Is it time to Ditch Vinyl?

Is it Time to Dump Vinyl?

  • Yes. High Res digital streaming is better and here to stay.

    Votes: 22 36.1%
  • No way man. Vinyl is still king.

    Votes: 8 13.1%
  • Embrace all formats, even 8-Track!

    Votes: 31 50.8%

  • Total voters
    61
gene

gene

Audioholics Master Chief
Administrator
In this editorial, Jerry Del Colliano talks about why he decided to sell his entire vinyl collection.

There are Baby Boomer writers over at Stereophile and TAS pulling out their Jerry Del Colliano voodoo dolls as I type in preparation for this article being published. You see, the audiophile community doesn’t like change. In fact, they despise it with every fiber of their beings. In the eyes of the elders who still control the hobby to this day, poorly performing “vintage” tube amps are somehow better than the most state of the art Class-D amps. Digital room correction (or even equalization, despite EQ being used on every track of every recording audiophiles listen to, as well as on the “house speakers,” in the mastering lab, and beyond) is looked upon as evil, because it uses actual science to measure the physical acoustics of a room, and provides digital solutions that can provide wholesale upgrades. These fly in the face of the “preamp of the week club” or blindly changing out expensive, inaccurate, EQed cables in search of one’s own personal audio utopia. But no one retro move in the audiophile hobby has been more hurtful to the business and broken in logic than the so-called comeback of vinyl.

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Read: Why I Sold My Entire Vinyl Collection and Didn't Look Back

Do you agree with the author or still a diehard vinyl lover?
 
killdozzer

killdozzer

Audioholic Samurai
He had to sell it to someone and if that guy followed his reasoning, no sale would've happened.

Maybe an extra option should be added? I'd hate to see one of his vinyls inside a whale. How about an option: only if they can be 100% recycled?
 
diskreet

diskreet

Audioholic
That article hit hard. Excellent writing, Jerry!

No doubt change is hard but we're all benefiting from the proliferation of technology in the hobby.
 
Ponzio

Ponzio

Audioholic Samurai
To each his or her own.

If it puts a smile on your face, brings back some happy or sad memories and you can hum along to it, why not?

I still buy the occasional CD but overall I switched to digital full-time, as of 2009, and happy as a pig in you-know-what.

Plus, what am I supposed to do with my mostly overall pristine 2,000+ LP collection? :p

Originally I had plans to donate it to my local library but all hell broke loose with my millennial kids, who are more than happy to 'take it off my hands', as my son-in-law stated.
 
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John Parks

John Parks

Audioholic Samurai
Is Jerry still selling people’s emails? I swear I’m still getting spam from when he sold mine 20 years ago... :rolleyes:
 
KenM10759

KenM10759

Audioholic Samurai
For me, playing LP's does one thing that all the Qobuz and Amazon Music HD subscriptions I have cannot do. It encourages me to stop and just listen to the whole thing from start to finish.

I could of course, just get up and skip over songs like I do when the tablet is in my hand playing digital music. Somehow, something inside me doesn't want to do that. I've set aside this time to listen to albums (typically two per evening), and I only get up to flip the record over and play Side 2. While it's playing, I've often got the album cover and liner sleeve in hand. I enjoy that. No CD or digital stream is going to give me the cool and funny inner sleeve artwork and tongue-in-cheek humor of what's in the Traveling Wilburys album. Plenty of other details that simply can't be duplicated any other way.

The music is great. That's what I'm listening to is music. I well-know that digital music format has nearly twice the dynamic range. Oddly, the music itself doesn't have that range. The engineers of recording process already took out the widest expanse of dynamic range and created something that's more pleasing to my brain and ears. I'm listening to the music, not my turntable, phono stage, pre-amp, power amp, and speakers.

I've bought a number of limited-release MoFi records and they sound really great, but the digitally-remastered version still sounds clinically cleaner. So what. With a perfectly aligned cartridge, good balance of tonearm and cartridge mass, a reasonably rumble-free platter and the right (for my ears) stylus shape, I like it better than digital even if others say it's distortion. If this is what distortion sounds like, bring it on.
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
I will not dump my record collection. There are discs never transferred to CD. The discs are in good condition and in many cases give quality as good as CD. In any event a lot of those recordings come from a time when recording engineers where justly renowned professionals who really knew their craft.

I don't buy new vinyl, but I still enjoy spinning it.

Quite honestly I will feel bereaved if I parted with these turntables.



 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
While I've lugged around my tt & vinyl for many years/moves, I'm not planning on moving again and I've got room so I'll keep it around and let my heirs worry about it.....if I move again for some unexpected reason that could change I suppose but the hassle of selling the vinyl rather than continuing to use it (very infrequently) doesn't particularly appeal. My preference is to buy the cd and rip it for use in various ways. Other optical discs being hard to rip I'll still generally play those (SACD, DVD, Bluray) and I do use a couple streaming services (mostly to find stuff to buy).

I never considered vinyl "king" really, more it was what was readily available/playable....reel to reel tape was something I was aiming at during my vinyl days but digital came along and made that unnecessary....
 
Ponzio

Ponzio

Audioholic Samurai
There are discs never transferred to CD.
Agreed. I'm still waiting for Buddy Miles 1975 A Message To The People to be released on CD and many others.

You can get individual tracks here & there on compilations or his greatest hits CD's but not all and it's just not the same.
 
afterlife2

afterlife2

Audioholic Warlord
Vinyl reminds of the best years of my life as a kid. Hence my love for it. Nothing like hearing pops. :)
 
Alex2507

Alex2507

Audioholic Slumlord
Dead. Like the 8 Track. I want to be buried with my turn table, still running if possible but c'mon ... I'm the only guy I know who owns one that's even hooked up. TLS has 3 or 4 hooked up but you know all his grand kids have earbuds and iTunes (or whatever). Convenience wins out because laziness.

Does anybody think TVs without remote controls are gonna make a come back? :D
 
lsiberian

lsiberian

Audioholic Overlord
I remember my parents had a vinyl collection in the 80s. Once we got a CD it never got played again.
I don't even play my CDs anymore. Why listen to a record when I can listen to live concerts remastered online from the artist. And I did have a TV without a remote control for a while, but it was voice controlled so I don't think that counts.
 
AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
I say ditch vinyl...unless your vinyl is a Yamaha MusicCast Turntable that can stream lossless digital music at 192kHz/24 bit. :D

 
BoredSysAdmin

BoredSysAdmin

Audioholic Slumlord
Why many words then few will do: Two words - Dynamic Range. Old recordings -> More DR -> better sound.
Most New recordings -> Small or tiny DR. CD could store higher DR than Vinyl with much fewer artifacts/noise, but often remastered and processed (aka compressed) to have smaller DR. Thank the radio stations for that.

More words:
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
I say ditch vinyl...unless your vinyl is a Yamaha MusicCast Turntable that can stream lossless digital music at 192kHz/24 bit. :D

LOL what and lose all that "analogness"? Might be nice to have the tt in a more convenient location, tho....
 
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