Why Do You Still Have Vinyl if You Don't Play it?


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I own 3,000 plus lp's that I just don't play anymore. I told my 14 year-old son that he can have them when he starts college. He said no thanks, he said that he can carry around that much music in his back pocket in his iPod. I tried to explain to him that if he played LP's in college, he'd easily be one of the coolest students on campus. He told me to "get real" and thanks, but no thanks. I think I just may have to go through the task of grading each LP and selling them off. I've tried to convince myself that I will one day play them. I was just fooling myself. For the last fifteen years, I play one or two LP's a year just for the hell of it. I do like looking at them in their Ikea racks and marvel how I assembled my collection over nearly 40 years. I do like it when visitors comment on them and look through them. Cd's killed my vinyl and now my Squeezebox is finally going to bury it.

How many of you still have a sizeable vinyl collection that you don't play, but refuse to let go of?

I think it's time for me to let go.
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mitch4t
I feel I don't really have the authority to say this, but it's my opinion, none the less...

Ditch it. The only regrets you may have - at least at this point, after you've pretty much come to your own conclusion - might be the sentimental value of any of the recordings. If that's not present, then move on.

I found myself agonizing over the whole damned process, and found that I spent more time fiddling with things than just listening to the music.

The Squeezebox + a decent DAC changed everything, at least for me.

Cheers,
Mark
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Mark, you may have something there. I remember when the first iMac came out, it didn't have a floppy drive. It was the first computer to omit a floppy drive. Well, that was just unheard of. The next few desktops that I owned, I made sure that they were configured with a floppy drive. Never mind that no one was using floppy disks any longer....I wanted one on my machine "just in case". I kept getting floppy drives on my machines until I was told "um, sir, we don't do that anymore". Same thing with a land line in my home. Several years ago a co-worker mentioned that he had gotten rid of his land line and was using his cell phone as his only telephone. That was blasphemy! How can you not have a phone in your home? I woke up several years later and noticed that I rarely used my home phone because everyone in the house had their own cell phone. I also looked at how AT&T was socking it to me every month for the bill for the land line that I never used. I got rid of my land line and have never missed it. In hindsight, I should have dropped the land line years ago.
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Let me add that I have a relatively large collection of 78's dating from the early oughts (or is it aughts?). These I will *not* be getting rid of, if not solely for historical reasons. There's something about these discs and the music on them that will always fascinate me... And they're all perfectly flat! Something that just can't seem to be mastered, even in 2011. I guess that's good ol' shallac for ya.

Cheers,
Mark
Ballywho,

I have some old 78's also that I recorded to CD and then ripped to music server. I bought an old Admiral ceramic cart record player that plays 78's for $10 at a yard sale. Then I used my Denon recorder to burn to CD. Then I ripped to music server like any other CD.

The recordings are pretty good. The sound of the 78s comes through, flaws and all, but the sound is similar to what I've heard recently when a dealer played me several old 78s on several restored Victolas, minus perhaps some of the artificial horn speaker artifacts that gives an actual Victrola an authentically appealing touch of warmth.

These are a lot of fun and very enjoyable to listen to at a touch of a button off the music server! A nice mix of teh old and new!
I have plans to do that very thing. I just haven't gotten around to it. Having those tunes on hand like all the other music in the house will be real nice, not to mention the peace of mind knowing that it's *finally* been archived after 100 years!