Before Vinyl Consumed Your Life (sandbox turntable geek thread)

Now I have listened to:

Alice Coltrane - Journey To Satchidananda side 1
Beatles - Help OST side 1
H.N.A.S. - Ach, Dieser Bart side 2
PGR - The Flickering Of Sowing Time side 2

currently on: Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti side 3

I am ecstatic.

D'oh! Er, I mean...

(The point about reissues is a good one -- especially since I think we're likely seeing the last reflexive kick of physical fancy-schmanz reissues in the CD realm in these recent years. So for me it's fun to pick up things like the Cure/Depeche/Siouxsie etc. reissues, and after all is said and done with a thorough ripping and selling back I'll be keeping those.)

Ned - yeah, there are some really nice CD packages that have come out recently. I'm definitely keeping box sets and such. And the stuff I find myself going back to is usually for historical interest or perspective as opposed to the "OMG I gotta hear this it's so great" impulse.

There's also the explosion of limited edition/CDR runs, of course, and I do like hanging onto those when they warrant it (happily many do). In their case, they are intentional rarities, and the circulation of their music in the electronic realm is to be expected. I have no problem with that approach at all, I think it's a good recognition of the market.

Music is silly as an investment. i learned this the hard way. now i never buy anything with an intention to resell it (giving it away is more fun)

I find it hard to give up my CD's sometimes, although I have been selling quite a lot of late. I agree that a WAV file disc is about as good, but I get into these weird questions about some of the CD's I own. Like the ones that I own and have for years and will never let go of, but that I also know very well I have not played and will not play in the future. I don't understand why I can't get rid of Blur albums. I don't understand. Etc.

Bimble, unless you want to use the turntable to actually DJ out at clubs or parties or wherever you should get a belt-driven turntable. they are better for just listening, less motor noise bleeds through the center spindle.

Anyway right now I'm playing a CD and am perfectly happy. Go figure.

A Graham Slee pre-amp, ESOJ? Very good choice!

Having kids has had the opposite effect on my listening - the Michell turntable barely gets used thesedays, it's practically all CDs. But CD sounds slightly better through my system (Copland/Audiolab/Heybrook), so that's OK (not that I get the chance to do much dedicated listening...I barely get the chance to do the bleedin' dishes).

when CDS first reared their ugly heads in the late 80s I went on a vinyl-buying spree, scarfing up cutouts befpre they disappeared. felt kinda dumb about this a few yrs later but in retrospect I was ahead of my time once again...oblivious is more like it.

1) Greatly enlarging my vinyl collection could become a burden vis a vis moving/storage

2) I know these external hard drives fail frequently, and even if I back them up I'm afraid I'll lose all my music

Not that I'm going to do vinyl unless it's a dancey release. And we'll still release CDs, what we already have lined up and if we luck into something we think we can sell 5,000 copies of (fat chance...)

Bimble, conventional wisdom says that audiophile's hate Technics because they are direct drive, so the vibration of the motor directly touches the platter which touches the record which touches the needle, that's why not only the cheapest record players are belt-driven, but the most expensive ones are as well. Lately I've been reading about a third option called Idler Drives that some say are great and make for some really high quality turntables you can get used:

http://www.btinternet.com/~a.d.richarson/hifi/lenco/lenco_land.html

but I'm not made out of money and I'm a DJ and I already have 2 1200s so I'm not about to buy another turntable. When I'm rich maybe...

See, that's ALL I ask. (Or even just doing it FLAC/SHN style, even.)

It Was Free Cuz I Stole It
The year in unfair shares.
By Chris Zeigler

Now is a bad time to be a giant music corporation, but ethically challenged music fans couldn't ask for better days. Bootlegging has always been about catering directly to the fans, and the Internet breeds the best bootleggers yet: bigger and stronger and faster than ever before, the better to handle the demands of 10 million file sharers trading a billion and a half songs daily.

It's clear now that the CD-R bent the CD over and the MP3 player finished it off, and although the industry is still in shock, smaller and more agile labels are already accepting the inevitable and locking in a vinyl/digital-only production schedule, then using merch like T-shirts—low production cost, high sale price, lots of options to ratchet up collectibility—to plug their revenue gaps.

Since file sharing is permanent enough now that you can buy $19-per-year lawsuit insurance, it's time to acknowledge the bright side. Out-of-print doesn't mean anything anymore. If you can learn about it, you can listen to it, and if the record company doesn't want to reissue it, you can probably find it without even having to stand up. The romance is gone but the music is cheap, accessible, and instant—that's the music industry of the future, brought to you now by Russian MP3 pirates, obsessive genre bloggers, and criminals selling albums off a blanket on the street. Highlights of a year of unfair shares:

PodTube and iTube: Once YouTube really got going, the video collectors blew open their vaults. This is footage no one ever saw from sources no one ever heard of—psychedelic small-town variety shows, supersaturated Scopitone camp-operas, unfinished punk-rock docs, and student films. Watching them was good enough, but now you can illegally own them through programs that copy those videos to your hard drive. PodTube and iTube get you screening items unseen since the day the station filmed them.

Street Meat: You don't even need a computer to play this one. If you live in one of the Recording Industry Association of America's 12 priority piracy cities (which include Dallas, Houston, L.A., Miami, N.Y.C., and San Francisco), you can get bootlegs hot off the sidewalk, out the trunk, or on the bus. "A disturbing trend," said RIAA executive VP Brad Buckles. "As the pirate music trade continues to evolve, criminals are enhancing their products." Thanks for the tip, Brad! On the menu now are knockoffs of chart hits bulked up with bonus tracks, chopped and screwed remixes ready right after the legit release hits stores, and the RIAA's dreaded "dream compilations,"—albums that mix tracks between competing labels into albums that are too good to be legit.

Zune: Microsoft's Zune—aka "the BetaPod"—seems destined to be a sure staple of the thrift stores of the future. And that's too bad because wireless file transfer without Microsoft's copyright hobbles is a seductive idea. Imagine the record conventions of 2016: a bunch of silent geeks pointing blinking black boxes at each other and going home with a billion and a half new songs, and . . . actually, that's a little pathetic. But the fact remains that instant player-to-player wireless transfer would (and probably eventually will) be the most efficient reiteration of the old going-over-to-your-friend's-house-with-a-bag-of-blank-tapes ritual. Maybe it will become reality by the time Zune 2.0 rolls out, when Microsoft gets desperate to dig out from under the iPhone.

Sharity Blogs: Much better than the sanctioned sites that give you one brand-new track smothered in a bunch of recycled reviews. Instead, sharity blogs resurrect full albums long lost or forgotten and post them in their entirety on overseas hosting sites. It'd be almost obscenely exploitative except for the obvious love and research put into the selections. This is a scholarly crowd on an admirable mission: rescuing suppressed Japanese terror-folk, Brazilian psych nuggets, and buried Golden Age hip-hop from graves where reissue labels fear to dig.

MySpaceGopher: Everyone with electricity and an instrument has a MySpace Music site, but the songs are still downloadable at the artist's discretion. Inevitably, hackers removed that discretion, and while it's disrespectful, it was an effective way to ransack exclusive prerelease streaming content. MySpace repeatedly repairs the code holes that allow these shenanigans, and the public responds by finding a new hole. At press time, the newly disabled MySpaceGopher was working on a fix, which will probably be ready by the time you read this.

Snob Torrents: Concentrated swapper sites are gonna strangle themselves with stinginess, the same way networks like Hotline and KDX sank into obscuro- lescence. Music freeboters don't like to follow rules about ratios—there's no homework among thieves—so sites like these will probably vanish as users move to free sharity blogs, friendlier message boards, and unstumpable file-share networks.

Premix Leaks: Lupe Fiasco may hate these—an unmixed version of his Food & Liquor came out months early—but premix leaks are becoming routine. TV on the Radio's Cookie Mountain also came out months prematurely, the Shins' Wincing the Night Away (due in January) has leaked at least twice in different versions, and Bloc Party's A Weekend in the City (due in February) hit the networks in November. The solution now belongs to the PR people—lucky Lupe got an early review calling him the future of hip-hop, and a correctly leveraged premix can garner a spike of welcome, unexpected publicity.

Virtual Release: If legendary 78 collector Joe Bussard could plug an iBook directly into his Victrola, he'd be making these. This is real ghostly stuff: sourced from unreleased sessions or radio broadcasts or repo'd master tapes. That's all time-honored bootleg chow, sure, but virtual releases go straight from the source to the file shares, skipping physical media entirely. For instance: WFMU recently popularized a Faust album that never made it past a few Virgin Records promo tapes until someone copied it up to MP3. Companion to this are homemade virtual compilations, issued direct from the collector's originals—a stack of uncomped funk 45s, say—to the file shares with some kind of searchbait name, like "MY HOT FUNK 45s." These albums are aimed at audiences so microscopic there's almost no profit in pressing up hard copies—and as such, they're usually pretty great.

Give It Away Now: Nobody can steal what you give away. A California band called Wooden Shjips put out their EP for free this year; all you had to do was ask and there was a real record in your actual hands. And it was really good, too—blown-out Les Rallizes homage with vocals Echoplexed to infinity. In fact, it was so good that I bought a copy with my own actual money, just for old times' sake.

I can't say I do, though I see your point. I'd always rather have melange and collage rather than monochrome.

and, yeah, obviously i believe in the whole variety = spice of life thing. i just wish i was a little, um, more "selective" sometimes. do i really need all ten old german mountain yodelling albums at the thrift store? wouldn't one or two be enough? that sort of thing. which is why just centering my attention on metal as far as new stuff goes is kind of a relief in some ways.

Visit SF's Amoeba sometime. It's amazing what lurks in the dollar bin section -- stuff from this year, even.

http://www.needledoctor.com/core/media/media.nl?id=351&c=ACCT106601&h=6c76dd4315dd0016b311

i'm FAIRLY picky about condition. and i have a good eye. i can tell how something will play by looking at it. i won't buy something less than VG+ unless it's a good deal/have to have it/etc. thrift store stuff i will make acceptions for cuz it's so cheap and i might just want to hear something. i can always just throw it out if its too beat. i'm VERY good with my stuff. i may not be an audiophile, but i can at least say that.

people who don't care about the condition of the used vinyl they buy...they should just listen to CDs. cuz as wonderful as a good record can sound, man, nothing sounds worse than a beat to shit record.

http://www.needledoctor.com/Nitty-Gritty-Record-Master-Operates-like-Model-1-0-but-has-built-in-adapter-for-45s-78s-and-LP?sc=2&category=106

what everyone needs is one of these(!!):

http://www.zenn.com.sg/Zenn_RC_MKII2.JPG

x-post: I saw instructions for a diy record cleaning vacuum you could make out of a Shop-Vac a while ago - looked like a disaster waiting to happen

Idler drive turntables are an interesting solution for playing records. But given that all players have their ups and downs, these are no exception. Low-end rumble. Bah. If people are DJs, they typically, though not always, have 1200s. If people aren't DJs, they use whatever record player was handed down to them or randomly invest in some audiophile quality home unit. Me? I personally like my mixer better than the turntables.

Anybody here used this Last preservative coating stuff? Two different hifi stores have mentioned it to me recently, but I am generally wary of putting unknown substances on my records.

-- ian

word, son. i bought a bunch of shit at tower and figure i'll copy it to itunes, throw 'em all on an MP3 disc, and trade the stuff in for LPs. my cd player at home plays MP3s now, so i don't see much point in keeping a lot of them. i have about 450 CDs now, I can see having 1/3rd of that number at the end of '07.

i'm totally up for all music to be sold as flacs or whatever equivalent.. a few labels are already doing this and i love them for it

Slim Devices makes a few incredible products for this use. A rich friend's father schooled me on the Transporter ($2000):

http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_transporter.html

I dropped some cash for my pops and got him their significantly more affordable but equally cool Squeezebox ($299) and it's now his favorite thing on earth:

http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_squeezebox.html

I swear by this here ($50):

http://www.amazon.com/XITEL-HFL-A1-X1-HiFi-Link-PC-Mac/dp/B00006I601/sr=1-3/qid=1167702246/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/002-1272197-7360832?ie=UTF8&s=electronics

Yeah, when I said "data discs" at the top of the thread I really should have clarified that FLAC is the way to go for me at least. I have only heard about the Squeezebox through this thread and one other ILM audio geek thread, and I am now officially intrigued.

-- electric sound of jim (jame...), January 2nd, 2007 12:00 AM. (electric sound of jim) (later)

That's what I wanted to know, thanks! OK so maybe I will invest in one this year...

Quick, what's on the turntable RIGHT NOW?

(Chris & Cosey - Take Five EP)

Last time of playing, it was "Station to Station" DavidBowie, followed by "The 900 number" Mark the 45 king.

hey this is actually a pretty interesting thread to read through, not all of our predictions played out in the intervening five years!

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4106/4951159030_4996652888_z.jpg

via WFMU blog, link here:

http://www.voicesofeastanglia.com/2011/06/inside-oxford-street-hmv-istore-in.html

Last vinyl I played was Brian Eno Music for Airports.