I saw a piece on the news, or maybe it was a website about how the album is making a comeback.
Yay!
Sort of…
I am a digital music fan for many reasons. I lament somewhere on this blog about my dislike for buying an album for one song. Now, all I have to do is buy the one song! My music doesn’t skip when I am running with my iPod. I don’t have to spend hours making a mix tape of my favorite songs, now it’s just a playlist. And, I don’t have to worry about my Walkman eating that mix tape I spend hours on.
Remember that sound, your song grinding to a quick halt as the tape wraps itself into the innards of your cassette player.
The reason for the resurgence of the LP is because Audiophiles’ can’t stand the sound of digital music. It lacks that rich full sound the old analogue technology offers. I met an audiophile once many years back. She was a friend of a friend. In her living room was this large turntable that fed into a much larger amplifier. From that amplifier the sound was pumped through a couple of expensive cabinet style speakers.
She was the one that described to me what digital music does to her. She can hear the bits. The changes are not subtle, but jarring, ragged, digital. There was not this smooth, subtle transition between notes and melodies. Digital music gave her a headache!
I had the same problem when we first went to satellite TV on our old analogue 36” Proscan TV. When there was a lot going on in the scene, like an explosion in an action scene, I could see the pixilation. It wasn’t often, or regular, but once in a while, in the ball of fire rising from the car that just crashed into the garbage truck, I could see pixilation. If it were constant, it would definitely give me a headache.
So I sort of get where she was coming from.
What I miss about those old LP’s is the art work. My ears were never sensitive enough to pick up the nuances of digital v. analogue. It’s all music to me.
When I first became a music connoisseur LP’s were the thing. You could buy singles, but I didn’t like them because there was no artwork, you had to change the disk after just one song, and the B side usually sucked. But the LP’s had around ten songs; five on each side, gave you about thirty minutes of music per side, and were great pieces of art in so many cases.
Love the sunglasses in this mid evil setting!
An LP was 12’’ and offered a great size for displaying the artwork. I used to push those plastic push pins into the paneled walls of my bedroom and display my favorite albums as anyone else would display a poster. I didn’t push the pins through the albums cover…no! I would use the little grove in the pin and set the bottom edge of the album in it. The album then leaned back against the wall.
Sometimes, when I was having a temper tantrum, I would swing the door shut and it would blow all the albums off the wall.
Frustration!!