NEW YORK, Feb. 10, 2008
Vinyl Is Back In The Groove
Audiophiles Shun MP3s and CDs For "Old-Fashioned" LPs, And Companies Meet The Demand
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Buying LP records isn't just for nostalgia buffs, as more and more contemporary artists are releasing their work on vinyl. (AP)
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A vinyl-pressing plant produces long-playing records. Digital CDs and MP3s are thought to have killed analog music, but the obituary of LPs was premature, given their growing popularity among young audiophiles. (CBS)
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Schoolkids at P.S. 8 may not know exactly what the large round black thing is.
"It's, it's, uh, I don't know," one said.
"A CD?" another asks.
"It's a disk," said another.
Hey, if you were born in the age of digital sound, you might not know exactly how this it works, either. But they threw out guesses:
"It's something really old and it plays music."
"And it's so huge because in those days CDs hadn't been invented and this is kinda what it was."
"When you play it, it sings music out."
"It's a record!"
And … it's coming back.
Vinyl records, yes, the same kind of LPs you listened to on a turntable, have become, well, cutting edge again.
True, the newer technology can put a thousand digital songs in your pocket, but for a growing number of music lovers, there's nothing like a real groove.
Record labels are re-releasing vinyl LPs; Amazon has inaugurated a vinyl-only Web site; and the makers of vinyl records say sales are up, enough to keep them in the black.
When asked why he ventured into an analog music business, when vinyl is virtually non-existent in music stores, Thomas Bernich said, "There's enough out there to, you know, have a little piece of the pie. I'm certainly not going to be driving a Ferrari tomorrow, There's no question about that!"
Bernich is the founder of Brooklynphono, a tiny factory that presses records in small batches for artists who want the sound, and feel, of vinyl.
Why would an indie band want to put their album out on vinyl as opposed to what's supposedly cool - you know, CDs?
"It's a closed format," said Bernich. "Not everyone can have access to it. So if you don't want your music to go everywhere, it's one way of having control over your product."
With wife Fern and daughter Hazel, Bernich's record factory is, quite literally, a mom-and-pop business.
"If the money's green, we press the record," said Fran.
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Jason Durham runs the production line, where each record pressed is inspected. "Both sides, A and B. Every album. We're very serious about quality control."I think it's got to do not only with the sound but the ritual of playing the record, and also just the whole packaging. It's like a gift every time you open it.
Jason DurhamTo Durham, the difference between vinyl and digitized music is like comparing a formal dinner to fast food.
"I think it's got to do not only with the sound but the ritual of playing the record," he said, "and also just the whole packaging. It's like a gift every time you open it."
Our schoolkids had some idea of the history of vinyl.
"In the old ages they used this instead of a DVD player," one said.
And just when were the old ages?
"In the 1960s!"
Actually, he's right. The 1960s have been called the golden age of vinyl. That decade saw major advances in how the music was actually recorded, but it all ended up on a turntable. Steve Sheldon was a college student when he joined Rainbo Records in L.A., back when vinyl was king and "The King" was on vinyl.
"The busiest period for Rainbo was 1977, when Elvis died," Sheldon said. "And within three days of his death, we had booked about a million and a half records to be pressed. Our capacity at the time was 60,000 pieces a day."
But in the 1980s, CDs hit the market, and pure sound quality took a back seat to convenience. When computer downloads and MP3 players came a decade later, it would seem that vinyl LPs were on the fast-track to oblivion. But although demand for vinyl declined, it never disappeared, in part because digital recordings just don't sound the same.
"It's smooth, right?" Durham said. "It's a groove, whereas a CD takes music, audio, chops it up. And it's done in little packets of data. And the trick is that you listen to it, if the data is quick enough, your ear 'makes up' for the difference. Theoretically, they scientifically have proven that we can't hear the difference. But there is something. There is something different."
That old-fashioned sound requires an old fashioned, labor-intensive process.
Technicians create the metal master plates one by one. The raw vinyl pellets are hand-loaded into the pressing machine, and each LP is packaged (carefully) by a gloved employee.
Making compact discs is a different story: The process is high speed, and highly automated, with a lot of the work done by robots. At Rainbo, making a CD costs less than half of what it takes to press a record, but Steve Sheldon says he's banking on the future of vinyl.
"In the next few years I'll be pressing more vinyl records than CDs."
"Here's the bottom line question: Will vinyl ever die?" Assuras asked.
"No. Absolutely not," Thomas Bernich said. "It's too wonderful of a medium."
And for true believers, a medium that will keep audiophiles happy for generations to come.
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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See all 39 CommentsVinyl is abundant in most of Europe and Asia. The Japanese are alsmost obsessive about it, making copies of just about all great American lp''s in the vinyl format. Tower went out as a distributor of CDs. Vinyl made up a miniscule percentage of their sales--they just did not carry much of it. Many vinyl users were forced into CDs as many retailers refused, starting in 1989, to guarantee, and then to even carry vinyl product--if you could get it and it was defective, you were stuck with it...the incentive was in place to force users to switch to the higher priced cds.
On the other hand, digital information "muddies" itself through compression and the resultant combination of pink, brown, and white noise. Pink noise is somewhere in between white noise (complete chaos, far too disorderly to be considered musical) and brown noise (very orderly, and too dull to sound like music). The vinyl counterpart, because of it''s analogue nature, practically eliminates brown and white noise leaving the subtle sounds of pink noise to delight the ear. the "type" of music (rap, rock, classical, spoken word) is important in the equation, but doesn''t effect the waveform demonstration of the analyzer.
there are a few turntables that play both sides of a record without turning over the record. I think Mitsubishi (MGA) made one and maybe Sharp.
As far as finding one I would search ebay rather than buying a new one from china. The older ones are built better. Yup you''ll need a new needle (and belt) again online is much faster than pawnshops. turntableneeldes dawt com has all that stuff. Hope that helps.
Nicolas
the internet is a weak source at best for information, but here is a link that some might find useful: http://www.recordtech.com/prodsounds.htm
I have LP recordings that were recorded in the 1960s. I also have the exact same recordings; the same performance, all digitally re-mastered on a CD set. And the music quality on the LPs is better than the CDs. There is some noise that is on the LPs; but the sound quality is still better than the CDs. Quantization noise you just can''t get away from with CDs.
And the general quality of "high fidelity" equipment has gone steadily downhill since the 60s and 70s, with the push to cracker box loudspeakers. People have the gall to call a six inch cone speaker a woofer, just because it can crack the windows of your boom box laden automobile. But it takes a thousand Watts of amplifier power to produce what you can get from 4 good Watts with the right speakers, and the sound still isn''t as good.
French organ music has sounds that go down to about 8Hz, and you aren''t going to get that out of a 4 inch cube speaker no matter whose name is on the box.
But the sound quality of what passes for high fidelity today is more than adequate for the music du jour that is being churned out by people who call themsleves musicians; when they are not stoned on crack.
Was that in ''88 or ''89? They need to be more specific on that. All I know, I did not listen to my first CD until the early ''90s.
Throw away the MP3, bring back the LP!!!
70''s and 80''s rule!!!!!
Posted by MaxMcPower
Live music--the true gold standard!
Problem is, it''s too damm big to get into my cars dash.
Today music is disposable. No space on my mp3 player? Just delete some songs. I can get them back anytime if I want, along with 8 million other songs.
What bothers me the most is not CD''s instead of vinyl, but what''s on them. Record companies give us idols instead of artists. They want to make money instead of music. If we had a better sounding media, what bands today would be worth listening to?
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