Pet Peeves | Page 100 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

ewe2 said
My hatred of iTunes was the key to breaking free of the Apple curse and I’ve never looked back. I’m looking seriously at getting a decent turntable and buying LP’s again because there’s so much stuff that never made it to CD, and I can have the best of both worlds, listening through a usb interface and ripping them.

As I have over 1000 CDs now, which will keep me busy for the next decade at least – what didn’t make it onto CD of is of next to no concern here.

I know people like their LPs – more power to them – but I can’t return to the Rice Bubbles crackles and pops and they cost so much for new and decent ones. I hope you enjoy it though if you do get back into it. I also don’t “do” digital files so for me ripping them on first play to avoid future irritating noise is not an option.

Please note this is not me siding with CDs against LPs or anything – they are just not my cup of tea any more. I bought one of the first CD players in Australia and have been more than happy with them ever since.

trcanberra said
As I have over 1000 CDs now, which will keep me busy for the next decade at least – what didn’t make it onto CD of is of next to no concern here.

I know people like their LPs – more power to them – but I can’t return to the Rice Bubbles crackles and pops and they cost so much for new and decent ones. I hope you enjoy it though if you do get back into it. I also don’t “do” digital files so for me ripping them on first play to avoid future irritating noise is not an option.

Please note this is not me siding with CDs against LPs or anything – they are just not my cup of tea any more. I bought one of the first CD players in Australia and have been more than happy with them ever since.

I’m in the same boat, trc – let me grab an oar.

I’ve had the White Album on so many different formats (remember Tommy Lee Jones’ line in Men In Black?). After listening to the remastered CD from the 2009 box set, I am convinced I need not regress. I still have many LP’s in a storage bin in the basement. Every once in a while (OK, mostly when my brother comes to visit) I’ll break them out and reminisce about the memories forged while listening to certain ones (he recently reminded me how we wore out the Ziggy Stardust album on a friend’s front porch), recalling the precise event that caused each blemish on each cover – a scratch here, a phone number there, oh yeah – I remember that burn mark…

I don’t have the trained ear to hear how any “top end” or “bottom end” may be cut off from digital recordings, nor do I care. This is because digital lets me hear tons more of what is in the middle (my term). I ask myself, would I rather hear 3 more seconds of a cymbal crash fading out or would I rather hear John faintly shouting “We told you why!” in ‘What Goes On ‘. When I play a digital file in surround sound, I can actually “feel” John standing over there and Paul and George over there and Ringo back there – just like in real life. I don’t have to listen to them standing all bunched together in a phone booth, which is what mono sounds like to me.  

A radio station I listen to in the car on the way home plays a vinyl album on Wednesday evenings. Last week, it was Jethro Tull’s Aqualung (IMHO, a masterpiece). It was kinda nice to hear it on vinyl again, but afterward I was convinced it sounds so much better on CD – to my ears. There were subtle little sounds that were obscured by the limitations of vinyl and it was disappointing not to hear them. To be fair, it could have been their copy of the LP or some other variable (least of which would be my HD car stereo). But to my point, LP’s simply wear out and lose fidelity (is that the right term music scholars?). Even if you do burn them into a digital format, the missing bits in the middle of the sound are still not there to begin with. I could not live without those sounds now that I’ve heard them.  

I read and hear people say, “The Beatles on vinyl in mono is the purest form – it’s how they wanted it to sound” or some such. I even remember a quote from George saying he did not like the stereo versions when he first heard them. Could that be because mono vinyl was just about the only thing available back then? It was all they ever knew growing up listening to singles. I could be way off base here, but I firmly believe that if digital technology was available back then, there would have been no contest as to which format they would have preferred to record in. Yet, somehow, I’m glad they had to “earn” their sound by getting all they could out of the available technology. God bless George Martin’s parents!

I will admit that when the vinyl craze began again in recent years, I strongly considered buying another turntable if for no other reason than to play my collection again. But the money I would have spent on that and any subsequent LP purchases have been better spent on Beatles books, CD’s, DVD’s and so on. Looks like I will just have to settle for listening to their digital replacements. 

So, staying on topic, my pet peeve is people trying to tell me that vinyl is best (nobody in the Forum – just people that I know). It may be for them and I sincerely hope they have fun collecting LP’s because What Is Life without fun? Just please don’t tell me it’s the best thing since spliced tape (see what I did there?).