![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The continuity of vinyl
Aug. 7th, 2018 08:03 amI've been really getting into vinyl lately. (Me and all the other music enthusiasts I know, haha.) For my birthday I went to a local audio shop and got their recommendation for a high-quality turntable...and wouldn't you know it, it came in purple. Clearly this was meant to be!
As it happened, ordering it was only the first step; once it came in and Brian started putting it together, he quickly discovered that the needle it came with was borked, and that the receiver we were connecting it to didn't have a preamp...a couple more Amazon purchases and quite a few magic hi-fi-fixing words later, however, it sounds every bit as good as digital, and arguably better than the streaming music I use for everyday listening. (Not really surprising, since the latter is compressed and then usually sent wirelessly from my phone or computer to the receiving station before being routed through the receiver...) It's set up in the second bedroom, which is where I do most of my writing as well as just hanging out in the mornings with my coffee; it's nicely soothing to put a record on while I do. And having to get up to flip the vinyl helps keep me from getting so lost that I don't get up for hours, heh.
I'm actually kind of pleased (and, in retrospect, unsurprised) at the vinyl renaissance that's going on right now. Streaming services are difficult to beat for sheer convenience, with their huge catalogs available anywhere you have an internet connection (which, if you have a smartphone, is nearly anywhere, especially in the city), but quality issues aside, there's no sense of tangible ownership in them. Which for lots of people is fine! But I've always enjoyed the self-expression inherent in building a visible media collection, whether books or music or movies...the fact that they take up physical space means that you have a limited amount of space for them, which makes each selection relevant, as well as the collective space they take up. How important are books to me? Movies? Music? How much space in my home am I willing to dedicate to them?
Related, I've been working my way through a collection of vinyl records that Brian's mother gifted us when we first moved in together (and have been lugging around ever since). In truth, if it'd been up to me, I would've donated them a decade ago, but they were his parents' collection and Brian wanted to keep them, so they've been sitting in a box in the closet until recently...and now that I have a decent player, I've been sifting through them. There's a lot of good albums in there, much of it (Jimi Hendrix, Simon & Garfunkel, Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac) exactly what you'd expect from a couple of college students in the 70s, but some more obscure stuff as well. But even more, I've found a strange sense of satisfaction in that aforementioned tangibility; these are the literal physical records his parents listened to when they were younger than I am now, and something about putting them on my bright-purple player creates a strangely comforting sense of continuity. I've never been a big one for family heirlooms, never having been close to my extended family, but I think I'm beginning to understand why other people cherish them. I'm heading up to Anchorage for my yearly family visit at the end of this month, and my grandmother's promised to let me look through her box of vinyl as well. I'll have to ask her for her stories about it...hurrah for family!
As it happened, ordering it was only the first step; once it came in and Brian started putting it together, he quickly discovered that the needle it came with was borked, and that the receiver we were connecting it to didn't have a preamp...a couple more Amazon purchases and quite a few magic hi-fi-fixing words later, however, it sounds every bit as good as digital, and arguably better than the streaming music I use for everyday listening. (Not really surprising, since the latter is compressed and then usually sent wirelessly from my phone or computer to the receiving station before being routed through the receiver...) It's set up in the second bedroom, which is where I do most of my writing as well as just hanging out in the mornings with my coffee; it's nicely soothing to put a record on while I do. And having to get up to flip the vinyl helps keep me from getting so lost that I don't get up for hours, heh.
I'm actually kind of pleased (and, in retrospect, unsurprised) at the vinyl renaissance that's going on right now. Streaming services are difficult to beat for sheer convenience, with their huge catalogs available anywhere you have an internet connection (which, if you have a smartphone, is nearly anywhere, especially in the city), but quality issues aside, there's no sense of tangible ownership in them. Which for lots of people is fine! But I've always enjoyed the self-expression inherent in building a visible media collection, whether books or music or movies...the fact that they take up physical space means that you have a limited amount of space for them, which makes each selection relevant, as well as the collective space they take up. How important are books to me? Movies? Music? How much space in my home am I willing to dedicate to them?
Related, I've been working my way through a collection of vinyl records that Brian's mother gifted us when we first moved in together (and have been lugging around ever since). In truth, if it'd been up to me, I would've donated them a decade ago, but they were his parents' collection and Brian wanted to keep them, so they've been sitting in a box in the closet until recently...and now that I have a decent player, I've been sifting through them. There's a lot of good albums in there, much of it (Jimi Hendrix, Simon & Garfunkel, Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac) exactly what you'd expect from a couple of college students in the 70s, but some more obscure stuff as well. But even more, I've found a strange sense of satisfaction in that aforementioned tangibility; these are the literal physical records his parents listened to when they were younger than I am now, and something about putting them on my bright-purple player creates a strangely comforting sense of continuity. I've never been a big one for family heirlooms, never having been close to my extended family, but I think I'm beginning to understand why other people cherish them. I'm heading up to Anchorage for my yearly family visit at the end of this month, and my grandmother's promised to let me look through her box of vinyl as well. I'll have to ask her for her stories about it...hurrah for family!
