LP … CD … Blu-Ray ???

SACD, MD, DVD-A, DAT … 5.1, 7.1 … DTS … What is the fascination with the Long Playing Record?

It’s scratchy, poppy, clicky and dusty. But some of us still love it.

Recently, I was watching a sitcom back in the UK. The Dad was holding up a copy of Led Zeppelin I and the Kid says, “Hey, Dad. What’s that?”
Dad replies, “It’s Led Zeppelin.”
The Kid, “Yeah? But what’s that black round thing?”

So, 130 years since the first mechanical playback, over 50 years since the first vinyl stereo discs and the current era of the digital download, the LP record is one of the few, if not only, hard music media actually increasing its sector of the retail market.

My first recollections of purchasing and playing music was back in the 60’s. Then music was only available live, on the radio or on black, vinyl disc. Okay, a few people had tape machines, but tape’s successor, the Compact-Cassette, was very much in its infancy.

And really, that’s pretty much how things were until the mid-80’s CD revolution. In that time I graduated from a simple stacking record player to a reasonable hifi rig and paid the staggering amount, for the time, of ukp400.00, probably the equivalent of a month’s wages for my first Marantz CD player. And it was a revelation … no rumble, no noise, clicks … select a track, loop it … those nice shiny discs and jewel cases … convenience itself.

I remember at the time the sales guy not being willing to commit himself as to whether the laser would last more than 1000 hours. As it happens, that Marantz is still the center of my son’s bedroom hifi.

Anyway, my record deck languished for a few years meaning my collection of a thousand or so LPs gathered dust. However, a few years ago as a matter of curiosity, I blew the cobwebs of my collection of records and tried out one or two.

And far from the rumbly, scratchy sound I expected, I heard some great music, but with a quality I had forgotten. I’m not saying it was better, although it was if you like tight bass and good timing. Women’s voices, in particular, had a smoothness hard to match on the CD players of the time. I quickly bought a better record deck, and was rewarded with more of that quality … whatever it was.

Maybe it’s the sheer physicality of the thing; the transparently obvious means by which music is retrieved from that groove whose trail makes up those light and dark bands on the surface of the disc; the way you have to handle this medium of music with the respect it deserves.

Today, I still find myself buying LP records. I still buy CDs too. But give me those big vinyl discs with sleeves which really do look like works of art. Give me music and production which sounds like it’s an art, not a numbers’ game. … aeh