But isn’t that person who’s taking the piss also a snob?
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Yes but she is funny and doesn’t take herself too seriously.
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The main point of the article is to suggest that people who keep banging on about why they listen to vinyl are boring.
You’ve just managed to prove that people who keep banging on about why they don’t listen to vinyl are equally as boring. 
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I think it would be fun to have a record of my first Dead concert. My first is nigh impossible to find recorded, but of course there is no shortage of well-recorded concerts from that time frame or any other time frame in which the band played. (It was University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, in May of 1978,)
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I agree on both accounts. But, it’s what we do 
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Are you sure it wasn’t a hallucination?!I was surprised when you said you couldn’t find a recording as they were being regularly recorded by 1978. In the book An Illustrated Trip, produced in collaboration between GD productions and Dorling Kindersley, the only Massachusetts gig listed for that spring tour was at Springfield (11 May). Some of that gig is on DP 25.
Whoops typo – May 1979!
Ah just a mistyping not a fantasy! You’ve probably looked here where there’s a recording uploaded, but I have no idea what the SQ is like - maybe you have found it wanting.
The link is just to Jack Straw, but the whole concert is on archive.org
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Is it though?
I like buying, owning and playing vinyl. It’s a complete extravagance when I could instead pay the money direct to an artist to get digital files, which would certainly be more environmentally friendly. But I choose to buy vinyl because I like it.
To do so requires a lot of money and expensive kit to play it on. The fact is that it is a play thing of the (relatively) rich, which excludes a huge proportion of music lovers.
Buying vinyl is like buying a luxury 4WD to drive around town.
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I fear you may have missed the wider point i.e. that the only people who bang on about formats and indisputable merits are people who use vinyl. I couldn’t care less what people listen to. I was merely observing that some of those who listen to vinyl have a genuine struggle with understanding that they’re not in the majority or in possession of an absolute truth for fairly mundane and obvious reasons. We all see logic in what we do.
The standard response for anyone even suggesting that there may be an alternative perspective is to deride the author. That’s not an argument in favour of vinyl. It’s just an ad hominem approach which suggests a lack of rigour in understanding the bigger picture.
Certainly the comments re: the author of said article are unnecessary and personal.I see no actual rebuttal in there.
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One benefit of record store day comes later when the unsold special releases are flogged off on the cheap. As long as you’re OK with the slightly obscure or unfashionable.
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If ever I’m unsure about how I feel about something, I can always rely on certain members here to help me shortcut forming my opinion by reading theirs, and allowing that to galvanise my own opinion around the polar opposite stance.
If only I could also learn how to be so unapologetically rude, I reckon I’d be really on to something.
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I don’t see this assertion. She’s saying that some people are taking it too far and the medium gets in the way of the music. I know this is true because I know people who listen to the same few pieces over and over, because the purpose is to be awed by the system. Maybe not worth getting pissed off about it in an opinion piece, but she’s not saying that everyone is like that.
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Devel’s Advocate?
Thin edge of the wedge……
Did you get hold of a copy? I think you are in the U.K., and Banquet Records in Kingston are currently showing 9 in stock online. I got mine yesterday and I’m working my way through. So far it sounds very good, although there was a bit of surface noise on side 2. My main complaint is that they have simply used the artwork from the box cover on each of the inner sleeves, with a colour change. For last year’s Paris box they used different photos on each sleeve.
Hi - Clive, thanks for the heads up - I’ve bagged it from Banquet on line!
I thought I’d missed out as Rough Trade in Bristol had sold out - must be a lot of Deadheads around here.
Pev
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Same here. Although to be honest I was swayed back when vinyl was becoming fashionable again 10 years ago… but the love affair was short lived… and my various turntables now sold.
I have given most my LPs away, but kept about 30 special albums from a collector’s perspective… but have nothing to play them on now.
I do think with vinyl record there is a degree of style over substance for many as a clearly it’s in vogue … and yes the RIAA eq distortion errors often make attractive replay… but these days if that floats your boat you can achieve without needing to electro mechanical audio reconstruction.
In short I have nothing against record replay … it’s just another format with its own idiosyncrasies… and yes it’s highly tweakable which attracts certain people to it… and like most interests that people pursue or collect one gets a degree of faux standards and snobbery… I guess it’s what ever you are interested in… but it’s not unique to record replay.
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I remember that comment… however perhaps I have become sensitised to it… but in severeal recent films and series on AppleTV+ I noted CD players including in Hi-Fi setups were included and were woven into the screen play… the fantastic Slow Horses springs to mind.
Perhaps vinyl has become too common now and CD is seen as more interesting for new younger audiences?? (But… have you noticed how CD Hi-Fi and opera replay seem to sometimes go hand in hand now)
A DJ and music producer I know well (a son of a close friend) surprised me the other day by telling me he collects and uses CD now… amongst other things. I think he has sold his turntable too.
One thing is for sure, fashions are always shifting… and if the focus does move away from vinyl over the next 5 to 10 years again… I’m sure it will return again in the future.
I was hopeful that Pulp Fiction would bring a vogue of reel to reel tape players… but it didn’t really build much momentum
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I initially retained a mix of things I had a specific attachment to and things I could not as yet see on CD. The latter has initially reduced significantly over the 1990s but the move to streaming has reduced it further again. I am left with a small but, to me, significant number of items which exist in no format. I also have a surprising number of 12” singles given that the format actively annoyed me. They take up more room stored in the garage than nearly 2,000 CDs ever did.
The sad thing is that vinyl snobs, to use the title of the thread, do tend to pursue a series of justifications and have a belief in the absolute superiority of the format which isn’t really borne out by the general experience. I’ve heard better and worse on CD and streaming. It is perfectly possible to enjoy any or all three without making claims about an absolute superiority which simply doesn’t exist. If it floats your boat and you get off on all the stuff associated with it then brilliant but it doesn’t require the demeaning of others who hear differences which come down to preference and it certainly shouldn’t involve criticism of female journalists which arguably comes to something rather more unpleasant.
There are certainly aspects of vinyl packaging I appreciate which were diminished but not entirely lost with CD. I’m currently listening to a CD rip of a 5 CD box which is a beautiful tiny replica of the vinyl box I still own but can’t play. Streaming has also made me appreciate sites like Discgos where I am suddenly reminded of what the back of the inside of certain albums looked like and great memories are triggered. Equally though at the point at which I sold my vinyl I noted that around 75% of it simply had unreadable back covers and plain white inserts. I was talking to friends about this the other day and there recall was similar. We all wanted fancy booklets etc. but it’s easy to forget that during the years of recycled vinyl and cheap imports they simply weren’t the experience of most buyers.
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