New computers don't even have CD / DVD rom

That CD player would have cost between $1,500 and $2,000 in today's dollars!

I'm glad he didn't shake the player too much because it would have skipped. Interesting how they made all the initial players vertical which was purely to show off the disc, there was no technical reason at all. I was very fortunate to have spent my early life (My first life if you will) in electronic retail actually selling high end hi-fi and later video equipment. So I was on the shop floor when CD players first appeared and the first home video recorders the Phillips vc1500 in the UK the first CD players were over £400 the first Video recorders were around £800 the blank video tapes cost around £25 each and recorded a maximum of 45 minutes and if they worked five times without getting tangled in the machine you were very lucky. The tapes if you can imagine this were around the length of a mobile phone and almost as thick as a mobile phone is wide, the tape was on two spools and each spool was on top of the other spool, it's no wonder they were crap.

Of course now some people are going away from CD and back to LP's for their warmer sound, although it amazes me that particularly the younger generation that are doing this are playing their now rather expensive LP's on crappy record players often sold in the same shops that sell the records, so the whole process completely spoils the sound experience that is possible with the LP. The most important part of any turntable is the cartridge and stylus (or needle as some people still call them) the cartridge on the crappy turntables is probably worth about a fiver. I spent around £500 just for my turntable back in the 80's a Mitchell Transcription turntable with a SME arm and a Shure V15 mk 111 cartridge the cartridge along was £150 even in the 80's going through Kef 104 speakers via a Yamaha c610 amp. Nothing compared to what you could or indeed can spend on Hi Fi equipment but £1200 worth of anyone's money.

Technology! Can you imagine your grandchildren watching clips 40 years from now and they'll laugh at these i-phones, desktop computers, laptops, televisions and what not that we have right now.

The recent upsuge of interest in vinyl records leaves me quite baffled. I was very happy to abandon this medium in favour of CDs, and the reasons are still just as valid today. Low quality sound including additional pops and crackles, fluff on the stylus, jump out of chair every 20 minutes or so to turn over the record, more frequently if there was a particular track I wanted to skip. The myth of genuine, warm, quality sound of vinyl is laughable. They were, and still are, crap. Of course even CDs are now old tech. When I left the country I gave away all of mine to friends and family, but not before ripping them to my PC in FLAC format. Now I have well over 2000 albums available at the click of the mouse, all of them stored on a hard drive no bigger than a paperback.

#5 I have to say Foxy I do disagree with your description of the LP. If played on proper hifi equipment the sound quality is amazing. The problem comes in when people share their LP's with others and/or they are played on poor quality turntables.

If you consider that the stylus with an extremely accurately machined diamond tip, on a high end turntable perhaps costing £600 in today's money (or an awful lot more and that's without an amplifier or speakers,) makes contact with the LP at around 1.5 grams and there is information right deep into the groove of the Vinyl which is picked up by the precision diamond. At 1.5 grams there is little or no ware on the vinyl.

Compare that to the turntables that people are generally using today, often under a £100 with built in amp and speaker. The cheap poorly made stylus is probably weighted at 3 or 4 grams maybe more, which is basically wearing away the vinyl even on the first play. The mass produced el cheapo stylus is not reaching deep into the groove of the LP so information is being lost. The LP is then often left on the player or left on a pile in the room somewhere to gather dust then mishandled or lent to some tosser who gives even less care to the poor black circle. The abuse as described goes along way to produce the pops and cracks that you describe, along with static, so yes you have to own an LP brush and possible an anti static gun like the good old Zerostat (worth a google) if it's still in production.

I have to admit i'm making this all sound like a big faff but actually it all takes seconds and the romance of hearing your well taken care of LP through a good amp and a pair of large English made loudspeakers walks allover sticking a CD in a slot. And now of course and correct me if I'm wrong, most people listen to their music through their Laptop or then through some add on speakers through the same. It's a real detrimental step in my opinion, your speakers should be four meters apart in a comfy lounge and they should be two or three feet high preferably on stands and you should be able to feel the sound they make not just hear it. But hey what do I know. JJ

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PS: http://assets.rebelcircus.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/HipsterwithRecordPlayeratCoffeeShop.png

#7 your hipster is incredible and hopefully fake

i have only about 250 LPs left .. i gave all of my CDs... i have around 2 TB of FLAC and mp3s

and i listen to radio 75% of the time .. 23% youtube and 1% being mp3s streaming via bluetooth to my shitty bose car system when italian radio stations take over the FM in the coast and the last 1% when the second news in a single commute come

#6 Yes JJ, exactly, what do you know. Nothing from what you spouted out on here. A 'big faff' is what you write. You sound off like General Melchett.

Love the music on my lap top through a great sound bar, satellite radio in the car. I'm all set.

Jake #6, you make some good points regarding the extreme difference between a high end Hi-Fi setup with discrete turntable/amp/speakers and quality stylus etc, and a ... record player, and yes, the weight is crucial. I remember my mom used to set the weight on her stereogram by sellotaping a couple of pennies to the end of the arm.

I'll be honest here, as a teenager I never had the dosh to put together a top of the range setup. But my brother, a few years older than me, and a self-confessed 'afficionado' used to spend everything he earned (and more) on his system, so I've witnessed first hand what can be achieved with the right gear. Nevertheless, since it's just as easy to attach a quality amp and quality speakers to a CD/PC as it is to a turntable, that side of the equation cancels out, leaving just the source of the sound signal to deal with.

I'll never forget the day my brother bought his first CD player, a £60 Philips item. He popped in a CD, and turned the volume on his NAD amp up. Right up. The sound was breathtaking. We looked at each other and were both speechless. I guess that was the day that CDs replaced LPs for me. The quality of digital sound simply cannot be matched by an analogue vinyl setup, and just look at the price difference.

I can only attribute the resurgence of interest in vinyl as a rose-tinted 'nostalgia' effect, a bit like when I often think back with fond memories of my old cars of the 70's and 80's, but then after a moment's reflection I realise... they were actually crap.

There is one part of the LP experience that I do lament the passing of though; the album covers and contents. Many of them were works of art in their own right. 8 Tracks, musicassettes and finally CDs put the nail in that coffin. Pity. I wonder where my old Quadrophenia album is now...?

#11 agree,i miss the smell of an LP cover

#11 I know exactly where my old Quadrophenia double album is as it remains one of my favourite albums of all time.

I won't go on anymore, I think I've made my opinion more than clear, except to say that I agree that it's very easy to connect pc's laptops etc to amplifiers but it remains a fact that most people don't.

#13 "it's very easy to connect pc's laptops etc to amplifiers but it remains a fact that most people don't."

Quite so. And the reason is obvious to anyone not still living in the past. Even the most modest digital setup today will easily out perform the most expensive snap-crackle-pop, fluff collecting vinyl analogue, setup.

#14 That's simply not true Fox, go visit your nearest up end Hi-Fi shop (Not Currys) and ask for a demonstration of a decent system, it would blow your mind, I'm sure your brother would agree with me. The problem is everyone is lazy these days when it comes to music they listen to it through the first thing they find in their local John Lewis or superstore. In my day people where much more interested in the actual sound quality of all the component parts of the system. The amp, perhaps even the pre amp, the turntable, the arm on the turntable the Cartridge on the end of the arm of the turntable and the stylus on the cartridge and finally the loudspeakers. These people are still around but it has become a little out of most peoples pocket and as mentioned people are less switched on these days.

When I used to run the Hi-Fi room in the store I worked in back in the early seventies, I had over fifty pairs of loudspeakers wired up to a comparator which was also connected to any combination of amplifier, turntable, open reel player etc. Customers would come in and ask to listen to actually Quadrophenia or Pink Floyd or the like through a different systems and speakers before choosing the set up that they liked. If was usually not made up of the same brand, it could be a Quad amp and preamp a Thorens turntable, a Shure cartridge and maybe a pair of Kef speakers. We had a pair of Tannoy speakers that were almost as heavy as a piano and would blow your hat off if you were wearing one. They were £600 in the 1970's a sixteenth of what my first house cost! I'm sorry but no sound bar even holds a candle to what was and is still available in the HI-FI world. PS Just had a look on ebay, those same Tannoy speakers the Ardens are being sold second hand now for £2995.00 About a third of the price of my first house, and they are 40+ years old. JJ

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