Record Collection Recollections #9: The Great Vinyl Debate

I read a very interesting post by Ian McNabb on the Book of Faces last week. You might have seen it yourself. If not, here's what he had to say in reference to the image above...

Let's kill this myth.

As a practitioner I have been into the minutiae of this well-debated subject a hundred times. I have lived with a song from its inception to its release into the world.

The original mix, either on tape or digital, gets mastered before we the public get to hear it. This is CRUCIAL to the process. In the eighties when CDs first appeared they were often mastered from poor sources - usually ancient production masters, frequently second or third generation. They sounded quiet, muddy and flat.

As we became a CD consuming global market things improved. CDs were mastered with greater care and consumers began demanding higher quality for their money, often starting at £14.99 (!).

Then the LOUDNESS WARS began in the mid-nineties. Mastering engineers began brick-walling mixes (making the CDs louder at the expense of definition and dynamic range). This meant compression and lots of it, making prolonged listening a slog and rather tiring after ten minutes.

Since then mastering has gotten pretty good. 

I've forensically analysed my own finished CDs and vinyl. To the point of madness. Vinyl is a great experience, largely due to size of the artwork and the ritual freeing the vinyl from its sleeve and placing it on a turntable. From that point on its a disappointment.

 Unless you've spent a lot of money on your hardware the vinyl is never going to sound as good as the CD - even on an entry-level system.

Vinyl is a LOSS format.

As for MP3s/streaming, well that's the way most people are going to hear the music. All streaming services have their own algorithms and the music sounds perfectly serviceable even to my professional ears.

I fell in love with music listening to vinyl and cassettes in the 70s - usually played through cheap systems and Walkman headphones. MP3s sound a lot better.

So there!

Should you be interested, my music is available in high-quality at ianmcnabb.bandcamp.com

You can chose your format.

IX

I don't own a turntable anymore, and sometimes that makes me sad. I love the warmth of vinyl, the crackles, dropping the stylus into the groove and waiting for the music to start. It reminds me of being a boy, of my first adventures in record collecting, of my early days in radio, cueing up 7" singles on pre-fade (and trying to remember to make sure I have the fader down... there's nothing more embarrassing that cueing up a song over the top of the one that's playing out live on air). 

Todd Snider - Vinyl Records

But I don't own a turntable any more, and I don't have any vinyl. I had to make a choice about ten, twelve years ago, and if I was still going to have a record collection (rather than just going all-digital, as many people have), CD was the only option that made sense. They take up less room, they're a lot cheaper than vinyl (both new and second hand), and the romantic notion of having the time (or the space) to sit down and listen to an LP in the old-fashioned way... well, it wasn't happening any more and the chances of it happening again in the foreseeable future were negligible. 

The Legendary Stardust Cowboy - I Hate CDs

Most of my listening is done in the car on my way to and from work (that's at least two hours a day right there) or late at night as I'm drifting off to sleep. That music comes from memory stick, burned CD compilations and streaming. If I'm at home alone, I will occasionally still pull a CD off the shelf and give it a spin in the way god intended, but the majority of CDs on my shelves have not seen the inside of a CD player in ten, twenty, thirty years... you might ask why I bother to collect them then, and I'm not sure I really have an answer for that. You either get it or you don't.

Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage - LPs

Those of you who still have big vinyl collections... well, I am jealous, but I've made peace with my decision. Still, I found Ian McNabb's post heartening, that in his eyes at least, I'm not some musically-challenged second class citizen. Maybe in my retirement years, I'll but myself a cheap second hand turntable and dabble in the delights of vinyl again. I must be prepared to dream...