used vinyl LP records
- Thread starter Stymie
- Start date
Theres a Velvet Underground lp on Ebay , http://cgi.ebay.ca/VELVET-UNDERGROU...309QQihZ020QQcategoryZ306QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
do you have it? Ill give you A buck for it.....
do you have it? Ill give you A buck for it.....
There's Monster Records on Yonge St. in Toronto
I've bought most of my vinyl records for a buck each at fleamarkets etc.
I've bought most of my vinyl records for a buck each at fleamarkets etc.
I had all the old KISS ones before they started to suck [as in before the solo ones], but gave them away.
I still like the music, but I can't believe I thought a bunch of make up wearing leather queens were cool when I was a wee lad. I am so glad I had minimal contact with priests when I was young.
And thatlittle kitty icon tapping his claws is so cute in the post above.
I still like the music, but I can't believe I thought a bunch of make up wearing leather queens were cool when I was a wee lad. I am so glad I had minimal contact with priests when I was young.
And thatlittle kitty icon tapping his claws is so cute in the post above.
I am a collector. A lot depends on what you have. Most likely you have crap (no offense, but in most collections I am lucky to pull 1 out of 500). If you have truly good stuff (extensive jazz and classical through the 50s and 60s) it could be a real find and I would not be in a hurry to sell.
Note a lot of stores sell new vinyl reissues. The turntable is alive and well, simply because most digital and mp3 players sound like crap.
Note a lot of stores sell new vinyl reissues. The turntable is alive and well, simply because most digital and mp3 players sound like crap.
Back in the 80s when CDs started to replace vinyl, it was promoted as a much better sound alternative; but I never thought the discs sounded any better or clearer than vinyl. In a lot of cases it sounded worse. CDs were undeniably far more durable, but most of the buzz about them was just B.S. from the record companies who stood to make more money off them than vinyl.
In most big cities over the last few years, a lot of used CD stores have bit the dust with music so easily available on the Net, but it hasn`t affected the used vinyl stores.
In most big cities over the last few years, a lot of used CD stores have bit the dust with music so easily available on the Net, but it hasn`t affected the used vinyl stores.
In terms of the frequency range that can be captured on vinyl vs CD. Vinyl comes out the winner.
However the quality of your listening experience depends on the condition of the record, the stylus/needle, the arm, the turntable, the amp, the speakers, the subwoofer, the pre amp, even the power source and the cords connecting the components.
Some people even go so far as to clean their records with a cleaning fluid along with a turntable/vacuum cleaner contraption.
As for value of LPs. Well many can be bought cheap but costs can depend on....
1) the condition
2) rarity (e.g. different cover, different colour vinyl, low print numbers)
3) type of vinyl it's pressed on and weight (e.g. 180 g is the shit)
4) how deep are the grooves the deeper the better
5) who made the pressing (sometimes the same album gets re-released and certain companies are known to be better than others) (see 3 and 4)
6) where was it originally released (imports are more expensive)
7) are there extra tracks
8) is it sealed or open
9) is the dust jacket still there and in good condition
10) anything else that might make it a novelty
However the quality of your listening experience depends on the condition of the record, the stylus/needle, the arm, the turntable, the amp, the speakers, the subwoofer, the pre amp, even the power source and the cords connecting the components.
Some people even go so far as to clean their records with a cleaning fluid along with a turntable/vacuum cleaner contraption.
As for value of LPs. Well many can be bought cheap but costs can depend on....
1) the condition
2) rarity (e.g. different cover, different colour vinyl, low print numbers)
3) type of vinyl it's pressed on and weight (e.g. 180 g is the shit)
4) how deep are the grooves the deeper the better
5) who made the pressing (sometimes the same album gets re-released and certain companies are known to be better than others) (see 3 and 4)
6) where was it originally released (imports are more expensive)
7) are there extra tracks
8) is it sealed or open
9) is the dust jacket still there and in good condition
10) anything else that might make it a novelty
This is not true. On technical grounds, CD has some major advantages, frequency range in particular. However, most CDs are now compressed to the max (some interesting articles on this) and we have no dynamic range (once again, an area where CD kills vinyl). As a result, most vinyl actually sounds better as it was simply recorded/mastered better. The primary reason for compression is most people think louder music sounds better (it is not subtle, but it really sucks emotion out of the music).frankcastle said:
Hey Garrett I can't confirm or deny your claims. All I can say is that a buddy of mine belongs to the audiophile version of terb and has studied this extensively. According to him the low and high ends of the spectrum are wider for vinyl vs CD.
Anyways, I think we agree on the main point though which is that a well recorded vinyl album sounds better. Ultimately I think that's the important issue.
Anyways, I think we agree on the main point though which is that a well recorded vinyl album sounds better. Ultimately I think that's the important issue.
Frank,[LEFT said:
the tone arm and needle assembly had a lot to do with the sound quality as did the turntable motor assembly. A lot of what we heard from vinyl came from the quality of the turntable as well. If you turned up the sound loud enough you would get feedback using a turntable..it was harmonic distortion.
I agree there is a sound that CD's can't seem to reproduce but I think it's because we use solid state amps now, not the vinyl records.
When all amps were tube there was a beautiful low mid range that can't be adequately reproduced on low end ST amps right now. You can spend a huge buck and get close..but it's not the same.
Many of the recording studios that used to record artists to 72 track tape machines..that went away in the 80's are now bringing them back and recording individual tracks on tape and them dumping then into the digital realm for mixing.
The human ear is fickle...it knows what it likes..and it doesn't like those "solid state" machines very much!
Mark you're preaching to the choir..... as mentioned in my original post I did mention the turntable, arm and stylus. For those interested I think Aries and VPI make some killer turntables. Some of those arms look pretty funky I know people who will buy a broken turntable just to swap out the arm to another functional table.
As for tubes vs solid state you are correct.
As for the human ear it goes beyond that. There are frequencies that we can't hear but can feel which gets lost in low quality stereos and sound formats (e.g. mp3s). This too contributes to the genuine feel.
As for volume you are right again. A good system will allow you to hear everything without having to crank the volume.
As for tubes vs solid state you are correct.
As for the human ear it goes beyond that. There are frequencies that we can't hear but can feel which gets lost in low quality stereos and sound formats (e.g. mp3s). This too contributes to the genuine feel.
As for volume you are right again. A good system will allow you to hear everything without having to crank the volume.
Sorry, but the LP has better frequency resopnse. CDs, conventiuonal ones, cut off at 22 kHz. Vinly have been known to contain well above 27 kHz. It is the harmonics that define a violin form a flute, or an English horn. Even at my old age, I can hear the difference when the harmonics are absent on a CD. There is also a granularity effect with the conventional CD that makes the higher frequencies seem a bit raspy. I have compared the same music, on more than one occasion on CD and LP, and the LP sounds more accurate. In addition, the placement of the sound is better IMNSHO on vinyl.Garrett said:
shakenbake
frankcastle;frankcastle said:
I think that it depends on what types of transistors are in the amp. The mosfets duplicate the tube sound very well. Also, even if you have bipolar transistors, as in my Dynaco 400 (vintage 1974), the way that the final amp is biased makes a big difference. Class A bias, which draws a lot of quiescent current and makes the amp very inefficient, sounds mor epure that a class B bias arrangement that can introduce crossover notch distortion, or 'transistor sound'. But, that was a long time ago, when stereos didn't have all those gadgest etc. and lots of stuff was made in North America and Europe.
shakenbake, listening to his old Beatle records on an Ariston RD11S witha Mayware Formula IV tonearm and a Shure V15III.
The problem is, there is theory, and there is practice. The frequency response of the CD is virtually guaranteed (mathematics do not lie, though you can certainly record it badly and I would say most popular music today is badly recorded). Vinyl has a number of things working against it. There is degradation of the vinyl (proven after even one listen), the actual abilities of the cutting head (and need to control resonance), imposition of the RIAA curve and what is necessary to achieve wideband response. The net is, in practice, you will not get vinyl to beat CD for frequency response in real world situations (I actually do a lot of measurement, with calibrated measurement microphones). Also, on the other end of the range, there is no comparison. Vinyl has a very difficult time going down to 20hz with authority (it introduces too many other artifacts).shakenbake said:
As for harmonics, you do not need to reproduce the frequency to have the harmonics (this is the principle used by telephones). I think a lot of the arguments on frequency response, harmonics and second order harmonics, waveform inaccuracies etc. are usually missing the point. The simplicity in the methods used in recording and playback are (I think) a big part of vintage is better (and witness the beauty of the RCA and MLP recordings of the 50s and 60s, never mind the return to fullrange drivers by many companies today). I agree with you on the top end of CD, however I find the return to simple non oversampling players with elimination of opamp based output stages have been a major change (for not a lot of money).
Even with all that though, vintage is still where my heart is. I currently run a citation II (while other components will change, that one never will) and never cease to be amazed at what a smart person the great Peter Walker was.
Actually it's somewhere between 4-22KHz.shakenbake said:
22KHz is the absolute best a CD can do assuming a pure sine wave (mathematically = nyquest theory = 44Khz/2). If you try to record anything higher than that, something called aliasing occurs (a digital 23 KHz wave will look just like a digital 1 KHz wave). To prevent that from happening, a filter needs to be used to get rid of all signals above 22 KHz before it gets converted to digital. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_rate
Since music is a more complex waveform and contains a lot of harmonics, it's a lot closer to noise than a sine wave, one needs to sample a lot faster. The rule of thumb we used for digital analysis was to sample 10X to get a proper capture on digital scopes, so in real life a CD could be as bad as 4KHz (=44KHz/10) . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oversampling
Analog is doesn't need to be converted, so this effect doesn't happen.
The 1st and 2nd generation CD players sounded terrible compared to vinyl. By the 4th generation CD players, most people couldn't tell the difference. Today, a CD in a $18 DVD player on a $100 sound system probably sounds a lot better than a vinyl record on a old $200 turntable and a $1K sound system. You might be able to hear the difference on a $5K turntable and a $15K sound system, but how many people have that kind of gear?
In the end, this is sort of like arguing film vs. digital photos. Real film is over 20 MP, but it takes a pro with the right ($$$$) equipment to be able extract that much resolution. The average guy can take better pictures with a 3 MP digital camera than with film because the digital reproduction chain in the average supermarket 1 hr photo lab is so much better than it used to be.
Last edited:
I69norm;l69norm said:
There were CD-4 (Compatible Disc 4 channels) LP records that had modulated signals that went up far above 22 kHz. I have a Shure M24 cartridge that was supposed to read signals as far up as around 45 kHz. There was another CD-4 cartridge from Empire (wow, that is old) that went up to 60 kHz. All these frequencies were measurable both in the lab and in practice.
Anyway, with time comes progress. I will agree as you say, the quality of these 1-hour places for photofinishing is better than it was a few years ago. Only, they keep screwing up the prints from the negs out of Leica M4-P! And so it will be with audio, we hope. Maybe, it's time to upgrade my CD player? But, I have a lot of music on LP that cannot be replaced.
It's a good part subjective, as well as objective,like all things in life. Soe people hear one detail and other people will hear another, and yet others will not hear anything at all in the details. The most important thing to remember is, listen to the music more than the equipment it's being played on. ;~)
I spent all the money I was going to use for audio equipment on SPs and MPAs. Dang!Stymie said:
