Re: Retailers giving vinyl records another spin
- From: Ron <ron@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:32:04 -0700
iPods are just like a CD converted to stored digital data. So the
"sound" has the same positives and negatives as a CD. That and the
fact that the iPod you carry with you has terrible speakers. Playing
an iPod through your stereo is better, but still digital sound. Vinyl
is analog all the way through and subject to the positives and
negatives previously noted. However you want to play back your music
selections, you are (for now) limited to either analog or digital.
Therefore the equipment you use for playback is either analog or
digital and that's where the difference comes in.
Ron
On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:01:39 -0400, "Joan F \(MI\)"
<jjfahl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
How about iPods? You're way behind the technology..
Ron wrote:
| There are arguments going both ways. It's true the CD has clear
| sound, (no clicks or pops) and has tremendous frequency response. The
| complaint is, the CD are too "brassy" or "bright".
|
| Vinyl has a "warm" sound, and played on a decent turntable, isolated
| from room vibrations and played through a vacuum tube pre-amp and amp
| gives sound more like the original live performances... so I am told.
| True, you do have to put up with the care and maintenance of the LP's,
| and with enough playing even with very light cartridge pressure you
| will lose some of the high frequencies over time.
|
| You pays your money and you takes your choice. Me... I have both,
| CD's and LP's. And to be honest, I can't say for certain which I like
| more. If I had to choose, I'd say for listening pleasure, vinyl would
| be my preference, but for the sheer amount of available music, I'd
| have to go with CD's.
|
| Ron
|
|
|
| On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:57:47 -0400, Jim Higgins
| <gordian238@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
|
|| Personally I could not imagine going backwards to vinyl. I remember
|| my first experience with a CD-I was stunned with how clear and rich
|| it sounded. Way to much care and attention is needed for
|| vinyl-besides my ears do not hear a broad range of frequencies
|| anymore. Give me that old-time CD :-)
||
|| Retailers giving vinyl records another spin
|| http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/10/vinyl.records.ap/index.html
||
|| PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) -- It was a fortuitous typo for the Fred Meyer
|| retail chain.
||
|| This spring, an employee intending to order a special CD-DVD edition
|| of R.E.M.'s latest release "Accelerate" inadvertently entered the
|| "LP" code instead. Soon boxes of the big, vinyl discs showed up at
|| several stores.
||
|| Some sent them back. But a handful put them on the shelves, and 20
|| LPs sold the first day.
||
|| The Portland-based company, owned by The Kroger Co., realized the
|| error might not be so bad after all. Fred Meyer is now testing vinyl
|| sales at 60 of its stores in Oregon, Washington and Alaska. The
|| company says, based on the response so far, it plans to roll out
|| vinyl in July in all its stores that sell music.
||
|| Other mainstream retailers are giving vinyl a spin too. Best Buy is
|| testing sales at some stores. And online music giant Amazon.com,
|| which has sold vinyl for most of the 13 years it has been in
|| business online, created a special vinyl-only section last fall.
||
|| The best-seller so far at Fred Meyer is The Beatles album "Abbey
|| Road." But musicians from the White Stripes and the Foo Fighters to
|| Metallica and Pink Floyd are selling well, the company says.
||
|| "It's not just a nostalgia thing," said Melinda Merrill, spokeswoman
|| for Fred Meyer. "The response from customers has just been that they
|| like
|| it, they feel like it has a better sound."
||
|| According to the Recording Industry Association of America,
|| manufacturers' shipments of LPs jumped more than 36 percent from
|| 2006 to 2007 to more than 1.3 million. Shipments of CDs dropped more
|| than 17 percent during the same period to 511 million, as they lost
|| some ground to digital formats.
||
|| The resurgence of vinyl centers on a long-standing debate over analog
|| versus digital sound. Digital recordings capture samples of sound and
|| place them very close together as a complete package that sounds
|| nearly identical to continuous sound to many people.
||
|| Analog recordings on most LPs are continuous, which produces a truer
|| sound -- though, paradoxically, some new LP releases are being
|| recorded and mixed digitally but delivered analog.
||
|| Some purists also argue that the compression required to allow
|| loudness in some digital formats weakens the quality as well.
||
|| But it's not just about the sound. Audiophiles say they also want the
|| format's overall experience -- the sensory experience of putting the
|| needle on the record, the feeling of side A and side B and the joy of
|| lingering over the liner notes.
||
|| "I think music products should be more than just music," said Isaac
|| Hudson, a 28-year-old vinyl fan standing outside one of Portland's
|| larger independent music stores.
||
|| The interest seems to be catching on. Turntable sales are picking up,
|| and the few remaining record pressers say business is booming.
||
|| But the LP isn't going to muscle out CDs or iPod soon.
||
|| Nearly 450 million CDs were sold last year, versus just under 1
|| million LPs, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Based on the first
|| three months of this year, Nielsen says vinyl album sales could
|| reach 1.6 million in 2008.
||
|| "I don't think vinyl is for everyone; it's for the die-hard music
|| consumer," said Jay Millar, director of marketing at United Record
|| Pressing, a Nashville based company that is the nation's largest
|| record pressing plant.
||
|| Many major artists -- Elvis Costello, the Raconteurs and others --
|| are issuing LPs and encouraging fans to check out their albums on
|| vinyl. On Amazon.com, one of the best-selling LPs is Madonna's
|| latest album, "Hard Candy".
||
|| Some artists package vinyl and digital versions of their music
|| together, including offers for free digital downloads along with the
|| record.
||
|| "We've definitely had some talks with the major retailers about
|| exclusives on the manufacturing end," Millar said of United Record
|| Pressing, which focuses primarily on independent recordings.
||
|| An avid music fan himself, Millar says he has moved to vinyl in
|| recent years.
||
|| "Once I got my first iPod ... I'm looking at my wall of CDs and
|| trying
|| to justify it," Millar said. "The things I like -- the artwork, the
|| liner notes, the sound quality -- it dawns on me, those are things I
|| like better on vinyl." He welcomed back the pops and clicks, even
|| some
|| of the scratches.
||
|| "I like that fact that it's imperfect in a lot of ways, live music is
|| imperfect too," Millar said.
||
|| Independent music stores, which have been the primary source of LPs
|| in recent years, say many fans never left the medium.
||
|| "People have been buying vinyl all along," said Cathy Hagen, manager
|| at 2nd Avenue Records in Portland. "There was a fairly good supply
|| from independent labels on vinyl all these years. As far as a
|| resurgence, the major labels are just pressing more now."
||
|| In this game, big retailers aren't necessarily competing head to head
|| with independent sellers' regular clientele of nostalgic baby
|| boomers, independent label fans and turntable DJs.
||
|| "I cannot see that Best Buy or Fred Meyer would order the same
|| things we would," Hagen said. "They aren't going to be ordering the
|| reggae, funk, punk or industrial music."
- References:
- Retailers giving vinyl records another spin
- From: Jim Higgins
- Re: Retailers giving vinyl records another spin
- From: Ron
- Re: Retailers giving vinyl records another spin
- From: Joan F \(MI\)
- Retailers giving vinyl records another spin
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