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Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Everything Matters and Nothing Matters - Part 4

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/showbiz-and-lifestyle/showbiz/2012/04/10/vinyl-making-a-comeback-as-sales-figures-grow-91466-30724627/

So yet another headline announcing vinyl is making comeback. Now, I own a lot of vinyl records but would I hand over my hard earned dollars for such a fragile medium? Probably not, anymore. So why do people do this?    Some say it is the quality of the sound ...

Well they probably didn't grow up in the era of clicks, pops and scraping noises of not so old but still worn out vinyl records. If they did, they are probably yearning for a past glory, when you could appreciate the cover art easily and actually read the liner notes without a magnifying glass. Perhaps also a certain comforting warmth of sound quality... and the reassuring absence of silence, even between tracks when the tape hiss stopped.

They may have however, forgotten that vinyl records needed to be treated with kid gloves to maintain reasonable sound quality beyond a few spins. That some spent additional dollars on record preservative treatments and replacement records with increasing fidelity and dynamic range such as the "Direct To Disc" series.... which were only available for a select few recordings..... Nobody thought vinyl was the ultimate medium then....

Like the film camera, the vinyl LP is a quaint relic from the not so distant past and a lovely collector's item... As a practical medium for music it is really suited to a museum, more than everyday life. Today's youth have access to a quality of sound and a portability those growing up in the early 60's dreamed about, with our crystal set radios and scratched 45s. I still love my vinyl records, but really it is ultimately about the music and being able to enjoy it and digital allows me to do that everywhere.....

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