More today than yesterday au
I fondly remember the time when, as a rather playful boy growing up in the late ‘60s, I would toss vinyl records back and forth like Frisbees in our backyard. But vinyl records then were a dime a dozen, so breaking one or two of them did not really matter because there were hundreds of replacements available in downtown music stores.
As a grown-up, I play with my prized vinyl collections with the utmost care. Audiophiles like me do not have to be reminded how this plastic “toy,” which plays back beautiful music, is revered more today than in those days when they ruled as the era’s music format.
For years, some audiophiles have been complaining about the rising cost of CDs. Curiously, though, nary a whimper is being raised about the price of a vinyl record which could be more than thrice that of a CD. Bidding more than $200 at eBay for a hard-to-find album of Joni James is easier for an audiophile to accept than to cough up P200 for a CD copy of the same album.
Better sound quality is the overwhelming reason serious music listeners prefer an LP over a CD or an MP3 recording. Audiophiles have steadfastly stood by this “Jurassic” music format even in the face of stiff competition posed by the “clean-sounding” CD since its market launch 25 years ago. Sales of LPs have more than doubled online lately. LPs have in fact re-captured overall market share, mainly due to the younger generation’s growing fascination for the LP’s sonic quality, and the greater satisfaction they get from it over that which a 99-cent MP3 offers.
Sales of vinyl albums have climbed steadily in recent years, disproving the belief that the so-called “analog renaissance” is just a fad. Throughout the month of November 2009, for instance, more than 2.1 million vinyl records had been sold; up by 35 percent in a year which represents less than one percent of album sales including CD and digital downloads, according to NielsenSoundscan. This is the highest record set for vinyls since Nielsen began tracking them in 1991.
Moreover, the fortune of the CD tumbled against the competition posed by digital downloads. Sales of CD albums which are priced much lower than LPs have dropped almost 20 percent this year, according to Nielsen, leading to the closure of big music-store chains such as Tower Records. The last I heard, HMV has pulled out of Manhattan as well.
Perhaps this is precisely why Heinz Rohrer, Thorens president and CEO, is so confident about the future of vinyl. Heinz, who was in town recently to grace the launching of the Thorens flagship turntable products, the TD 309 and the TD 550, says that his company continues to produce turntables because there remains a vibrant global market for it. To those of you who were born in the age of iPods and may be unfamiliar with turntables, a turntable is where you spin your LP records to reproduce excellent quality music.
“Nothing can come close to vinyl in reproducing good music. It is analog and the only format which can get you close enough to (feel as if) the artists (were) performing right in the comfort of your listening room,” Heinz says. Thorens turntables, which have been on the market for over a hundred years, are being sold here by Bienvenido R. Tantoco Jr.’s Tweak Studio on the 5th level of Rustan’s Makati.
Based in Switzerland, Thorens has been engineering and producing high-end audio gadgets since its founding in 1883. It produced its first motor-driven record player in 1928, and has since made different models which until today are sought-after in the revitalized analog market.
Heinz says the new TD 309 is standard-setting. Its innovative three-point-suspension guarantees ideal balance, translating into better music reproduction.
The flagship TD 550 comes equipped with a suspended chassis and the belt drive around the outer rim of the platter. This isolates the table from noise and vibration, essentially making listening “a magical experience.” Heinz adds that the tonearm’s platform is made from extremely stiff carbon fiber compound to ensure a very rigid coupling of platter and tonearm, further insulating the gadget from resonance. A resonance-free table contributes to a larger, more airy and better-defined soundstage, Heinz says.
The analog principle of recording sounds has definitely proven itself better than the much-hyped digital method. When Thomas Alva Edison recited Mary Had a Little Lamb and recorded it for posterity in 1927, he may not have known how much the world would change and benefit from his sound-reproduction device. While his inventions may have undergone modifications through the years, Edison’s concept of recording and replaying sound has remained essentially better than its 21st-century counterpart.
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For comments or questions, please e-mail me at audioglow@yahoo.com or at vphl@hotmail.com. You can also visit www.wiredstate.com or you can tweet audiofiler at www.twitter.com for quick answers to your audio concerns.
