Your Story With Vinyl (And Ripping More Specifically)

[Trance4m8tor]

Guys,

This thread is intended for vinyl rippers and others wax nerds. I'd be interested as to know your ripping story with this format. How have gotten into vinyl in the first place? What is your opinion about it? Is it any better than digital format to you? Would you say it's worth the purchase? Any other ideas are more than welcome!

 

[IZE]

digital formats purchased are really a hit or miss, sometimes its perfect DAT quality, other times the artists/labels themselves either don't know about it or deliberately put up lossy encodes thats pirated from the internet thinking the consumers are none the wiser without proper tools to identify the fakes.
Another thing purchased digital format has is about remasters, its really bad at times and unnecessary imo

You can never trust online stores anymore even if the artists put it up themselves. P2P copies ironically are sometimes superior as they have rip info, spreadsheets or scans of what they share and more importantly burned by the system they once trust that now doesnt care about quality only profits

 

[Trance4m8tor]

Exact truth mate! I otherwise think vinyl has the perfect untouched masterfiles albeit analogous. Either way both are awesome formats in their own categories. Digital I thought though has always been the fifth wheel of the wagon with higher proft margins for the stores. CD is the most balanced one and allows for cheap and reliable copies. I would say I hate what the late age of electronic has made of the use of CD-R, first used as pomo's then hijacked for horrendous profit margins on Discogs. This is why I'm getting to the point where I started this thread : vinyl! The cheapest yet most effective way of having music. At first a way to introduce EDM to the scene and a DJ's thing to promote and play music now has turned into a niche market. For sure records take years of practice and dedication before being even known about but at the end it easily gathers all of the best advantages one can think of : reliable, full masterfiles pressed straight from the artist and infinte personalisation !

 

[Juna]

other times the artists/labels themselves either don't know about it or deliberately put up lossy encodes thats pirated from the internet thinking the consumers are none the wiser without proper tools to identify the fakes.

What do you mean by this? Fakes?

 

[Trance4m8tor]

What do you mean by this? Fakes?

He meant lossy scene releases that stem from dark groups turned into fake lossless files and used intentionally by labels to make profit on sites such as Beatport which they in turn have no control on or even worse know about in the first place.

 

[IZE]

He meant lossy scene releases that stem from dark groups turned into fake lossless files and used intentionally by labels to make profit on sites such as Beatport which they in turn have no control on or even worse know about in the first place.

Yes. You may not hear any difference on your headphones or basic speakers, but on a good stereo system, you can immediately tell the bass, hi hats are off

This is from Merch from Activator. Very dissapointed with them..
here we have Q-Dance label from Beatport

 

[Trance4m8tor]

Yep mate each his own I guess. But it takes years to train the ear. I mean those people building collections out of lossy files.... And saying that there doesn't exist a difference...

 

[Trance4m8tor]

Typically most records of the late age (2004 and after) were pressed using 16/44 masters made digitally. Yet some labels before 2002 used studio 24/192 masters and it feels like there IS a difference with a lot more precision in the treble.

 

[IZE]

Typically most records of the late age (2004 and after) were pressed using 16/44 masters made digitally. Yet some labels before 2002 used studio 24/192 masters and it feels like there IS a difference with a lot more precision in the treble.

yea the high hats and snare drums are a big give away

 

[Trance4m8tor]

Mate you will know what I feel if you listened to those old Zazoo/Red & Raw stuff or most of Graeme Laverty classics works. Dynamic range on those is crazy as heck.

 

[Juna]

Very interesting guys, I did not know all this. But still I need more clarity sorry english is not very high standard of reading for me yet. Let me try and understand. So 'dark groups' (who. example?) take something medium or low quality like an mp3 and then fake it to look like a lossless file? Labels then buy (or just take) these fakes to upload on their bandcamp or beatport to sell. This more cost effective because they dont have the make the Flac file themselves? Why cant they just export lossless their own way from the artist DAW? Why turn to fake when they can make their own real one? What is to gain for the dark groups too? Thanks for you responses.

 

[Trance4m8tor]

English isn't my mother tongue either mate so no issues there.

 

[Trance4m8tor]

You have unveiled pretty relevant points that I will try and go further into detail.

 

[Hensmon]

You have unveiled pretty relevant points that I will try and go further into detail.

Also curious at your response, this is news to me.

 

[IZE]

Very interesting guys, I did not know all this. But still I need more clarity sorry english is not very high standard of reading for me yet. Let me try and understand. So 'dark groups' (who. example?) take something medium or low quality like an mp3 and then fake it to look like a lossless file? Labels then buy (or just take) these fakes to upload on their bandcamp or beatport to sell. This more cost effective because they dont have the make the Flac file themselves? Why cant they just export lossless their own way from the artist DAW? Why turn to fake when they can make their own real one? What is to gain for the dark groups too? Thanks for you responses.

Its not really just electronic music, give a good google search its really a creeping problem in the music industry. Its up to labels/artists, most of the time those guys would say that they didn't know its a mp3 encode and some would defend their actions or simply just ignore you but im really starting to believe they are feigning ignorance. What i suspect is they probably lost the DAW over the years and kept lossy encodes of those as they are like so many times smaller then what their DAW are as digital storage back then are very expensive and limited and master copies can go up to a a couple hundred megabytes.

The big sellers like beatport/juno are not excused either, they probably knew the extend of the problem (thus the quick refunds)

 

[Trance4m8tor]

What i suspect is they probably lost the DAW over the years and kept lossy encodes of those as they are like so many times smaller then what their DAW are as digital storage back then are very expensive and limited and master copies can go up to a a couple hundred megabytes.

Indeed! Just like what Combined Forces kinda forced (unintended pun...) the artists into sending them 32 kHz masterfiles back then (hence the cut above 16KhZ on most of their releases) as storage space back then was so limited as @IZE said. Digraceful practices when so many underground labels tried and keep the full (studio) masters.

@Juna if you want to know what rips on web releases mean, check this : Limbo artists & music download - Beatport ...shame on you Kiltie...

 

[Juna]

OK I think this is making more sense to me now. The labels are pushing old tracks as the fakes as they have lost or not have access to the original DAW or export. Things like storage space really limited them back in the day so the fakes were appealing in place. That is correct?

So I would assume new tracks don't have this issue then? What software can I use to test my lossless?

 

[Trance4m8tor]

Defo. And the fact that they're making easy profit on some old dusty records they rip and keeping the old masterfiles to themselves (which I'm sure are avaialable somewhere for more than 99.99% of the oldies) won't stop them anytime soon. I guess this is the point of this thread. Vinyl at least has the best possible version of the music, because it's sound in its purest form and the most supreme way to keep the original masters within reach not to mention to keep the records for real. For sure most of the people will never have the patience to rip it properly but once you know how to it becomes the ultimate format. And it's pretty easier as one thinks...just takes what most people won't want to take into account : time!