Music plays an enormous part in my life and I'm sure for all of you reading this or, well, you wouldn't participate in this forum.
I currently feed said fixation via a mix of the highest quality downloads I can lay my hands on (ALAC or FLAC where possible) and lately have gone back to vinyl, thanks to rescuing my Rega Planer 2 deck from the loft, some TLC and a much needed service and new cartridge.
Great stuff and my vinyl collection has already swelled to decent proportions via a mix of fab Saturday's spent in a great local record shop (hats off Swordfish Records), record fairs and online mail orders.
I regret to report however that the much heralded and hyped 180g vinyl product is nought but a vacuous marketing tool. It's not that these heavy weight products are inferior, but they're invariably not superior. It's not a straight line of course: Love's Rhino reissue of Forever Changes for example is superbly rendered, but that's an outcome of the care taken to pull the sound from original source tapes in the mastering process rather than the weight of the wax.
I say this whilst listening to a £5 mint second hand copy of Valerie Carter's 2nd LP Wild Child, purchased from the good burghers at Vinyl Tap UK- it's a wafer thin late 70's CBS vinyl LP and the sound quality is outstanding.
It'd be good to hear your views guys, but that's been my experience.
Ps avoid like the plague anything on the 4 Men With Beards label: 180 gram vinyl pulled from CD sources and poorly mastered!
I currently feed said fixation via a mix of the highest quality downloads I can lay my hands on (ALAC or FLAC where possible) and lately have gone back to vinyl, thanks to rescuing my Rega Planer 2 deck from the loft, some TLC and a much needed service and new cartridge.
Great stuff and my vinyl collection has already swelled to decent proportions via a mix of fab Saturday's spent in a great local record shop (hats off Swordfish Records), record fairs and online mail orders.
I regret to report however that the much heralded and hyped 180g vinyl product is nought but a vacuous marketing tool. It's not that these heavy weight products are inferior, but they're invariably not superior. It's not a straight line of course: Love's Rhino reissue of Forever Changes for example is superbly rendered, but that's an outcome of the care taken to pull the sound from original source tapes in the mastering process rather than the weight of the wax.
I say this whilst listening to a £5 mint second hand copy of Valerie Carter's 2nd LP Wild Child, purchased from the good burghers at Vinyl Tap UK- it's a wafer thin late 70's CBS vinyl LP and the sound quality is outstanding.
It'd be good to hear your views guys, but that's been my experience.
Ps avoid like the plague anything on the 4 Men With Beards label: 180 gram vinyl pulled from CD sources and poorly mastered!
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