The cost of LP's and CD's - an observation

In regard to price; that "see-saw" thing has little to do with the cost of production, but the simple law of supply and demand; all of a sudden records are in demand. When CD's came out they were overpriced because CD's were in demand; capitalists got to make money.

When I went to college we had records and cassette tapes. Records were a problem in dorm rooms. My roommate had a B&O turntable with its own suspension but it was still not enough for the bouncy floors in our 70 year old dorm rooms. We even suspended it from the ceiling using webbing. It worked in terms of isolation but it swung around in a gentle circle which was disconcerting.

So we waited until we could be still and quiet and dubbed the vinyl onto cassette tape. We had a nice Nakamichi tape deck (but not the Dragon). We obsessed over which "metallic" tape to buy and then we obsessed about the settings on the tape deck even though we had very little idea what we were doing.

The end result was decent cassette tape recordings.

When CDs came out and became affordable that’s all I wanted and even though no longer in a dorm room, I had no desire to go back to vinyl and or cassette tapes.

@orpheus10 "All the people I knew were impressed..."   Possibly because you hung with other people who cared about the sound? Most of the people I knew during the cd-days of the 90's didn't care. I liked them because they were easier than tapes AND because they didn't have that tape hiss and muffle, but that was a baseline preference.

I don't know what generation you are, but most of my Gen X'ers who came of age with cd's liked them for their mechanical benefits, like convenience and that they wouldn't get eaten or tangled. Yes, there was some acknowledgment of their superior sound quality, but as most of us didn't have amazing systems, that was secondary.

n80, I've been around awhile, I was at the Dead Sea when it died, and I was at the Red Sea when they dyed it Red. CD's are the best thing to come along since.......you name it.

Having said that I'm currently into "analog", but my cartridge costs as much as my CD player, plus you need a TT, plus phono Pre, plus expensive NOS tubes, and we ain't even got into the high price records to hear some music. And if you don't have all that stuff set up perfectly, you still ain't got squat.


Don't let nobody BS you, unless you come into a lot of loose change, you keep on doing watcha doing because I still do what you're doing.

For those who are claiming analog sounds better; yes it does, but at a much higher price.