I bought a turntable to relive some old albums. What actually happened was a record from 1978 reminding me it remembered being annoyed at me thirty-five years ago.
Ah, muscle memory. I also remember when album tracks were specifically crafted to flow from one to the other - a musical trip. You had to listen in that order for it to make sense. I'm thinking specifically of Pink Floyd. Those were the days, eh?
I feel you. I recently got a similar turntable and started playing my old Rush albums again. I think what we love is the ritual of music, as you alluded to. Handling vinyl becomes an active process rather than a passive one.
I did the same thing about 5 years. Blue tooth connection to the receiver across the room. Still using the old time Bose speakers mounted on the walls. 200 albums had been sitting in closets for 30 or so years since our last turntable died. By then we were all CDs, then digital.
The drop of the needle, the hiss and pop before the first groove when music shows was magic. For Christmas that year my daughter bought me a new album. Styx, The Crash of the Crown. The ritual of sliding the sleeve out, gently plopping the record onto the platter, and listening to it straight through while reading the liner notes was so much fun.
I bought "Young Americans" by David Bowie on vinyl in 1975. My copy skips four times in the first 20 seconds, not because I did anything - it's a fault in the pressing, which happens. I also have it on CD. When I play the CD, I regret the lack of skips...
The great Czech animator Jan Švankmajer says that he can’t work with CGI because he needs the physical object that he’s animating in front of him, its surface pitted with evidence of its individual history. If he can’t physically run his hands over it, he’s not interested in animating it.
My LP ritual included drops of cleaning fluid on a fine-textured brush to wipe the record, zapping it with an anti-static "gun," and carefully wiping the stylus with a tiny brush. You're right about the nostalgia, and it kept my records in peak condition. But the fact remains that, by dragging a stylus that repeatedly bounced off the walls of a groove, every playing inevitably shortens the life of a record, no matter how meticulously it's maintained. I still have hundreds of CDs, DVDs, and BDs, and play them often, as well as digital media. It's always struck me as ironic that the argument made by vinyl enthusiasts that digital music is inferior because it's electronically processed ignores the fact that so is every LP. If a record groove was the pure analog equivalent of the sound waves embedded in in, low frequencies would cause the stylus of jump out of the groove. That's why the sound is compressed by an equalization curve that dampens the bass. The actual balance is restored in playback by a preamp that—you guessed it—electronically processes the signal.
Ah, muscle memory. I also remember when album tracks were specifically crafted to flow from one to the other - a musical trip. You had to listen in that order for it to make sense. I'm thinking specifically of Pink Floyd. Those were the days, eh?
I feel you. I recently got a similar turntable and started playing my old Rush albums again. I think what we love is the ritual of music, as you alluded to. Handling vinyl becomes an active process rather than a passive one.
I did the same thing about 5 years. Blue tooth connection to the receiver across the room. Still using the old time Bose speakers mounted on the walls. 200 albums had been sitting in closets for 30 or so years since our last turntable died. By then we were all CDs, then digital.
The drop of the needle, the hiss and pop before the first groove when music shows was magic. For Christmas that year my daughter bought me a new album. Styx, The Crash of the Crown. The ritual of sliding the sleeve out, gently plopping the record onto the platter, and listening to it straight through while reading the liner notes was so much fun.
I bought "Young Americans" by David Bowie on vinyl in 1975. My copy skips four times in the first 20 seconds, not because I did anything - it's a fault in the pressing, which happens. I also have it on CD. When I play the CD, I regret the lack of skips...
Beautiful. Thank you.
The great Czech animator Jan Švankmajer says that he can’t work with CGI because he needs the physical object that he’s animating in front of him, its surface pitted with evidence of its individual history. If he can’t physically run his hands over it, he’s not interested in animating it.
Heart warming! Thanks.
My LP ritual included drops of cleaning fluid on a fine-textured brush to wipe the record, zapping it with an anti-static "gun," and carefully wiping the stylus with a tiny brush. You're right about the nostalgia, and it kept my records in peak condition. But the fact remains that, by dragging a stylus that repeatedly bounced off the walls of a groove, every playing inevitably shortens the life of a record, no matter how meticulously it's maintained. I still have hundreds of CDs, DVDs, and BDs, and play them often, as well as digital media. It's always struck me as ironic that the argument made by vinyl enthusiasts that digital music is inferior because it's electronically processed ignores the fact that so is every LP. If a record groove was the pure analog equivalent of the sound waves embedded in in, low frequencies would cause the stylus of jump out of the groove. That's why the sound is compressed by an equalization curve that dampens the bass. The actual balance is restored in playback by a preamp that—you guessed it—electronically processes the signal.