Vinyl or MP3

[bass_culture]

What I have concluded is that you should never mix the love of music with money. They simply do not belong near each other. Buy something for the love of the music, the industry, and the people involved.
For me, I enjoy the emotions of anticipating my order to arrive then having the opportunity to physically unbox my disks. And with future DJing in sight, I love thinking about my first night when I can put a Mala tune on with my bare hands.

With digital, you get a file, on your hard drive, and are still left with the question, "why don't I just pirate?"
Because if you are looking to spend little to no money on music you most likely aren't worried about the music industry so why not pirate.


But that's just how I see it, and I could be wrong because I'm tired.

You are very wrong AND stupid

To be honest whenever I see a Dj who's not playing vinyl (apart from the big names) I'm always in the back of my mind thinking hmmm I wonder whether they're pirating.

[redfire]

dont be a fool move with the times, bare people are kidding themselves buying records still

kidding themselves about what mate? the better sound quality on ANALOGUE???? maybe the feeling you get having an actual physical product..

or possibly the fact that when my hard drive died, my rcords didnt disappear...

nowt wrong wi digital, yeah move with the times and all that. but try to remember that analogue is natural sound.

digital is 1 and 0 REPRESENTING an electrical waveform, that itself REPRESENTS an ANALOGUE waveform...

oh, and if u must, use wav............

[wobbles]

wtf is wav why would i fill up my hardrive for no reason i have 192 kbps and no higher there is literally no difference in sound quality

[redfire]

dbl pst. del pls

[redfire]

mate, 32kbps is optimal....

192? bleedin hell! HQ to da max m8!!!!!

[Alistairr]

look guys, in a perfect world i would loveeeeee to own a huge collection of vinyl but for some of us ,its just a luxury too far, why waste all that money on a collection when i can get better value for money via mp3???

it jsut doesnt make sense to me. moeny is an issue and those who chose to ignore it are either rich/loaded or pain stupid. i listen to broad range of music, not jsut dub/bass music, so i consume A LOT of music but i still want to support the artists, so i make my contributiion via payign for mp3s. i simply wouldnt be able to do this collecting vinyl and would be forced to narrow down my tastes which can only be a bad thing/

also, im not from the dubplate world, i still go to fabric on a saturday to see the legend craig richards, most of the electronic world has moved on, except for bass scene and dnb scene.

only pockets of vinyl collectors exist elsewhere. so for me to argue for mp3s is completely natural thing and it makes sense logically too.

[garethom]

look guys, in a perfect world i would loveeeeee to own a huge collection of vinyl but for some of us ,its just a luxury too far, why waste all that money on a collection when i can get better value for money via mp3???

it jsut doesnt make sense to me. moeny is an issue and those who chose to ignore it are either rich/loaded or pain stupid. i listen to broad range of music, not jsut dub/bass music, so i consume A LOT of music but i still want to support the artists, so i make my contributiion via payign for mp3s. i simply wouldnt be able to do this collecting vinyl and would be forced to narrow down my tastes which can only be a bad thing/

also, im not from the dubplate world, i still go to fabric on a saturday to see the legend craig richards, most of the electronic world has moved on, except for bass scene and dnb scene.

only pockets of vinyl collectors exist elsewhere. so for me to argue for mp3s is completely natural thing and it makes sense logically too.

That's fair enough if you can't afford it, and to be honest, even if you could, you don't have to! Just don't get why people question why people do things so much. Some people collect stamps, I don't understand why, because it's not my interest, but I'm not gonna tell them they should get on google images and just save a copy of the stamp to a hard-drive. If people want to 'move on' then fine, but there's still going to be people that choose to buy vinyl. It's not harming anybody. People aren't always logical beings.

Some people collect classic cars. Maybe they should move on and just get the new focus.

[dj phonetic]

some quotes i collected in the years :

Flicking through what I got, and it isn’t a lot compared to other vinyl collectors, I’m looking for the reason why I bothered to start collecting in the first place. Yea, you can’t throw it on your iPod… it’s true you can’t get the whole back catalogue in a matter of seconds by clicking some download button while scratchin’ your arse… but it really isn’t about that.

It’s about the journeys and stories behind every record. Arriving home with a fresh batch and kickin’ back for the day, checking out to what you got. It’s about listening from start to finish, no skipping between tracks, no repeat button, no randomisation… you are in for the journey from Side A to D. You are listening to rediscover the lost art of the album, when artists and producers spent day after day forging the ultimate running order, when it was about feel, about the journey…

You are listening to hear the stories, even the ones that don’t involve you. Listening for those second hand discs that wear the battle scars of late nights in clubs or house parties… scratches that tell of drunken punters knocking into the turntables or the feint mark of a beer stain from some late night after-party; forgotten by everyone but the vinyl. You don’t right click a record to read its “date of creation” or when it was “last modified”, a record’s history is engrained on its surface forever, every bump and bruise… every huge drop at the club, and every resulting rewind.

It’s about the album art, from the crazy to the colourful and everything in between, big enough to get lost in, small enough to keep a whole gallery full of masterpieces in your bedroom.

It’s about a sound that shits all over everything else in a club. It’s about knowing that you are listening to the closest thing to pure vibration after the live performance itself.

It’s about dropping a track at the wrong speed, and it sounding better than the real thing.

It’s about THAT record… that one you’ve been looking for… the one that has only ever appeared in dreams and computer screens. It’s that diamond in the rough at a car boot sale.. stuffed between Hungarian folk music and Chris de Burgh…

It’s about buying the Hungarian folk music as well just because “you have a feeling”… and being completely wrong.

It’s about giving something back. It’s about knowing months and years have gone into every bit of it, and walking out of a store with something physical under your arm that keeps people with jobs and food on the table.

Of course you could scratch your arse and click download… call yourself a music lover and boast about how many terabytes of Depeche Mode B-sides you have on your hard drive… or you could turn off the computer, and reconnect.

Theo's right in a way, it does take time to be a good DJ, and it is about far more than the actual mixing.

Software & Digital Djing has led to a proliferation of DJs; Djing is much more accessible than it once was, financially and technically.

You do of course get excellent digital DJs, just look at Tensnake, Surgeon or Ben Sims. But its also true that using vinyl simply means before you even think of leaving the house, you must be pretty shit hot.

Through the nature of buying vinyl and practising constantly to get anywhere near decent, you get to intimately know your records; whilst you slowly build a collection of music consisting only of what you feel to be the very best prime cuts.

Now anyone can feasibly download 8000 tunes, spend brief time practising with a Hercules and Virtual DJ and be hot to trot. Technology has made it possible to sidestep the dedication to the art of DJing vinyl once ensured, if that's what you want to do.

I'm going to get hold of Traktor and some time codes soon, so I've got nothing against digital per se. I just know personally learning on vinyl has really helped to show me the music.

Its helped to get to the music and get to know a bit about the artist & records labels. Its ensured I understand how the music is arranged and how to use this information so the records fit together with one another properly. Its shown me how tunes ebb and flow, and how to create a nice set of contrasting and complimentary tunes that come together as a cohesive whole.

Sure the digital formats don't prevent any of this, but the vinyl format really helps/helped to basically ensure you did/do know it.

From what I see occasionally when I'm out, read on blogs & forums and hear on Soundcloud I think more than a few people could have benefited from learning with the humble black plastic & experiencing its DJ training ways.

Peace to everyone though, despite what I say, it is ultimately about having a good time, lets not just lose all the other important DJ shit while we're doing it.

Fuck all of this bullshit! Buy 2 technics 1200's and learn how to mix.
Technical limitations inspire creativity. Convenience kills it.

Vinyl smells good, like women do
Vinyl is unique, like women are
Vinyl looks good, like women do
Vinyl can break, like women do
Vinyl is real, like women are
The best are hard to find
Vinyl can cost a lot of money, but women do too
Vinyl can be heavy, women can be too
And like vinyl, i prefer them black

[dj phonetic]

another one:

You can’t make a rational case for choosing vinyl, and I wouldn’t – there isn’t a single one that’s compelling. Digital is cheaper, less wasteful, more malleable and far more portable. There’s virtually nothing to store, scratch, warp or shatter. Records meanwhile remain cumbersome, fragile and expensive. And yet, in spite of all this, I will continue buying, collecting, playing with and paying for the damned things, for as long as I’m willing and able to. Why?

Well, there are lots of reasons. First of all, it’s because vinyl has life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not such a caner – I don’t think that my records are alive in the way my lover or my dog is. They don’t eat, drink, bark or bone. But, like us, they exist in space and through time – they have their own history, they wear their own scars, they need our care. They have a world.

When you dig for vinyl and you find something you’re looking for, you don’t just uncover the music. There’s a sense of connectedness, both of your desire to the sound and the sound’s embodiment in the object. Who knows the circumstances surrounding the original purchase? Maybe the record got sold because of a drug habit, a death, or a disappointment. Or maybe because of indifference. But in every case the piece you hold in your hands is the silent bearer of a story, a mute witness to whatever and wherever it went. It also carries the signal of its producers, embodying their dreams. I think Danny Wang said it once: second-hand record stores are such sad places. That’s because they’re dream graveyards. At one point, a group of people invested all their time and talent in making it. It was going to make them famous…

At the receiving end, the previous owners of a record invested their best hope in it too. So they chose it, they took it and kept it with them, and it slowly mapped itself into the web of their memories. Or they hated it, and flogged it. I don’t recall every intricacy of what I did last week, but I can tell you almost without fail the circumstances surrounding each record I own, and explain the resonance it has, what it evokes. It’s an object of music and of memory, and to me that gives it the true aura of an artefact, and makes it deserving of respect, reverence. I also love the presence of the music in the scratch. The groove is a perfect visual representation of the metaphor of what the thing is and does, and the music is there in a way that digital formats, even in whatever visual/waveform representations they use, aren’t. Functionally, this makes absolutely no difference. ‘Visual mixing’ of the kind now possible with digital obviously has advantages, but it’s always at a distance. Like talking through glass.

A lot of DJs' selections turn to shit after they start using digital. Somehow - no, because of all those choices, they’re unable to make a single interesting one. This is no coincidence.


Records are also incredibly sensual objects, and this has always been their advantage for mixing. Even with the abilities the new technologies have given us to loop, sample and freely choose key and pitch (which is in every way musically superior as an instrument) there’s no substitute for being able to touch, to play by feel. Serato and Final Scratch have overcome this limitation, but even in ‘the best of both worlds’ there’s more than a little of nowhere and nothing at all. Mp3 doesn’t even exist, at least, not in the way we and our records do. It’s a nothing and it exists nowhere but in blips on our portable nonplaces.

Crucially, choosing a track through drag and drop is utterly different to digging through a box with a very limited selection thoroughly and carefully chosen before leaving home, or so you’d hope. In fact, the irony of having a greater number of choices is that it’s invariably harder to choose, or easier to make do with default choices, which are not real choices at all. A lot of DJs’ selections turn to shit after they start using digital. Somehow - no, because of all those choices, they’re unable to make a single interesting one. This is no coincidence.

There’s no sacrifice involved in collecting digital formats either. Any two-bit chump can download a huge body of work in a matter of days, something that would have required a huge expenditure of time, effort and money on the part of a vinyl collector. When you go and see a veteran play her set, she’s carrying with her whole decades of memories whittled down to some eighty selections. Packing a box requires further sacrifice, further selection, further acts of will, respect and love. You have to think, choose, include, reject. Without these repeated sacrifices, it’s all to easy fall prey to the tyranny of ‘any old thing’. ‘Oh shit, I need a track with drums to mix out of this, um… shit, only sixteen bars to go, oh, okay, this’ll do…’ Click, click, drag, drop. You hope the audience won’t feel the difference, and you fool yourself that you feel anything at all. I wouldn’t argue that this is a necessary outcome of digital, but it’s going to happen far more often.

The same is true of Ableton: paradoxically the program’s incredible power, speed and flexibility means you can churn out an average tune, not even in a matter of hours, but on the fly. ‘You can do anything on Ableton’ and you can, but most people do less and less. They don’t make minimal, they make very little of a lot. In fact, in a turn of events that would shock grandpappy, it’s easier to record a track than to write a song. All too often it shows: lazy drum programming, boring melodies with no tension or development, and a screaming, dithering, swarming shitload of plugin effects to cook the tune in, so we don’t have to listen to the half-baked mess. And how good are you as a musician really, Mr DJ? Can you really perform with the same level of musicality that’s contained within a well-made record, something a talented, dedicated person invested everything in for days, weeks, months? Why not let the record play, if it’s a good one. If it’s not, no wonder you’re bored, no wonder you need to fiddle.

Back to the body – the other quiet crime of indifference that this ‘choice’ contains is the death of another related artform: cover art. One of the things that make records so valuable and beautiful is the incredible creativity that goes into a lot of the covers, even if it’s the artful details of the colours and fonts chosen on the plainest of my EPs, or the ‘mastered by X at the Exchange’ scratched into the run off. No doubt the artisans who manufactured gilt frames for heavy oil paintings mourned the passing of their time, and maybe all systems of artistic representation are not only bound to, but should wither and die. It’s still sad.

Like most ‘technological advancements’, digital isn’t an improvement of what went before, it’s a rationalisation. Never forget that. From a consumer point of view, CD wasn’t ‘better’ than vinyl, and at least until the mid-nineties, a well-pressed record played better through a good component system (again, all put together through individual choices) than most CDs, even with, and probably because of the sound artifacts and sub-audible frequencies in the record. We’re losing them, too. But they’re inaudible, right? Never forget, it was the ‘record’ companies, greedy to reduce distribution costs and fit more units on shelves, who pushed for CD, and we paid more for less. Three times the price for something a third of the size and a fraction of the cost to make. Now they’re reaping the whirlwind, and a big and happy fuck you all.

Vinyl dies too, but not all at once. It goes slowly, just like we do. Do yourself a favour, and age gracefully with records.


The technology might end up getting us over the barrel too: it isn’t ‘simply better’ – it’s a new entanglement that solves some problems and embroils us in others. I’m late finishing this article. That’s because, not three days ago, my Powerbook, on which I do, well, almost everything, decided to play Hungry Hungry Hard Drives and eat itself for breakfast. Luckily, all my media and documents are backed up – are yours? Don’t think it won’t happen. Houses burn and vinyl will too, but data loss is a completely new kind of risk. If any of you still have the XT you grew up with, go pull it out of the garage, turn it on and see if it still works. Then, take one of the diskettes with all your old games on ‘em and see if you can load them. Captain Comic, Space Quest, all those daggy old things. Remember them? The only story most of mine can tell me now is one that goes from beginning to end in three words: permanent fatal errors. Vinyl dies too, but not all at once. It goes slowly, just like we do. Do yourself a favour, and age gracefully with records. They’re not dead, they’re elderly, and they need your care and respect.

I suppose this whole thing’s based on a bogus choice ‘vinyl or digital’. We don’t have to choose. I’ll eventually buy myself a digital interface and start using it, in conjunction with my records. But don’t expect me to love the interface. That’s a leap I’ll never make. Can you? Do you really ‘love’ your interface? Can you cherish a hard disk? I can only speak for myself and my records, the only musical objects I keep that capture my imagination, just as they capture something of the magic of music in space and time. And that’s something that no data packet can ever do.

Sounding off is a column for free comment from readers on any aspect of DJ and club culture. If you have a burning issue you'd like to get off your chest, send your submission or proposal to info@residentadvisor.net with the subject line 'Sounding off'.

[phrex]

thank you sir phonetics - excellent quotes.
quality > quantity

nuff said.

[skimpi]

yeah, i mean im not a big vinyl head, i aint got a massive collection, i cant afford to get everything that i like on vinyl. so i just buy the ones that i am really feeling, then tunes that i like but not as much i then try to buy them digitally, but then some tunes i kinda like but not enough to buy them so i pirate them, that doesnt happen that often though. but at the moment theres a big list of digital tunes i want, but i cant really afford all of them so i might have to be a bit naughty i dunno. but like alot of people have said, i love the fact that i can hold a big thick chunk of vinyl, and put it on the turntable, and then i cant start playing it wherever i want, and then slow it down, or rewind it back, and hold it for a second. i then have to get up and make effort to change the track when its finished, and even more effort to change the record, which shows how much i love the tunes cos i dont just let itunes move to the next track. it even better when the artwork is good, or even when the disc is a different colour, or see through, or has a pattern on it. its just great having something that is there, rather than just data, it gives me a day out aswell when i go to pick some up, and gives you more of a social aspect behind it too, you have to ask someone to get it for you if you wanna listen and then you get served by someone who already has the love of music, the same as you, rather than just clicking on the download button.

if you dont love vinyl you dont love music!

[Zoobi]

wtf is wav why would i fill up my hardrive for no reason i have 192 kbps and no higher there is literally no difference in sound quality

you're joking, right?

[Raggles]

Wobbles is such a troll. he should be banned with lyons.

[wilson]

wtf is wav why would i fill up my hardrive for no reason i have 192 kbps and no higher there is literally no difference in sound quality

you're trolling, right?

Yeep.

[faultier]

dont be a fool move with the times, bare people are kidding themselves buying records still

so everyone still RELEASING on vinyl is a fool also?wasteman

richie hawtin being one of the guys who run beatport makes his opinion on the matter truly unbiased too

[robbiej]

OP:

i can sort of relate....although from more of a dj'ing perspective. i have been collecting vinyl since late 1993 ( ) and I ve been having the same debate as you for the last little while, and i finally caved got a couple of cdj's (that support mp3/wav from usb). Im happy i did. to have 2 x 1200's and 2 x 3cdjs leaves everything open to me. digital only release , cool, vinyl only release, cool too. add to that the piles of cd's ive collected over the years have suddenly become mixing fodder as well .i ve rediscovered so much music that id forgotten.

Ill never give up on vinyl. Theres a certain je ne sais quoi, to it that to me, is irreplacable by digital. In this day n age , i feel like if a label is willing to press vinyl releases, that it shows a certain commitment to the music, a belief in the song and a respect for where this music/culture came from.

for me personally vinyl>digital. for reasons others have stated more eloquently than i could. but i ve concluded that theres no point in limiting myself to vinyl. using mp3 or cd's doesnt diminish my love for vinyl . the two are not mutually exlcusive.

and for all the digital dj's out there, go get yourself a turntable, pick up a couple of records, theres nothing else quite like it.

[djbmc]

I love my vinyl, i'm going to invest in a CD deck, i've been using my mate's one and it's good to play them old tunes u missed, and to mix ur own track, to see how they stand up against professional releases but i'm still a vinyl man. I've some early, early records that have passed thru the hands of older djs like heirlooms, (old jungle, dnb and uk garage tracks that still sound fresh today) it would be a disservice to them if i never played them again. i learnt on vinyl too, so i'm more at home with the format than i am with digital djing; feeling the track, and looking at the patterns in the grooves to spot where the breakdown is. I'm not gonna lie, it's not perfect, and there are plenty of disadvantages but to me, it just feels right.

[dro524]

If money wasn't a problem my whole collection would be vinyl. But it is, so most of my collection is digital.

[rorz9992]

While I love the music and my records, I wish I hadn't wasted so much money on records.

surely if you love your records then you can't view it as money wasted, right?

Err, you messed up your quoting. I never said that

[Eplo]

traktor/serato = digital and you can still use vinyl. leave the cdjs alone.