It seems like 1-2 million new vinyl records are sold every year....up some years and down others....and who knows how many previously owned vinyl records have changed hands. In the midst of all the arguments over which has the better sound, it's easy to forget a primary distinction.
Going back in time, people used to compare radio sound, recorded sound, and live sound. All of it was "analog," whatever that means.
Consider the vinyl record. Even though it is mass produced, the sound comes from grooves cut in the record. Compared to a CD, or mp3, or wav or wma, it IS LIVE MUSIC. The record is making that music. What happened before the record was made may have involved tape or even digital mastering, but the RECORD IS PLAYING MUSIC.
The digital file, by contrast, is re-constructing music which resides in digital code. And, it's truly amazing how this has become the primary way of listening to music. People love it, while at the same time, it has laid waste to the whole business of music distribution and live performance.
The art of the club DJ was once about the vinyl record. Now software can do just about the same thing.
Selling records since 1997, we seldom know the age or motivations of our buyers. We've been selling books the same amount of time and most years, records are more popular than books.
Records--- bulky, labor-intensive, delicate--- are a big export from the USA to other countries.
And perhaps many people play them only once.
But, the intensity of that one play experience cannot be denied. The record, the music, the effort that went into it, and its cultural significance are handy stimulants available to anyone for a dollar and up.
The most fun of records is going back in time. Most people do not realize that before the late 1940s, records were mostly documents of a performance, rather than a corporate concoction in a studio that started out with the "raw materials" of musicians playing.
Many record fans are eventually led back to the 1920s and 1930s when recording was often a game of 'catch as catch can'.
Perhaps one day digital re-creations will display their lineage of romance and culture. It's probably a matter of demographics.
One artist who worked well with the detritus of analog imagery, including records and TV, was Nam June Paik.
The vinyl record has earned its place in the fields of mass production AND art.
Showing posts with label vinyl record. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vinyl record. Show all posts
Friday, February 19, 2010
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
What have we here then? Oh, just a little fun inspired by a site sent to me by a reader. Check it out: http://www.sleeveface.com While we're doing this, another link I'd like to share with you, it's the vinyl search for amazon.com. Finally, they have a page you can search vinyl records from and it works pretty good. If you try to search for vinyl from any other amazon search page, it's almost futile. But this link will give you vinyl almost every time: Try amazon vinyl search.
Finally, how about one more link? We're going to sell some vinyl in the barn this weekend, so for more details check out our craigslist ad. Let me know if you need directions to the barn. We'll be offering albums, singles, 78s, you name it, most for $2 apiece. Probably some good sleeveface fodder!
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Shop.moneyblows.com
We have been gradually rebuilding our storefront where you can shop conveniently with us at shop.moneyblows.com
A quick run-through of the categories we've currently populated on the site:
10-in. vinyl records includes just a few items, never has been a big category for us. But, I should note a few very special items in this category: a Jazz at the Philharmonic Vol. 3 which is rare by any standard, featuring Al Killian, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. And, something from the 1960s, published by Scholastic under the direction of the National Gallery of Art: Music of the Shakers. It's got some pretty incredible songs and performances on it.
The next category is called 12-in. singles. Also a small category consisting of mostly dance singles.
The next category is 45 rpm vinyl records. These are the "big hole" singles, and we have quite a few in all musical styles. To find the single you're looking for, best to use the Advanced Search and enter the artist or title.
We also have 78 rpm vinyl records for advanced record collectors who like to dig deep into vinyl history. There's some great blues, jazz, and r&b here, a smattering of pop and country, and it's also best to use the Advanced Search and enter the artist or title.
Our biggest music category by far is LP vinyl records, with thousands of rare and collectible albums, and also some copies of albums that are very popular, including rock from the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s. This is the "bread and butter" category that put the "music" in our store title. An interesting piece of trivia, is that we were the first dealer to offer vinyl records on amazon.com. You can imagine that before amazon starting offering their site to anyone with a few records to sell, we pretty much owned the category of vinyl records in the early amazon "zShops." (zShops was the "z" in amazon's "everything from a to z.") Likewise, before we pioneered the category of records on amazon, we were a books-only ecommerce outfit.
Other categories: we have some audio CDs & tapes. Once again, a very small category, but with some very distinctive and hard to find jazz and classical items. We were also a pioneer in offering record replacement needles online, and you may find this category very helpful, for we have needles and cartridges not only for many vintage players, but also to replace the needles found on some inexpensive common turntables sold today at places such as Radio Shack and online from Audio Technica. Under the growing category of music history we currently have some rare copies of The Clarinet magazine, and Etude Magazine, both of which are music teacher type specialty publications. We have many more publications to add to this category, so keep an eye out if you are interested in music-related publications. Another popular category is vintage sheet music, not just for collectors but also for musicians who seek the rare verses to important tin pan alley tunes, or original arrangements or chords. Finally, we are building back our books and magazines category, starting out with the very popular Architectural Digest periodicals that have become such big sellers for us.
So, that's a rundown of the current categories, and watch shop.moneyblows.com for more every day!
A quick run-through of the categories we've currently populated on the site:
10-in. vinyl records includes just a few items, never has been a big category for us. But, I should note a few very special items in this category: a Jazz at the Philharmonic Vol. 3 which is rare by any standard, featuring Al Killian, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. And, something from the 1960s, published by Scholastic under the direction of the National Gallery of Art: Music of the Shakers. It's got some pretty incredible songs and performances on it.
The next category is called 12-in. singles. Also a small category consisting of mostly dance singles.
The next category is 45 rpm vinyl records. These are the "big hole" singles, and we have quite a few in all musical styles. To find the single you're looking for, best to use the Advanced Search and enter the artist or title.
We also have 78 rpm vinyl records for advanced record collectors who like to dig deep into vinyl history. There's some great blues, jazz, and r&b here, a smattering of pop and country, and it's also best to use the Advanced Search and enter the artist or title.
Our biggest music category by far is LP vinyl records, with thousands of rare and collectible albums, and also some copies of albums that are very popular, including rock from the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s. This is the "bread and butter" category that put the "music" in our store title. An interesting piece of trivia, is that we were the first dealer to offer vinyl records on amazon.com. You can imagine that before amazon starting offering their site to anyone with a few records to sell, we pretty much owned the category of vinyl records in the early amazon "zShops." (zShops was the "z" in amazon's "everything from a to z.") Likewise, before we pioneered the category of records on amazon, we were a books-only ecommerce outfit.
Other categories: we have some audio CDs & tapes. Once again, a very small category, but with some very distinctive and hard to find jazz and classical items. We were also a pioneer in offering record replacement needles online, and you may find this category very helpful, for we have needles and cartridges not only for many vintage players, but also to replace the needles found on some inexpensive common turntables sold today at places such as Radio Shack and online from Audio Technica. Under the growing category of music history we currently have some rare copies of The Clarinet magazine, and Etude Magazine, both of which are music teacher type specialty publications. We have many more publications to add to this category, so keep an eye out if you are interested in music-related publications. Another popular category is vintage sheet music, not just for collectors but also for musicians who seek the rare verses to important tin pan alley tunes, or original arrangements or chords. Finally, we are building back our books and magazines category, starting out with the very popular Architectural Digest periodicals that have become such big sellers for us.
So, that's a rundown of the current categories, and watch shop.moneyblows.com for more every day!
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Digital vs. analog for vinyl record buffs
Analog recording-- which is the source of most used vinyl sold at moneyblows books and music-- can be thought to essentially reflect the Victorian scientific imagination, in which sound is mechanically inscribed, rather than digitally encoded.
By contrast, the pitch, tone color, and loudness of a digital playback starts out as binary numbers intelligible to computer circuits. In other words, the presence or absence of an electric pulse (“1” or “0”) is detected and digitially converted in the original reproduction.
The waveform of the sound, as a human might hear it at this point, becomes a representation of the audio frequency, possibly encompassing more than half a million bits per second. For more than a quarter century now, this torrential bit stream has become audible when a digital recording is played back.
It all begins when a musical waveform is "sampled" at least 40,000 times per second. Each sample represents a point in time as the music unfolds. Then, the height of the sound wave at each of these 40,000 sampling points is numerically expressed. Together, these two factors accurately describe the sound wave so that it can be recorded as a series of numbers.
In playback, those numbers are fed into a device called a digital-to-analog converter which produces voltages corresponding to each number at precisely defined points in time. In this way, the digital signal is reconstituted as a waveform.
Once it is digitally encoded, the music’s fidelity is undisturbed—whether it’s on vinyl or CD, or played via a computer's own file or an internet stream, theoretically makes no difference.
A moment of digital silence—or an analogous very faint pianissimo, is preserved without tape or vinyl noise. An explosion of musical loudness needn’t be intentionally (though expertly) distorted for the putative convenience of the end user, or the delicate constitution of a record stylus.
In a digital recording, bass response is extended from 30 to 20 Hz to encompass the very lowest notes of the musical spectrum. Frequency deviation over the entire range from 20 to 20,000 Hz is reduced from ± 2 db to ± 0.5 db, resulting in clarification of tonal timbres and textures thanks to greater linearity in the crucial overtone range.
Dynamic range, i.e. the maximal span between loud and soft, is enlarged to 90 db, closely approximating the natural loudness range of live music. Distortion at maximum loudness shrinks from the traditional norm of 1% to an amount too small to be measured, resulting in the added clarity of loud passages. Finally, flutter and wow - those marginal wobbles of pitch that cause a sense of false vibrato in some conventional recordings - also reduced from the usual 0.050/0 to the point of unmeasurability.
A vinyl record, though, remains the manufactured product of its Victorian heritage—a representation of the musical waveform in inscribed (actually stamped) grooves. It’s necessarily imperfect compared with computer playback, and presents the listener with a Hobson’s choice of whether one should listen with digital ears or analog ears.
Ears are the definitive equipment for listening. The ultimate choice of digital or analog, I think, is cryptically (though oddly appropriately) laid out in the movie “Pulp Fiction,” when (I’m paraphrasing here) Uma Thurman asks John Travolta, “Do you spend your time listening, or waiting to talk?” Travolta hesitates for a moment and says, “I guess I spend most of my time waiting to talk…. But I’m working on listening.”
In listening there invariably is background noise, whether or not it disturbs the foreground intent. A truism of hearing loss is that the two eventually blend, so that the person suffering some auditory loss will say, “I can’t hear you,” particularly in a crowded room.
Using this standard, I don’t mind listening to the background noise in a vinyl record, until it gets so bad I might say to the music, “I can’t hear you.”
Digital techniques can fix that, too. People buy HD TVs so that can get better resolution of a lousy show. The greatest invention of modern culture, television, is about to be bumped off the analog spectrum as of February 2009. You are already being asked to give it up.
I have VHS tapes and records to play. Judge for yourself who is better equipped-- the digital only consumer, or the one the one who admits the imperfections wrought by Thomas Edison when he lit the known world.
By contrast, the pitch, tone color, and loudness of a digital playback starts out as binary numbers intelligible to computer circuits. In other words, the presence or absence of an electric pulse (“1” or “0”) is detected and digitially converted in the original reproduction.
The waveform of the sound, as a human might hear it at this point, becomes a representation of the audio frequency, possibly encompassing more than half a million bits per second. For more than a quarter century now, this torrential bit stream has become audible when a digital recording is played back.
It all begins when a musical waveform is "sampled" at least 40,000 times per second. Each sample represents a point in time as the music unfolds. Then, the height of the sound wave at each of these 40,000 sampling points is numerically expressed. Together, these two factors accurately describe the sound wave so that it can be recorded as a series of numbers.
In playback, those numbers are fed into a device called a digital-to-analog converter which produces voltages corresponding to each number at precisely defined points in time. In this way, the digital signal is reconstituted as a waveform.
Once it is digitally encoded, the music’s fidelity is undisturbed—whether it’s on vinyl or CD, or played via a computer's own file or an internet stream, theoretically makes no difference.
A moment of digital silence—or an analogous very faint pianissimo, is preserved without tape or vinyl noise. An explosion of musical loudness needn’t be intentionally (though expertly) distorted for the putative convenience of the end user, or the delicate constitution of a record stylus.
In a digital recording, bass response is extended from 30 to 20 Hz to encompass the very lowest notes of the musical spectrum. Frequency deviation over the entire range from 20 to 20,000 Hz is reduced from ± 2 db to ± 0.5 db, resulting in clarification of tonal timbres and textures thanks to greater linearity in the crucial overtone range.
Dynamic range, i.e. the maximal span between loud and soft, is enlarged to 90 db, closely approximating the natural loudness range of live music. Distortion at maximum loudness shrinks from the traditional norm of 1% to an amount too small to be measured, resulting in the added clarity of loud passages. Finally, flutter and wow - those marginal wobbles of pitch that cause a sense of false vibrato in some conventional recordings - also reduced from the usual 0.050/0 to the point of unmeasurability.
A vinyl record, though, remains the manufactured product of its Victorian heritage—a representation of the musical waveform in inscribed (actually stamped) grooves. It’s necessarily imperfect compared with computer playback, and presents the listener with a Hobson’s choice of whether one should listen with digital ears or analog ears.
Ears are the definitive equipment for listening. The ultimate choice of digital or analog, I think, is cryptically (though oddly appropriately) laid out in the movie “Pulp Fiction,” when (I’m paraphrasing here) Uma Thurman asks John Travolta, “Do you spend your time listening, or waiting to talk?” Travolta hesitates for a moment and says, “I guess I spend most of my time waiting to talk…. But I’m working on listening.”
In listening there invariably is background noise, whether or not it disturbs the foreground intent. A truism of hearing loss is that the two eventually blend, so that the person suffering some auditory loss will say, “I can’t hear you,” particularly in a crowded room.
Using this standard, I don’t mind listening to the background noise in a vinyl record, until it gets so bad I might say to the music, “I can’t hear you.”
Digital techniques can fix that, too. People buy HD TVs so that can get better resolution of a lousy show. The greatest invention of modern culture, television, is about to be bumped off the analog spectrum as of February 2009. You are already being asked to give it up.
I have VHS tapes and records to play. Judge for yourself who is better equipped-- the digital only consumer, or the one the one who admits the imperfections wrought by Thomas Edison when he lit the known world.
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