"Keith G" wrote in message

"Arny Krueger" wrote

[LPs]

The absence of tics and pops, background noise due to
the medium, flutter and wow, and lack of inner-groove
distortion on the CD are immediately obvious to those of
us who still have useful amounts of hearing left.

If you really do hear any or all of that **** you would
be better to stick with CDs....

Of course I still hear all of that stuff.

But thanks for the implicit sharing of your own difficulties, Kitty.

Sue me for taking care of my ears...

"Keith G" wrote in message

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Iain Churches" wrote in message


This is something that many people fail to understand -
the difference in the concept of disc mastering, and CD
mastering.


Right. When you master a CD you might think of the
original master as being 5 pounds of very fine
chocolates. The CD is like an 8 pound bag, and the LP
is like a 3 pound bag. There's nothing that stops you from putting 2 or 3
pounds of chocolate into either bag.

There's no way that you are going to get the full 5
pounds of chocolate into that 3 pound bag, Nothing but
common sense, personal integrity and good judgment on
the part of the consumer keeps you from claiming that
you have... ;-)



The beauty of LPs is they don't attract the *wrong type
of person*....

If you call people with any semblance of normal hearing "The wrong type of
person".

"Keith G" wrote in message

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in
message
In article ,
Iain Churches wrote:

The vast majority of people who buy pop CDs are
very happy. The levels of returns are incredibly low.

What is the point in returning something you want except
to get it replaced by a better one? Which of course
happened frequently in the heyday of vinyl.

More bull****.

No, an absolute fact.

I'm sure a few *types* with wholly unrealistic
expectations made themselves a complete nuisance
endlessly trawling backwards and forwards to whinge and
change records, but I don't know of a single soul who
ever took one back when I was young.

Speaks to your peer group, Kitty.

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message

In article
, Arny
Krueger
wrote:
"Iain Churches" wrote in message


The fact that the vinyl pressings were sold out on the
day of release, and the CD is still available many
months later speaks volumes:-)

Shows how ignorant you are about production and sales,
Iain. Everybody with a brain knows how to have a
recording sell out on the first day - simply don't
produce enough of them. Selling out on the first day is
a disaster that any competent product manager wants to
avoid.

There may be some exceptions to the last point. The one
that occurs to me is a sales strategy based on selling a
series of items as 'rare collectables'.

I see your point, but "the first day" is still probably a little extreme.
First week would do about the same job, and get 7 times more revenue up
front to pay bills with.

In that situation you might deliberately aim for some of
your releases to sell out very quickly by producing a
very small number. The hope being that this makes them
items which others then treat as being 'desirable'
precisely because they are 'rare'. This may then attract
buyers for later items because they don't want to 'miss
out again' on owning something which is rare and where
ownership can make them feel 'special'.

The basic idea could work. However I suspect that more of this happens
through simple incompetence than a desire for raw profiteering and
deception.

The overall result being to allow the sellers to raise
the price, making the items seem even more rare and
'fashionable', whilst quietly cranking up the numbers
made. And people who buy to 'collect' and never even take
the item out of the packet for fear of this reducing its
'value'.

The British visual art market has worked on that kind of
basis for years.

However, the per-peice production costs are probably a tad higher.

Hardly a new idea I guess, so no suprise
if people making 'audiophile' LPs might exploit it. if
you look at some of the ultra-expensive items for 'audio'
you can see a parallel.

True, this is the sort of thing that someone like Iain would like to
nourish.

I've also encountered this with books. Can be a real pest
if all you actually want to do is read the content. Also
crazy for the 'collectors' if they bought a fancy-looking
binding but paper that yellows are cracks quickly. Items
made to sell, not use.

I recall many years ago someone proudly showing me what
they'd just bought and pointing out it had "Guaranteed
for life!" printed on the box. I wondered, what/whose
'life' did they have in mind? The 'life' of the box?
Expecting something will work for its 'life' is kinda to
be expected, eh? But it does remind me of the
self-referential justifications sic for
compressing/clipping pop CDs. They think they should do
it because they think they should. Right by
self-definition. 8-]

I contend that the reasons for hypercompression are related to actual needs
of the market, which is now dominated by portable and incidental use.

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Keith G" wrote in message

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Iain Churches" wrote in message


This is something that many people fail to understand -
the difference in the concept of disc mastering, and CD
mastering.


Right. When you master a CD you might think of the
original master as being 5 pounds of very fine
chocolates. The CD is like an 8 pound bag, and the LP
is like a 3 pound bag. There's nothing that stops you from putting 2 or
3
pounds of chocolate into either bag.

There's no way that you are going to get the full 5
pounds of chocolate into that 3 pound bag, Nothing but
common sense, personal integrity and good judgment on
the part of the consumer keeps you from claiming that
you have... ;-)



The beauty of LPs is they don't attract the *wrong type
of person*....

If you call people with any semblance of normal hearing "The wrong type of
person".


Hmmm....

I really am going to have post that Domine Prat2 **** again and call a vote
on *hearing*....

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Keith G" wrote in message

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in
message
In article ,
Iain Churches wrote:

The vast majority of people who buy pop CDs are
very happy. The levels of returns are incredibly low.

What is the point in returning something you want except
to get it replaced by a better one? Which of course
happened frequently in the heyday of vinyl.

More bull****.

No, an absolute fact.

I'm sure a few *types* with wholly unrealistic
expectations made themselves a complete nuisance
endlessly trawling backwards and forwards to whinge and
change records, but I don't know of a single soul who
ever took one back when I was young.

Speaks to your peer group, Kitty.


What's this? You snipping my *good stuff* now, Amy?

Such a hypocrite, such a shower....

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Keith G" wrote in message

"Arny Krueger" wrote

[LPs]

The absence of tics and pops, background noise due to
the medium, flutter and wow, and lack of inner-groove
distortion on the CD are immediately obvious to those of
us who still have useful amounts of hearing left.

If you really do hear any or all of that **** you would
be better to stick with CDs....

Of course I still hear all of that stuff.


I don't believe you.



But thanks for the implicit sharing of your own difficulties, Kitty.

Sue me for taking care of my ears...

In article , Keith G
writes

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in
message
In article ,
Iain Churches wrote:
The vast majority of people who buy pop CDs are
very happy. The levels of returns are incredibly low.

What is the point in returning something you want except
to get it replaced by a better one? Which of course
happened frequently in the heyday of vinyl.


More bull****.

I'm sure a few *types* with wholly unrealistic expectations made
themselves a complete nuisance endlessly trawling backwards and
forwards to whinge and change records, but I don't know of a single
soul who ever took one back when I was young.

The only recent time I know a record was taken back was a copy of
Bjork's 'Medullah' that Swim Bo bought from HMV in Edinburgh. Shortly
after leaving the shop she shook it out for a look and noticed some
dimples, so she took it back to swap it by which time the three other
copies there had been had sold out, so she took a refund!

I was a tad peeved when she told me - the dimples would have almost
certainly been silent and I bet the returned copy was off the shelf
again before she had got 10 yards!!

Tant pis...


Part of the problem is that the difference between SOTA vinyl and a
defective, unlistenable product is mostly a judgment call.


Yes, see above....




I worked in a music shop in the 70's which sold vinyl and cassette and I
can state with some certainty that we routinely had 20% returns on all
types of LPs. Classic, Rock, Pop, Jazz it made little difference. We
saw disks where the label was embedded in the grooves, off centre holes,
dimpled, warped, we saw it all. It was really noticeable when almost all
the companies switched to much thinner pressings.

The main offender was EMI but A&M went from good to bad seemingly
overnight. DG and the classical Decca pressings proved to be the
exception, we did occasionally have a warped disk but nowhere near the
error rate of the other labels.

The people who returned these did not have "unrealistic expectations"
nor did they whinge (much) but just wanted a flat, fairly noise free
disk.

--
Right, you lot start coding, I'll go and see what they want.

Andrew

"Andrew Shepherd" wrote in message
...
In article , Keith G
writes

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in
message
In article ,
Iain Churches wrote:
The vast majority of people who buy pop CDs are
very happy. The levels of returns are incredibly low.

What is the point in returning something you want except
to get it replaced by a better one? Which of course
happened frequently in the heyday of vinyl.


More bull****.

I'm sure a few *types* with wholly unrealistic expectations made
themselves a complete nuisance endlessly trawling backwards and forwards
to whinge and change records, but I don't know of a single soul who ever
took one back when I was young.

The only recent time I know a record was taken back was a copy of Bjork's
'Medullah' that Swim Bo bought from HMV in Edinburgh. Shortly after
leaving the shop she shook it out for a look and noticed some dimples, so
she took it back to swap it by which time the three other copies there had
been had sold out, so she took a refund!

I was a tad peeved when she told me - the dimples would have almost
certainly been silent and I bet the returned copy was off the shelf again
before she had got 10 yards!!

Tant pis...


Part of the problem is that the difference between SOTA vinyl and a
defective, unlistenable product is mostly a judgment call.


Yes, see above....




I worked in a music shop in the 70's which sold vinyl and cassette and I
can state with some certainty that we routinely had 20% returns on all
types of LPs. Classic, Rock, Pop, Jazz it made little difference. We saw
disks where the label was embedded in the grooves, off centre holes,
dimpled, warped, we saw it all. It was really noticeable when almost all
the companies switched to much thinner pressings.

The main offender was EMI but A&M went from good to bad seemingly
overnight. DG and the classical Decca pressings proved to be the
exception, we did occasionally have a warped disk but nowhere near the
error rate of the other labels.

The people who returned these did not have "unrealistic expectations" nor
did they whinge (much) but just wanted a flat, fairly noise free disk.


Sorry, I'm not buying that - call it *denial* if you like.

Like I said, I don't know anyone who ever returned a record 'back in the
day' and I never saw anyone returning one while I was in a record shop. I'm
not saying returns didn't happen and I know there were many and various
faults in vinyl manufacturing and suspect that a 'bad run' would lead to a
high percentage of returns on particular occasions, but not a consistent
20% - that would would kill any business.

My own experience of selling records is microscopic compared with even a
small record shop, but at least I seemed to have a lot more luck - also back
in the 70s (possibly 1972, when everybody wanted Billie Jo Spears albums) a
friend of mine was an EMI record rep (he helped set up Andy's Records) and
he supplied me with hundreds of records over a period of about a year which
I was flogging to fellow students when I was at college and I never had a
*single* return in all that time.

Maybe your shop was particularly unlucky...??

"Keith G" wrote


Like I said, I don't know anyone who ever returned a record 'back in the
day' and I never saw anyone returning one while I was in a record shop.
I'm not saying returns didn't happen and I know there were many and
various faults in vinyl manufacturing and suspect that a 'bad run' would
lead to a high percentage of returns on particular occasions, but not a
consistent 20% - that would would kill any business.


I tried to do a little research to see if there were any figures available,
but if you Google 'vinyl returns' you get this sort of thing:

http://www3.timeoutny.com/newyork/th...returns-again/

http://www.seveneightfive.com/lifest.../vinyl-returns

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/sto...the_age_of_mp3


@:-)