Posted on 11/28/2014 3:03:33 AM PST by RoosterRedux
In 2014 you'd be forgiven for thinking the music industry is all about online charts and digital downloads, but the latest figures released by the Official Charts Company reveal a corresponding boom in vinyl record sales which have reached an 18-year high.
More than one million records have been sold in the UK so far this year – a number which is expected to rise even further by the end of Christmas. We haven't bought that many since 1996, back when cassette tapes were still considered technologically advanced...
Sales have been driven primarily by the Arctic Monkeys (whose LP AM is the biggest selling vinyl of 2014), Jack White and Pink Floyd, with Oasis, Status Quo and David Bowie also contributing to the impressive figures.
(Excerpt) Read more at radiotimes.com ...
I love the sound of vinyl records...particularly operas. It has a classic sound (the scratchiness) about it that just isn’t there in digital music.
A good new record won’t be scratchy. But it will sound very analog. Scratch effects if desired can be added in your reproduction equipment if you must have the nostalgia.
Apple is supposedly about to release a new version of Apple Lossless encoding equivalent to 24-bit 96 kHz sampling rate (the same sampling rate found on Blu-ray disc audio tracks). If that happens, the recent infatuation with LP's will be over.
I take it they are only tracking NEW vinyl sales.
Actually, 24-bit, 192khz master tape downloads have been available for quite some time...and they are far superior to the 96khz FLAC files.
Apple still does not do high sound quality music.
Sound quality varies depending ADC converter and the mastering engineer doing the conversion...and IF the true, studio master tape is used and not a 2nd or 3rd generation safety copy.
And I hate to break it to the author, but CDs were fully entrenched by 1996 and Cassettes were practically gone from the pre-recorded marketplace.
vs the current digital music collection on an iphone which is very portable and has perfectly acceptable sound quality for most people. This device has essentially made apple the most valuable company in the world.
Thank you for the dose of reality. You are entirely correct. But as a person born in the 60’s I feel for my children (born in the 00’s) who will never have the tactile, visual and emotional thrill of buying your favorite band’s new album, playing it incessantly after school, raving with your friends about every song, liner note and aspect of the cover art, transferring the music to tape (for mobile play and sharing), and protecting the entire package with your life. No way a digital download from iTunes — a very evanescent and empty thrill — comes close to that experience. In the 70’s and 80’s music was a very rich and complex endeavor. That is gone.
Very true. But I am loving Amazon's auto rip feature. You get the benefit of the hard copy CD, but you don't have to wait for it to arrive. I hardly ever buy download only. Somehow , I just feel cheated.
That LP you bought after school didn’t require you to click on a “terms of service” check box before you could play it.
You owned it. You could play it on any “device” of your choice, even one that you didn’t own, you could sell it or bequeath it to your heirs and they would have the same freedom of use that you had when you bought it.
That’s another freedom that is gone, stolen by armies of lawyers and the “most valuable company in the world”.
Lossless streaming is the future.
I believe the price of this beauty is $18K+. Is it really going to produce previously unheard fidelities from 70’s 80’s vinyl LP’s? IMO you can only get out of LP’s what record pressers put into the product. Pls correct if I am wrong.
Just to reiterate, Apple & Amazon MP3/MP4 are low quality in terms of sound - much, much lower than the 16-bit CD - and typically compressed to kill dynamics.
However, in all fairness, many CDs are also compressed by labels to obtain that horrible “modern sound”.
24-bit, 192khz, if mastered correctly, can sound very close to the studio master tapes.
But having heard master studio tapes (incl classic albums of Sinatra among others), that is THE reference for sound quality. absolutely amazing and lifelike.
In terms of vinyl, I have an acetate of Doobie Bros “Minute by Minute” that was cut before my eyes and given to me by a good friend who is a highly acclaimed mastering engineer.
1. Most recent Apple iOS devices can't play back FLAC files natively. You have to run a conversion program to convert them to Apple Lossless format--and that usually compromises sound quality.
2. 24-bit 192 kHz FLAC files are HUGE in size for even a four-minute song.
Besides, 24-bit 96 kHz digital audio is already way better than Compact Discs, since you have better sampling of high-frequency sounds, very important if you record a real symphony orchestra.
There’s a huge difference between “audiophiles” and “audiophools”.
Most of that high-end stuff is made specifically to extract large quantities of money from the phoolish.
I like the convenience of a high quality digital audio signal that doesn’t wear out no matter how many times you play it.
We already have better-than-Compact Disc quality audio on the Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks on Blu-ray discs (they normally use 24-bit 96 kHz sampling). Apple's rumored new version of Apple Lossless will be equivalent of this, and that means sound quality better than any Compact Disc.
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