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Exactly Why Vinyl Isn't The Future of Audiophilia

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He's just re-hashing the same old arguments from 30 years ago. He does make a lot of assumptions about what "audiophiles" want. Video?? really? Surround?? What's this guy talking about?

Also, the dynamic range that digital formats are capable of are completely irrelevant when so many recordings are "brick-walled"; they are mastered so hot that everything gets smashed up past clipping to an effective dynamic range of like, 6db.

This ought to be interesting.....
 
I categorize articles like that as "navel-gazing." I think there's simply no doubt that at sometime in the future, vinyl will become passé (again). Until then, I have ~1,000 LP's that I've collected over the years that I intend to enjoy.

I'm reasonably confident, however, that a child born today will never buy new vinyl records (nor any other physical media) 25 years from now. Despite its resurgence in recent years, it's still a niche market and will remain so.
 
I suspect that many of us are holdouts in the format wars until a standard is set. We've seen the VHS/ Betamax wars, cd/vinyl and it's reappearance as vinyl/cd; SACD vs CD, SACD vs 24/96 streaming... I for one am tired of shelling out to replace my entire catalog only to find a format discontinued or declared obsolete. I'm not going to argue that vinyl IS the standard for the future; It seems rather obvious that it isn't. I think we already have digital formats that are extremely close to analog sound and most folks can't tell the difference. In the meantime, I'll enjoy the music on whatever format from which it comes, except for mp3 which just sounds like bacon frying to my ears.
 
Wow, another 20 something telling me that vinyl isn't the best! Lets throw out some Db numbers and sound like we know what we're talking about. F him!!!
 
Brett a said:
He's just re-hashing the same old arguments from 30 years ago. He does make a lot of assumptions about what "audiophiles" want. Video?? really? Surround?? What's this guy talking about?

Also, the dynamic range that digital formats are capable of are completely irrelevant when so many recordings are "brick-walled"; they are mastered so hot that everything gets smashed up past clipping to an effective dynamic range of like, 6db.

This ought to be interesting.....
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My thoughts exactly.
 
The future of audio is high resolution digital formats, most likely in whatever format that is native to the master, such as DSD.

You heard it here...well, not first. It's been widely considered to be the future for some time in various corners of audio.

Vinyl will last as long as people still have a lot of records, which seems like it will be for some time. But its not the future. Its not even the present. The degree of difference in ability of digital is becoming more and more apparent with the better DACs out there now. My $2000 DAC equals the sound quality of my $11,500 CD player from a few years ago. The $1500 Mytek DAC isn't far off, either. They are more "analog" sounding than ever, and the pains of playing vinyl are getting further and further from being worth it, for a number of people even with a LOT of time and money dedicated to their record playing rigs. I have several thousand records and have no intention of giving up on it totally. But my record player gets maybe 20% of my listening time these days.

Which is to say, I think a lot of the points raised are perfectly valid. I don't get the video thing, though. Physical media is dying, especially digital physical media. Anybody who thinks otherwise is fooling themselves. The only physical media that has even a chance is vinyl.
 
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JohnVF said:
The future of audio is high resolution digital formats, most likely in whatever format that is native to the master, such as DSD.
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John, is that the format that Neil Young has been squawking about for the last couple of years, his "Pono" solution?
 
Pono is just the player from what I can gather, and it plays 24/192 files. Which by their popularity might be the future, or they might live alongside something else as you can have one DAC that plays multiple file types. I wish him luck. There's no reason to be toying with lossy compressed files anymore.

I think there will be an active LP playing crowd, though, for as long as any of us are alive. It may grow and wane in popularity but there's a lot of young people right now who are buying a lot of records, and not just because they're trendy. They love them.
 
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JohnVF said:
The future of audio is high resolution digital formats, most likely in whatever format that is native to the master, such as DSD.

You heard it here...well, not first. It's been widely considered to be the future for some time in various corners of audio.

Vinyl will last as long as people still have a lot of records, which seems like it will be for some time. But its not the future. Its not even the present. The degree of difference in ability of digital is becoming more and more apparent with the better DACs out there now. My $2000 DAC equals the sound quality of my $11,500 CD player from a few years ago. The $1500 Mytek DAC isn't far off, either. They are more "analog" sounding than ever, and the pains of playing vinyl are getting further and further from being worth it, for a number of people even with a LOT of time and money dedicated to their record playing rigs. I have several thousand records and have no intention of giving up on it totally. But my record player gets maybe 20% of my listening time these days.

Which is to say, I think a lot of the points raised are perfectly valid. I don't get the video thing, though. Physical media is dying, especially digital physical media. Anybody who thinks otherwise is fooling themselves. The only physical media that has even a chance is vinyl.
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Pretty much said it for me right there (minus the 11-large CD player and my $150 DAC).
 
JohnVF said:
Pono is just the player from what I can gather, and it plays 24/192 files. Which by their popularity might be the future, or they might live alongside something else as you can have one DAC that plays multiple file types. I wish him luck. There's no reason to be toying with lossy compressed files anymore.

I think there will be an active LP playing crowd, though, for as long as any of us are alive. It may grow and wane in popularity but there's a lot of young people right now who are buying a lot of records, and not just because they're trendy. They love them.
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I agree that hi-res digital is the way of the future, and that vinyl will remain as a part of a diverse music scene. Physical media won't be going away anytime soon, though - the US just doesn't have the high-capacity data structure necessary for streaming/high-res downloads to become the standard yet. I live well within the city limits of the third-largest city in Missouri, and my internet access is slow and buggy. Right now stable, high-speed and high-bandwidth connections are the exception and not the rule.

Some other niche formats that offer high fidelity playback (SACD, open reel, high-quality cassette) will also likely soldier along in some form or another for the forseeable future. Even if new media isn't being produced for some of them, there is tons of existing media and as long as the machines work, people will be happily using them.
 
1TUFSS said:
Pretty much said it for me right there (minus the 11-large CD player and my $150 DAC).
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I forgot the part where I actually paid less for the 11-large player than the new DAC. The winds of the used market being what they are. Still, its quite impressive that around $1500 can get you what $11,000 got you in 2006, when that player was new. I really think there's very little difference in sound-quality between the Emm Labs player, the Meitek DAC, and the NAD M51, which is my new DAC. They're each different, but I don't feel that one is dramatically superior to the other beyond a subjective preference for each units take on sound, the Emm Labs player maybe...maybe...being just a hint more analog in sound, for good and bad. The NAD M51 is state of the art IMHO. And the EMM Labs player is glued to physical media, there's no DAC input, making it quite the 11-large dinosaur...

Speaking of which, any company making a CD/SACD player today and not offering a DAC input is headed down a dead-end path.
 
Sometimes I feel like the only [audio enthusiast] person in the world that really doesn't give a crap about what source/format is "the future of audiophilia", or any such thing. We've had plenty of reasonably good technologies for a long time now. How about a better speaker that regular folks can easily afford to purchase new? If there's room for an inch of improvement in digital formats, there's room for a light year in affordable speakers.

Give me better speakers and better recordings available to more consumers and more studios, please.
 
dumptruck said:
Sometimes I feel like the only [audio enthusiast] person in the world that really doesn't give a crap about what source/format is "the future of audiophilia", or any such thing. We've had plenty of reasonably good technologies for a long time now. How about a better speaker that regular folks can easily afford to purchase new? If there's room for an inch of improvement in digital formats, there's room for a light year in affordable speakers.

Give me better speakers and better recordings available to more consumers and more studios, please.
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The rate of change in the computer realm is far more rapid than just about anything else. We've gone from 10GB hard drives to 2TB hard drives being the norm in 15 short years.
 
dumptruck said:
Sometimes I feel like the only [audio enthusiast] person in the world that really doesn't give a crap about what source/format is "the future of audiophilia", or any such thing. We've had plenty of reasonably good technologies for a long time now. How about a better speaker that regular folks can easily afford to purchase new? If there's room for an inch of improvement in digital formats, there's room for a light year in affordable speakers.

Give me better speakers and better recordings available to more consumers and more studios, please.
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Those better speakers are out there. Very few AKers seem willing to believe it, or to actually go out and look for them and audition. They're not giving them away, but an item that costs less than a 50cc motorscooter is hardly the sign of something that isn't for the "regular folks" whatever that means. Just today, an AK friend called me and we talked at length about an amazing experience he'd had at an audio shop, listening to a pair of speakers that blew away anything vintage he'd had. And if he started a thread here on them? It would just lead to a **** storm of naysayers and "you can only get bass from a 12" woofer" and the same old tired debate about how everything new sucks. This stuff is out there.
 
JohnVF said:
Those better speakers are out there. Very few AKers seem willing to believe it, or to actually go out and look for them and audition. They're not giving them away, but an item that costs less than a 50cc motorscooter is hardly the sign of something that isn't for the "regular folks" whatever that means.
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I was talking about the broader issue of making good speakers. You know, errors in response, phase, distortion, and more that are orders of magnitude beyond other components, plus the ongoing issue of how best to deal with the real world of rooms and stereo reproduction, plus other post-stereo ideas. The "regular folks" bit was just me saying that I'd especially like to see tech that allows big improvements in budget speakers.

You're saying that there are speakers available that are very good as compared to the field as a whole, and generally within reach to those that really want them. I agree.
 
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