Does anyone here still spin wax? (listen to records)

Frijid

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i know it's a dead fad, but i'm sure some people out there still do it
 

markr6

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Oh yeah! I have a fairly inexpensive Sony turntable but I bought it a few years ago just for fun. I'm big into new high tech equipment, but I'll admit the sound just has that special quality that can't be beat. I have a small collection of Jazz, which I think excels on vinyl. Some John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Stan Getz, etc. I actually have to turn the bass down it's so rich. I remember showing it to some friends, all in their mid-20s, and they loved it!
 

JCD

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I don't listen to vinyl, but I often find myself seeking out the original mastered version of albums, which was typically for vinyl. The claimed superior sound quality of vinyl over CDs is, more often than not, due to the fact that the LP version of an album and the CD version are often mastered independently. The master for vinyl is typically better, with greater dynamic range. The CD versions are mastered to be louder, at the expense of dynamic range, and, consequently, sound quality. With relatively rare exceptions, albums "remastered for CD" are garbage.

After spending WAY too much money on audio equipment, I learned that the two biggest factors for sound quality for the listener are the master and the speakers. Nothing in between makes enough difference to matter, provided that it isn't complete junk. I'd rather listen to a 128 kb/s MP3 of a well mastered version of an album than a 24/96K "high resolution" copy of a poorly mastered version of the same album any day.
 
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PhotonWrangler

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I still have my old Technics turntable and my vinyl but I haven't had them hooked up in years. One of these days I hope to transfer my favorite albums and singles to digital. I'll probably process them a bit to add some "warmth" so the digital playback sounds a little more like the original vinyl.

BTW the Technics was my very first DC direct drive turntable. Up until then every turntable I ever had used an AC induction motor and a rubber drive wheel against the inside rim of the turntable. This always caused a slight but annoying 'wow' in the audio, as if the record was playing with a slightly off centered hole. It was wonderful to finally have a turntable that produced steady, solid audio without the induction-motor 'wow.'
 
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Frijid

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I still have my old Technics turntable and my vinyl but I haven't had them hooked up in years. One of these days I hope to transfer my favorite albums and singles to digital. I'll probably process them a bit to add some "warmth" so the digital playback sounds a little more like the original vinyl.

I bought a vinyl to mp3 player machine for 50 bucks a few years ago. ripped all of the records to mp3, burned them to cd so i can play them in my vehicle's cd player. i haven't used the machine in a few months. it still has that "warmth" you was talking about, you can still here the pops and ticks on some of the records that are in worse shape than the rest.

i still listen to my vinyls (over 300) when i'm home on my old vintage sanyo record player.
 
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StarHalo

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Meanwhile, in StarHalo's neighborhood (and it's just across the way from the coffee shop that roasts its own beans, gotta love Cali..):

i4jWpjr6fGYj.jpg
 

PhotonWrangler

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Very nice, StarHalo!

BTW you know you're a flashaholic when your eyes are immediately drawn to the light fixtures in the picture, wondering whether they're incandescent, CFL, LED, HID, etc. I'm such a lighting dork. :p
 

tarrow

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StarHalo your pic makes me jealous! I still spin wax all the platters that matter! These days I have to have them shipped in, look in thrift stores or drive to the nearest record store a province away. I go down New Orleans every couple of years on a record hunting expedition. If you like soul and funk, even the thrift stores there have better stuff then up her in the great white north.
 

Steve K

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I still have my old Technics turntable and my vinyl but I haven't had them hooked up in years. One of these days I hope to transfer my favorite albums and singles to digital. I'll probably process them a bit to add some "warmth" so the digital playback sounds a little more like the original vinyl.

I've still got my old Hitachi direct drive turntable, and have been using it to convert the old albums to mp3. The vinyl still does sound good, but maybe it's just a side effect of the old routine of cleaning off the record and looking over the album art and liner notes. I did just buy a proper USB audio gadget to digitize the audio (had been using a little mp3 player with a line in jack). The USB gadget is a Behringer U-Control UCA202. Tried a Creative Labs Sound Blaster USB device, but it could only accept a mic level input.
 

Frijid

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awesome pic, i could shop in their for hours. i've recently stopped collecting vinyl as they've started to get in the way. only way i'll buy one is if it's one i need to finish out a collection or one i really really really REALLY want. the days of "oh i wonder what this band sounds like? well i'll buy it and find out) days are over. I've known the guy who works at the local "hippie" store around here and we've got a major trust relation. i'll take about 10 records home of bands i've never heard of, play them, if i like em i'll keep em and pay him for them. if i don't like em, i'll just bring em back and put em on the shelf. i don't even have to show him which one's i taking, i can just walk out the door with em cause he knows i wouldn't cheat him. (guess that's the benefit of living in a small town) plus he knows just about every band i like and am looking for and if one of that band comes in, he'll keep it behind the counter and call me and asks if i have that certain album. if i already have it, he'll put it back up for sale. if i don't he'll hold it til i come in a get it. why just the other day he found me the last album of the monkee's i needed to finish my collection of monkee's, and just a few weeks before that he held onto a jefferson airplane, iron butterfly, and a cream record i needed.
 
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StarHalo

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the days of "oh i wonder what this band sounds like? well i'll buy it and find out) days are over.

That's what the preview feature on Amazon and iTunes is for, no borrowing necessary. Don't forget to use Amazon's recommendation engine to direct you to similar music you'd enjoy. And web radio is an excellent way to discover new music, just find stations within your genre and leave it playing in the background from time to time, you'd be amazed how many new albums you'll need to buy.
 

Frijid

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That's what the preview feature on Amazon and iTunes is for, no borrowing necessary. Don't forget to use Amazon's recommendation engine to direct you to similar music you'd enjoy. And web radio is an excellent way to discover new music, just find stations within your genre and leave it playing in the background from time to time, you'd be amazed how many new albums you'll need to buy.

SHHH! Keep quite with that, or i'll start listening to new music, get addicted to new bands and have to buy their LP's!! :laughing:

LOL thanks for the idea, i'll give it a go.
 

StarHalo

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Yeah, that was the big problem with physical media music, there wasn't really any method of "try before you buy"; in the digital realm, that's no longer an issue, you can preview all the tracks from all the albums you want. Try it out: Click here and down where it says "MP3 Songs", click the play button next to "Play all samples", you'll be glad you did!
 

Frijid

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Yeah, that was the big problem with physical media music, there wasn't really any method of "try before you buy"; in the digital realm

Yeah, the only thing i can remember is when stores like walmart and FYE used to have those little scanners you scanned the cd under and put on headphone and it would play like a 15 second sample of each song on the cd. Don't know if they still have them. all the FYE's went outta business here and when at walmart i don't even go anywhere near the CD's (it's been back around 2006 since i've bought an actual CD)

oh thanks for the link, i like the small faces! time to listen! :popcorn:
 

Frijid

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Gotta love the public headphones; hair lice was never so easy!

LOL I know right? one of the stores stopped using them after a while, they just had a jack where you plugged your own headphones into them to curb this problem.
 

RNDDUDE

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Yes to vinyl. I just retired my Bang & Olafson 4002 linear tracking turntable and purchased a Pro Ject turntable for the sole use of ripping all of my vinyl to digital WAV files. MP3, by the way, sucks big time in terms of fidelity. Everything will be vaulted on a windows-based music server (MusicaPristina) running foobar management software and controlled via an Ipad. I will use Audicity software when ripping the vinyl, which will allow me to clean up some of the scratch and pop on some of the records.
 

HighlanderNorth

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I sold or tossed my last phonograph back in like 1991. By that time I had bought my 1st CD changer for my home stereo, and I used cassettes in my car. But go back just 5 years to 1986, and we still had a stereo with a phono and an 8 track player at my Moms house from like 1978. I used to listen to this 8 track tape from the Guess Who that had this song called "Coors For Sunday" which was a pretty cool tune, even though I wasnt a big Guess Who fan. I had AC/DC's Back In Black on 8 track in 1982. Also had it on cassette, album and later, CD.

But I used to have a big vinyl album collection from when I was about 10 in 1978 til 1986 when I was 18, and I had probably 90 albums there that I had bought with allowance money, paper route money, or money from my 1st job at 16 in a machine shop. It was mostly late 60's to mid 80's hard rock and metal.

I found a Youtube video recently of a song I wanted to hear, but instead of simply playing a digital CD or downloading a digital file to youtube, the guy used this extremely high tech, and extremely expensive phonograph which was pictured in the video playing. I had never seen a record player that looked anything like this, but it was new-ish and it cost somewhere in the $5,000-$8,000 range! But it sounded as good as any CD I have ever heard even though it was playing an analog vinyl album. I read where some people say a top notch phono with a good quality album will sound better than a CD(???)
 

StarHalo

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I read where some people say a top notch phono with a good quality album will sound better than a CD(???)

The CD is digital, so the signal switches on and off really quickly, like PWM in an LED. The record is analog, so the signal is a continuous waveform. So one would deduce that the record should sound more "natural", or at least generally better in one way or another; but experimentation hasn't borne this out, it turns out that the CD's digital signal is so fast/dense that it's not humanly possible to distinguish it from a continuous waveform. In fact you can make a recording of the "natural" record signal and put it on a CD, and it sounds exactly the same as the record when played back, not even the record people can tell the difference.

So throw in that fact with the usual difficulties that come with records, like crackling and popping, proper maintenance of the turntable and needle, etc, and the CD obviously gives much better fidelity for much less money. Take that a step further by removing the physical aspect altogether, and the digital sound file is an even better deal.
 
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