[Days of Broken Arrows]

(04-01-2019 12:10 PM)etwsake Wrote:  

(04-01-2019 11:52 AM)911 Wrote:  

I think the idea of LPs as the equivalent of giant trading cards is totally hilarious. I guess that's why they sell LPs at places like Urban Outfitters.

That's a perfect analogy. That's pretty much what they are to me. Big, heavy, unwieldy trading cards. But the art is cool and if it's on see-through vinyl it's even cooler.

Notice everyone that everyone that starts the sentence "Vinyl does sound better" completes it with the "IF" part about equipment. Certainly there are audiophiles out there like yourself that have the systems necessary to make vinyl sound as good as digital, but I bet the majority of people buying vinyl don't invest in a proper system.

LP collecting is alive and well here in Japan, however. I was at a used record store in Osaka over the holidays and the place was packed with crazed collectors like something out of "High Fidelity," straining their eyes to carefully inspect the grooves on stuff they wanted to buy. There's definitely a "type."

"Better" is a relative term. Your "better" might be my worse and vice-versa.

But one thing we do know is that vinyl does have a unique sound. There are a bunch of reasons for this: The medium itself, the RIAA EQ curve, and the old compressors they used.

For the best sounding vinyl, I'd recommend buying records recorded and mixed specifically for the medium, esp. in its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s. Some of the best LPs I ever bought were the mono collections of Motown hits they pressed in the mid-1960s (see below) or mono Jan & Dean and Lesley Gore albums from 1964-65.

Do they sound better than CDs, MP3s, or even FLAC files? Again, that's relative. But nothing else captures the sound of these kinds of records when they're on the turntable. And that can be any turntable -- from expensive Technics (which I own now) to old Close-And-Plays (which I had as a kid!).