I was in my record shop the other day and they had a number of " turntables" and portable record players on display. The displays of LPs and 45s are getting larger and larger every week. Most of the people looking at the kit and the records were young.
What is causing the revival? Well fashion is one thing. Youngster these days are too young remember using turntables. It is all very new to them.
I commented to one of the younger sales assistants that I had ruined a copy of Captain Beefheart's Safe as Milk on a Dansette. She looked at me as if I had just stepped off a space ship from Mars. She had no clue about record players and turntables and was not embarrassed to admit it.
An audiophile would sneer at the kit available and would probably regard the players as toys. There is no facility to adjust tracking weights, vertical tracking angles and spin rates etc. There is nothing to play with to make the records sound better. What are the real toys though?
The audiophile vinyl lover is part of a small group and this group will not drive a revival of analogue music. The growth in LP sales will come from young people who couldn't care less about azimuth adjustments and anti-skate springs and a suspended chassis. They just want to hear good music in as easy manner as possible. They will want to transcribe their LPs to digital too - heaven forbid, and have a USB stage built in. They will also want their decks to be equipped with an equaliser stage - whatever next? This is the future, however, and vinyl purists will not be able to stop it.
I often wonder why anyone would want to constantly twiddle with adjustments to try and get a perfect sound from an LP when the limiting factor is the LP itself. Perhaps, it is some kind of "control freakery". If you want to, you can spend tens of thousands of pounds to buy an almost perfect piece of kit that does not sound much or any better than a two hundred pound turntable made of MDF or acrylic plastic. If you have got a couple of grand to spare then good luck to you but lots of young people haven't even got one thousand to spend on a whole system. So this is the £40 solution - http://vinylrecordplayer.co.uk/gpo-stylo-3-speed-stand-alone-vinyl-record-player/
Quite frankly it does not sound too bad and it would not have stopped The Beatles from selling millions of records had it been around at the time. The only problem will be wear and tear on the records but I have still got some LPs and 45s from the 1960s that are playable.
Don't get me wrong I love listening to LPs even though most of my listening is from CD or other digital sources. From a technical point of view CDs and other digital sources give better sound reproduction and they lack the snap, crackle and pop and frequency changes from wow and flutter. A well recorded classical piece on a CD beats an LP any time.
Sometimes, however, I get a bit nostalgic and I put on a record for old time's sake, and I never cease to be amazed that a very small hard rock or diamond which scrapes against a piece of round plastic can make such a good sound. Some of this amazement has rubbed off onto the young; you don't need 24/192 digital nirvana to hear good sound and you do not need a degree in computing. Records are nice and simple so maybe that is what is so appealing.
The modern players are the 1960s and 1970s Dansette equivalent and they will sound good enough to help the revival of the LP and 45 industry. They will also encourage music lovers of all ages to sit around a player together to enjoy some sociability and share their music again, just like we did when we played our first Beach Boys albums and 45s in the good old days. There was no need for anti-skate springs then and there was no sneering at the equipment.
