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Vinyl Records

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chaospersonified:
I was wondering what this board's general stance was on them. I considered framing this as a poll, but I'm more interested in hearing peoples' thoughts on the medium than in the actual numbers.

So vinyl's been having a revival recently; sales of LPs last year went up 52% in a world where other forms of music sales DROPPED. I bought myself a record player around Thanksgiving and have been building up a collection since then, so I guess I'm technically a part of that increase.

So I personally buy vinyl for a couple reasons.

The biggest one is that with vinyl versus digital download, there's physical matter involved, and I'm more likely to listen to something new. I can download a song, put it into a playlist, set my itunes to shuffle and literally not even hear that song while I'm sitting there. I buy a record, there's the whole ritualistic process of getting it out, putting it on the player, pressing play, flipping it when the side ends, maybe changing to the second disc. It's more work, but it's not exactly difficult, and it adds to the enjoyment.

I'm more likely to listen to it, since I've had shopping sprees in the past with downloads, getting three, four albums at once, and a week later, I'll have listened to probably eight songs a hundred times, and the rest of what I got just the once. With vinyl, it's possible to skip songs on records, but it's not worth it, really, so I hear the entire thing every time. Deep tracks, man, sometimes the best songs on an album aren't the hits, or the ones that caught your attention the first time around. You hear them again though because they come before your favorite, and something in them just hits you and suddenly you have a new favorite.

Suffice to say, I am very much pro-vinyl records. I'll be at the record store on April 18th for Record Store Day, picking up the new Built To Spill and anything else that catches my eye that morning.

What about the rest of you? Vinyl good, vinyl bad? I'm curious!

Aziraphale:
I grew up on vinyl, so I still have (and probably always will have) a soft spot for it. I never minded CD's or MP3's (I love being able to fit a decent chunk of my collection in my pocket and listen to it wherever), but there was so much with LPs that you just don't get with other formats. The artwork, the fact that it's divided into sides (and how that influences the construction of an album as a cohesive piece of work), the warmth of the sound...

I still have a lot of my old LPs. One of these days, I'll probably invest in a turntable and start buying vinyl again, especially the older stuff that still hasn't been reissued in digital.

The only drawback I can think of is albums that I only wore out one side of 'cause that one side was so good I'd just keep going back to it. It wasn't 'til I got some things on CD that I started hearing the rest of certain albums and realizing that the rest of the music was actually quite good (or that side one had grown on me so much that side two never stood much of a chance).

hedgie:
Audicity is free, and can be used to put it into a digital format for casual listening, so one can save using the actual vinyl for special occasions, which ought to cut down on the wear and tear, so all you need to do is hook up the turntable to a computer.  I've also purchased a few newer ones where they included a code for a digital download, which saves the hassle of ripping them.

SubaruStephen:
Thanks to the latest LP I bought (The Doors), I've realized that my turntable is too fast.

I need to wire in a speed controler to the motor.

Aziraphale:
Is it direct-drive or belt-drive? The direct-drive turntables usually have a pitch control that can be used to tweak the RPM's.

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