I did get into a discussion with someone on this, talking about the feel of vinyl and the artwork etc. I suggested that we should invent a thing whereby you have record sleeves with RFID tags in, vinyl optional, and you tap this against a reader connected to your hi-fi, which then plays the music.
Obviously it turns out that such things exist, Google RFID music player! Although I’d want it with the beautiful gatefold sleeve artwork.
I do miss having my records on a shelf and pulling one out to play.
Just remember I bought 2 301s and a fair bit of leak valve stuff from a refuse collector who pulled it all out of a skip.
Both 301s were spot on speed wise.
I have converted the smallest bedroom in to an office (put a desk and chair in it) for working from home, it is also where all my records are kept. So unlike all the ‘library’ backgrounds people use for Teams meetings my background is my vinyl collection.
Lots of people comment ‘That is an impressive vinyl collection’ and if we are waiting for people to join the meeting they might talk about the records they used to own and be quite wistful about it. Nobody ever mentions HiFi or asks what I play it all on.
It is almost as if the collection stands in it’s own right,
To perhaps 95% of people, HiFi is like a fridge or a dishwasher. The general perception being that they all do their job competently with no requirement to obsess about them.
This has been a fascinating aspect of meeting my girlfriend. The fact I had a load of records was neither here nor there. What she found much more revelatory was that the audible performance of those records could actually be very good.
In part our culture of instant gratification & convenience has eclipsed ‘Quality’. The backlash to this is the out of date term / culture ‘hipster’. I have been selling increasingly less to the traditional ‘audiophile’ market and vastly more to ‘hipsterish’ people, particularly record collectors who see the 301 as an extension of their collection (due in most part to it’s heritage). Striving to get to the root of a particular ‘thing’ is not new 'hipster’Japanman has been very good at it for century’s, it’s standard consumer custom there.
This new ‘market’ is way more into music and audio than the mac wearing moochers of traditional hifi shows. People like Devon at Ojas, listening bars etc etc are driving this ‘overground’ Very few traditional audio sellers are currently in a position to cut through (OMA, do a good job here).
From the ones I have i would tend to agree with this, and have found it with quite a lot of new reissues. I may have the old noisy 80s version on flimsy vinyl I have played to death, but it has more tone and vitality than the new quiet stable repress, which tends to sound a bit grey and anaemic
I have the Abbey Road pressing and it doesn’t get close to my old copy.
And that isn’t a first pressing, I think it is a second re-issue with blue Island labels?
Meanwhile, whilst tidying up this morning, I’ve been listening to a couple of old Phillips Cello recordings that are quiet, sound wonderful & came in F.O.C as part of an auction lot. In fact, they’re as old as I am.
That was an important factor in me getting back into vinyl, and is why I stutteringly persist - but yer hipster douchebags weren’t satisfied with that, so I can now count two new/forthcoming releases that could only be obtained as FLAC or fucking cassette tapes!
The backlog at pressing plants (x1 year and counting in many places) forces artists to try and get their art out there in other mediums. Cassettes are one route.
There are just not enough plants to ‘do’ 100-1000 runs at the moment. It is carnage out there for bands.
I also have a nagging feeling that around the world, various shutting-down factories are busy piling CD-manufacturing equipment into big industrial skips as we type…
Given the precision required, there will be no going-back with optical discs once all the tooling is gone…
