Do people still listen to vinyl?

Do people still listen to vinyl? The last time I owned a turntable was in the 80's (A Cosmic DD Turntable) and I was happy to get rid of!

Wondering how vinyl would sound now compared to digital music?

In all the mayhem and rush of the digital world, we have forgotten the soothing notes of analog.

With this statement we have opened a HUGE pandora's box of pros and cons of Vinyl (analog) vs CD (digital).

The reason for the original shift from LP to cassette and then to CD was purely 'ease of use' - very little attention was paid (by the general public) to what was being lost because of this convenience. Its akin to the bespoke suit losing out to off-the-rack - what we got was convenience and price, but what we lost out was soothing smoothness that only pure analog devices can deliver.

We recommend you take on a LP player to a similarly priced CD player any day. I would like to see where this discussion leads.

Do look on the net for this oft discussed topic. You can also look at 'tubes vs transistors'

Hi Mohan/Soundsmiths,

Vinyl....if u say that i m an audiophile n i sleep eat n drink music....then f@$# with ur CDs! vinyls will always remain the ultimate in sound quality. why do u think are these tube amps or Turn Tables the best today? In a layman's language, to get the best out of anything, u shuld always try retrieve it just the way u made it. digital to digital and analog to analog. are tablas or guitars or pianos any digital? ofcourse not...then why have a digital player or an amp for that? Go out of india n u'll still find vnyls and that too almost double the price of a cd. The level of satisfaction u get outta vinyl is definitely 200 times.

Why we phased it out from india then? because we nvr cared to keep ourselves n our surroundings clean. evrybdy is so selfish here tht they went ahead with the construction mania and let the dust prevail all our life. Its the dust that kills us and whatever we have our lives relied on. And ofcourse the people here are as lazy as ever and always look upon music as a passe...why to have those big ugly looking vinys when i can have a 3.5' disk with 500 songs on it? And ofcourse the tube, people always thought that once the tube is gone, the whole system is gone....

I have some 200 vinyls at home which has spent some memorable part of their life spinning on a 36 yr old philips TT. The player is still alive and so are the vinyls. they still spin at 33.33, 45, & 78 rpms and sound fantastic. We occasionally take them out from my bed (because i sleep eat and drink music) at family gatherings when everyone remembers the good old days and specially when i use to shut myslf off as a baby boy listening to neil diamond or a george mccraig LP evry night on a murphy tube transistor! Now, we do take them out with a lot of enthu, but eventually half of the time's spent cleaning them. If i manage to clean them well, and if i manage to get all my cds converted to vinyl, i can forget about the DACs and the transport or evn the CDs forever for good.

I will buy a good tube amp, a good TT and some really good bookshelves for my DAD. I still want him to play those songs the way he use to, and bring our innocent lives back again.

This is what is happening to CDs now, enter MP3s. Somebody has to ban this for the sake of our passion and the reason why we all are here expressing our views and the billion like us doing the same somewhere on some blog. Imagine the pain, the time and the money these people spend to ensure that we all die a beautiful death listening to their amazing compositions on amazing pieces of machineries. If this goes on, just like the vinly is dead in India, music will also die forever.

Period!!!

Mohan
I had a cosmic tt too somewhere around the late 70s/early 80s. I think it was a Japanese made tt with cosmic branding... It was well made and I had a Shure cartridge. Soon after I got the Akai deck and then the tt was forgotton!
Fortunately I have rediscovered vinyl and am slowly but surely collecting as many LPs that I can find.
I personally find the sound much more natural and pleasing and the whole experience is like a Japanese tea ceremony compared to CDs which is a cafe coffee day equivalent!

Those of you who live in Bangalore and would like to experience a truly wonderful vinyl experience, suggest call Absolute sounds (Prithvi) for an audition.
Jeeves

Hi! Jeevs,
Thanks for the post. By the way the company is Absolute Phase. Anyone interested in hearing one of the worlds best LP Player , The Linn Sondek LP12 can PM or call me for a demo.
Rgds

Prithvi

Prithvi..my apologies! Absolute Phase!

jeevan-- my answer with 2000 LP's is an emphatic YES
I CURRENTLY have 2 turntables -- a thorens td 160 with shure m97ed cartridge & a projectvdebut 2 with factory fitted orthofon cartridge & a NAD phono pre amp pp 1.
I have duplicated mANY RECORDS BY BUYING THE CD'S LATER BUT FIND THE ANALOGUE SOUND OF VINYL FAR SOOTHING THAN CD SOUND. THERE IS NO DOUBT ABOUT THIS. THE IRRITANT IS THE STATIC ELECTRICITY & WARPING WHICH CAN BE MINIMIZED WITH AN ANTI STATIC GUN & WASHING THE LP WITH SOAP/WATER. I WELCOME YOU TO A DEMO AT MY HOUWE TO PROVE THE POINT. I CAN BE CONTACTED ON MUMBAI MOBILE 98200 35734

Hi

I can definitely vouch for the sound of vinyl. I have a NAD 533 turntable with a low end goldring elektra cartridge and a Rega Planet 2000 CD player and run them through my valve amp. I have albums like Pink Floyd, Alan Parson, Dave Grusin and old hindi film songs on both Vinly and CD and have compared songs on both the sources. Most of the time, the vinyl sounds better than the CD (specially the old hindi songs which sound surprisingly very nice on vinyl). Soundstage is better, detail is better, more musical and the sound is warm. Check out the Dark Side of the Moon vinyl (EMI records 30th edition). Great sonics compared to the CD. On some occassions however the CD sounds better.

I think it all boils down to mastering. Well mastered CDs played on a good CD player can match vinyl in my opinion. Particularly CDs mastered post 2000. SACD supposedly sounds as good as vinyl if not better though it is a dying medium unfortunately.

Further, setting a record player to get the optimum sound requires practice/patience as there are a number of parameters one needs to get right. It is not plug and play. I don't think everybody wants or has the inclination to do that. Also, it makes sense getting a player if one has a lot of records stashed up somewhere. It is difficult to get vinyl now in India though there are tons of good second hand stuff available abroad.

I think CD quality is getting better by the day. But that won't lure me away from vinyl.

Convenience is all that matters now. CDs will soon give way to mp3 and ipods in some years at least in the commercial market. So probably we will have a discussion at some point in time on how good CDs used to sound.

Dr Chichgar
Would like to take you up on your offer next time I'm in Mumbai.
Thanks!
Jeevan