playing perfectly which Santo wrote about) with which I can entirely identify as someone with a good dose of OCD. That said, I go for the zero maintenance, spontaneity, universal availability and convenience of digital - I too am digitising all my CDs for the very reasons Sharkkb8 outlined, regaining precious space in the house and exchanging it for the ability to listen to my music whenever and wherever I want. There were a few LPs, but surprisingly few, which I digitised to preserve a particular performance not available, or repertoire not replicated, on CD, and I've also kept some of them (mostly of Raff, of course) for sentimental or "collecting" reasons, but otherwise I haven't regretted the LP>CD>digital transition for one moment.
Maybe it´s because I am a firm supporter of the Reinecke tradition in German music, but I refused to buy a single CD until the autumn of 2017. The Tudor boxed set of Raff at a bargain price proved too much even for this particular reactionary and I have been making up for lost time in the past three years.
There are indeed new classical LPs being made. Reference Recordings has quite a few, including a terrific Saint-Saens Organ Symphony and the Elgar Enigma Variations.
https://referencerecordings.com/format/lp (https://referencerecordings.com/format/lp)
I, too, have kept too many LPs and other than transfer some to CD haven't listened to them in over 30 years. During this Covid lockdown I have made attempts at unloading quite a few. I imagine that someday they'll all wind up in the landfill. Same with CDs - that era is over, too, it's just that us classical types are the last holdouts. But now that concerts have all gone quiet, I never knew just how much I appreciated my collection.
Well, right you are! But at $35-50 per disc their appeal is what you might call "specialist"
Very much so and the people that pay these prices also tend use extremely high-end turntables. They can afford it.
Martin you might consider donating them to a library that has a note worthy music school. I've found a lot of rare lps in the music libraries.
I have found that the resurgence of the LP turntable as a "fashion" item has helped quite a few people get their first acquaintance with classical music - and beggars can't be choosers.
Here in Leiden (Netherlands, student town) we have three pretty well-stocked second-hand LP shops that sell their products at as low a price as 50 cents (plus a few charity shops). I don't buy there often, but one is a mate and I've sometimes bought LPs for students when I thought they might appreciate it as a "gateway drug" to the genre. Sure, pop/hiss/crackle, but if they like the music it might drive them to Spotify (to which they all have a subscription) to search out less sonically challenged experiences.
And personally, the experience of browsing through LPs is second to none.
Hear,hear!
A designer friend of mine buys LP's not for the record but for the retro covers which he incorporates into his works... I don't know if this includes classical! Separately, I was talking to the guy at the till in my local music shop on Saturday which has successfully moved into the LP-niche market (Record Corner in Godalming, FYI!) - he told me that where an LP is pressed dramatically changes it value. He gave me the example of an album by a band (might have been Pink Floyd) - its LP's normally sold in the range of £20-30, but he had handled one that had been pressed in Mozambique (!) and it sold for £6000. Who knew?! So some of you might want to check the contents of your collections! He himself is in a band and, rather depressingly, told me that despite having over 100,000 hits or streams on spotify and other services, he and his bandmates received for that just £30 between them. Whereas they received a much larger percentage of sales for their albums which they managed to sell in hard copy. So the lesson is, keep buying CDs and LPs to support artists in all genres!
Sure, Spotify is hardly a goldmine (hardly a secret); this (https://www.quora.com/What-revenue-model-does-Spotify-use-to-distribute-their-subscription-revenue-to-content-owners-on-their-platform)gives some info about the way Spotify pays out artists. Moreover, their model doesn't favor classical music since only individual streams are counted, not their length: so a performance of Mahler's 3rd generates a third as much revenue as your average punk rock band album. Also, artists are paid as a share of total revenue, and with over 1,2 million artists on Spotify... There's simply too much music being sold for individuals to make a living.
But whatever you may think of that, I'm convinced that media such as CDs are on the way out, the more so since they lack the boutique analog appeal of LPs. We shouldn't hang onto these: their production cost may be relatively low, but distribution remains expensive, and the rest of the music market has long since moved to a download/streaming model. In general, I buy the download and then listen to it via Qobuz or Spotify - that way I try to maximize, in my own very modest way, revenue for the creators.
I still play my cassettes! I love how handy they are, you can pop them in and out, press play and stop and play again and continue where you left off. Plus they are not as fragile as CD's that can get scratched. Digital is definitely more convenient and my most often used medium. However there is something special about tapes/ cassettes and how much more portable they are than LP's. I also started seeing that they are becoming quite expensive also.
Cassettes were a disastrous recording medium. I thought they were going to be the answer to crackly LPs, but the sound on them was usually worse than on vinyl - and when they went wrong the result was total disaster. The Germans called that disaster 'Bandsalat':
(https://cdn.thedesigninspiration.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Bandsalat-l.jpg)
Steve mentioned that soon little new classical music on CD will be made. I hope he is wrong. I am not a fan of streaming music unless you can download it to your hard drive for the same reason I do not want my computer files on a cloud server somewhere in the world. I want control of my files as well as my music.
That said, I am very grateful for the music which has been put on Youtube, both live performances of music which has never been recorded or recorded music no longer available. There are many an interesting work I have found there. But that is I think very different from Spotify. Performers and music lovers are making the music to like minded people and not trying to make a buck off of it.
Cassette was awful - I remember being able to buy some RCA tapes for "4 for $10" and even then it wasn't a bargain. But they worked well enough for the truck. Even worse were 8-track tapes, a path I never took.
in my area there are several large stores that buy/sell/trade used media. The largest, which deals mostly with LPs, has no interest in classical at all. And I agree with Ilja - there's nothing like browsing through a record store. I used to look forward to trips to Los Angeles and New York to browse the shelves, read the liner notes at Tower Records and HMV. There were some store that had floor copies of records you could take into a booth and listen to, and then in back the unopened copies for sale. I really miss those days!
Quote from: MartinH on Monday 14 September 2020, 20:06....floor copies of records you could take into a booth and listen to, and then in back the unopened copies for sale. I really miss those days!
Wow, I hadn't thought about that for decades. Those of us who admit to remembering it are giving away our ancient-ness. :o
The worst medium by far was the 8 track cartridge; double tracking, horrible divisions/cuts - not to mention the damage they could do to your person when they inevitably slid off the dashboard and into your lap...
I had high hopes for the elcaset in '76, but in spite of a greatly improved sound quality the medium never caught on with the public...
Elcasets would have been far superior to standard cassettes. I guess they were too expensive by comparison.
I sold my LPs off around 1988 or so. I'm with Alan, good riddance to them. I would have to say that a large part of the problem was the increasingly poor quality of the pressings. By the end, I was buying brand new LPs, and the first time I'd play them, my ears were assaulted by the crackle. Seemed like I was wasting my money on a high end turntable and hideously expensive cartridges.
Sad to say the same kind of thing is happening with CDs. Jewel cases, which were thick & heavy in the beginning, became thin and flimsy (and easily broken when the the mailman dances on them). The discs themselves aren't faring much better. In the first ten years or so of my collecting, I only got one CD that had anything wrong with it (it just wouldn't play on any machine). Now, the situation is very different. I order new CDs, and, when I get them and I remove the cellophane, I find scratches on the playing surface. (and, yes, I know a re-wrap when I see one, having been burned on that many times when buying through Ebay or the Amazon Marketplace). I'm at the point where I will not purchase CDs on Supraphon or anything manufactured in Italy (Urania being the absolute worst).
Add to this all the labels foisting off CD-r's on unsuspecting customers, unrealistically high prices in the secondhand market, the near extinction of brick-and-mortar shops, rising international postage rates, increasingly poor postal service, having to pay North Carolina sales tax on discs I order from other states, having to order from Japan to get the format (SACD) I want... Well, let's just say that, when the CD is dead, it won't be just downloading and LPs that killed it.
I still have about a hundred LPs left from a big collection - all genres. Some of it was sold but most was eventually given en masse to charity shops. The survivors are either collectors' items, or still waiting for me to digitize them (because they are not available on CD). Once that's done they'll go to charity.
Some CD reissues of LPs have poorer sound quality, and sometimes the sound has obviously been altered. But, for me, the LP is of historical interest only - rather like the lamplighter and the knocker-upper! ;D
Personally, I'm for bringing back lamplighters. Especially if they've hung onto their lp collections.
What's the LP equivalent of CD coasters?
I've seen lps made into clocks and sold on ebay. No idea who would buy such a thing.
Someone who knows time is up for lps? ;)
I am told that, if you can be bothered, you can mould them into flowerpots!!
LPs replicate the original sound wave, while CDs can't. So while LPs are fully reproducing the sound that you would have heard in the studio/hall, the pops and crackles detract from any of those advantages. And CDs/digital downloads are becoming more advanced all the time, so you can't really notice.
QuoteSo while LPs are fully reproducing the sound that you would have heard in the studio/hall
In theory only. The whole audio reproduction system, involving physical contact between stylus and groove, surely makes that impossible. In addition, once played, the condition of LPs can only deteriorate.
And most masters made today are digital, so new LP releases are not even analog.
Treated with reasonable care and in spite of occasional mild abuse LPs can have extraordinary longevity. My most precious purchase in 1967 was the DG/Jochum set of Bruckner symphonies. For the first few months I only had a mono autochanger with a rigid stylus to play them with, but they somehow survived this and most remain clear and crackle-free to this day.
Ah! Original top-notch DG pressings, perhaps. Very much the exception, even in those days.
I have only experienced the issue with the ASV CDs that were reissued by ASV. They were very helpful in that they replaced all my CDs that I owned. As you may remember, they turned brown after a period of time due to a flaw in the manufacturing process... it was not long after that they filed for bankruptcy..
The only label I've had defective cd issues with is Bongiovanni. No luck contacting them, either.
But we were talking about LPs, not CDs.
I have a defective Bongiovanni ALBUM as well. (Spontini Overtures).
I have both LPs and CDs so I'm not trying to convert anyone. But for those who still play LPs I would strongly recommend getting a record cleaning machine: either the vacuum cleaner style or the more expensive ultrasonic models. I have about 1000 LPs- 3/4 classical - and I don't hear any Rice Krispies with them. Of course I make a point of getting unscratched copies but an incredible amount of dust easily gets trapped in the narrow grooves and a damp cloth does nothing really.
I gave up buying LPs forty years ago. I salute all those who still play them, but the thought of waiting for scratches and other unwanted sonic artefacts to interrupt my listening pleasure fills me with horror.
Again I'm not trying to convert you or anyone else; just noting for current LP players I don't experience the issues which plagued you and others in the past and what helped to ameliorate them. Quite frankly the recent revival of LPs owes much to the increasing intrusive remastering practices that are blighting many CD reissues and also downloads and streaming - not that LPs are totally immune from this. Buying pre 1995 CDs (and LPs) is often best.
That's fine. But I won't be going back...
I plan to start buying LP the next month maybe, only for unique repertoire.