I've taken the Vinyl plunge....

I found the early CD players/discs both unmusical and physically painful to listen to, even at low volumes. It's hard for me to see how anyone could have found them tolerable, let alone enjoyable. I suppose they must have had "digital ready" ears...

JD

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The only area that CD competed with vinyl in the 80s was right at the end of the decade when they started making players cheaply enough to go into the ultra cheap home entertainment centres that previously would have had a horrific plastic
TT as Frank describes. For our purposes these systems can be ignored as they are not, and never were hi-fi.

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You're right, Tony, that the cheap tables were never hifi, but they can't be ignored if one is asking why CD succeeded.

Average U.K. stereo gear (not "hi fi") may well have been superior in the early to mid-80s than average U.S. gear of the time. But I can certainly say that in the U.S. it was very hard to find quality turn-tables -- Linn and Rega were sold only in a few large cities. Almost everything the rest of us had access to was made in Japan (an exception was Thorens). The "high-end" Japanese decks were things like the Denon DP-series machines; not very good, but below that it got very, very bad. Technics, Pioneer, and JVC must have sold millions of cheap plastic decks -- even the platters and arms were plastic. So you had this massive consumer market blanketed with really low-grade junk.

Mick and Frank are definitely right -- about the U.S. market at least -- in saying that CD was successful because despite all of its flaws it beat what most people were listening to hands down. People willingly put up with what at the beginning was a very limited selection of music -- and thereby made the CD medium successful -- because it was soncially superior to what MOST people had.

When CD came out it was a serious investment. £4-500 for the first Sony and Philips machines.

I paid £350 for a year old LP12/Basik a couple of years before then. It was no contest for many years, especially as CDs themselves were expensive and of limited variety. The first I bought was 'Does Humor Belong in Music' by Zappa, which simply wasn't available on vinyl. This cost £10.99 in 1986. Not exactly a bargain...

Paul

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But I can certainly say that in the U.S. it was very hard to find quality turn-tables -- Linn and Rega were sold only in a few large cities. Almost everything the rest of us had access to was made in Japan (an exception was Thorens). The "high-end" Japanese decks were things like the Denon DP-series machines; not very good, but below that it got very, very bad. Technics, Pioneer, and JVC must have sold millions of cheap plastic decks -- even the platters and arms were plastic. So you had this massive consumer market blanketed with really low-grade junk.

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There were certainly some pretty naff decks about at the time, but the UK hi-fi mags did tend to steer customers away from them and towards decks like the Dual 505 or Sansui SR222 which were a pretty decent turntable at a bargain basement price, certainly a fraction of the price of the cheapest CD player. The hi-fi mags of the time seemed to be a lot less elitist and snobby than they are now, there was very little coverage of the spoilt brat stuff that cost a average persons yearly wage etc – it seemed to be far more about getting a good sound for a reasonable price (as IMHO it should be).

There was always a half decent turntable at a price notch below a Planar 2. At the time the Nad 3020 was the king of the budget amps, and the Planar 2 / Nad 3020 / Videotone Minimax system was a classic, I knew a few people who used that combo, and bloody good it was too. There was also obviously a lot of people running older decks just like there is today – I started with a second hand Lenco 75 in 1978, and there were obviously loads of old Thorens etc knocking about, as there still are!

Tony.

Hi all:

Just a few comments from a relatively old fart.

I was in the 'Hi-Fi' retail business when the first CD players (a Phirrips and an Hitachi IIRC) blighted Britain's sceptered shores. I was honestly astounded and saddened at how badly they portrayed music.

As time went on the players got better (or at least different) until we arrive at today. Personally, I still cannot live with CD sound and do not own a CD player. Interestingly, my wife also cannot stand CD 'reproduction' and staunchly defends vinyl. She has no vested interest, as it were, in either medium and really couldn't give a fig about the equipment either, as long as it satisfies her own quality requirements.

Man, did I get lucky or what?

Best Regards,
Mark Dunn

Certainly the 80s CD players were very poor in comparison to almost any deck which was respected and cared for. There is no doubt about this.

I am sure that in the 80s and in the average household, decks were given little care and attention - and records were treated with little respect. The records were often scratched and dusty and so sounded unbearable. With CDs scratches were not a problem and so I suppose that was the attraction of the CD. It had nothing to do with potential quality. In even the late 80s the vinyl source was potentially miles better for a fraction of the price.

I am old enough to know that quality doesn't always win in the commercial world. Take for example Video 2000, Betamax and VHS. The poorest technology won there.

CDs became popular for their ease of use and the absence of the vinyl crackle, pop and click which occurred due to lack of care and attention to the media.

Terry

I'm old enough to remember that revered publication 'The Flat Response'. At the time of the launch of CD they reckoned it was fundamentally 'musically' inferior to decks of the quality of the Dual 505. I listened...... and I agreed.To this day my CD2 is good but my LP12 is the only replay medium that can move me to tears/euphoria. When I listen to vinyl I regularly get it in the neck off 'her indoors' for listening on in to the early hours, album after album. This never happens with silver drinks coasters.

As I said before, I spent £450 on my LP12 in 1983. CD Players were in their infancy and were MORE expensive than this and sounded crap.

Joe Public was buying musiccassettes in greater numbers than LPs by then anyway. Sound quality on those was absolutely dreadful! Yes most people did not look after their records and many moved to cassettes for convenience.

The other thing at the time was digitally mastered recordings. These sounded awful when pressed on to vinyl (bright, cold, harsh).

To my mind the only advantages that CD's have over vinyl are the convenience of having up to 67 minutes of music in one go, and they are smaller and lighter (having lugged my record collection around when I was renting and moving flat every few months this was a major bugbear).

Mick,

Average salaries were about 7K then (LP12 £450), they're about £24k now a CDS2/XPS costs £6k Hmmmm.

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Most people play music as a background activity whilst doing someting else, and are quite happy with poor sound because they do not know anything else exists.

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No one has argued that there is no use for CD

Tony.

Old minty has hit it on the head.

At the end of the day most people that purchase CDPs are not anal nerds like everyone posting here.

Way back when I got a Shnider CD player come record deck thing from my dad, I was amazed at the quality of the CD replay, I was stunned. I also got Brothers In Arms, as I remember one of a handfull of avilable CDs.

For people who just want to buy an album and play it without wetting the bed to how it sounds, and were the highs sweet and the lows low, then CD wins every time. face it.

The hi-fi enthusiast market doesn't drive the record or equipment industry. Regular people value convenience over all else.

Records and turntables are very inconvenient--you have to keep it level, you have to change the needle and keep dust off, the thing must be aligned, you will get feedback if it is on the same surface as the speakers (not uncommon), etc. etc. Have you played a record on a cheap rack system? AWFUL, especially if the cartridge is poor, worn, at the wrong tracking force, and misaligned (usually at least two of the four obtain). That's what records are like for most people--distorted, crackly, muffled. That's why cassette had already overtaken lp in sales in the early 80s before cd even launched.

A cd is a lot easier to get mediocre sound out of than a record player. It is smaller. If they are handled half decently they will not skip. They will not mistrack. You can play it in your car, on your boombox, on your walkman.

What's more, it was bound to be cheaper to manufacture (the labels knew this), and yet consumers would a)pay a higher price and b)actually replace stuff they already owned.

With respect to sound quality, I think 80s pressings get a bum rap--it was really the recordings that went downhill. The cold, icy sheen of synthesizers, drum machines, digital effects boxes, and digital recording were actually what producers aimed for, and the records reflect that as much as a decline in pressing quality. It is true, however, that warps became very common.

Finally, as to the question of baby boomers turning their backs on lps, there was no choice. I remember in 1990 I got a gift certificate to a record store for high school graduation. THEY HAD NO RECORDS! Right around then, stores stopped carrying vinyl (the labels stopped accepting returns of defectives) and labels stopped pressing it, even indie bands like Dinosaur Jr (there were usually imports available). So the market wasn't exactly defined by free choice.

On the plus side, when I started buying used vinyl due to the unavailability of new, it wasn't long before I realized that there were big differences between pressings and I should have been buying classic rock records used for $4 instead of budget-line new for $6.

--Eric

I don't want to accept the doom laden comments here. Just because the high street/mall record shops are full of new sealed CDs doesn't mean so many are being sold nor that people who buy them are that thrilled with their purchases. I think the buzz in the US with Music is at Wherehouse (sh CD, which people have much more confidence in than sh vinyl or tapes) and independent record shops (mix of new CD, SH CD, SH vinyl and new vinyl) which represent the healthiest type of shops. Most of the interest at a Tower or Virgin these days seems to be with VHS and DVD movies.
I take great heart from the fact that many bands are putting out new recordings on vinyl at half the price of CD. These are not obscure artists either - in the last month I've bought Weezer, Van Morrison, Pete Yorn, The Get Up Kids and others as new releases. (funnily enough, all of these were also available to hear on CD at those headphone listening stations- another great use for CD!) In a smaller record stores' top 20 you will find 5-10 will be on Vinyl at a lower price than CD. I bet most of the people buying these have at best a Disco-deck type TT, but more likely an ancient all-in one record player. These also sound great, sorry. I just moved to another city which has a record shop with a million records (yes, really a million!), the guy has this type of TT IN EVERY ROOM (try before you buy) with any old amp to make the sound come out of some old studio monitors and every record sounds great! I get the impression that people who actually go to live gigs (ok, they're mainly younger than me) know all about vinyl.

I am actually glad that CDs are not perfect enough to stop people going to hear live music, but at the same time have enabled much more music (both vinyl and CDS) to be available to more people on the sh market.

So - let's think positive! Or indie, gothic, industrial....

Jeremy

Eric Barry has summed up the position admirably. It's the mass 'yoof' market that defines the way that canned music will be sold. The minority audiophile market is simply too small to have any real influence except on a handful of small labels which produce specifically for it.

As a result fashion, lifestyle, convenience and portability tend to be the driving force rather than ultimate quality. This is a fact of life, sad if you're a total vinyl junkie, but a fact nonetheless - so live with it!!

In any event, I'm happy to have both CD and vinyl available to me as well as FM radio. Maybe my ears are defective but I wouldn't mind betting in a 'blind tasting' the only thing that would enable me to tell my LP12 from the CD3.5 would be the surface noise on the vinyl, otherwise both sound just fine to me.

So why don't we call a halt to all the CD bashing and just remember with the kind of equipment most of us are lucky enough to have, both CD and vinyl are capable of producing beautiful music, so go listen to the music not the equipment.

David S

I just got myself a used p25 with the exact cartridge. Get the feeling that my cd5 will be underutilised in next few weeks.



Anyway everything is nice except that it is a little too upfront, esp on rock recordings. It seems to be the characteristics of the exact cartridge. Any comments on that?

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Anyway everything is nice except that it is a little too upfront, esp on rock recordings. It seems to be the characteristics of the exact cartridge. Any comments on that?

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er, enjoy!

James,

thanks for your reply but all these sound very foreign to me, at least at the moment.

The advice given to me by the dealer was that everything is set up in order and that i shouldnt meddle with them if i didnt know what i was doing.

Maybe the only thing i can do now is to check on point 1.

I realised that since i got the TT, i am listening to less music. why?

Because whenever i pop a CD in, i want to go back to vinyl, but when i remember how little software i have, I sometimes end up watching TV.

Thats the downside of vinyl for me.