Anyone still buy physical music?

[Dogs of Doom]

I have always preferred vinyl recorded to cassette. Tapes tend fail but sound good.

I just got a cheap tube preamp to record and digitize the records.
Lately UFO has been releasing some previous Chrysalis catalog recording with live recordings.
Phenomenon has live in Atlanta and No Heavy Petting has " Live at the Roundhouse "
I just got "Wherewolves of London"
Live at Wolverhampton.

The version of Rock Bottom has the best tone and playing I have heard from Michael. It was recorded during " Walk On Water" 1998. It would have to be his 2205. Super clean tone.

one of my favorite Rock Bottom's is an early BBC one...

the lead solo isn't as polished, but MS has attitude & something to prove.

Has Chap on guitar too, but, MS rocks it!

 

[ibmorjamn]

That is a good version. Of course he is 24 years older on this one. Go ahead to about 4:00.

 

[PentodeLicious]

Yes. probably 2-3 CDs a year.
I used to buy vinyl but everything now is new editions with digital remaster.
kinda of missing the point of buying a vinyl.
HD tracks is now also selling CD quality music(Wave file 16 bit 44.1Khz) that are not released in HD format.
So that pretty much got me covered for every music that I want in decent quality.

 

[nickfox]

Here is the best place I have found to buy digital music. Lots of high quality lossless file types.

I usually buy tracks one at a time to use as reference tracks in my recording.

Streaming and music Downloads in 24-Bit Hi-Res - Qobuz

Qobuz is the world leader in 24-bit Hi-Res downloads, offering more than 90 million tracks for streaming in unequalled sound quality (FLAC 16 Bits / 44.1kHz)

www.qobuz.com

 

[Clifdawg]

Very recently, I’ve started buying some of my favorite modern rock and metal albums on vinyl. I get that they’re all digitally recorded and pressed to wax, but I do it more to have those beautiful, large-printed jackets to display. I don’t even have a record player yet.

So far, I’ve got:

Wolves at the Gate: Eulogies
Disciple: Southern Hospitality
Thrice: Artist in the Ambulance Revisited
Skillet: Victorious
Tremonti: Marching in Time

With more to come, I’m sure.

 

[ITburst]

I still only buy physical copies of music. That's the only way I will buy and listen to music. I don't buy any digital downloads or stream at all. I use to have a big 600 + vinyl collection and a couple hundred cassettes I started collecting back in the 80's and my CD collection. I ditched my vinyl and cassette collection around 6-7 years ago and only have and buy CD's now. I still have a lot of CD's to buy to replace the vinyl and cassette versions I had.

Interesting. I’m buying vinyl to replace my favourite CD’s.
I very rarely by digital. My home stereo (two channel) is of high enough quality that it would be counter intuitive to push overly compressed, digitized music through it. And when I buy vinyl I look for analog pressings. Most of the vinyl released today still comes from digital sources.

I have many CD’s as I did jump on that bandwagon when it came out. This is why I am picking my favourites now to replace with vinyl.

Just something about that analog sound, putting the record on my Rega, cleaning the record before lowering the tone arm, etc.
I know that probably sounds like to much effort to the younger crowd but there is something satisfying about it all.

 

[GibsonMarshallGuy47]

I have a particularly O.C.D. routine for when I buy vinyl... I will typically only buy records if its a very unique limited edition thing (like an exclusive Record Store Day release), or if its a really obscure, odd-ball out of print item. its my own personal way to keep my record buying under control, or else I'd probably be buying records once or twice a month, and I really can't afford that.

 

[Dean Swindell]

CD's and eventually vinyl again. Music from space just lacks a story or identity. There's no context.

 

[donnyrocker]

I just got the latest QOTSA album on CD to jam in my 2014 F-150 Supercab...

("Sicily" is my favorite for the moment)

 

[taylodl]

I've been listening to music on CD since the 80's. I was buying music on CD's and ripping them to AAC and then a little over 10 years ago I asked myself - why am I doing that? I never listen to the CD, and I can save a lot of money just buying the AAC's. So that's what I've been doing for the past ten years. All the music I listen to nowadays is on my iPhone thru BT speakers. That's just the way it is. Is it the best-sounding solution I could possibly get? Nope. Do I care? Nope. 90% of the time I'm playing music so I can play along to it.

 

[Dgd73]

I mainly try to find discounted cds now. I rip them to my computer and put them on my iPod. I like to choose what I want to listen to while I’m driving. I’m not going to pay for a subscription. I do have a couple apps but I just use them the same as listening to the radio. I just recently got a jukebox and if I can get it working again, I’ll start looking into getting more vinyl 45s.

 

[niazmet]

I don't because classical music is ultra expensive physical. At least the decent collections and recordings. Much easier to find flacs and mp3s on sale (Sometimes a mp3 cost 50% less than flac and if I know the source of the master tape and how they might have transferred to digital I don't even bother to get the flac)

When it comes to vinyl it's rather difficult for me to recommend vinyl for two reasons: pre phono amps are expensive. The good ones. It's hard to find a company or a engineer who still design these with good quality.

nyway, if the companies really wanted us to have good quality audio regardless of vinyl, flac or mp3, they would transfer the 1/4” MASTER TAPE to flac(digital) or CD(directly pressing machine) using high quality equipment. By doing so it would eliminate the following issues: 1 - Budget cd players would still reproduce the type of file that would sound superior to any remaster or any vinyl or any "Gold 24bit Master Tape Transfer". 2 - It would eliminate the need for audiophile "96/24bit" files. Because the default 44.1/16 would sound perfectly fine. 3 - it would even sound amazing when converted to mp3.

The issue is in the 1/4 inch Master tape transfer process to whatevercd-vinyl-mp3-remaster thing. That is something only the record label and the tech guys get hands on. The 90s and 2000s "Gold Master Series" also called the Original Master Series don't sound much better than the regular CD. Or re-issue vinyl. Or whatever new transfer they have made


The 1/4” master tape is a mono (dual mono) or stereo master that is the final product of a recording. This 1/4” master was created at the Mastering studio by a mastering engineer sourced from a 2 inch 16 or 24 track master tape. Earlier recordings were 8-track. It doesn't matter, as long as the 1/4” master tape was good and the FIRST MASTERING ENGINEER DIDNT FUCK UP, the music was preserved. The problem is they used to make copies and it degrades quality, they would lose or do a bad job at storing these tapes. Or the company would transfer that 1/4” FUCKED UP FIRST MASTER (badly mastered by the engineer using tons of compression and etc) to reel to a DAT using mediocre equipment. This resulted in the flood of awful quality CDs that were supposed to sound good. Sometimes, at least in the early days, it had nothing to do with the mastering engineer. As much as he/she may suck, the problem with CDs in the 80s and 90s was the equipment used. They didn't bother to transfer pop music (rock, heavy metal, whatever sell well) using quality stuff. They would leave the decent equipment for jazz and classical records that were sold for 10x the price of a pop album. So why do recent remasters or recent reissues sound average even when they claim it's from the master tapes using the highest quality equipment from Abbey Road or from the Best Studio in The World? Simply put: the mastering engineer don't care about the source material and he will always compress the shit out of it and most of the time they are lying when they claim it's from the master tapes. At best it is a copy from the master that was degraded by another master engineer who did fuck up in the 80s or 90s. A master on top of another master.


Question 1: Why does vinyl sound better? Because the mastering engineer didn't fuck up in the 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s. And the company transferred the master to vinyl using high quality equipment
Question 2: why does the cd sound awful if it's from the same master tape? The company fucked up by either losing the master tape or doing an awful transfer from the 1/4 inch master to CD. And on top of that they might have hired a master engineer with no experience just to get the CD "loud and compressed"
Question 3: Why don't they track the 2 inch and mix it again? Because it is expensive and it will sound awful anyway, since the mastering engineer will destroy the sound in the end by compressing it.
Question 4: When did this start? In the late 80s and 90s. They would hire average studios to manipulate master tapes to digital so they could release on CD fast and make huge profits, applying compression on top of inexperienced engineers.
Question 5: I have a CD from 1991 and a vinyl from 1991. Same band, same album. Vinyl sounds better. Why is that? The master tape transfer to vinyl was done with better equipment and usually without "a specialized engineer". That is, no one would destroy the master tape when transferring to vinyl. But they did destroy when transferring to CD, because they thought they were doing a great thing.
Question 6: Why does X album from the pre-pro tools era in the late 80s and 90s sound loud and compressed anyway? Simply put the mixer engineer didn't care anymore, 90% of the mixer engineers were rich and bored. The master tape was already awful sounding
Question 7: can you give some examples? No because what sounds bad to one person sounds good to another. There is also the nostalgia factor. You can't measure emotional attachment. You can't say that X song or Y album sounds bad even from a technical perspective. Music is way too subjective.
Question 8: So everything you said is invalid because it is subjective? No, because I'm comparing mostly (99% of the time) master tapes that do exist in vinyl or in other preserved format to factually bad transfers to CD. I'm comparing a good apple to a bad apple, a healthy apple to a rotten apple. When a person buy an album, he or she is told that the music in that album is sourced from a master tape. But when we hear the master tape transfer it doesn't sound like the original master tape. If it doesn't sound like the master tape, then something bad happened. Which I tried to explain more or less. When you buy a movie DVD you don't expect noise or digital glitches that were never meant to be in there. Something bad happened in the process.
Question 9: What if it sounds this or that way because the band wanted to? Refer to question 7. This is totally possible. Some bands or someone in the process wanted to sound compressed and loud and they thought it was better that way. A faulty amplifier can be a source of inspiration, it can be a way to create art. A musician want to have that faulty amplifier sound. That is different from having recording in a good amp and then re-amping to a faulty amp because inexperienced people didn't know what they were doing. This is the main point