Recordstore day 2014

[Sméagol]

Does anyone know what this is, and is looking forward to it?

 

For those who don´t know:

It´s a day where people celebrate the BEST medium to put music on: vinyl.

It´s a worldwide event, with a lot of recordstores participating in each country. They sell a lot of limited vinyl releases, some specifically released for this event, and therefore very hard to get outside of it. Apart from that, some recordstores will also have live music on that day. This year it´s held on April 19.

 

As for the exclusive releases: they vary a bit per country, some are worldwide releases, some are exclusive to that country (local bands etc.). The records span the broadest range of genres you can think of, in fact some of it doesn´t seem to be music. But there´s bound to be something you like. All kinds of genres, soundtracks, new, old, special re-releases, or limited vinyl exclusives in fancy colours for the collector.. Since most of you are British, here´s a list on the UK site:

http://www.recordstoreday.co.uk/exclusive-products/2014/

Also, keep in mind not every store will stock every record.

Even if you don´t care about vinyl in general, this list is a great way to discover new (or old) music. You can spend an evening googling the list of 400 releases.

 

As for live events, you´ll have to check yourself, but they haven´t announced anything yet so far. But you can also check your local recordstore to see if they have any special plans.

 

Since I´m a collector of all kinds of media, vinyl is just part of the game. I used to have DJ ambitions (well, I guess I still have more or less), so most of my small colection is dance / house related, but with the trend nowadays of pop artists rediscovering vinyl as a medium (being more exclusive), I´m buying other stuff as well. When I have the money that is. But I like physical objects, being a collector, and when I can choose between a CD and vinyl, I´ll opt for vinyl.

 

Doesn´t seem I´ll have much money to spend next month, but after a quick look, I have my eyes set on at least:

 

Bonobo ft Szjerdene - Get Thy Bearings

 

 

And I also kind of like the sound of:

 

London Grammar - Hey Now

 

 

Last year I bought this one (didn´t have any money back then as well.. Otherwise I´d had bought more).

 

Sébastien Tellier & Caroline Polachek - In The Crew Of Tea Time

 

[MoogleViper]

Soooooo....

 

...It's a day for clueless hipsters who think they're audiophiles?

[Zechs Merquise]

For those who don´t know:

It´s a day where people celebrate the BEST medium to put music on: vinyl.

It´s a worldwide event, with a lot of recordstores participating in each country. They sell a lot of limited vinyl releases, some specifically released for this event, and therefore very hard to get outside of it. Apart from that, some recordstores will also have live music on that day. This year it´s held on April 19.

 

Anyone who genuinely believes that vinyl is the best medium for music is seriously deluded.

[The Bard]

Vinyl is great for a lot of music but it's contentious to say that it's universally the best medium for music. It's more like the equivalent of switching to the neck pickup on your guitar, whereas high quality digital music would correspond to the bridge pickup; the spectrum of the sound in the former is a little bit more muted and a little softer, but technically not "better" in the slightest. If I'm listening to motown or jazz, I'll want to have it on record. If I'm in the mood for breakcore or house I'll definitely prefer digital audio.

 

The whole experience of Vinyl is something special though. The art is blown up to its intended size and there's a sense of commitment when you put in a vinyl, because you're more obliged to sit through the entire album as a cogent experience than you are with a digital track on your phone which you can just easily change or queue into any given sequence. Vinyl is a way for artists to fulfill an auteur vision, it makes music a more linear and involved experience.

[Sméagol]

I was exaggerating folks. Vinyl delivers the best audio quality theoretically, but is prone to scratches. The best medium of course is flac. Geez..

For collectors of physical media though, vinyl is much cooler than a CD, or I dunno, an Itunes giftcard. But I guess I´m on my own here : peace:.

 

Anyway, like I said in the OP (although you seems to have focussed on just one minor sentence), even if you don´t care about vinyl, there will also be live music, but that will be announced closer to the date of the event.

 

Soooooo....

 

...It's a day for clueless hipsters who think they're audiophiles?

 

Well, I intend to go, so I´d say no.

Edited March 21, 2014 by Sméagol

[The Bard]

I'm going too, need to get me some Marvin Gaye records.

[MoogleViper]

Vinyl delivers the best audio quality theoretically, but is prone to scratches.

 

Sorry, but it really doesn't. You can argue that you prefer the "earthier" sound of vinyl, but CD quality is better. A CD has over 1400kb/s bit rate. Obviously a vinyl is audio, but the best quality vinyl will only achieve the equivalent of less around 1100kb/s, possibly higher. And most vinyls will only manage 18kHz bandwidth, with the equivalent bitrate of 600-700kb/s.

 

In short, the best quality vinyls will be about as good as a CD. But most vinyls, particular as they degrade over time, will be about half as good as a CD.

[The Bard]

Nobody really thinks that the quality is better, but Vinyl is more about nostalgia for a time when listening to music was more its own experience than something you do in the background while scrolling twitter. When I have Spotify open, I'm obviously near an internet device. With Vinyl, I'm in my living room, sitting on my couch with no distractions, and little choice but to listen to the thing until the whole side is finished playing. It might seem odd that I like a format for the constraints it puts on my ability to choose, but for me as someone with a roving focus of attention, it's just like taking a weekend trip to the lake district and bringing nothing with you but food and a book - the fewer stimuli in your environment, the better you're going to remember the one thing you have to focus on. It takes me back to when I didn't have a computer as a teenager, and ever week I'd go to Music Zone and pick up a few CDs for a fiver a piece, and sit there listening to them without thinking about anything else.

 

So for me, it's totally to do with a love for the analogue age, and that when I think back and remember the experience of listening to an album, the memory isn't cluttered with all the detritus of modern living. Of course, that's a highly subjective set of criteria, so I'm not saying that I like it because it's better

[Sméagol]

Sorry, but it really doesn't. You can argue that you prefer the "earthier" sound of vinyl, but CD quality is better. A CD has over 1400kb/s bit rate. Obviously a vinyl is audio, but the best quality vinyl will only achieve the equivalent of less around 1100kb/s, possibly higher. And most vinyls will only manage 18kHz bandwidth, with the equivalent bitrate of 600-700kb/s.

 

In short, the best quality vinyls will be about as good as a CD. But most vinyls, particular as they degrade over time, will be about half as good as a CD.

Sorry, but it really does.

Just wtf are you talking about kb/s? You know the difference between analogue and digital right? It is a fact, that vinyl has a theoretical higher quality than CD´s, because of it being analogue. Again, theoretically, sound can be recorded to vinyl one to one, which can´t be done digitally, you always lose quality in the process. But that´s theoretical. Like I said, vinyl is prone to dust and scratches, CD´s less so. You go have a look at this link: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question487.htm

[The Bard]

Actually Moogle's right, because digital music is encoded as a series of data points that are then interpreted by a machine, it can be more faithful to all of the overtones (frequency integer multiples that give any given instrument its timbral character), whereas with Vinyl music is encoded in terms of the variations in the depths of the grooves, there's a physical limit to the depth of bass and the dynamic range that you can record onto Vinyl. This difficulty is actually what gives Vinyls their "warmer" sound by the way; the overtone signature of bass instruments is reduced, making it a bit more soft). Though Vinyls usually match the traditional 44kbps you get on CD recordings (occasionally better, often worse because of damage, at least I think - not sure if the figures Moogle gave on projected "bit rate" equivalent on Vinyls is accurate) they can't come close to the 360kbps and beyond that you get on the highest quality digital recordings (yes, even MP3s).

 

If you're going to conduct an argument for Vinyl, you sort of have to do it on an experiential basis rather than a sound quality basis.

[MoogleViper]

Sorry, but it really does.

Just wtf are you talking about kb/s? You know the difference between analogue and digital right? It is a fact, that vinyl has a theoretical higher quality than CD´s, because of it being analogue. Again, theoretically, sound can be recorded to vinyl one to one, which can´t be done digitally, you always lose quality in the process. But that´s theoretical. Like I said, vinyl is prone to dust and scratches, CD´s less so. You go have a look at this link: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question487.htm

 

I know the difference between digital and analogue, which is why I said "equivalent" bit rate. As in the level of digital bit rate that would compare, when you measure quality emprircally, CD is better than vinyl. A good vinyl can only achieve bandwidth of 22khz, and a dynamic range of ~70dB. Whereas a CD has 22kHz bandwidth and a dynamic range of almost 100dB.

 

It is a fact, that vinyl has a theoretical higher quality than CD´s, because of it being analogue. Again, theoretically, sound can be recorded to vinyl one to one, which can´t be done digitally, you always lose quality in the process.

 

That's absolute bollocks. Digital transfer can be perfect because it's a binary waveform. Therefore there's no ambiguity. Digital files only suffer from a loss of data with compression.

 

With analogue, every step of the process reduces quality. The recording of sound, the transfer to a master vinyl. The pressing of new vinyls. As it's analogue, any slight imperfection at any step of the manufacturing process (of which there will no doubt be many), reduces the quality.

 

That's the same reason why you'll never have a perfect signal with analogue TV (you'll always have interference or some distortion), whereas with a digital TV the picture is either perfect or not there.

 

Actually Moogle's right, because digital music is encoded as a series of data points that are then interpreted by a machine, it can be more faithful to all of the overtones (frequency integer multiples that give any given instrument its timbral character), whereas with Vinyl music is encoded in terms of the variations in the depths of the grooves, there's a physical limit to the depth of bass and the dynamic range that you can record onto Vinyl. This difficulty is actually what gives Vinyls their "warmer" sound by the way; the overtone signature of bass instruments is reduced, making it a bit more soft). Though Vinyls usually match the traditional 44kbps you get on CD recordings (occasionally better, often worse because of damage, at least I think - not sure if the figures Moogle gave on projected "bit rate" equivalent on Vinyls is accurate) they can't come close to the 360kbps and beyond that you get on the highest quality digital recordings (yes, even MP3s).

 

If you're going to conduct an argument for Vinyl, you sort of have to do it on an experiential basis rather than a sound quality basis.

 

I think you might be mixing up kHz (or ks/s; kilo-samples per second) with kb/s. A CD is 1411.2 kb/s. Way better than a 320kb/s mp3.

 

Obviously this still isn't as good as lossless files such as FLAC/ALAC.

[bob]

Supposedly the reason some people prefer vinyl is because it contains fewer overtones than digital rather than more.

[The Bard]

I think you might be mixing up kHz (or ks/s; kilo-samples per second) with kb/s. A CD is 1411.2 kb/s. Way better than a 320kb/s mp3.

 

Thanks, you're right. It's been a while since I did any reading on it. Isn't KHz indicative of kb/s though, since the greater the frequency of the samples, the more data there is to encode?

 

But my point still stands; physical media is a different (for me: better) way to experience music.

 

Edit: @Moogle, Oh I see what I was doing; using kb/s and KHz interchangeably. My bad. And there's no corresponding data on Vinyl sampling frequency because Vinyl encoding isn't to do with sampling, it's a more direct recording?

Edited March 23, 2014 by The Bard