Not that kind you pervs… how many of you have the capability to play LPs?

I do, I own about 500 LPs. I rarely play them anymore, though. I have an older B & O turntable. My roommate’s ex-hubby owns over 10,000 of them, but has donated them to the radio station that he manages. All of mine have been played, so no collector status really, just that I don’t pull them out to play very much anymore. I have most of them in other mediums now.

I don’t use LPs’, I use MP3s’. I think me mum has an LP player though.

EDIT: correction, I use M4P’s, not MP3’s.

I don’t even know what an mp3 is, much less an m4p… An LP player is a turntable, hon, to spin “Long Playing” old fashioned vinyl record albums. The name LP (long playing) came into vogue when they were finally able to transcribe music onto records that spin at 33-1/3 revolutions per minute instead of 45 rpm or 78 rpm. You could fit a lot more onto a record album at 33 rpm, thus “long playing”.

“me mum”, is rb no longer the only British person on the site? Are you an Anglo in hiding, FiNiX?

I don’t even know what an mp3 is, much less an m4p

MP3s’ and M4Ps’ are file types. You can buy MP3 and M4P players, and then upload music onto them in MP3 and/or M4P format via your computer. (You can purchase MP3s’ and M4Ps’ using a credit card and download them via the internet.)

I have a player the size of a credit card that can hold up to 65 hours of music, if not a good bit more.

“me mum”, is rb no longer the only British person on the site? Are you an Anglo in hiding, FiNiX?

Naw, I just like to say weird things sometimes. ^^

oi…you lot…wassup wiff ‘at accent…?...clip ‘round the ear is it?

oh,yes…the vynl thingy…I have some of those…from the old pa…his 60s-80s stuff…I have the Beatles first LP “Please Please Me”...Woo-yay me

I’ve still got a hell of a lot of LPs, but nothing to play them on.

The only one I’m really attached to is The Flying Burrito Brothers Last of the Red Hot Burritos , and if I could find it on CD, I’d toss most of them. Vinyl sound quality sucks.

yes…but vinyl has a certain charm…I even have some 78s I’ve collected from car boot sales and charity shops…Russ Columbo is my GAWD…

You mean “Russ Columbo is your Gawd- creature.”

touch’e…as it were

Satolkin wrote:
>I’ve still got a hell of a lot of LPs, but nothing to play them on.

...Vinyl sound quality sucks.

Not true. If you have vinyl that is in pristine condition it will sound better than ANY other medium out there. Sound is analog. Vinyl is analog. Any digital recording media requires conversion to and or from analog and you will ALWAYS have noise introduced in that process. Don’t misunderstand me, I have a MP3 player also and all my music stored in my computer in mp3 format. You can’t beat it for portability but mp3 sound quality is less than ideal.

P.S. Satolkin, if you are ever interested in getting rid of your collection let me know…

I tend to agree, AL. My albums are still in very good condition and they still sound great. The turntable is important, too, though. Make sure it is also in pristine condition. I have found that many CD’s just don’t sound exactly like the original vinyl. I have actually returned some due to this problem. And tape, except for reel to reel, forget it! I only put up with cassettes in my one car which doesn’t have a CD player and I actually prefer the radio!

I haven’t noticed M4P to be of lower quality than vinyl. Hmm. Oh well.

Maybe you need better speakers???
I had an 8 track in my first car…a 1980 Subaru hatch…and of course no 8 tracks so I took one of my dad’s 8 track cassettes and an old 8 track player… removed the tape head and installed it in the empty cassette shell… spliced into a headphone cord and viola… 8 track adapter for my portable cd player…I’m still pretty proud of that little feat…

Maybe you need better speakers???

I think it might be exactly the opposite. I own extremely high quality speakers. They’ll make anything sound good. Lol. I think they’re made by Altec Lansing or summit’ like that.

Gawd it’s awsome. The song that’s playing right now is so beautiful. Makes me cry almost every time.

You think??? Well now… +1 for good…no…excellent speakers…I run JBL myself…liquid cooled silk dome tweeters, 5 1/4 mids, 12in subs…

I saw the coolest thing the other day: A turntable with a USB output. Yes, that’s right: It has the ability to convert vinyl straight to MP3 or other digital format. No patch cables, no transfer to tape or CD, just pure analog-to-digital goodness.

Still not quite the same as listening to vinyl directly, but the advantage is that it reduces wear on your best vinyl albums (since you aren’t putting needle to vinyl all the time) and preserves the audio at that moment in time as effectively as possible.

Those are awesome Swiss… I would LOVE to pick one of those up…don’t have an extra $500 sitting around though… The software included will even get rid of the vinyl hiss on older albums…

absoluteliquid wrote:
Those are awesome Swiss… I would LOVE to pick one of those up…don’t have an extra $500 sitting around though… The software included will even get rid of the vinyl hiss on older albums…

70’s funk and groove need the hiss, though. That’s part of what made the sound. To hear an album where it’s been remastered out just isn’t the same.

I have a great example for you. Play the vinyl of “Billion Dollar Babies” by Alice Cooper. Then listen to the “remastered” CD. It’s muddy, much more bass, you can’t even hear or understand some of the lyrics! I thought something was wrong with the first one I bought, so exchanged it, they all sound like that! I demanded a refund and got one. I have done that with several CDs.

But there are also success stories. The “Ziggy Stardust” album (David Bowie) transferred beautifully to CD and actually does sound better than the vinyl version.

I don’t know exactly what the problem is. I mean, I’d like to contact Alice Cooper to see what he thinks about it. Does HE think it sounds bad? Do they consult the artist when they “remaster” this stuff? I would hope that they do.

I think that artists were working with the mediums they had available. And, yes, the hiss was a part of it, SC. They knew it would be there, so good artists found a way to use it to their advantage. Also, they made records as cheaply (and sometimes badly) as possible (they still do!). Some sounded better than others.

And lastly, remember that albums have two “sides”. CDs don’t have “sides”. Many classic albums were very different on each side. The artists knew that there was going to be a major break when the listener had to get up to turn it over. The order and number of songs were chosen with this in mind. It used to piss me off to no end when cassette or CD manufacturers used to change the order of the songs or change the timing of spaces between the songs. Ex. “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” (Elton John). The songs on each of the four sides meld together. Sometimes there is no “space” between them, sometimes there was and the amount of space also changed. It was made that way on purpose. When cassettes came out, the studio changed the order of the songs and due to space limitations at the time, did not include two songs from the album. The first CDs made of it had exactly the same spacing between songs. (Well, these problems were fixed, eventually, at least for this album. But only due to our complaints, I’m sure) New CDs of it are spaced correctly and there is a longer space at three points in the CD that allow for the four “sides”.

Well, enough for now, thanks for listening…

That’s very interesting Kookoo… I guess I was aware that artists laid down tracks in order and sequence knowing the medium that they were going on… I just didn’t know any examples off hand…

EDIT: The software that comes with the USB turntable has the ABILITY to remove the hiss… you can leave it in there at your own discretion…

FiNiX wrote:
>>Maybe you need better speakers???

I think it might be exactly the opposite. I own extremely high quality speakers. They’ll make anything sound good. Lol. I think they’re made by Altec Lansing or summit’ like that.

Gawd it’s awsome. The song that’s playing right now is so beautiful. Makes me cry almost every time.

Fini…you sensitive thing…what song is that…?

I imagine the point was more the pure beauty of SOUND than perhaps a particular song… I have a tendency to get choked up when listening to music through my speakers at home… I can hear the exact same song in a supermarket for instance and it feels cold and distant… Kookoo touched on the subject of being able to really HEAR everything that is going on is a song… i.e. a friend of mine never liked NIN until he heard it at volume on my speakers and it blew him away… every time he had heard it before was on some shitty bookshelf stereo… It’s a totally different experience with 800 watts of power pushing through $1200 speakers… Same thing for Sarah McLachlan… It’s completely different music on a quality stereo… For me…being submersed in the moment and really FEELING the music is what I thrive on…

Abs, I have high quality speakers, but they’re very small. I don’t like super loud all that much. There are actually a few songs out there that sound even better in the background than the foreground.

Fini…you sensitive thing…what song is that…?

The sound on it’s own paints such a beautiful picture. There’s also a version in French that’s amazing.