On Friday, July 26, 2013 11:11:48 AM UTC-7, ScottW wrote:
On Thursday, July 25, 2013 11:46:35 AM UTC-7, Audio_Empire wrote:
In article ,
ScottW wrote:
On Thursday, July 25, 2013 5:57:19 AM UTC-7, wrote:
In the article there is a link to the kessler youtube mentioned below.
Apanel of audio folk discuss the current poor health of the audio biz and
customer decline. But in the article there is a small glimmer of light.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/ga...eeks.html?_r=0
They run one of these articles every 6 months or so...and they all lack
credibility with lines like this leading into a segment on resurgence of
vinyl.
"Then he heard one of his older brother’s albums, “A Night at the Opera” by
Queen, in 5.1 surround sound. “I remember listening to it in my room and
hearing all the voices,” Mr. Damski said. “I thought, ‘Oh, there’s another
layer to this I wasn’t aware of.’ ”
ScottW
There IS a resurgence in vinyl.
That may be true but how one is led to it by listening to a 5.1 remix of Queen's Night at the Opera is unclear.
Unclear? It should be downright opaque! There is no VINYL 5.1 remix of anything.
One would have to be really out of the
loop to not have noticed it. There are more 'tables, arms and cartridges
on the market today than at any time since the advent of the CD (~1983)..
And the people in this business MUST be selling this equipment to
SOMEONE. After all, they keep introducing new models and brands at all
price points (except the very bottom - the $100 Japanese direct-drive
table with the linear-tracking arm is a thing of the past), but every
other price-point, all the way up to $100,000 turntables and $15,000
phono cartridges seem amply represented.
Vinyl will have a future when someone starts manufacturing cutting lathes again. Until then this "resurgence" is a dead cat bouncing.
I'm sorry but you seem to miss the point. Vinyl's resurgence is not now, nor will it ever be on the scale that it once was when vinyl (along with R-to-R tape) was THE source of a music collection. But it has gone from being a moribund market to a healthy one. Can't say how long it will last, but right now the existing equipment for mastering new discs seems to more than able to keep up with demand.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of vinyl.
But the price of new high quality vinyl is in the same death spiral that high end (and I don't mean performance by high end, I mean price) equipment is in.
Frankly, I don't think it's about "new, high quality" vinyl as much as it is about the millions of existing LPs out there being bought second-hand or part of extensive vinyl collections belonging to existing audiophiles. That's my interest in all things phono. I have 5000 LPs and I like to play them..
I see a factory sealed version of my Classic Records Zeppelin IV is being peddled for nearly $270 on elusive disc. I'm sure the next generation of audiophiles is just dying to have it, literally 
.
Anyone who would pay that much for a Led Zepplin LP deserves what they get. OTOH, IMHO, the shift in peoples' tastes away from classical music and toward pop is at least partially responsible in the decline of the audiophile hobby. Studio produced music lacks so many of the things that drove the hi-fi market for so long, that there is a perception that the level of reproduction required by audiophiles simply doesn't do that much for pop. As long as the reproduction provides big bass, sparkling highs, and fairly low distortion (things that are, as Mr. Kruger states "pervasive" and pretty easily and cheaply come by), that any subtlety of performance is merely gilding a lily and deemed unnecessary.