Photo: Thom's
Today, I want to talk about listening to music on vinyl records vs. mp3s. Quite recently, I purchased my first Beatles vinyl and am excited to be able to enjoy it! The record I bought was Revolver, the seminal 1965 release from the world’s most exciting act. The album plays as if it could have been released yesterday, with both the sound quality and compositions being timeless. Writing about why The Beatles were the best rock n’ roll band has been done extensively enough through the years, that’s not what this post is about; rather I would like to just mention the fact that vinyl records still sound as good, if not better than their compact disc or mp3 counterparts (just a side note: if your music has been released across every type of musical format through the years, that says something about how relevant your music truly is.)
So, why bother with buying used vinyl records when you can simply download your favorite songs off iTunes? There are several reasons for buying records over mp3 downloads. Sound quality aside, we will get to that in a minute. The first reason I enjoy buying records is the fact that it is a treasure hunt. Because the records are often from another time, unless of course it is a brand new pressing, they can be found almost anywhere. You name it and records are bound to be there: garage sales, flea markets, retail stores, and record exchanges. Half the fun of buying a record is that you never know what you will find from one of your favorite artists. I realize that only some modern artists choose to release their work on vinyl. In terms of the treasure hunt aspect, I am speaking of finding music from artists who did most of their work from the 60s onward. Sure, you can find new pressings of your favorite modern artists, but it is not much of a treasure hunt when you go to say, Best Buy, and they have the record you want on the shelf. Next I want to talk about the friendship and community aspect of obtaining records.
One of the ideas of music is that it can bring together people who may never have spoken to one another or gotten along. This is one of the many reasons I love music because if it can bring people together to share a common joy, how can that be a bad thing? While mp3s are great and can be played on virtually any electronic device, the idea of scrolling though a friend’s mp3 collection on a computer or mp3 player doesn’t quite resonate the same way as sifting through the same friend’s record collection. This may be an old school idea, but I like to think that certain aspects from the past should be continued today. In other words, vinyl records can be picked up, looked at, and discussed among new or old friends in a way that mp3s can’t. There is a more human aspect to the format, whereas mp3 sharing is simply clicking or scrolling through songs on devices that separate the human side out of the music sharing equation. This leads me to my next point: the physical act of putting a record on.
The fact that you have to get up, select a record, place it on the turntable, and put the needle on the record is cool, at least in my mind. It means that you really want to hear this music, as it requires a physical act to get it to play. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that mp3s aren’t convenient and awesome in terms of their ease of use and tradability. What I am saying is that simply clicking to hear a song is not as physically demanding as putting a record on is. You may think I’m driving this point into the ground, but I think overall as a society we have grown very dependent on technology to take care of everything for us. In other words, we tend to get lazy as technology simplifies our lives. Moving on, records force you to listen to the entire album from start to finish.
One facet of mp3s that I’ve always disliked is the fact that they allow you to select only certain songs from an album. If you want only the two or three big hits from an album, you can download only those two or three songs and nothing else. While this is great from an ease of use standpoint, I believe that you should give at least one listen to the entire album from start to finish. The reason for this is simply, if you like the big hits from your favorite artists, chances are you will like many of their other songs that may not be as mainstream, but are still amazing! I’ve discovered so many songs this way and people often ask me questions such as: “What song is this?” or “What artist is this, I’ve never heard this song before?” The fact of the matter is that I have often listened to entire albums of artists you may love. Some of the songs from the albums people may never hear because they haven’t been played on the radio, put into music videos, etc. The bottom line is that you should give your favorite artists more of a chance when it comes to listening to their entire work. If you already do this, kudos to you!
Finally, we have come to the first point I mentioned about records: their sound quality. This point is debatable (more so than the other points, you might be thinking) as listeners and artists are on both sides of the issue. Legendary artist Neil Young has sounded off (no pun intended) on the debate about digital music and sound quality. Writer Marshall Kirkpatrick had a chance to ask Young exactly how he felt in an interview. Young quipped: “[When it first came out], digital music sounded like shit. It was no fun to listen to turned up. Instead of water poured on you it was like being attacked with ice picks (2008).” You may be thinking to yourself, “How can digital music sound worse than records that may be scratchy or altered?” This is a legitimate point I would like to address. It is true that some of the records I own are a bit scratched and consequently when played, the scratchy sound can be heard. However, I also own quite a few mp3s on my computer that sound distorted and irregular at times. This is due to the mp3s being shared and traded. The more mp3 files are traded, the more the files have to be copied. In this process, the overall sound quality of the files can diminish. Pantelis Vassilakis of Iddblog.org sums up this process.
“Every sound-compression technique has two objectives:
a) to reduce a sound file’s data rate and therefore overall file size (for easier download and storage)
b) to accomplish (a) without noticeably degrading the perceived quality of the sound.
Sound-compression algorithms basically remove bits from a digital sound file and select the bits to be removed so that the information that will be lost will not be perceived by listeners as a noticeable loss in quality.”
In summary, because of the digital bits and bytes present in an mp3 file, this can degrade the overall sound of the files. Now we will take a look at why vinyl records tend to have a deeper, richer sound than mp3s. Howstuffworks.com gives an insight to this topic.
“A vinyl record is an analog recording, and CDs and DVDs are digital recordings…A digital recording takes snapshots of the analog signal at a certain rate (for CDs it is 44,100 times per second) and measures each snapshot with a certain accuracy. This means that, by definition, a digital recording is not capturing the complete sound wave. It is approximating it with a series of steps. Some sounds that have very quick transitions, such as a drum beat or a trumpet’s tone, will be distorted because they change too quickly for the sample rate. A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound’s waveform. This means that no information is lost (p. 1).”
To sum up what has been said, vinyl records are analog in format, which means that they have the original sound waves pressed onto the discs. Because of the digital format of mp3s, sound waves tend to become distorted. The point of this long winded discussion is simply to bring to light a technology (the vinyl record) that is just as high quality today as it was when it came out. If you get the chance, listen for yourself, you might be pleasantly surprised!
John
