Collecting......records vs CDs

[A Lark Ascending]

No over-romanticising, just stating, for example, that if I'd pick up "The Court of the Crimson King" and look at the cover and expect some kind of brutally loud in-your-face experience without hearing it and get it home and find that 75% of it is deep mellotron ooze and a quarter hour of plinks and plonks, I might've gotten quite pissed!

Ha! I remember being really annoyed by 'Moonchild'. I'd bought ITCOTCK by mail order. Couldn't believe half a side was taken up with bumbling around.

Really like it now - I even hear the Jimmy Giuffre trio in it these days!

+++

Steve is right in that our preferences will vary enormously. Downloads work perfectly for me but I can appreciate why others like the physical product or/and the packaging (it took me a while to ween myself off the packaging and I still make a home made sleeve for the CD-R!). The thing is that these things are usually stated in rather black and white terms - vinyl-lites will insist the medium 'is' superior (rather than a personal preference), that mp3s have rubbish sound (may have once been true but things have moved on).

I like exploring music. I like having access to music I've got to know and being able to pull it out when I want. I like having that collection around me. So yes, I'm a collector. But I don't buy more than one copy of things (except in cases where an early CD reissue was poorly remastered); I rarely buy more than one version of a classical piece and certainly don't chase original pressings and the like. So maybe I'm not that sort of collector (the sort who buys toy cars and then keeps them in their boxes!). Though I can understand why that kind of collecting might be enjoyable.

One thing that has proved I'm a collector is Spotify - despite all it offers I've found I use it infrequently. For things where I really am uncertain, yes. But I've found I feel that listening on Spotify first will spoil the impact of the first play of the acquired product. So the industry has got me good and proper!

[Big Beat Steve]

I'm not against discovering - that should be clear from my post.

I would just rather discover music thru audible means than thru just purely physical ones.

I still am trying to figure out if there is any contradiction in these diverse ways of "discovering" and I cannot see to what extent any "physical" discovery mentioned earlier in this discussion really is "purely" physical.

Referring to this thread,

my purchase of that Shelly Manne LP, for instances, mentioned in post #139 was triggered by the fact that I just HAD to have it after having heard "Grashopper" and "La Mucura" on a jazz radio show. But as my curiosity about (almost) anything Westcoastish at that time had already been aroused sufficiently I would just as likely have bought it after having read about it and its merits. So to me all these different ways of "discovering" are complementary, not contradictory.

The "physical" aspect in all this invariably comes in if you want to preserve your item beyond sheer digital mass consumption on some hard drive (which might go bust at the worst moment, you know..., and re-burning CD-R's every couple of years might be forgotten and can become a nuisance anyway). So if you intend to keep and preserve your music for any substantial length of time the "physical" aspect invariably comes in.

[rostasi]

I'm not talking about physical ownership.

We're talking about discovery.

You just said that you had to get the Manne after hearing it first.

This is how you "discovered" it - by hearing it first - not

by standing in the store staring at the cover of Shelly sitting at his drums

and wondering how good it was.

You heard it first and then you decided to buy it.

This is what today's technology makes possible for nearly every form of music out there

instead of the one-off chance that you'll hear the "Haiti" box set on someone's stereo.

[Big Beat Steve]

This is how you "discovered" it - by hearing it first - not

by standing in the store staring at the cover of Shelly sitting at his drums

and wondering how good it was.

You heard it first and then you decided to buy it.

I agree, and probably we're not that far apart in our opinions. However, on quite a few occasions I have bought this or that LP (or even CD) on the strength of a "killer" record cover (that just struck a chord with me) or, in the case of box sets, for their packaging, booklets, etc. and this despite the fact that in many cases I really had just a basic idea of the contents (in the sense that I was familiar with the basic style but not with what to expect of each track and artist). So as long as I was vaguely aware of the musical style the cover often had a decisive function in my buying decision (and I was rarely disappointed).

The funny thing is that in my early collecting days (long before the internet and after the demise of listening booths) this was way more difficult to do because in the 70s nondescript covers with ineptly modernized or totally "out of tune" artwork on reissues with music from the 50s were all over the place whereas the age of "facsimile" reissues of the original LPs or reissue packagings done in a "retro" vein that managed to make the atmosphere of the music come alive just by looking at the cover had not yet arrived to any significant extent.

So, again, this kind of "physical" discovery can be valid (and gratifying) too. Being able to listen to online samples is convenient and reassuring and I certainly would not want to discourage taking advantage of that but as long as one is willing to take chances and has an eclectic enough taste (and some basic knowledge of the subject on hand) it is not mandatory at all, IMHO.

In fact, I do remember several recent purchases of CDs where I was just slightly underwhelmed by my (previously untried) purchases because they just did not immediately jell with me yet upon repeated listening I did warm up to the contents. I doubt I would have gone to that trouble (of giving the tracks a 2nd or 3rd listening chance at certain intervals) if I had actually listened to online samples before deciding to buy. And in the end it would have been my loss.

Strangely enough, in the days when listening in beforehand was more or less impossible this kind of disappointment did not happen any more often either.

Edited June 27, 2010 by Big Beat Steve

[JSngry]

...Mahssa mixes...

What that is?

[Guest Wallace]

Back to the origional post, which I believe was mainly about which is the better format, cd or vinyl.

My personal collection is mainly lps. Lps are more collectable than cds ever will be.

But ,SOUNDWISE unlike audiophyles and others, I will NOT tout vinyl over cd.

Where cd-sound beats vinyl:

1/ vinyl's 75db dynamic range is limited. This is because the vinyl cutting/mastering process is inherently limited by the physical limits of the medium itself. Irrefutable limitations. Many more hurdles that the vinyl engineer has to deal with but the cd engineer is not impeded with.

2/vocal sibilance is more pronounced on vinyl. Less so on digital (and tape).

3/Vinyl cannot deal with deep bass. It lacks bass. Digital can go much lower without loss of resolution. Cd gives better bass ( but, and Im going out on a limb here, from what Ive heard, TAPE give the best bass response of all.)

4/ Vinyl = distortion, especially at the ends of lp sides where the grooves come closer together and are more difficult to properly track. (Stylus/groove limitations.)