Oldies but goodies September 27, 2006
DON'T look now, but vinyl records are making a comeback.
I saw that in the Internet, from a CNN report. In many parts of Britain in particular, vinyl is flourishing. It is the preferred medium of dance deejays who say that for some reason, vinyl sounds so much better on the dance floor. It is the preferred medium as well of some bands, which have been producing singles on vinyl. Yes, producing. Vinyl is no longer just old records, it is new ones, too. Some recording companies have taken topressing them all over again.
One storeowner says it's not just the sound of the thing buyers go for, it's also the look of the thing. The covers of vinyl albums, which are bigger than those of CDs, make for a better canvas for artwork, and serve as posters that can be pinned on walls. In fact, the storeowner says, there are quite a few buyers of LPs who do not own a turntable or recordplayer, they just find the visuals "cool." Vinyl remains a niche market though. It's thriving, but it's not selling in the volumes it used to before the CD. It's not bound to overrun the music stores anytime soon.
Quite apart from my own interest in vinyl, I found the news fascinating because of one remarkable thing. Which is the survival of a seemingly antiquated article in an age of dizzying invention. Indeed, more than survival, a triumph of sorts. It's almost like beholding the manual typewriter giving the PC a run for its money.
This is an age, as I wrote some weeks ago, where digital technology has accomplished levels of compression that can fit an entire TV series in one DVD disc. In sound, you have MP3, or WMA, or even smaller audio files. You can convert your whole music library into them and fit it into a 20-gig iPod, or whatever player you prefer. Indeed, digital technology has even freed sound from its corporal vessel or container in the form of vinyl, cassette, CD, or DVD, by thrusting it into Cyberspace. It's just something floating out there that you can download via your friendly neighborhood peer-to-peer service as MP3 or whatever audio file you like.
Now, with that feast laid out before you, you'd go for the "tuyo" [dried fish]? Well, sometimes tuyo is great, especially with egg and "sinangag" [fried rice] (some Visayans like to pour chocolate onto the rice) on a gray and rain-drenched morning.
Which is what vinyl is. Its disadvantages are patent from the perspective above. On average you have only about 10 songs on a vinyl record, five or so on one side and the rest on the other -- or "flip" -- side, which is where the word "flipside" comes from. To the vinyl also owes the expressions, "You sound like a broken record," or "you're stuck in a groove," which happens when the turntable needle gets quite literally stuck in a groove of a vinyl record and keeps repeating and repeating a part of a song. But that's another story.
If you just want songs to pour forth from your sound system while you snuggle on a sofa, you will curse the vinyl. I don't know that they have invented a remote for the turntable. What I do know is that you physically have to go to the turntable to flip the record once it's through with one side. Might be good for therapy but not if your concept of therapy islistening to music till you doze off. You listen to an MP3 player with earphones stuck in your ears, and when you wake up the damn thing is still playing.
But if you're finicky about sound, there's the miracle of it. I've written about the aural wonders of vinyl in past columns, I leave the reader to read them if they can find them. Suffice it to repeat something I've discovered on my own in that respect. Which is that with vinyl you can raise the volume of your sound system without being assaulted by it: It kind of just floats around you or envelops you. With a CD, you hit a wall of sound, or the wall of sound hits you. You can play a vinyl at a fairly loud volume and still talk to people. With a CD forget talk, you'll just raise your BP.
That's the difference between the manual typewriter and the vinyl record. The vinyl record produces better sound, the manual typewriter does not produce better writing.
The survival, even triumph, of the vinyl, however, says something grander than that certain technologies have a way of refusing to die. It says to me at least that some oldies are goodies, and are often better than "newies." Or on a still grander scale, it says to me at least that more is not necessarily better, new is not necessarily better, convenient is notnecessarily better. Sometimes less is more, old is newer, and doing the extra work infinitely more rewarding.
Reading easily comes to mind as against watching video, the first now more and more going the route of the turntable. Video today is easily the more plentiful, the more digestible, the more conveniently consumable. It is also in the larger scheme of things the less deeply pleasurable, the less a fountainhead of knowledge and wisdom. A book remains the best way two minds -- the writer's and the reader's -- can be linked together inpleasant conversation.
There are other examples. Sometimes black-and-white is more "colorful" than color: I don't know that color will make "Schindler's List" or "Good Night and Good Luck" better. I understand that the US Film Board has banned the colorization (something they've done to many old black-and-white Hollywood movies) of the classics, among them "Citizen Kane" and "Casablanca." They may exist only in their original black-and-white. That is a wonderfully sage decision. "Improvements" do not always improve.
Some even like to believe that old-fashioned love is better than newfangled sex, that "When I fall in love, it will be forever" is better than "What's love got to do with it?" But I leave others to debate that point.
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=23303
I saw that in the Internet, from a CNN report. In many parts of Britain in particular, vinyl is flourishing. It is the preferred medium of dance deejays who say that for some reason, vinyl sounds so much better on the dance floor. It is the preferred medium as well of some bands, which have been producing singles on vinyl. Yes, producing. Vinyl is no longer just old records, it is new ones, too. Some recording companies have taken topressing them all over again.
One storeowner says it's not just the sound of the thing buyers go for, it's also the look of the thing. The covers of vinyl albums, which are bigger than those of CDs, make for a better canvas for artwork, and serve as posters that can be pinned on walls. In fact, the storeowner says, there are quite a few buyers of LPs who do not own a turntable or recordplayer, they just find the visuals "cool." Vinyl remains a niche market though. It's thriving, but it's not selling in the volumes it used to before the CD. It's not bound to overrun the music stores anytime soon.
Quite apart from my own interest in vinyl, I found the news fascinating because of one remarkable thing. Which is the survival of a seemingly antiquated article in an age of dizzying invention. Indeed, more than survival, a triumph of sorts. It's almost like beholding the manual typewriter giving the PC a run for its money.
This is an age, as I wrote some weeks ago, where digital technology has accomplished levels of compression that can fit an entire TV series in one DVD disc. In sound, you have MP3, or WMA, or even smaller audio files. You can convert your whole music library into them and fit it into a 20-gig iPod, or whatever player you prefer. Indeed, digital technology has even freed sound from its corporal vessel or container in the form of vinyl, cassette, CD, or DVD, by thrusting it into Cyberspace. It's just something floating out there that you can download via your friendly neighborhood peer-to-peer service as MP3 or whatever audio file you like.
Now, with that feast laid out before you, you'd go for the "tuyo" [dried fish]? Well, sometimes tuyo is great, especially with egg and "sinangag" [fried rice] (some Visayans like to pour chocolate onto the rice) on a gray and rain-drenched morning.
Which is what vinyl is. Its disadvantages are patent from the perspective above. On average you have only about 10 songs on a vinyl record, five or so on one side and the rest on the other -- or "flip" -- side, which is where the word "flipside" comes from. To the vinyl also owes the expressions, "You sound like a broken record," or "you're stuck in a groove," which happens when the turntable needle gets quite literally stuck in a groove of a vinyl record and keeps repeating and repeating a part of a song. But that's another story.
If you just want songs to pour forth from your sound system while you snuggle on a sofa, you will curse the vinyl. I don't know that they have invented a remote for the turntable. What I do know is that you physically have to go to the turntable to flip the record once it's through with one side. Might be good for therapy but not if your concept of therapy islistening to music till you doze off. You listen to an MP3 player with earphones stuck in your ears, and when you wake up the damn thing is still playing.
But if you're finicky about sound, there's the miracle of it. I've written about the aural wonders of vinyl in past columns, I leave the reader to read them if they can find them. Suffice it to repeat something I've discovered on my own in that respect. Which is that with vinyl you can raise the volume of your sound system without being assaulted by it: It kind of just floats around you or envelops you. With a CD, you hit a wall of sound, or the wall of sound hits you. You can play a vinyl at a fairly loud volume and still talk to people. With a CD forget talk, you'll just raise your BP.
That's the difference between the manual typewriter and the vinyl record. The vinyl record produces better sound, the manual typewriter does not produce better writing.
The survival, even triumph, of the vinyl, however, says something grander than that certain technologies have a way of refusing to die. It says to me at least that some oldies are goodies, and are often better than "newies." Or on a still grander scale, it says to me at least that more is not necessarily better, new is not necessarily better, convenient is notnecessarily better. Sometimes less is more, old is newer, and doing the extra work infinitely more rewarding.
Reading easily comes to mind as against watching video, the first now more and more going the route of the turntable. Video today is easily the more plentiful, the more digestible, the more conveniently consumable. It is also in the larger scheme of things the less deeply pleasurable, the less a fountainhead of knowledge and wisdom. A book remains the best way two minds -- the writer's and the reader's -- can be linked together inpleasant conversation.
There are other examples. Sometimes black-and-white is more "colorful" than color: I don't know that color will make "Schindler's List" or "Good Night and Good Luck" better. I understand that the US Film Board has banned the colorization (something they've done to many old black-and-white Hollywood movies) of the classics, among them "Citizen Kane" and "Casablanca." They may exist only in their original black-and-white. That is a wonderfully sage decision. "Improvements" do not always improve.
Some even like to believe that old-fashioned love is better than newfangled sex, that "When I fall in love, it will be forever" is better than "What's love got to do with it?" But I leave others to debate that point.
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=23303
posted by dqfan06 @ 9:14 AM
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