Interesting Article on the Resurgence of Vinyl

[joshnich]

Nothing new but interesting take from the ad world

 

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/vinyls-resurgence-heres-how-brands-are-capitalizing-musics-most-analog-medium-170016?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Adweek_Newsletter_2016000715&utm_source=sailthru&utm_term=AWK_AdBrand

[Chris A]

It's really not that difficult to understand why people think there's higher fidelity in vinyl...it's because the music companies are stacking the deck to increase revenue:

 

http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list/dr?artist=Adele&album=25

 

http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list/dr/desc?artist=Beatles&album=Abbey+Road

 

http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list/album?artist=Arctic+Monkeys&album=AM

 

http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list/dr/desc?artist=Lana+Del+Rey&album=Born+to+Die

[Mallette]

Hmmm....and revenue keeps dropping? 

 

Dave

[billybobg]

What's wrong with companies making money if there is a market.  There are many fad items for sale and occasionally something takes off.  That vinyl exists and I can still get needles and cartridges and some company makes a dollar doesn't offend me.  No one crawled under barbed wire to get out of a capitalistic economy.  If something costs too much, wait.  There will always be sales or someone who jumps off the wagon wanting to unload their once cherished collector edition. 

[Chris A]

What's not cool is what the giant music companies are doing to CDs and digital downloads in terms of reducing fidelity.  That's a big step down that they're inserting.  They have to actually do work to decrease the fidelity of those recordings.

 

Chris

[Wolfbane]

I believe high quality Reel to Reel Tape has been coming back. More slowly but coming back none the less.

[totalcomfort]

I believe high quality Reel to Reel Tape has been coming back. More slowly but coming back none the less.

Yes, Yes Yes!!! This would be awesome!! Love my RTR.

[Travis In Austin]

"In the physical realm, vinyl stayed strong, as sales of LPs hit a new record in 2015—nearly 12 million units. This marks the 10th straight year of vinyl sales growth. The big winners in this realm were independent record stores, which drove 45% of all vinyl sales. The biggest genre for vinyl? Rock, with 68% of LP sales."

So that is going to be about 290 million in sales. Getting close to 10% of US music mkt. That is getting to a point where some heads may start to turn where they were not before.

[Travis In Austin]

"In the physical realm, vinyl stayed strong, as sales of LPs hit a new record in 2015—nearly 12 million units. This marks the 10th straight year of vinyl sales growth. The big winners in this realm were independent record stores, which drove 45% of all vinyl sales. The biggest genre for vinyl? Rock, with 68% of LP sales."

So that is going to be about 290 million in sales. Getting close to 10% of US music mkt. That is getting to a point where some heads may start to turn where they were not before.

[Mallette]

Is in understood here that it is about high quality audio, not about a medium?  I have demonstrated to my own satisfaction that digital can equal, and in terms of not degrading, exceed analog.

 

It's a question of engineering, not media. 

 

I am thrilled it is sending the message.  It will either be received and acted upon or we'll just keep buying vinyl.  Can't really lose on on this.

 

Dave

[billybobg]

I believe high quality Reel to Reel Tape has been coming back. More slowly but coming back none the less.

Not sure if this was tongue in check or not.  I rebuilt a R2R that I picked up for $30.  Maybe put another $40 into it.  Plays fine, but it takes an effort for me to actually play it very often.  I'll peruse the bay for tapes and I've not been disappointed in what I've received.  They appear to play well and other than the usual tape noise, I kind of like the niche oddity of having tape in my system.   Old Beatles, Stones and other groups from the 60's can bring big dollars for tapes on ebay.  I also pick up DBX encoded albums as I have an old DBX decoder and maybe a couple of dozen albums. 

[twk123]

Is in understood here that it is about high quality audio, not about a medium?  I have demonstrated to my own satisfaction that digital can equal, and in terms of not degrading, exceed analog.

 

It's a question of engineering, not media. 

 

I am thrilled it is sending the message.  It will either be received and acted upon or we'll just keep buying vinyl.  Can't really lose on on this.

 

Dave

 

I agree, especially considering most newer recordings are made onto a digital drive anyway so why bother converting it to analog then pressing a vinyl disk when we can just get the bytes and convert it to analogue ourselves with a quality DAC?

[Wolfbane]

 

I believe high quality Reel to Reel Tape has been coming back. More slowly but coming back none the less.

Not sure if this was tongue in check or not.  I rebuilt a R2R that I picked up for $30.  Maybe put another $40 into it.  Plays fine, but it takes an effort for me to actually play it very often.  I'll peruse the bay for tapes and I've not been disappointed in what I've received.  They appear to play well and other than the usual tape noise, I kind of like the niche oddity of having tape in my system.   Old Beatles, Stones and other groups from the 60's can bring big dollars for tapes on ebay.  I also pick up DBX encoded albums as I have an old DBX decoder and maybe a couple of dozen albums. 

 

 

I was being serious. I own three  RTR machines and just a single TT. I've not had the turntable in active system use in years.

[Seadog]

What's not cool is what the giant music companies are doing to CDs and digital downloads in terms of reducing fidelity.  That's a big step down that they're inserting.  They have to actually do work to decrease the fidelity of those recordings.

 

Chris

 

Or is this because the average Joe with earbuds or car stereo actually prefers highly compressed music???

[billybobg]

 

 

I believe high quality Reel to Reel Tape has been coming back. More slowly but coming back none the less.

Not sure if this was tongue in check or not.  I rebuilt a R2R that I picked up for $30.  Maybe put another $40 into it.  Plays fine, but it takes an effort for me to actually play it very often.  I'll peruse the bay for tapes and I've not been disappointed in what I've received.  They appear to play well and other than the usual tape noise, I kind of like the niche oddity of having tape in my system.   Old Beatles, Stones and other groups from the 60's can bring big dollars for tapes on ebay.  I also pick up DBX encoded albums as I have an old DBX decoder and maybe a couple of dozen albums. 

 

 

I was being serious. I own three  RTR machines and just a single TT. I've not had the turntable in active system use in years.

 

So, if R2R is coming back, are there any companies even thinking of building machines again?  Seems like they would be prohibitively expensive compared to TT.

[Mallette]

Don't forget vinyl is a compressed medium.  Has to be.  That's why I use a DBX with mine.  I consider playing them without it as not accurate.  Having use it since 1976 it's second nature and I get it right with a flip of the controls. 

 

Dave

[JJkizak]

I'm so glad that vinyl lost. But I don't really know who won.

JJK

[bracurrie]

I also pick up DBX encoded albums as I have an old DBX decoder and maybe a couple of dozen albums. 

I too have several DBX records with a decoder.  I find the results to be pretty good, but R2R is blowing me away.  Several of the tapes I have gotten off of Epray have been pretty darn good.  What I have been looking for are titles not in the digital domain. Classical titles that didn't fit on LPs are intriguing. 

[Wolfbane]

 

 

 

I believe high quality Reel to Reel Tape has been coming back. More slowly but coming back none the less.

Not sure if this was tongue in check or not.  I rebuilt a R2R that I picked up for $30.  Maybe put another $40 into it.  Plays fine, but it takes an effort for me to actually play it very often.  I'll peruse the bay for tapes and I've not been disappointed in what I've received.  They appear to play well and other than the usual tape noise, I kind of like the niche oddity of having tape in my system.   Old Beatles, Stones and other groups from the 60's can bring big dollars for tapes on ebay.  I also pick up DBX encoded albums as I have an old DBX decoder and maybe a couple of dozen albums. 

 

 

I was being serious. I own three  RTR machines and just a single TT. I've not had the turntable in active system use in years.

 

So, if R2R is coming back, are there any companies even thinking of building machines again?  Seems like they would be prohibitively expensive compared to TT.

 

 

There are at least two companies making the media (magnetic tape) and I believe one company in the far east making machines.  I've stocked up on machines and tape a few years back so I've not looked into it since.

[bracurrie]

http://tapeproject.com/