Oh awesome, hopefully this won't be super expensive! Would be a nice collectible to have.

That is pretty cool! Don't have a record player though...

@no record player

50$

I used to turn my nose up at analog vinyl records. I dismissed it, foolishly, as audio snobs trying to be hip with an old format. Then I heard the difference! If you've got really nice headphones with a good quality source audio that isn't pooled from digital compressed audio, it makes a huge difference in music listening. Far better than even the most highest bitrate mp3. FLAC is about the only thing that may be arguably equal to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__6-bfdTxWQ

Called it.

Not exacty. There are inherent limitations in records where they can't accurately reproduce frequencies in certain ranges like digital can. The difference you might hear could be from the equipment you play the record on. Many LP afficianados prefer the old style vaccum tube amps (which are VERY expensive now). Tubes, unlike transistors, treat the signal differently with natural compression that produces warmer sounding midrange tones in particular. With todays digital technology, they may ATTEMPT to accurately reproduce those traits in a cheaper and more reliable digital solid state unit using active equalization and gated compression, but as all tube guys know, it's just not the same as the real thing.

I have a fairly decent sized collection of LP's. Mostly old 60's and 70's classic rock stuff that belonged to my dad, some of it is stuff I picked up here and there from consignment shops and flea markets. Still cherish my casette tape collection as well. They've remixed and compressed and normalized the living shit out of all the old recordings until NOTHING has the same sound it used to. It's nice to be able to pull out the old original releases of things and hear them the same way I used to hear them back in the good old days.

Huh. I'm trying to start a collection right now and the best I've got so far is a shitty transistor Victrola portable (I'm on a low budget). If the difference is that clear I'm probably going to need an upgrade pretty soon.

It's really not all that big of a difference. If you A/B it side by side, you can hear a difference, but it isn't huge.

The turntable itself doesn't have to have an onboard tube amp. I don't think they even make those anymore. But you can find tube driven receivers still. They're pretty expensive though. They can range anywhere from 150 up to 1k and more, and you won't get the same quality and features from the ones in the cheaper range. There's also tube selections to decide upon. They don't all use the same type or quantity of tubes. If you're wanting the highest quality sound possible, you'll probably wanna go with something with at least 3 preamp tubes, and any more than 3 is all the better. Some may or may not feature tubes in the poweramp stage as well, and different tubes there will yield different tonal characteristics. (not sure what poweramp tubes they use, but guitar amps tend to use either EL34's or 6L6's, EL34's having a warmer fuzzier midrange, whilst 6L6's have a flatter natural EQ shape and tighter sound) If you're gonna go the tube-audiophile route, you'll also need some good quality speakers too. The old 15inch giant fabric cones that came in massive Volkswagen sized particleboard or plywood enclosures that came with many old home stereo systems back in the day - they sucked balls. They're BIG and they impressed your woman with their massive size back in 1977, but they probably didn't sound optimal back then, and they definitely aren't quality compared to what's available today. And you don't NEED something that big to get lots of volume anymore either. Some decent bookshelf sized studio monitors would be best, and they'd probably run you 150 to 500 per speaker.

Totally nothing wrong with a tubeless setup though. I still use an old ugly 70's solid state stereo receiver to play my turntable through. I don't use the gargantuan floor speakers that came with it though. I ended up selling those in a garage sale several years back. Been using some early 2000's-made Mackie studio reference monitors I got for pretty cheap used.

Because you can spend 5000 bucks on a totally tits setup to listen to LP's,


edit: I'd like to fucking finish this post, but for some reason this forum software is apparently fucking retarded and keeps glitching out when I try to post shit.

FUCK IT. I'll cut and paste a fucking screenshot. Fuck you, internet.

Adversely, digital will never have as full a sound as vinyl for the simple reason that it will always cut off inaudible frequencies that are present in the analog format and interact with the audible range to create richer harmonics. Even the highest quality 24-bit 96kHz FLAC isn't capable of 100% faithfully approaching analog quality, though it is a significant improvement over standard FLAC.

Considering Reznor records digitally in the first place, buying the Quake vinyl will bring nothing more to the experience than the original CD does, except a bigger artwork. This is a cash grab tailored for dumb hipsters if you ask me.

Digital cuts off inaudible frequencies? Wrong. An inaudible frequency is an inaudible frequency, doesn't matter what medium you put it on. You can't hear what is unhearable. And one type of silence is not better than another... unless we're talking about Dolby hiss-filtering techniques on old tape decks, hehe. Harmonics produced by the medium are NOT a frequency, they are distortion of a frequency from too much gain (aka clipping), and usually undesired.

Analog "quality" that you speak of isn't quality at all. Analog is pre-1990's technology. Digital is post-90's. One came after the other because it's better both in physical size and sound quality. Technology advances. The "quality" you refer to is mere opinion and preference which isn't based on scientific facts.

For example... Older movies shot on technicolor film have a very distinct look to them. I love the way they look. So vivid looking. Comparing many films shot with and without technicolor film, I'd probably say that technicolor looks better. Is it actually better though? No. Although,... even if you shot a movie in Technicolor today, you'd probably still post-process it with digital effects, so the end result would not authentically mirror how movies were shot and mastered in the 60's.

Sorry Foc but your wrong is wrong... CD cuts off anything above 20kHz. Vinyl does not.

Uh, what? That's not it at all. Frequencies resonate between each other, right? Harmonics are the product of this resonation. When you cut off above 20kHz, ultrasounds obviously can't resonate with the audible range, hence not producing harmonics. The result is a less rich sound, and you can very easily witness this by comparing the same album on the same system on vinyl and CD.

Edit: I realized I should have said "Sound waves of different frequencies resonate" instead of just "Frequencies resonate".

You never said CD. You said digital. I lose the argument because you decided to argue about oranges instead of apples halfway into the apple argument. Silly fucking me.

The typical freq range of CD, vinyl and cassette tape (depending on tape composition) is all around 20hz-20khz. So... there's no point to make there.

The point to make could be that in addition to the sounds of music you hear on a vinyl LP, you also hear that native LP hiss as well as the sound of lint and dust passing between the needle and the record. Those are frequencies you are NOT meant to hear.

With digital, you don't hear those sounds (if you record it properly). Noise gates, filters, hum cancelling digital recording techniques, yada yada yada. When you're dealing with digital and want pure silence, you can have it.

Digital is not exclusively CD audio. Apples have vitamins.

I've read that vinyl can go up to 150kHz or so. Way more than 20kHz. CD quality is still the norm for most people, which is why I specifically mentioned CD (though nowadays the norm tends to be even less than that with the rise of iPods/smartphones that can only play lossy mp3, not FLAC). Normal FLAC is only slightly better than CD quality since it can handle 48kHz, which actually translates to 24kHz maximum range. I did say that 24-bit 96kHz FLAC was a significant improvement but it's still a few steps away from 150kHz.