[Tradjazz] Vinyl goes from throwback to comeback

[muskrat at bestweb.net]

Man, this (see article below) is an interesting subject probably with no
real answer.

The large part of my collection is on vinyl (mostly LPs).  When CDs first
came out it was almost "accepted" by many, that LPs had a better sound. 
One of the main contributers to that concept was that in the beginning,
there weren't many CDs available.  Record companies began re-issuing
anything and everything, on CD.

I gather that artistic and technical matters were often skimmed over, in
order to get the product out there.  Loads of CD re-issues were sorely
inferior to the original vinyl.

~~~

Years ago Vince Giordano (leader of the wonderful 1920's style big band,
the Nighthawks) gave me a demonstration that really turned my head around. 
He had a portable wind-up record player on which he played a 78 that was
recorded acoustically.  It didn't have the rich sound of latter day
recordings but it absolultely astounded me.

The sound quality was extraordiary.

~~~

Then there was the long-running debate about how digital was brittle in its
sound.  Over the years, I've heard many CDs that exhibit this phenom.

~~~

When we got our first CD player at home, I recall sitting in front of it
one night, and being blown away by a CD of John Phillip Sousa music.  It
was unbelievable.  That same night, I threw on a Billy Joel LP and was
astounded to find that the audio quolity was just as good.  That gave me a
new respect for vinyl.

~~~

When I first started working with digital recordings (at OKOM) I too,
tended to like the sound of vinyl better.  As I slowly became adept at
working with digital (recording, mixing etc.).  Analog tape is very
forgiving.  If you overload the tape, the distortion is there but often
it's not really noticable.

Digital, on the other hand, simply will not put up with an "audio
overload."  Even a slight overload will result in a harsh and brittle
sound. One must be very careful when working in the digital domain.

I came to realize that digital is far superior, by a mile.

I find the reproduction of the music to be very very pure and not brittle
at all (although unless mixed properly, it will be).

~

It's not debatable that working with digital is an almost miraculous boon
for engineers and producers.  The days of cutting and pasting tape are gone
forever, but that's not enough to warrent using a system that is lacking in
audio quality.  It's that pristine sound that sells me on digital.

~~~

For me, vinyl will never die because of the wealth of material I have on
LPs.  That said, my love and respect for CDs is in firm place.  And, of
course, these days, even CDs are old hat.

McN

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>From the Boston Globe:
 
Vinyl goes from throwback to comeback Young fans say analog records sound
warmer and fuller than digital music
 
By Jonathan Perry, Globe Correspondent | June 2, 2008

Monica Morgan, an 18-year-old high school student from Jacksonville, Fla.,
is taking a breather from scouting prospective colleges in and around
Boston. She is standing inside Newbury Comics in Cambridge, scouring the
bins of new LP releases by artists such as Gnarls Barkley and Bjork. Rows
of colorful album covers catch her eye.

"My dad just gave me a record player, so I mostly like to buy vinyl," says
Morgan. A stash of records originally owned by her mother, and now
bequeathed to her, led Morgan to her latest love. "I have some old Beatles
records with my mom's maiden name on them," she says. "I just
like the way they sound."

Almost any other decade, this scenario would have been ordinary. But the
scene - a teenager perusing stacks of cumbersome vinyl in a sleek digital
age that is gradually rendering the compact disc obsolete - was unfolding
on a Friday afternoon in 2008. And it is one that is being replicated in
small but growing numbers across the country.

Although she may be an anomaly among her peers, Morgan and other young
music fans are embracing the virtues of vinyl.

Mike Dreese, cofounder and chief executive of the New England music store
chain Newbury Comics, says his company's vinyl sales, which had been
increasing at an annual rate of about 20 percent over the past five years,
are 80 percent higher than they were at this time last year.

"Right now, we're selling about $100,000 a month worth of vinyl,"
Dreese says.

But why vinyl and why now, especially when even CD sales have
plummeted 40 percent since 2005? Dreese blames the sterility of
technology. "I think there are a lot of people who are looking for
some kind of a throwback to something that's tangible," he says. "The CD
was a tremendous sonic package, but from a graphic standpoint, it was a
disaster. People still want a connection to an artist, and vinyl connects
them in a way that an erasable file doesn't."

Vinyl lovers insist that analog records sound warmer and fuller, as
opposed to the brighter yet brittle digital experience of CDs. The
compressed sound of MP3s, meanwhile, sacrifices both the highest and lowest
ends of the sonic spectrum.

"It's unbelievable how much vinyl's coming out," says Josh Bizar, sales
director for musicdirect, a company that specializes in analog products
ranging from new and reissued vinyl to turntables. "We're seeing this
explosion of young people under 25 who never even saw an LP as a child
running toward a format that was pronounced dead before they were even
born. But if a title has any kind of mass appeal, it's coming out on vinyl
today."

The new push for records is also coming from musicians. Elvis Costello
issued his new album, "Momofuku," on vinyl two weeks before the CD and
digital versions were released. And the Raconteurs, led by White Stripes
frontman Jack White, recommended that listeners hear their new album,
"Consolers of the Lonely," on vinyl (it is also available on CD and as a
download).

"I prefer vinyl," says White, 32. "We talk about this backstage; as
musicians it comes up a lot. It's a shame the new generation is
missing out on albums - not just the sound quality, but the artwork,
the experience of holding something tangible in your hands."

Scores of listeners have begun to follow White's example.

Bizar's firm, musicdirect, services 250 to 300 independent record and
electronics stores worldwide and stocks CDs and MP3 players. But it is the
company's analog-related inventory that is causing a stir: Sales of albums
and accessories like needle cartridges and record cleaners have jumped 300
percent in each of the past four years, according to Bizar.

Sales of turntables, which can run anywhere from $150 to $24,000 (including
models that can now transfer the sound on vinyl to a listener's portable
player or computer) have spiked 500 percent annually during the same time
span. Indeed, huge retail outlets such as Best Buy now stock an array of
turntable brands and styles that reflect the surge in both technology and
demand.

"They cannot make them fast enough," says Bizar. "Owning a record album is
certainly a lot cooler than owning a digital subset of zeroes and ones on a
computer. And the simple act of playing an LP takes a certain
single-mindedness that seems to go beyond today's culture of
multitasking. It's not as easy as just pushing a button."

Merge Records founder Mac McCaughan estimates that for every 10 albums his
label puts out as a digital download or CD, eight get a vinyl release.
"It's not going to come back and replace CDs or MP3s," he says. "But if you
do it right and make the vinyl heavy and make the packaging nice, it's
everything that people liked about music in the
first place."

Then there's what Bizar calls "the collectibility issue." A limited-edition
LP box set of Radiohead's 2007 album, "In Rainbows,"  which retailed for
about $80, sold out briskly. A recent search on eBay found the now
out-of-print package selling for $300.

Music fan Nick Pioggia, 25, buys even more vinyl now than he did as a
teenager. "I got into it because the [punk] music I was trying to find was
only available in that format," says Pioggia, who also runs a small label
called Painkiller Records in Boston. "No one cares about CDs anymore, but
someone will still buy an album because it's got the huge artwork and is a
limited pressing. That's the biggest draw."

New releases are typically being pressed on vinyl in quantities of
about 10,000 per title. But when it comes to the demand for lavish
reissues, that number can double or even triple. Bizar says his
company saw 35,000 advance orders for the four-LP edition of Led Zeppelin's
"Mothership," a career-spanning collection released this spring. While that
is certainly a far cry from vinyl's heyday of the 1970s, Bizar calls the
demand for a bulky box set that retails for roughly $60 a pop
"astonishing."

As an enticement for consumers to buy a record rather than a 99-cent
download of a single, artists and record labels now usually include a
CD version of the album with the LP package gratis, or enclose a
secret code that allows listeners to download for free the album they
just bought on vinyl.

The idea represents a compromise for convenience-minded consumers and
artists who want their creative work to be something more substantive than
a digital file. "If you're an artist," says Dreese, "you're like, 'What do
I have to show my grandkids?' 

No one artist has released more records since the early 1990s than Robert
Pollard, both solo and with his band, Guided By Voices.

"I have to have vinyl," says Pollard, who's issued dozens of records on
labels large and small, including his own in-house imprint. "To me it's
psychological. If it's not on an LP, it's not real. Anybody can
make a CD, but as we used to say, 'Vinyl's final.' "

Evan Shore, singer-guitarist for the Boston band Muck & the Mires, recently
announced that his band's next Extended Play would be a "vinyl-only
release." With a European tour this summer, the reasoning was simple:
"Vinyl is huge in Europe."

Geoff Chase, a 40-year-old "classic rock" fan from Watertown, says he
stopped buying records because many older titles weren't available on LP to
replace his worn copies. Until now.

"What got me back into it big time," says Chase, "was that one day I found
an old [stereo] receiver on the sidewalk."

He took it home, hooked the receiver up to his turntable, and put on his
copy of AC/DC's "Back in Black."

"I could not believe how good it sounded," Chase says. "I was blown away."