What's in the mailbox? šŸ“¬ šŸ“¦

I have to ask. Do you own vinyls because they sound better or because of the bigger artwork, physical size and collectability?

I started collecting it in college in the early 2000's. The biggest part for me is just it being a physical object, really. I also like having the larger artwork as well. I appreciate the physical connection with the music, having to physically interact with it, check it for imperfections, clean it, turn it over, etc.. Vinyl just forces me to take time and to really be intentional about what I'm listening to. The inconvenience is the point, I guess.

As for sound quality that's not really something I care about all that much, though I can tell in some albums that I listen to that I do get a wider range of sounds/fidelity/whatever. It's hard for me to describe and it all sounds like mumbo jumbo, but: There's more background noise, but the sound fills more dimensions, is the best way I can describe it. Particularly on modern, good pressings.

I usually listen to Spotify so I chalk that up to compression, I guess - I'm not a hi-fi guy so I can't explain it but I do notice it even on my lower-end setup vs what comes out of streaming music.
 
I have to ask. Do you own vinyls because they sound better or because of the bigger artwork, physical size and collectability?
I got into vinyl because that was the only format the music I liked was released on, but that's not really the case anymore. I've swung in the opposite direction and I can't stand buying vinyl anymore because of how much room it takes up. I'm not interested in filling my whole house up storing all this stuff. I buy cassettes more than anything else these days
 
I have to ask. Do you own vinyls because they sound better or because of the bigger artwork, physical size and collectability?
A little bit of everything for me. A big thing is a lot of the music only being available on vinyl. Lots of old stuff that fell by the wayside when the digital age came along, and plenty of new stuff that’s deliberately released as exclusive-to-vinyl.
For me one of the biggest appeals is the tactile experience, and the ritual of listening to the album. It commands your attention in a different way. Do I think it sounds better? Not necessarily— the sound quality difference between vinyl, CD, and FLAC is entirely on a basis of mixing, mastering, and equipment used to listen (plus pressing quality for CD and Vinyl). A vast majority of my listening is digital, but there’s a specialness to listening to vinyl that’s more a symptom of the experience than the quality in any one way or another.
The larger scale artwork is also a huge plus. Tons of albums I listen to have really crappy quality images online, to the point that you’d think the original art was a tiny little jpeg. I’ve not found a single decent quality image of The Beach Boys’ ā€œSurf’s Upā€ online (even the Spotify image is very clearly a scan of a CD booklet), but when I listen to it on vinyl and immerse myself in the beautiful artwork of the 12ā€ sleeve… fantastic. Not to mention there’s just such a difference between viewing art on a screen, and viewing the tangible thing up close, even when it comes to print media like record sleeves and posters.
 
Vinyl just forces me to take time and to really be intentional about what I'm listening to. The inconvenience is the point, I guess.
That’s it for me. I like the larger format artwork as well. Streaming and digital audio makes it easy to jump around a lot. Vinyl is very deliberate and encourages you to listen to the music as an album, not just a collection of songs.
 
Do I think it sounds better? Not necessarily— the sound quality difference between vinyl, CD, and FLAC is entirely on a basis of mixing, mastering, and equipment used to listen (plus pressing quality for CD and Vinyl).
It’s a bit rare now, but sometimes records are mastered differently for each format. That can really change the experience.

The statement ā€œvinyl sounds betterā€ always struck me as really reductive. Of course something playing from a stereo system is going to sound better than streaming from a phone’s speakers.
 
I ordered mine (two actually) on the 16th. Looking forward to getting them, hopefully in the next week while I have off for spring break.
You got a line on the build docs(sonomatic delay)? I went through my document storage, email history, even my reverb history and nothing.
 
I started collecting it in college in the early 2000's. The biggest part for me is just it being a physical object, really. I also like having the larger artwork as well. I appreciate the physical connection with the music, having to physically interact with it, check it for imperfections, clean it, turn it over, etc.. Vinyl just forces me to take time and to really be intentional about what I'm listening to. The inconvenience is the point, I guess.

As for sound quality that's not really something I care about all that much, though I can tell in some albums that I listen to that I do get a wider range of sounds/fidelity/whatever. It's hard for me to describe and it all sounds like mumbo jumbo, but: There's more background noise, but the sound fills more dimensions, is the best way I can describe it. Particularly on modern, good pressings.

I usually listen to Spotify so I chalk that up to compression, I guess - I'm not a hi-fi guy so I can't explain it but I do notice it even on my lower-end setup vs what comes out of streaming music.

This exactly
 
It’s a bit rare now, but sometimes records are mastered differently for each format. That can really change the experience.

The statement ā€œvinyl sounds betterā€ always struck me as really reductive. Of course something playing from a stereo system is going to sound better than streaming from a phone’s speakers.
Exactly. The big reason why I think the Digital < Analog perception came about is that in the 80s and early 90s a lot of CDs were absolutely horribly mastered, often from 2nd or 3rd generation sources. Lots of Ryko releases in particular were absolutely horrible because they just did not know how to master for CD yet, and compound that with the fact that the source may have been a duplicate of a duplicate of a cassette rip of a vinyl record… yikes.

Even now, things are almost always mastered separately for each format. It’s just that in the past sometimes the mixes would also be different, which is pretty uncommon now. RIAA curves and all that…
 
I don’t remember. I do know they’re in the Facebook group.

If you’re not on Facebook at all, pm me and I can download and email them to you
yeah ... still pending on that group. I'll give it a week. I figure if I can wait over a month on untracked post from overseas I can not get too irate too quickly on some documentation. I still have stuff from here that hasn't seen a build doc in like a year.
 
How long does it generally take to receive a shipment from JMK? I'm in Los Angeles for reference.
Going postal...

Any time I've bought from JMK, shipping was 2-3 weeks — to Hong Kong.

From the Canadian Prairie to you, should be about 2 weeks; basing that guesswork on the following:
Now that I'm back in the deep-freeze, stuff coming to me from PedalPCB is usually 2-3 weeks.
 
Exactly. The big reason why I think the Digital < Analog perception came about is that in the 80s and early 90s a lot of CDs were absolutely horribly mastered, often from 2nd or 3rd generation sources. Lots of Ryko releases in particular were absolutely horrible because they just did not know how to master for CD yet, and compound that with the fact that the source may have been a duplicate of a duplicate of a cassette rip of a vinyl record… yikes.

Even now, things are almost always mastered separately for each format. It’s just that in the past sometimes the mixes would also be different, which is pretty uncommon now. RIAA curves and all that…
I don’t think digital sounds better or worse, it just sounds different. I have a small vinyl collection as well.
 
@andare I like vinyl because I'm an insufferable hipster and find enjoyment in smug superiority over norms and jobbers. How's that?
You listen to tapes. What, you don’t have 8-tracks?

For real though, vinyl is hardly ā€˜hipster’. (Is hipster still a thing?) Big names jump the queue and push back everything else at plants now. Love getting an album six months after it was released.
 
You listen to tapes. What, you don’t have 8-tracks?

For real though, vinyl is hardly ā€˜hipster’. (Is hipster still a thing?) Big names jump the queue and push back everything else at plants now. Love getting an album six months after it was released.
Yeah I have 2 8 track machines and 2 reel to reel machines too.

I used to run a record label and the plant wait times were pretty bad then, but shipping costs were very low. I couldn't imagine doing any of that now. A friend of mine who's still at it and moves a decent volume of stuff said he's forced to ship priority mail because he couldn't afford to keep up with replacing damaged media mail shipments because the majority of his shipments were getting obliterated
 
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