by Moderne » 25 Mar 2017, 06:46
In many ways I think the demise of vinyl was a self-fulfilling prophecy: the quality of the vinyl pressing leading to needle jumping and the incidence of pops and clicks (already mentioned) and the quality of the sleeves (which, in later years, tended to split along the top as well as the side) led to the first CDs being greeted with open arms. I have a fair number of LPs and the quality of pressing from the mid-70s onwards was often quite poor whereas a 50s/60s LP in good condition should still sound perfect. I would far rather have an LP than a CD because of the impressiveness of the sleeve: the gatefold Hipgnosis-designed LP sleeves from the early '70s were pieces of art - there's no comparison with a little CD with its nasty case which cracks and gets covered by scratches.
New LPs with their thick, gatefold sleeves and 180g vinyl are beautiful looking things - they can also be very expensive! The best thing about CDs is the fact you can programme them, so with an album like Double Fantasy by John Lennon and Yoko Ono you can set it to miss out all the Yoko tracks, instead of having to lift the needle over them on an LP!
Cassettes - the ability to make compilation tapes (or 'mixtapes' as people seem retrospectively to call them) was great but the pre-recorded ones never seemed to be as good quality as your TDK AD-90s (anorak, nurse!) and many of the official record company cassettes which I bought would sooner or later start slipping or get stuck inside the carrier mechanism of the player - necessitating hours of careful unravelling, spooling etc. Later ones seemed better (opposite of LPs) and my cassette of XXV still sounds good! 8-track cartridges always seemed pretty good - whatever happened to them!
Just my two penn'orth...