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Comment by intopieces | Hacker News Reader

It's a good guide for the gift buyer, but aspiring audiophiles beware: not every vinyl pressing was mastered better than, or even different from, the digital release. If you just get a kick out of vinyl's ritual and crack 'n' pop you'll be fine. If you're hoping for better dynamic range, however, a little research will save you a ton of disappointment.

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I feel this is more true now than ever. Now that the vinyl resurgence has hipsters everywhere picking up cheap turntables and their favorite albums at Urban Outfitters, there's tons of companies out there trying to make a quick buck off the fad.

There's no guarantee that the repress of your favorite album is sourced from the original masters. I have found that the process of finding information on the lineage of a given pressing to be hit or miss. Sometimes the only surefire way is to wait a while and see what the community thinks of a given new release.

I feel like turntables never went away. It's always been cool/fun to have one. I don't know what it has to do with "hipsters". Is my uncle a hipster? I doubt it. And I'm pretty sure Real Hipsters don't shop at Urban Outfitters.

Edit: In case the point of my comment wasn't clear, it was that I think broad-brush comments painting people as "hipsters" don't add any value. It's such a meaningless thing to say. Associating "hipsters" with Urban Outfitters is proof of that IMO, because that's where "normal" people shop. So, "hipster" just seems like a way to say "someone I don't like for vague reasons" without actually coming out and saying it.

For the record, I don't have a turntable and have no interest in vinyl.

mattdotc's idea of a Real Hipster in the actual fringe, trend-setting-in-2016 sense may or may not be accurate, but that's not necessarily critical to his/her intention behind using "hipster" — that people are buying into vinyl culture for superficial reasons.

A point which I think wrongly implies that there is no substance to the upsurge in record sales beyond profits. I feel like it also has a lot to do with our increasing involvement in digital media / computer fatigue[1]. People's 200gb iTunes libraries have made them numb.

[1] http://www.tokafi.com/news/computer-fatigue-and-rise-human/

I actually agree with most of what you're saying, with the exception of the interpreted implication.

I am ~30 years old with the collector's gene. I've always had an interest in collecting things: from backyard rocks to bugs and frogs, to stamps, coins, and books, to videogames, cassette tapes and CDs, and eventually - like you said - MP3s (and TV, movies, and more games).

Getting into vinyl was my escape from the ridiculous cache of music and media I had acquired from the likes of Napster, Kazaa, Soulseek, DirectConnect, and torrent sites like Oink. It was a numb feeling to have all that music and no possible way to really appreciate it all. And even though I frequently attended local acts' shows and some larger concerts, I did feel a bit guilty that I wasn't paying for any significant part of my collection.

In 2006, I was among this new wave of vinyl hipsters. Yes, I had recently learned about the loudness wars, and I had known about the claims of warmth and other less-than-scientific reasons for why 'vinyl is better.' I have always been a skeptic, and although I was curious to see for myself, I never bought into any of that stuff beyond that maybe there were some album releases that had crappy digital mastering for CD but much better vinyl mastering.

I got out my dad's old Pioneer table and whatever good music I could rescue from his collection. I replaced its belt. I was buying used vinyl at the last record store in my area and chatting with the regulars, learning about new bands from personal recommendations rather than a shotgun approach of downloading whatever was in the top 10 for that day on a torrent site.

I liked having big artwork and big liner notes to read.

This new popularity has been great for someone like me who enjoys new music and old. Someone who has a certain affinity to owning stuff. But it also sucks sometimes to preorder a record and then get a flimsy record that sounds terrible. I still maintain my digital collection which is a superset of my vinyl collection, but that doesn't mean I still don't like to listen to my vinyl on the weekends. I buy it because I do like spinning it.

I do have my own opinions about certain new interested parties in the medium. I also realize that this makes me a hipster. I didn't mean to imply that there is no substance behind it, but I can understand that interpretation without the above details. I do, however, agree that there is now a not-insignificant superficial element to this current wave of buyers and I think this is why there are companies out there trying to take advantage of these less-informed buyers.

It is only my opinion, but I think anyone that gets into vinyl because they happened to see it at Urban Outfitters is probably among this uninformed set. I mean, look at this thing[1]. A hardcore music fan would never want to listen to their music on those built in speakers, and an informed shopper would never spend $170 on that garbage, because they would realize that they could get a much better entry level table for near the same price. The people that are buying that gear are doing so because they want to project a cool image. And right now, vinyl is cool.

[1]http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/catalog/productdetail.j...

The generation that cut their teeth on 128kbps MP3 actually prefers that sound to the "fidelity" of CD, according to Stearne in his book "MP3: The Meaning of a Format." In some ways, the labels are giving people what they ask for. While I certainly prefer the dynamic range afforded to "audiophile" or older releases, it's a war already lost. I'll happily support the labels that press my kind of sound, of course.

I think WOW and flutter and other analog distortions along with the typical requirement for a preamp are the benefits to vinyl moreso than the ritual or the pops from a dirty disc. Of course that's a bit counter to certain audiophile aspirations, but IMO if you want to remove those elements from vinyl with various technologies than just stick with digital for purer sound reproduction.

It's also easy to be fooled by filters disguising clipping. Take a recording with clipping and high-pass filter it at 10Hz. The clipped wave tops will look better but it will sound identical. The vinyl recording process involves this kind of filtering.

What's the downside of apply a HPF at 10Hz, as it's outside of our hearing range?

The filter isn't the problem, it's just hiding the real problem: the song has been mixed so loud that it "clips" at recording medium's max volume. That means you've lost a lot of waveform information on the loud sounds and it comes out very flat-sounding.

As mentioned in the other comment, it hides the real problems.

It also does remove lo-fi sound we don't hear as pitches, or tones. We do feel those and experience them as volume changes at volumes and on equipment good enough to deliver them to us.

If you are ever in a place with great gear, where it can be loud enough to matter, apply that filter and a - b test. You may find some experiences filtered out.

In the very vast majority of use cases, nothing meaningful is lost, save for watching good amps move speaker cones in and out...

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