http://www.wired.com/ente...gpost_1029

Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD's Coffin
By Eliot Van Buskirk Email 10.29.07 | 12:00 AM

As counterintuitive as it may seem in this age of iPods and digital downloads, vinyl -- the favorite physical format of indie music collectors and audiophiles -- is poised to re-enter the mainstream, or at least become a major tributary.

Talk to almost anyone in the music business' vital indie and DJ scenes and you'll encounter a uniformly optimistic picture of the vinyl market.

"I'm hearing from labels and distributors that vinyl is way up," said Ian Connelly, client relations manager of independent distributor alliance IODA, in an e-mail interview. "And not just the boutique, limited-edition colored vinyl that Jesu/Isis-style fans are hot for right now."

Pressing plants are ramping up production, but where is the demand coming from? Why do so many people still love vinyl, even though its bulky, analog nature is anathema to everything music is supposed to be these days? Records, the vinyl evangelists will tell you, provide more of a connection between fans and artists. And many of today's music fans buy 180-gram vinyl LPs for home listening and MP3s for their portable devices.

"For many of us, and certainly for many of our artists, the vinyl is the true version of the release," said Matador's Patrick Amory. "The size and presence of the artwork, the division into sides, the better sound quality, above all the involvement and work the listener has to put in, all make it the format of choice for people who really care about music."

Because these music fans also listen using portable players and computers, Matador and other labels include coupons in record packaging that can be used to download MP3 versions of the songs. Amory called the coupon program "hugely popular."

Portability is no longer any reason to stick with CDs, and neither is audio quality. Although vinyl purists are ripe for parody, they're right about one thing: Records can sound better than CDs.

Although CDs have a wider dynamic range, mastering houses are often encouraged to compress the audio on CDs to make it as loud as possible: It's the so-called loudness war. Since the audio on vinyl can't be compressed to such extremes, records generally offer a more nuanced sound.

Another reason for vinyl's sonic superiority is that no matter how high a sampling rate is, it can never contain all of the data present in an analog groove, Nyquist's theorem to the contrary.

"The digital world will never get there," said Chris Ashworth, owner of United Record Pressing, the country's largest record pressing plant.

Golden-eared audiophiles have long testified to vinyl's warmer, richer sound. And now demand for vinyl is on the rise. Pressing plants that were already at capacity are staying there, while others are cranking out more records than they did last year in order to keep pace with demand.

Don MacInnis, owner of Record Technology in Camarillo, California, predicts production will be up 25 percent over last year by the end of 2007. And he's not talking about small runs of dance music for DJs, but the whole gamut of music: "new albums, reissues, majors and indies ... jazz, blues, classical, pop and a lot of (classic) rock."

Turntables are hot again as well. Insound, an online music retailer that recently began selling USB turntables alongside vinyl, can't keep them in stock, according to the company's director, Patrick McNamara.

And on Oct. 17, Amazon.com launched a vinyl-only section stocked with a growing collection of titles and several models of record players.

Big labels still aren't buying the vinyl comeback, but it wouldn't be the first time the industry failed to identify a new trend in the music biz.

"Our numbers, at least, don't really point to a resurgence," said Jonathan Lamy, the Recording Industry Association of America's director of communications. Likewise, Nielsen SoundScan, which registered a slight increase in vinyl sales last year, nonetheless showed a 43 percent decrease between 2000 and 2006.

But when it comes to vinyl, these organizations don't really know what they're talking about. The RIAA's numbers are misleading because its member labels are only now beginning to react to the growing demand for vinyl. As for SoundScan, its numbers don't include many of the small indie and dance shops where records are sold. More importantly, neither organization tracks used records sold at stores or on eBay -- arguably the central clearinghouse for vinyl worldwide.

Vinyl's popularity has been underreported before.

"The Consumer Electronics Association said that only 100,000 turntables were sold in 2004. Numark alone sold more than that to pro DJs that year," said Chris Roman, product manager for Numark.

And the vinyl-MP3 tag team might just hasten the long-predicted death of the CD.

San Francisco indie band The Society of Rockets, for example, plans to release its next album strictly on vinyl and as MP3 files.

"Having just gone through the process of mastering our new album for digital and for vinyl, I can say it is completely amazing how different they really sound," said lead singer and guitarist Joshua Babcock in an e-mail interview. "The way the vinyl is so much better and warmer and more interesting to listen to is a wonder."

- - -

Eliot Van Buskirk has covered digital music since 1998, after seeing the world's first MP3 player sitting on a colleague's desk. He plays bass and rides a bicycle.

would be great to see vinyl back
although the cd has its pro's

I never really stopped buying vinyl I'm Old School! Going on vinyl digs are alot of fun.

I don't know about that. Serato is here.. DJs can just play mp3 files off their computers using Serato records that feel and play just like real ones.

Some always have to feel as though they're winning; that they're using the absolute best!

Worrying about audiophile standards on $300 iPods and stereo systems is beyond bizarre.

But some audiophile told me that this isn't the absolute best format, never mind that his system cost 20 grand and he only touches $600 headphones.

Nevertheless, I should follow his lead on the input end, even if on the output end I spend a fraction.

I guess that $20 hand-me-down FM radio I cut my teeth on as a kid would be laughable. After all, I was taping off the radio, as I couldn't afford anything else at the time.

Most people marvel at the sound quality of my digital collection, and not because they're all totally ignorant of the best fidelity that private money can buy.

Vinyl is great but the final nail in the cd's coffin? I think NOT.

Don MacInnis, owner of Record Technology in Camarillo, California, predicts production will be up 25 percent over last year by the end of 2007. And he's not talking about small runs of dance music for DJs, but the whole gamut of music: "new albums, reissues, majors and indies ... jazz, blues, classical, pop and a lot of (classic) rock."


bring it to light, they need to include the 12" single, the promo 12" single would be extra nice.

A great thing but i think it will happen when hell freezes over. Mainly because labels already have driven all music retailers out of business. BIG BOX stores like Best Buy would never carry vinyl in a million years, they are already downsizing their cd departments and the last thing they will make room for is vinyl.So with vinyl supporters like a Tower Records gone and Sam Goody all but gone, Vinyl will only see the light of day in Indie shops which are also in big trouble at the moment, and really the only thing holding them open is "used" product at this point.

I still buy vinyl. Though It is expensive. I can certainly see if you're going to get something permanent it should be something like vinyl. A few issues with this format though. One really is length, though I think the industry is tired of long long CD's. Another issue would be that music is not being mixed for vinyl, thus making the pusic sound squeezed and flat. Lastly vinyl does scratch more easily than CD.

I hope CD doesn't go away and I don't think it will, because it's a LOT easier for the home musician or the musician in general to quickly burn a CD of their music.

I do have to say the cassette is deader than dead.

lastdecember said:

You are correct, the big box retailers will not go the way of vinyl. I do see them though going the way of MP3 and getting rid of CD's all together. Though to do this selling retail MP3's will have to become popular.

IMO, I REALLY hope MP3's don't become the standard. So much audio quality gets lost in the transfer, it's almost criminal. For the life of me I have no idea why anyone would want MP3's of certian music, like reissues.

superspaceboy said:

To me digital is really going to be the end of alot of things that we all enjoy, album covers,liner notes,lyrics and really just having a freaking idea of who an artist is. Vinyl could save that, but the expense of it in a time when the business is losing money in record numbers each year, is just not something they can take on. I remeber the beginning of this year that some Universal exec said this was going to be the turn-around year, and yet Universal alone dropped 20% in sales.

i still buy vinyl frequently. half the time its cheaper to buy a band's lp on vinyl than cd, so it just makes economical sense.

I really have no problems with CDs - usually. But, there are times when the sound quality is horrible, not due to the format, but due to the mastering (could Sign O'the Times be any quieter?)

I want to buy a turntable soon for one reason - there is SO much stuff out there that is much easier to find on vinyl or is only on vinyl. Prince is a great example -extended length singles, rarities, etc. - pretty easy to find on vinyl. A lot of jazz stuff that I really like only on vinyl.

coltrane3 said:

Very true.

There is many a time I wish I still had a record player. There is just so much out there for so little money.

And some of my bootlegs only exist because someone had a 12" they were willing to convert.

** I could use some help. **
[Edited 10/31/07 22:27pm]

Eh. That article is pure idiocy. Matador is a relatively small label that releases records that cannot be for the most part even bough from what people would refer to as "record stores" (you can get them widely from specialist ones, but not from the chain next to the entrance of the tube station). A large percentage of people who still prefer to buy vinyl are consumers of the type of music that really pays no serious economic importance to the record industry as a whole.

And once again, the "vinyl has a superior sound quality" is absolute nonsense. It may sound "warmer", "punchier", "livelier" after some use, but that's definitely not because of it posessing a more pristine sound-quality. People's ears react favorably to certain amount of "smoothness" that the lack of high-end on a vinyl will counter-actively produce - on most contemporary pop music the high-end is exaggerated and hyped and it's not to everybody's liking, regardless of what mixing engineers / people at the mastering stage might think. Anyway, 99% of the music produced today has been recorded digitally, so distributing that on an analog format will not anymore restore the "ones and the zeros" into "pure unadultered groove" or some retroactively religious, truth-seeking shit like that. In the case of newer recordings, pressing the material on vinyl will only work as a sort of an equalizing method that will just give a characteristic sound.

When some walk of life is tumbling down people are seeking some hopeless, more truthful value from arcane pieces of knowledge. The order of the things of the past is always named as a "superior" one to the current that's experiencing serious problems. A number of remnants, in their objectivized form, are usually brought up to epitomize the spirit of the "lost wisdom" - and this article is a pretty good example of that.

novabrkr said:

vinyl is far better. perhaps not with your random pop stuff because, quite frankly, there is nothing to that stuff. pull out the album leaf or tristeza or sigur ros or prince's rainbow children on vinyl and play them...there is a clear difference in sound.

you may not agree but my ears ain't convinced of your statement.

coltrane3 said:

If it's quieter, turn it up!
Don't get sucked into the perception that VOLUME = QUALITY

CD's have been getting mastered louder and louder since the early 90's.
It has become a battle of who can have the loudest master!
The reason they can make them louder these days is because the mastering engineers have advanced brick wall limiters which actually destroy the transients (peaks) of the music by squashing them.
The quality is going downhill in many people's opinions. If CD's were mastered at a level similar to "sign of the times" today, we would be alot better off.

Have a read here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w...dness_wars

This guy says it well:
"Can you imagine how fine art would be if each artist competed on having the biggest cavas or the brightest colours? Or authors having the most pages, or longest sentences, highest proportion of foreign words? It would be absurd! It should be absurd in music as well" - quoted from a guy who calls himself Thor.

I actually have looked out for the original cd masters for some albums that have been more recently remastered such as Stevie Wonder "songs in the key of life" because with the remaster they have tried to make them sound modern and loud which kind of fu*** up the way the tone and the feeling of it IMO.

Vinyl masters are usually less susceptable to this loudness competition as they are mastered by a different type of engineer and are expected to be bought by people that care about sound quality.

I haven't got "sign of the times" on cd but i'll bet that if you turn it up (and maybe turn up the treble a touch) it will sound more thrilling and exciting than just about any cd from the last couple of years. The transient impact will be there in all it's glory!

superspaceboy said:

That's not an issue, that's a blessing. CDs are always stuffed full of songs, out of which 50% or more are filler. Who the fuck wants a 17 song CD anyway?
The optimal number of songs is six to eight, imo.

nd33 said:

I have no perception that VOLUME = QUALITY. And, I can't just turn it up. On my home system with good speakers, it's not an issue. But, in my car or in a portable CD player, Sign O' the Times is quiet, meaning that even at "full" volume on those admittedly average systems, it is still not loud enough. It would be easy to say, well, that's just the system - an average car stereo or portable disc player is bound not to sound great. But, I play other CDs in the same systems and they are much "louder" at top volume.

This is a site that had been slowly rolling out but some releases have shown up.


WB Artists....

http://becausesoundmatters.com/

I am hoping they go more to dvd-audio but for you vinyl guys it might be of some interest.

Forget about the format let's get some good music period!

FuNkeNsteiN said:

Yeah i agree with that, CD's really destroyed alot of things, just like Digital is destroying what is left that cd's didnt destroy. CD's forced alot of artists into doing 70-80 minute cds, which, im sorry NO ONE needs to do, unless its a Best of or a live cd, nothing needs to be that long. So what you were ending up with all through the CD era were way too long albums and people feeling duped into buying a cd with 2-3 good songs and 15 bad ones. Now i am one that wants to see a return of the single and 12" mix and all that, this is where the industry CUT OFF its own head, the elimination of this caused the downfall of people getting into artists. Now bringing back Vinyl or at least re-introducing it is going to be impossible because the industry is hurting way too much at this point to start this, or mass producing albums. This happend back in the mid 90's when acts like Pearl Jam and STP released there stuff on Vinyl weeks before the cd to try and spark sales and it really didnt work at all. I learned about this new techique or machine from John Mellencamp, he has this device where he can take all his old vinyl (which he mostly has) and just record them into his iPod which holds about 60,000 songs, i believe its a Tmac machine, not sure if thats the name.

novabrkr said:

I have to disagree with some of what you said. Vinyl IS picking back up. Maybe I'm spoiled, but we have Amoeba Records out here in San Francisco. They just revitilized their vinyl section and you would not believe how many NEW albums are getting the vinyl treatment. I really think that it's largly due to this will be the format people will "own" and MP3's will be the portable counterpart.

I don't necessarily believe that vinyl sounds better than CD argument either. The only caveat to the Vinyl vs CD is that if music is mixed to sound better on Vinyl, it will. The same goes to the other end as well. If music is made digitally (like electronic music) and mixed that way, it's going to sound better on CD IMO. Same goes for the 5.1 sound too. Basically if there is intention for music to sound better on a certian format, it's going to sound better on that format.

FuNkeNsteiN said:

There are certain albums where I beg to differ with that statement.

lastdecember said:

You would be shocked as to how many new albums are getting mass produced on Vinyl.

If vinyl is to make a huge return, I would like to see each LP coming with either a CD-R of high-quality MP3s or a code for a free download. This would satisfy the needs of the audiophiles at home and the on-the-go iPod people.

I do agree with what one person posted, that people revert back to what was "comfortable" in previous generations. Vinyl LPs are one of them.

Although I do believe that vinyl sounds better, I think it suffers greatly from lack of portability and the lack of being able to skip tracks instantly.

CDs are not dead - the industry just needs to adopt a true mastering standard and stick to it.

Se7en said:

The thing is, back in the day when albums had around six to eight cuts on them, they were less likely to be filler. These +12 song CDs today always have too much filler on them, so track-skipping is necessary. I don't need skip tracks on old vinyl albums