selling vinyl and feeling?

04-27-07: Azjake
...how many of you bought cd copies of your despensed lp's or did you just wave goodbye to all that "classic" music?

For me it wasn't intentional; I lost most of my LP collection in a flood around 1980 and my turntable broke a couple years later. I made do with the LPs I'd recorded to my reel-to-reel and waited for CDs and players to become available and affordable.

Replacing LPs with CDs proved to be a frustrating process: For one thing, the CD versions sounded like ass--bleached, bare, soulless, and for another, many of my favorite jazz albums took decades--if ever--to get reissued.

In some cases, if you blinked you missed the reissue. There were very limited CD reissues by Quincy Jones' and Lee Michaels which are out of print and fetching $70+ on eBay.

Finally, 2 mos. ago I bought a turntable and buy used LPs at $1-5 each. Since I did that I'm hooked and now I'm buying LPs for which I have CDs. I like the sound and the playback effect on my mood so much better.

My regrets are: 1) I didn't replace my ruined LPs with new ones after the flood, 2) didn't replace or fix my turntable when it stopped working, and 3) didn't raid the used stores and garage sales in the late '80s and early '90s when so many people dumped their perfectly good LPs for next to nothing because they'd "gone digital."

04-28-07: Uraniumcommittee
I believe that a lot of the so-called 'resurgence' in vinyl is caused by high CD prices....many are finding old gems are much cheaper to obtain as used LPs. What are new LPs selling for?

Well, sort of, but you have to factor in the price of a turntable to get started.

My personal resurgence in vinyl is because after 20+ years of pretending that CDs provide satisfying music, I threw in the towel--I don't get the emotional response I get with vinyl, so I bought a turntable instead of yet another upgraded CD/SACD/DVD-A/DVD player.

Most new LPs cost more than CDs. They start at about $15.99 and shoot up rapidly from there. Many are around $20; the new Warner 180g reissues are $24.98--like an XRCD or nicer SACD. Nice remastered LPs from Speakers Corner or Classic Records are $30-32.

I got back into vinyl for the musical enjoyment. I'd rather have a library of 80 LPs that I return to again and again than 800 CDs I dread playing.

04-30-07: Uraniumcommittee
04-30-07: Johnnyb53
"Well, sort of, but you have to factor in the price of a turntable to get started."

Not if you already had one, or inherited one from your father, or got one used, cheap.

Well, geez, I sort of knew that, but I think it's safe to say that most of the same people who sold off/dropped off their vinyl in the '80s/90s got rid of their turntables too. How do you account for the BIG upswing in turntable models available? If there weren't a general vinyl renaissance, Music Hall and Pro-Ject would be scaling back or going out of business and Rega would be down to 2 or 3 models. Instead, they've all expanded their lines. They wouldn't be doing that if people weren't going out and buying NEW turntables in increasing numbers. And I doubt that most people are ponying up $800-2000 turntables just to hit the garage sales at a quarter a pop.

The vinyl resurgence mentioned in the audiophile press is addressing the increase in NEW vinyl sales. It's an easy statistic to track, much easier than tracking traffic in used vinyl. It's also easy to find out that what new LPs cost vs. CDs. A 10-second visit to http://www.acousticsounds.com reveals that most LPs are $20 and up.

04-30-07: Uraniumcommittee
04-30-07: Johnnyb53
"Well, sort of, but you have to factor in the price of a turntable to get started."

Not if you already had one, or inherited one from your father, or got one used, cheap.

Well, geez, I sort of knew that, but I think it's safe to say that most of the same people who sold off/dropped off their vinyl in the '80s/90s got rid of their turntables too. How do you account for the BIG upswing in turntable models available? If there weren't a general vinyl renaissance, Music Hall and Pro-Ject would be scaling back or going out of business and Rega would be down to 2 or 3 models. Instead, they've all expanded their lines. They wouldn't be doing that if people weren't going out and buying NEW turntables in increasing numbers. And I doubt that most people are ponying up $800-2000 for turntables just to hit the garage sales at a quarter a pop.

The vinyl resurgence mentioned in the audiophile press is addressing the increase in NEW vinyl sales. It's an easy statistic to track, much easier than tracking traffic in used vinyl. It's also easy to find out what new LPs cost vs. CDs. A 10-second visit to http://www.acousticsounds.com reveals that most LPs are $20 and up.

The REAL reason for the vinyl upswing is that vinyl has returned as the high resolution medium of choice. The choices were SACD, DVD-A, and LP. The suits never delivered digital hi-rez (SACD, DVD-A) in the numbers and variety promised. Now audiophiles are voting for LP with their pocketbooks.

After all, DSD may sample at 2.7 megahertz, but the resolution of analog is granular down to the oxide or vinyl molecules.

04-30-07: Uraniumcommittee
As I said, I'm not interested in the least in vinyl, old or new. Records suck, plain and simple...

You act like I'm trying to convince you of the superiority of vinyl. I don't care what you prefer. If anything, Whoopee! More vinyl for the rest of us.

You're the one who hypothesized that a vinyl resurgence is based on how cheaply one can pick up used vinyl. You didn't even know that new vinyl is more expensive than CDs, and is as much or more than SACDs and XRCDs.

When the audiophile press talks about a vinyl resurgence, it's talking about new vinyl being played on products of a thriving new turntable industry, whether that's your personal preference or not. People aren't just dusting off their uncle's Garrard and picking up Paul Revere and the Raiders at the garage sale down the street. They're buying new $350-to-$1500 all-manual turntables and playing new vinyl releases that cost $20-35. New vinyl and new turntable sales are at their highest points in over 10 years, and old turntables and thrift shop vinyl don't figure into those statistics.