Thine ears have heard the glory of the sound of music –
no, I’m not referring to that old movie about the Von Trapp family *rolls eyes*
- rather, good ol’ vinyl records.
I love music…all kinds of music...it re-energizes me. Additionally, I would say about 95% or so of
my favorite music was recorded during the pre-digital days, so I had been
itching to go back and listen to vinyl records and their analog sound again. There were two things holding me back though:
1) the vinyl records that I remembered hearing back in the day never really
impressed me sound-wise because we never had a fancy sound system, plus I was
too young to really appreciate good audio recordings anyway (I listened to
crappy 8-tracks and cassettes for pete’s sake!) – and – 2) I’m rather frugal by
nature, and the thought of buying new equipment and re-buying expensive albums
I already owned on CD/mp3, made me a bit hesitant to say the least – though the
collector in me had been wanting my favorite albums on vinyl anyway just to
have.
Well, after feeling a bit down and stressed with life
(why I get that way, I don’t know, I actually have a lot to be thankful for) I
needed a bit of a pick-me-up. So, I took
the plunge and jumped (in a budget-friendly way) straight into the deep end of
the vinyl pool. I got a turntable,
decent cart/needle, phono amp, SpinClean record cleaner, and a handful of new and old albums, and started my
journey into a whole new/old world of sound.
And what an amazing new/old world it is!!!
As a frequent lurker on the various “audiophile”
sites/forums, the two constant themes you hear in regards to vinyl’s
superiority over the CD/mp3 format is: “warmth” and “dynamic range” of the
soundscape. As two examples in response
to that I thought - “Well, I’m really happy with the sound quality of my
Ozzy-era Black Sabbath Deluxe Edition/Remastered 2009 CD’s from the UK
Sanctuary label, as well as my 2011 Remastered CD’s of the Queen albums from
the 70’s…is a vinyl recording really
better than those?”. There is a fair
amount of “vinyl snobbery” on those sites, so I had to separate the “wheat from
the chaff”, so to speak, in the information I was taking in. Anyway, as my first vinyl purchases, I went
and bought all 8 of the Ozzy-era Black Sabbath albums that Rhino recently
re-issued on 180 gram vinyl from a site called Acoustic Sounds. These
albums had received good reviews on those same audiophile sites; the original
UK pressings, as much as I would love to have them, are a bit too pricey for
me. On Ebay, I was lucky to happen upon
a set of original Canadian pressings of the Queen albums from the 70’s (News of the World wasn’t included
though, dang it!) at a good price, so I went for it (also, the sound quality of
the old Canadian pressings seem to be held in the same high regard as the old UK
pressings). After a cleaning in the ol’
Spin Clean record cleaner, they all looked fantastic. So, how did these new/old vinyl albums
sound?...
