vinyl vs cd

and why the 90s felt better

Welcome to another brain dump.

Coffee is breakfast and lunch on Fridays and any food that is consumed is just to limit the damage the coffee is doing to my stomach. this may explain a few things.

I’m still kind of pissed my dad reads this but still, trying to get something regular happening that i can call representative of any kind of authentic self. it’s alwyas been cathartic to kind of put myself out there for some weird reason, not that i’ve ever had an audience, but something about the act of exposing the inner self (or the less surface self) is relieving to me. I’m beginning to understand why some people wear trenchcoats in summer.

i don’t think my thoughts are important, but it’s fun to formulate them. i don’t write privately: i do create for consumption, even with the knowledge that what i create is unlikely to be consumed. cest sera, dead soon. both fear and comfort. don’t lie and say you dont have this thought occasionally. i use it to navigate the contradictions of life… accepting fate where i think i’m meant to and also allowing myself to waste a little time.

this is also a creative exercise looking at how my half baked (the essay is literally unfinished) ‘theory of dirty’ might apply to writing, which was something i wasn’t sure about when i wrote the original piece.

er… cds vs vinyl.

i sold/lost/disposed of my small CD collection sometime in the late 2000s when I started downloading and storing music digitally. i was fine, and when Spotify released in Australia around 2013 it was more than fine. fast forward a decade and i was getting tired of listening to everything and nothing and wanted to reclaim music as a way to relax.

there was something about the 90s i’m trying to put my finger on. I’ve strung together a few words regarding this but it’s not all the way there yet. it was of course the decade i became conscious as an individual but it was also the last decade without the internet all over our lives. Here are my highly idealized reasons the 90s felt better…

In the 90s the present moment was forever and the place you were in was everywhere

Your attention was forced into the present moment. You couldn’t see beyond your vision, you couldn’t contact someone out of earshot, it was you and the world around you. Did anything else even exist? Who cares.

Any distractions such as music or books were all-encompassing. This is unlike today’s fleeting distractions which we barely focus on, our consciousness literally lost, splintered into 1000 pieces as we learn and do nothing.

the wider world didn’t exist

News was entertainment. The people suffering and dying were irrelevant, they might as well not exist. The world was an infinitely large place with infinitely large problems that you could do exactly nothing about, and nor would you want to lest your perfect life become tainted. a social consciousness was a blight to be extricated from your being: a disability. The better off you were the more this was true.

there was no conspiracy

before 911 nothing confusing ever happened. after 911 nothing was true, a feeling that has only got stronger over time. media being so democratic, anyone can go online to verify their suspicions and validate their ego. everything is proven, everything is denied.

tv was god

it ruled your life, after your basic obligations to your family and body. if you were too lazy to read the “paper” it was your only window into the world. it defined reality and your control was limited to what you watched on it.

everythign was mainstream

i’d search desperately in the limited media available to be for fragments of a self that was coalescing. Eat carpet on SBS and midnight foreign arthouse movies were food for my soul. RAGE was a religion. Everything you had easy access to was mainstream, so you had to work hard if that wasn’t what you wanted.

don’t be weird

the 90s were great for these reasons but it was hard to be weird. people were very constrained in their attitudes and behavior and though there were individual social trends and groups, they were themselves very homogenic. bevans vs homies for example. finding your actual exact self in that world was hard, and if you did, you were weird. it is for this reason that in the last couple of years of high school i unattached myself from any groups or people.

i still have no ‘people’, but the world is evolving in a good way in this regard, especially recently where individuals can have their own cultures, but are also forming communities that embrace differences. its getting easier to be weird which is good because everyone is a fucking weirdo and those that think they are normal are actually the worst people to be around. we are more about underlying, more basic and actually important things about people and accept someone’s manner of expression as their creative liberty.

OK

CDs came out of the 80s and bloomed in the 90s., and only really for the 90s. They carried with them glimpses of the self i wanted to create, and so they were cherished even with the flaws of the personalities they brought.

early in my teens i had accessed some interesting music via the TV, but having no means to buy this music, the music i could really listen to came from my dad. U2 was a strong favourite especially zooropa and it’s mesmerizing opening track - still a top 5 track for me. i have a strong memory of lying on the rug in front of the JVC amp and Sony CD player, eyes closed in the dark, with some huge closed back headphones from the 70s, picking out sounds and realizing for the first time the depth of hearing and the possible depth of music. i think the obsession was born here.

my first job was held exactly long enough for me to buy a stereo for my room. i delivered the local rag around my suburb for around 15-30 dollars a week - an absolute joke considering it took me a good six hours. A precursor of thigns to come. Another precursor was that i took all that money to harvey norman Brookside and bought the envy of my imagination… something like this:

A TOTAL peice of crap, it probably sounded like banging on a cardboard box, but i didn’t know that because it was mine. I finally had a private, immediate means to explore the world of music.

I used this to study and dissect NIN’s The Downward Spiral, until that CD was confiscated that is. I mean, that made sense dad. No shade thrown for that. Thematically it was… worrying… musically it was an auteur’s masterpiece that still stands alone.

the following years aren’t well remembered. I know I continued exploring music but I also remember using most available money for smokes. I did rent a few CDs from that old shop at Ithaca, but otherwise there was too much going on other parts of life to really remember music, and then a year or two later, too much alcohol. My clearer memories resume when I stopped drinking around the age of 22. Its actually hilarious that alcohol is a social norm. It disassociates your soul from your mind, turning you into a bland mix of automatomic nothing. Unless you go mad in which case you might look interesting or creative but will burn out and eventually shrivel into something even worse.

Er…

Vinyl

Aside from my Dad’s very few records and much neglected record player. I almost never listen to vinyl but I do remember putting on and even concentrating on the Dark Side of the Moon which might have been the only LP dad had left in the 90s, maybe one of the last remnants of his own teenage years that ended so shortly just before I was born.

So I guess I had and have no emotional connection to vinyl in the same way I do CDs. I definitely have a stronger … ideological (?) connection with vinyl though - a larger commitment to the music both in terms of owning (cost and maintenance) and listening (involvement). This actually more than makes up for the emotional connection to CDs and I jumped right into the format as if I wasn’t born at the start of it’s decline. Interestingly vinyl sales are getting back to where they were in the 70s these days, and I believe it’s because of the same reasons I enjoy vinyl.

Reasons I like vinyl

Audible reasons

I love to listen to music - really listen. The more fully engaged my hearing faculty the better. A lot of music doesn’t do this, because it’s been mastered for easier listening and lower volume levels. If the quietest parts of a track are much quieter than the loudest, many people would struggle to hear them. So the levels are compressed so there isn’t a lot of volume difference. This sucks for music because it changes the feel of it, even if you can’t consciously hear a difference. I describe it as being able to hear ‘into’ the music.

There’s no restriction on digital music that says it can’t be mastered more dynamically, but because it’s inherently a format of convenience, it tends to be compressed for consumption.

I noticed that vinyl mastering tended to be different when I went searching for different versions of one of my favorite songs, smells like teen spirit. i think i was researching online what the best version was and a particular record kept being mentioned. I downloaded the vinyl rip (a digital capture of the vinyl sound) and listened for myself. Wow, that snare was so round and full, unlike in any other available version i’d heard, apparently just tinny shadows of their origin. From this point I started thinking about vinyl and it wasn’t long before I had a player and the record in question in my possession. Sure enough, my favorite music was better on vinyl, and it was nothing to do with the vinyl, it was to do with the mastering.

There are reasons for it, the most convincing I have heared are that vinyl is mastered to listen to, whcih makes sense, and that vinyl can’t be mastered too hot - or too close to the maximum volume level of 0db, so more dynamic waveforms (grooves) are cut into the wax. I’m not 100% sure on either, but the difference is mostly - not alwyas - apparent.

Not always because as mentioned, most people can’t hear and don’t care about this difference, and as vinyl regains popularity in the modern era of hyper-compressed popular music, digital masters are sometimes transferred to vinyl without much improvement. I don’t know this but it makes sense to me and correlates to what I hear. If you know more about it please let me know, there is so much random info online you can never know what is correct.

If you do want to experience the difference between compressed and dynamic music on your own equipment (even digital), try some classical music. It’s hard to compare if you don’t always listen to classical, but you will be able to note the larger difference in the volume of parts of a track, as well as your increased audible reach into the music itself. An example from the world of rock might be PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me, a raw and masterful production. You will notice that you will have to turn the volume up to hear all the music comfortably, but that when you do the loud bits feel way too loud. But if you think about it, this is closer to the reality of what the music would have sounded like when recorded. Earlier CDs of all genres tend to be better - be suspicious of remasters from 1995 onwards and definitely from the 2000s. I think it’s starting to get better though.

Romantic reasons

That aside, this article on why different demographics like vinyl sums me up pretty well as an early millennial ( I could be a late Xer but i identify more closely with millenials, probably because i can’t grow up. I all truth i worryingly identify too much with gen Z these days although they use too many memes. i will be a very weird looking child with a white beard and four chins).

The article says I want an emotional connection to physical media and have a desire for a tangible media collection. Yes and yes. God are we that predictable? As said, although I have more emotional connection to CDs, I really appreciate the tangibility of vinyl. I mean the actual music is physically carved into it. The album art is huge, as if displaying a work of art, which they often are. For albums like Zooropa which was my fave on CD but which I had never even thought of on vinyl, it’s strangely pleasurable to place the record, drop the needle and watch it spin. Hell, even spending $100 on the original felt worth it. I don’t do that too often (as will be motioned I don’t spend any amount on vinyl too often now).

Less explainable reasons I <3 vinyl

There’s also how I consume and listen. If you’re taking the effort to play a record the chances are you’re going to listen to it. The investment requires attention, whcih inreases the pleasure of it. If I just want to ‘hear’ music I’ll stream it, but if I want to ‘listen’ to an old favorite to elicit a desired state, play it. That’s about it, no need to examine further, god I have written a lot on this today and I still have to get into why I’m tending towards CDs now.

CDs!

So even though I appreciate vinyl as a medium more, some of the good things about records are also true for CDs.

It’s tangible. You still get to look at the art, although not in as much glory as with vinyl. You still get to jump in your car to go hunt for things on a Saturday.

It’s not on a device: play and enjoy. without worrying about what your phone or computer is doing.

Downsides

Unfortunately you don’t get the (mostly) better mastering of vinyl.

There’s actually no guarantee CDs will last longer than vinyl. If well cared for, and not over-played, it can outlast CDs. CDs are on or off, they work or not. vinyl, degrades in degrees.

Why I’m quitting vinyl

Last year and a half I have spent around $1200 on vinyl. That’s more than a few percent of my almost-minimum-wage what-the-fuck-am-i-doing how-the-fuck-are-we-paying-a-mortgage fuck-my-life income. This, by all accounts, was a mistake and I have stopped buying vinyl with any kind of regularity. Even with a tasty staff discount, it’s not a sustainable lifestyle, which leads me to wonder for who it is?

If money was no object it would be vinyl all the way. But money is a thing and CDs are pretty fun. When I started collecting vinyl CDs felt like a weird half measure: something you had to pay for but was audibly no better than streaming (if streaming lossless).

How many favorite albums do I have? Not that many. Vinyl being such an investment, I’m only really willing to collect records that are close to my heart, and/or listenable all the way through. CDs are great for things that fit that criteria more loosely.

Even though I grew up with CDs I’m not that romantic for them. Still, the act of collecting is fun and in this case more viable. CDs are worth very little at the moment. but I wouldn’t be surprised if the value/demand goes up a little as more vinyl enthusiasts step back from the more expensive format and investigate other mediums to collect.

Post-thoughts

Bandcamp

A marketplace for artists to sell music directly to consumer. I’m partial to this service - it’s very democratic and community based: direct connections to artists (well, in some cases labels, but still).

streaming

good for discovery - mobile/car listening and hard-to-find favorites.