The cost of LP's and CD's - an observation

@cleeds Obviously not to me. I got rid of (I thought) all my vinyl in 1990. But obviously to a niche of others it holds some kind of status, in-the-know or hip factor, otherwise all LPs would be at the dump with all the other obsolete technologies. Why else would you spend thousands of dollars on a turntable, cartridge and tens or hundreds of LPs on a technically inferior, inconvenient and space-consuming medium when the same money would give you 10-20 years of streaming millions of albums? OK, I get that a few prefer the added distortion of vinyl, but look at all the "pretty" megabucks turntables out there and all the vinyl aficionados who lust for them. That's not about function.

jssmith

...  it holds some kind of status, in-the-know or hip factor, otherwise all LPs would be at the dump with all the other obsolete technologies.

There are reasons to buy LPs other than the status you imagine they possess.

Why else would you spend thousands of dollars on a turntable, cartridge and tens or hundreds of LPs on a technically inferior, inconvenient and space-consuming medium when the same money would give you 10-20 years of streaming millions of albums?

This is the logical fallacy of "begging the question," also known as circular reasoning.

To understand why some still buy LPs, you might consider auditioning a high-end LP playback system at a local dealer. Then you might have an idea of what's possible with LP playback.

I didn't realize that my original post would generate so much discussion. I'm glad. Although I was thinking to respond directly to several posts, I think I'll just add a few extra thoughts:
1) I could have expanded on the comparing the cost between LP, CD to streaming. I'll leave that to some other economist or maths guy.
2) I purposely did not try to also compare quality as that is a whole other discussion, but it's a point well taken regardless of which format each person believes is good, better, best. You get what you pay for.
3) I listen to each type of media depending on my mood, desire/ability to handle a LP, to hear something new, and whether it's background music or a 'serious' listening session. Nope, not gonna tell you which is which as that will open another can of cables.
4) I like having a choice aside from just streaming as there have been many times the internet starts to act up as just as I want to listen. And I live in a city that has good bandwidth.
5) True, when buying used, that money does not go to the artist, but he did get paid for that CD originally. Should he get paid twice, three times? I believe there was a lawsuit long ago that tried to stop the sale of used CD's, video, etc. It failed. Also, in many cases I have brought the same album 2-3 times, and also then brought the CD. Then also streaming. How many times should you pay for one piece of music - another discussion thread perhaps? Now I don't get royalties, so my opinion might be different if I was.
Have a great and safe Thanksgiving all. 

Millercarbon,

" The great mass of people abandoned the quality of records for the convenience of CD." (not true)


For the great mass of people, CD was far superior to records, and CD is still far superior to records if you don't have a "high end" analog rig. No, you didn't witness mass insanity, what you saw was reality.

I had a Gerard GT55 and a Shure V15 cartridge, which was in the class of TT's that the masses had, and CD is still far better to that. When "noiseless" CD came out, those in "low fi" (most people) immediately switched over. While those who were in the "high end" said "What's the big deal". No, it wasn't about convenience, it was about superior audio.

When they said "What's the big deal?", I said one of us is crazy. No, both of us were right; it was just that one of us had a high end rig and the other didn't. Today, my cartridge alone, costs twice as much as my entire rig back in the day, and that's not due to inflation. CD still sounds better than a mediocre vinyl rig, and anyone who says different is pushing some kind of agenda.

Supply and demand "always" rules price, not superiority and inferiority; that's the way capitalism works.

Early 80's music was very good. Seemed to me that music group quality went down at just about the time CDs were becoming popular. Maybe just a coincidence. The Columbia record club were sending out cds for ridiculously low priced groupings trying to get everyone to rebuy all their records onto cds. They hoped everyone would forget to cancel or send the card back declining the next month's overpriced selection. 

You really didn't have a choice for while - they weren't making records.  They cost more to make and sold for less. You don't need an MBA to realize that wasn't desired by the music industry.

As soon as they started making records again, I came back and disconnected my CD player 15 years ago because the sound was lifeless. Still play them in my car and Bose radio while washing the car. Never even tried SACDs. Do they still make them?

There is one very important fact that has eluded everyone's assessment of this "CD, Record" thing. Everyone assumes that everyone else saw this thing from where they were positioned. People in the "high end" of analog, had an entirely different perspective than people in the "low end" of analog. What was fact for one person, was fiction for another person.

True Orpheus10. I said this before, and it should be a given. If we are talking about analog versus digital front ends, we need to realize that an entry level analog setup is not going to soar above a top tier digital rig and vice versa.

My uncle was the first audiophile I ever knew. He was a neurologist in New Orleans. I remember a lot of McIntosh and Klipsch gear. I also remember visiting there when I was a child and one entire wall of his dedicated listening room was vinyl albums floor to ceiling. All classical.

When I went back maybe 10 years later that wall was full of CDs. No vinyl in sight.
He knew someone at Sony and they sent him pre-release CDs for his review.
Was he a discriminating listener? Did he have golden ears? I don’t know. I do know that he knew classical music. And it was very clear that the CD suited him just fine.

As far as 80’s recording quality? Steely Dan. Maybe not everyone’s cup of tea in terms of production characteristics but it was clear that it was well and meticulously done and pretty much exactly what they intended.

Plenty of great music and recordings available on CD, Streaming and Vinyl. Ever since switching to Streaming five years ago, I became very selective in what I buy on CD or Vinyl. My current collection of CD’s and Vinyl are under 200 each and they represent some of the finest recordings available on both formats.

Enjoy the music and STOP worrying about which format is superior or their price of admission :-)

@orpheus10 Idk - I believe the convenience of a cd - being able to skip and select tracks at a whim - was a big factor in people moving over to that medium. Add to that their portability (who here once had a Discman of any iteration?) and it's no surprise they became so popular.

I imagine most were not playing them on systems with any real fidelity, either.

Simao, all the people I knew were impressed with the "noise less" fidelity; which was far superior to "mid-fi". The convenience was just icing on the cake.

Even today, while vinyl is being pushed, CD's are still better than "Mid-FI" and all these thing people hear with "Lo-Fi" vinyl are things we didn't hear during the 50 years preceding CD, but people are convinced that they hear what we didn't hear during all those years.

The only thing different today is the "expensive Hi-end" analog rig, which was also available back in the day, but few people had them. Not until CD did the masses become interested in "expensive analog rigs". Only after the "high enders" began to preach that vinyl was better than CD did they want to discover.

I feel sorry for people buying cheap record players and looking for something special because they got a vinyl record.

In regard to price; that "see-saw" thing has little to do with the cost of production, but the simple law of supply and demand; all of a sudden records are in demand. When CD's came out they were overpriced because CD's were in demand; capitalists got to make money.

When I went to college we had records and cassette tapes. Records were a problem in dorm rooms. My roommate had a B&O turntable with its own suspension but it was still not enough for the bouncy floors in our 70 year old dorm rooms. We even suspended it from the ceiling using webbing. It worked in terms of isolation but it swung around in a gentle circle which was disconcerting.

So we waited until we could be still and quiet and dubbed the vinyl onto cassette tape. We had a nice Nakamichi tape deck (but not the Dragon). We obsessed over which "metallic" tape to buy and then we obsessed about the settings on the tape deck even though we had very little idea what we were doing.

The end result was decent cassette tape recordings.

When CDs came out and became affordable that’s all I wanted and even though no longer in a dorm room, I had no desire to go back to vinyl and or cassette tapes.

@orpheus10 "All the people I knew were impressed..."   Possibly because you hung with other people who cared about the sound? Most of the people I knew during the cd-days of the 90's didn't care. I liked them because they were easier than tapes AND because they didn't have that tape hiss and muffle, but that was a baseline preference.

I don't know what generation you are, but most of my Gen X'ers who came of age with cd's liked them for their mechanical benefits, like convenience and that they wouldn't get eaten or tangled. Yes, there was some acknowledgment of their superior sound quality, but as most of us didn't have amazing systems, that was secondary.

n80, I've been around awhile, I was at the Dead Sea when it died, and I was at the Red Sea when they dyed it Red. CD's are the best thing to come along since.......you name it.

Having said that I'm currently into "analog", but my cartridge costs as much as my CD player, plus you need a TT, plus phono Pre, plus expensive NOS tubes, and we ain't even got into the high price records to hear some music. And if you don't have all that stuff set up perfectly, you still ain't got squat.


Don't let nobody BS you, unless you come into a lot of loose change, you keep on doing watcha doing because I still do what you're doing.

For those who are claiming analog sounds better; yes it does, but at a much higher price.

No, you think it sounds better to you. That is completely meaningless to other people..

@orpheus10 Its all good. I stream. I got CDs. I got CDs ripped on a server. No reason other than cash to limit ourselves. For me, cash and complexity are the barriers that keep me from vinyl. Not some notion that the other options are better or worse. Its all good.

"No, you think it sounds better to you. That is completely meaningless to other people.."


When we are talking about "High end analog" as compared to routine CD, it sounds better to most people.


In "high end analog" we are speaking of depth of "sound stage", we are speaking of "air" around the instruments, we are speaking of a "holographic sound stage"; that's what I'm speaking of that sounds better to most people, and not just me. But maybe that wouldn't sound better to you.

We are speaking of made up terms and euphonics.

When we are talking about "High end analog" as compared to routine CD, it sounds better to most people.

A bunched of aged audiophiles who grew up with vinyl is not "most people". (I fall somewhat into that group).

Presented with well mastered versions of both, most who did not grow up on vinyl will take the digital version.

But the truth is that most people, no matter their generation, simply don't care enough about fidelity to go further than a good sound bar. The idea of sitting down for a listening session without talking is the purview of what we do on this site, not the masses.

It's like a neighbor I once had who was completely into the video aspect of home theater and who was gushing about a new projector he had installed and interfaced with some complex software. I mean, i enjoyed watching movies and appreciated the picture at his place, but was just as content watching blue-ray on my home system.
Also, there are many, many millennials who have gotten into vinyl; however, even though many intro rigs sound decent, they're going to show their limits. And choosing between Spotify and a sub-$200 vinyl set-up thus becomes a no-brainer.

Speaking of which, how many people under 30 still buy cd's?

Many people, like me, still love their CDs and they can be had very cheaply. Used LPs are ridiculously expensive and prone to defects characteristics of vinyl. Many of the domestic LP pressings were simply awful (Westminster, Angel, Columbia, RCA, etc.) and back in the 70s and 80s we preferred imported pressings like DG, EMI and many exotic import labels. The remasters CDs of these old recordings are vastly superior played on a modern digital system. To me the LP popularity is based on pure nostalgia because messing with a Thorens TT, an SME arm, and a fine cartridge is very pleasurable. I know people who still swear by Telefunken 78s, and with good reason. I am trying to resist a Revox A77 open reel deck, which is really silly but they are great things to have. But digital rules, no question. 

Given a good price, I'll buy the Revox A77; digital can't touch it.

@rtorchia"
"To me the LP popularity is based on pure nostalgia because messing with a Thorens TT, an SME arm, and a fine cartridge is very pleasurable."
Careful there with that broom you're using for the sweeping generalization. I'm not sure what you find very pleasurable, but for me it's the sound of vinyl, not messing with the components.

"But digital rules, no question."
For you. Not for everyone.

I find nothing nostalgic about something I never had or heard before, and that's high end analog.

audio2design

No, you think it sounds better to you. That is completely meaningless to other people.

If he thinks it sounds better to him, then it does sound better to him. No one here should have to justify or alter his preferences to suit the sensibilities of measurementalists such as yourself. And his preference has at least the same value to others here as yours, and perhaps much, much more.

"But digital rules, no question."
For you. Not for everyone.

"The Earth is round."
For you. Not for everyone.

Which is more asinine? Discuss among yourselves, digiphiles.

I find nothing nostalgic about something I never had or heard before, and that’s high end analog.

Right, impossible to be nostalgic about something you never experienced. A dazzling display of logic. Unbelievable, even.

Comparing an ordinary record player to "high end analog" is like comparing a hot dog to porterhouse steak.

orpheus10,
"Comparing an ordinary record player to "high end analog" is like comparing a hot dog to porterhouse steak".

Very true; and young hipsters buying low fi turntables to get with the trend should be made to realize this before they jump in.