30th Anniversary TF:TM vinyl wonderment!

Figures, collectables, customs and collecting.
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inflatable dalek
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Cliffjumper wrote:Covers are bigger, no shit jewel cases, it's more fun and just about as durable as most CDs mark really easily. It's that simple.

Not for a lot of people who've cornered me at parties.

Though of course, everyone who enjoys the medium here is a half sane vinyl fan rather than one of the odder ones. Those actually talk very like people who don't understand why everyone doesn't want a massive HD TV and blu ray player rather than sticking with DVD's and not even being entirely sure if their TV is HD.

As for the score, it's rather like the film itself. Clearly terrible if it didn't imprint on you at the right age, pure joy if it did though.
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Auntie Slag
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Post by Auntie Slag »

A mate of mine gave me his original vinyl copy when he upgraded to the CD version. It is pretty cool, but I'm no vinyl junkie either, definitely prefer CD where electronic music seems like it has far more punch (Kraftwerk, Jean Michel Jarre, Gary Numan).

Oxygene is sublime on CD through a nice sound system. Turn off the lights & you feel like you're journeying in late 70's space, man. I did that once on a slow summer evening, it felt so cool. I was a sphere of energy that could see all forms of everything.

I got my copy for 10p from a charity shop. And they didn't even want the 10p, it was just a suggested donation... for that much greatness!
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Skyquake87
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Post by Skyquake87 »

Underworld's 'dubnobasswithmyheadman' album is my electronic album of choice for that kind of experience. Also really good to listen to when you're a state after a night on the tizer.

As for vinyl, I own some mainly through picking it up cheap second hand. A lot of singles on 7" were only a £1 new, which made it an easy way to check out new bands. Disadvantage is mainly in the space the stuff takes up, and its why I got rid of 80% of my collection.

Before the CiN spoilt singles for everyone in 1998, I loved all the fun stuff that was done with vinyl singles - different colours, die-cut sleeves, different materials used etc, a lot of this stuff was just glorious and CD sized reproductions didn't do it justice.

Pour example: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Pop+W ... 00&bih=799

and : https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Jesus ... MQ_AUIBygC

Sound quality-wise, the heavyweight vinyl is the better stuff. Electronic stuff sounds better to my ears on digital formats too, and if you're listening to vinyl, its much more something you have to pay attention to, I guess, as you have to be there flipping the thing over when the A-side ends (always found stereos that could play both sides gave variable sound quality when playing the b-side).

Not so hot on vinyl these days, mainly for space and because suddenly retailers of cottoned onto to it being 'fashionable', and now we're showered with £25 (!) vinyl releases, which is just the sort of nonsense that got the industry into problems in the first place.
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Auntie Slag
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Post by Auntie Slag »

Word.
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Cyberstrike nTo
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Post by Cyberstrike nTo »

Cliffjumper wrote:Covers are bigger, no shit jewel cases, it's more fun and just about as durable as most CDs mark really easily. It's that simple.
Depends on well you take of them.

And most record covers are just cheap cardboard and they are as crappy as any CD jewel case. At least CDs I can buy replacement cases pretty easily.
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Denyer
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Post by Denyer »

Cliffjumper wrote:just about as durable as most CDs mark really easily. It's that simple.
Eh, in twenty years and buying second-hand CDs in volume, I've run into the problem in low double digits.

Work in a player, not necessarily, but given reasonable optical drives it takes a bit of effort to destroy the things to the point they can't be read and as high a quality as was originally put on them obtained. There are some dodgy ones with manufacturing defects (both early and newer) plus some crap with breaking the book standards from some publishers, mostly historical, but even uncased CD-Rs kept in the car last pretty well. It's a durable format even when dye-based, and the reproduction costs for copies to handle for those that want their music to spin are negligible. The same goes for DVDs -- easy to copy and therefore ideal for kids. You can even buff out a certain amount of damage.

Differing dynamic ranges can be debated, but on the topic of physical wear and tear not many people are using laser turntables.
Skyquake wrote:It cost me £16
The 90s were a dark era, definitely. Nirvana albums going for £20 and up in some places and CD writers only just starting to hit the market.

There was some fun stuff with CD packaging and gimmicks as well. The Wildhearts did a lot of it -- printed images in the same colour as the case, lenticular, fake money, textured sleeves, grass mat for you to water, one of the promos had a miniature pump...
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Post by Auntie Slag »

Oh yeah, forgot about the buffing option. That's saved a few discs for me, but the more densely the information is packed onto a disc, the more susceptible it becomes to read errors. I think I remember someone in the film thread in GD mentioning how easy it is to ruin a Blu-Ray with a scratch where the same film on DVD would play just fine.

Do you think that's true of any storage medium? The higher the density, the higher the failure rate? I was talking to a guy today about vinyl, cassettes, CD and hard drives. His NAS drives fail more than anything else because they're quite dense and are spinning 24 hours a day, so I guess they just wear out.

Makes me think how advertising spiel would make you believe mechanical hard drives are awful compared to SSD's, but I was using computers 25-30+ years old (with original HDD's) over the weekend and they were running fine.

But back on topic; the price of a new Vinyl album where I live tends to be around £20-25 unless its extremely limited like this TF:TM release.
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Post by Cliffjumper »

Cyberstrike nTo wrote:If you look after one it will last and if you don't look after another it won't
Brief flirting with having an opinion followed by the usual veer into slow handclap territory. Keep firing that neuron, champ! You'll get there!

Jewel cases are shit - three brittle pieces of plastic; breaking one makes it look awful. A simple plastic bag however protects a record just fine.
Denyer wrote:Eh, in twenty years and buying second-hand CDs in volume, I've run into the problem in low double digits.
Bit of a dicier hit rate here, though in fairness I take better care of records.
Work in a player, not necessarily, but given reasonable optical drives it takes a bit of effort to destroy the things to the point they can't be read and as high a quality as was originally put on them obtained.
Which surely just makes them data discs? I'm all for digital music but MP3 players, decent-sized computer hard-drives, all music being free now and all that jazz effectively makes CDs just expensive and inefficient to my mind; they're too shit to be a physical manifestation of favourite music and not useful enough to be convenient (remember balancing your personal CD player on public transport like some sort of robot waiter?).
There was some fun stuff with CD packaging and gimmicks as well. The Wildhearts did a lot of it -- printed images in the same colour as the case, lenticular, fake money, textured sleeves, grass mat for you to water, one of the promos had a miniature pump...
Coloured vinyl, picture discs, gatefolds, diecuts, scented lyric sheets, art that isn't the size of a coaster (seriously, take any great album cover; shrink it by 75% - improvement?), looped playouts...

Big pluses of vinyl for me:
  • Gigantic artwork. If I'm buying an album so it's a physical representation of said album it needs to be worth buying.
  • No bonus tracks. If it was good enough to be on the album it would be on the album.
  • My record player is louder than guns.
  • Really easy to see whether a record's going to work or not. Records either work or don't work the same way on whatever record player.
  • You can't skip tracks. You want to skip tracks? Get an MP3 player or like better music, because you're doing albums wrong either way.
  • Don't come in jewel cases.
  • Booklets that can be removed without the edges being destroyed by those stupid little stubs to stop them falling out of the badly designed cases
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Denyer
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Post by Denyer »

Cliffjumper wrote:Which surely just makes them data discs? I'm all for digital music but MP3 players, decent-sized computer hard-drives, all music being free now and all that jazz effectively makes CDs just expensive and inefficient to my mind; they're too shit to be a physical manifestation of favourite music and not useful enough to be convenient (remember balancing your personal CD player on public transport like some sort of robot waiter?).
It's an artificial distinction -- optical media is just data storage. The discs are simply a backup and proof of purchase/ownership.

In the same way I might watch the special features on a DVD once, if that, inlays that aren't incredibly fascinating go in the bin. As do shit extras discs. The music's what's of interest.

I do generally listen to albums rather than tracks these days, but that's because stuff that isn't consistently good gets ignored unless individual tracks are really good but what's around them isn't as much. And whilst I like, say, the first three Eels albums as listens, the rest is patchier and I put most of the tracks that wound up on the official Essential together years before they did (and disagree with other selections). It's nice when things come perfect and fully formed, but **** artistic pretensions about songs not also being like LEGO. **** artificial restrictions and reverence, they went out of the window with magnetic tape and recording things off radio.

In terms of perspective, I'd go with music generally being a soundtrack rather than an event.
Cliffjumper wrote:No bonus tracks. If it was good enough to be on the album it would be on the album.
I miss the days of singles coming with slots for bands to experiment, get creative and occasionally hit on standalone or sequenced but eclectic gems, personally. These days songs often get released solo and there aren't many triumphs along the lines of the Lightning Seeds' Ready or Not backed by Another Girl Another Planet and Whole Wide World, or Mighty Mighty Bosstones' The Impression That I Get with a double punch of Is It and Storm Hit. Or pretty much every single and EP the Wildhearts released up to and including Endless Nameless before Ginger started believing his own legend. Or even stand out cover versions such as GnR's Sympathy for the Devil.
Auntie Slag wrote:Do you think that's true of any storage medium? The higher the density, the higher the failure rate?
Essentially yes. Or where the media is expected to degrade under normal use because reading the information is a more physical process, such as with punch cards or vinyl.
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Post by Tetsuro »

Cliffjumper wrote: Big pluses of vinyl for me:
...and the part where, thanks to being an analog format, they're not subject to overzealous boosting where the dynamic range goes down the shitter.

I used to think that was something only audiophiles care about, but I've come across far too many CD tracks where the clipping is palpable.

Fortunately, it's a problem that has manifested itself slowly over the past three decades so CDs released in the 80's and early 90's are relatively free of this problem.
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