Record collecting versus hoarding

Dust & Grooves neglected to contact me… their loss. Though I do not live in a tent in my back yard (yet), and I am having fun. So, how many records do I own? Many, my listening room walls are lined with them. And could not care less what other folks may define that as, or what their logic of collecting should look like. I imagine though, I would consider someone like me a collector. I would call myself a vinylphile. My collection started with a very few select jazz records that were in my dad’s collection. Possessing a library of sorts is a wonderful pass time and I feel so grateful and fortunate to have what I doing . In it, there are a number of records waiting for a rainy day, to be pulled down and enjoyed as a (new) listen, at our leisure. I love to compare pressings of favored recordings and most of all, sharing these performances is the best! I also sell and trade which is rewarding. Once read in an audio magazine, perhaps Audio, a comment that suggested that if you didn’t have invested 10x in media what you have invested in your kit, you are not a music lover but, a gearhead. I have always felt that that had some validity to it and showed where your priorities were. Mine are with the music over constant gear acquisitions and tweaking.

Happy Listening

I guess @mijostyn goes against @mitchagain’s  theory of big collections being owned by lo-fi systems…..

Define "big collection".

It was just the higher the hi-fi, the smaller the collection. Kind of a predictive theory. The extreme is one stereo dealer I know complaining that the crazy audiophiles that keep him in business only want to play Brubeck’s Time Out and see which wire sounded better. That’s the extreme.

It kind of makes sense in that the larger collections were built in most cases by acquiring other collections where  the acquirer has no control over the SQ of each record. Audiophiles would not typically be happy with that.

Spreadsheet?  I don' need no stinkin' spreadsheet.  It's all in my head.  I have three record storage areas on the first floor of our house and 3-4 more racks in the basement.  In each location, LPs are arranged by alphabetical order according to musician, if jazz or R&B instrumental, or according to vocalist, if jazz or R&B vocal, or according to composer, if classical, or according to movie title, if movie soundtrack.  But in my head is the idea of where in what cabinet or shelf on which floor of the house, to look for a particular LP.  Making a spreadsheet would take much too much time.  Soko, you must be particularly anal (the opposite of a hoarder) if you both keep a spreadsheet AND bother to sell LPs not in your regular rotation.  That's perfectly OK by me, but you should accord the same tolerance to collectors or hoarders who hang on to thousands of LPs, if it makes them happy.  For me, I can say it does.