Sony Will Start Pressing Vinyl Records after 28-Year Hiatus

Megalith

Megalith

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Sony last pressed a vinyl record back in 1989, but the company is getting back into that business with a new facility in Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture. Interest in the classic format has returned thanks to nostalgic seniors and younger aficionados: global revenue for vinyl records and related accessories (e.g. turntables) will reach $1 billion this year.

Sony will resume pressing vinyl records for the first time in nearly three decades, looking to keep up with demand from not only nostalgic seniors, but also younger aficionados. Production will resume by March 2018 at a plant in Japan's Shizuoka Prefecture run by a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment (Japan). Sony stopped making vinyl records in-house domestically in 1989 after the advent of CDs, which the company co-developed and began selling in 1982.
 
Pretty sure this will ruin it for everyone.
 
I think this is a good thing. There are differences in sound between a vinyl record and a digital reproduction. It's hard to quantify, but really, I like both. I love the romantic charm of putting on a record for my wife, and the convenience of carrying around thousands of songs on a digital storage medium, and being able to play something I'm in the mood for when I'm away from home.

I think that there's room for both.
 
An acquaintance of mine asked "Why? The source is in almost 100% of the cases high quality digital content anyway.". The only benefit (except nostalgia) I could think of would be that it would move the DAC in the chain and allow for a quality controlled high performance component. However that would still leave you with the quality of the pickup and not sure that would be any cost/quality benefit...
 
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There is a certain charm to spinning up a record. Back in the day, getting a new album was an event, swapping with friends after you were done with it, etc. Didn't have 5 billion albums available in the palm of your hand, and it was almost better that way somehow.

Not really though. Fuck vinyl.
 
I think [H] will need to test some record players. GPU's, CPU's, motherboards, etc, whats the difference. It's all tech! :)
Will they make a portable one too?
 
anubis44 said:
I think this is a good thing. There are differences in sound between a vinyl record and a digital reproduction. It's hard to quantify, but really, I like both. I love the romantic charm of putting on a record for my wife, and the convenience of carrying around thousands of songs on a digital storage medium, and being able to play something I'm in the mood for when I'm away from home.

I think that there's room for both.
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It's been debated for a long time, there are pros and cons. Digital is quite good, analog has more "samples" but does have some noise problems, it's a trade off. An LP sourced from analog tape will sound better than digital no doubt. In any event people like vinyl and I think it's here for a while until something else new and shiny gets people's attention. The larger art and colored vinyl seem to be in high demand at the moment.
 
I have thought recently of firing up my old technics turntable probably would need a new magnetic pickup and my Sony AV reciever has no magnetic preamp. Anyone know where to get a good preamp? PS turntable hasn't been used in 20 years......
 
I have already done the record thing, I never want to do it again. I wonder if we can mob mentality the resurrection of CED movies? :p
 
zalazin said:
I have thought recently of firing up my old technics turntable probably would need a new magnetic pickup and my Sony AV reciever has no magnetic preamp. Anyone know where to get a good preamp? PS turntable hasn't been used in 20 years......
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Soundstage direct is good. Or search on google and amazon. Alternatively, get an amp that has phono input. Lots of options out there, I hope you find a good fit for you.
 
SmokeRngs said:
But how is Sony going to put a rootkit onto a vinyl record???
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It will worm through your wall outlets ;-) Funny you say that, I sent them a nasty email when they were doing that on CDs. They didn't respond. What made me mad is it highjacked your media player and played a wma compressed version of the CD. Thanks for treating your honest customers so well.
 
What is vinyl and what is this? Is this CD stuff? Also get off my millennial lawn.
 
I buy vinyl all the time. But they are all old, like 50's to the eighties.

I think I own two that are from current artists.
 
This is craziness... I have played records, carts, cd's, and of course moved to hard drive/ssd automation in radio. It is amazing what you can sell someone these days. Beyond the crazy price of records, they are playing them on junk 200+ dollar turntables with cheap cartridges sold in these stores, destroying their precious $30 records on each play.

At least grab a used SL1200 and a great cartridge if you do this.

Digital revolutionized my personal and work life. I am not going backwards. Like fidget spinners & slime, this too shall pass.
 
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cditty said:
This is craziness... I have played records, carts, cd's, and of course moved to hard drive/ssd automation in radio. It is amazing what you can sell someone these days. Beyond the crazy price of records, they are playing them on junk 200+ dollar turntables with cheap cartridges sold in these stores, destroying their precious $30 records on each play.

At least grab a used SL1200 and a great cartridge if you do this.

Digital revolutionized my personal and work life. I am not going backwards. Like fidget spinners & slime, this too shall pass.
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This. Nostalgia of records and physical touch and sound is a thing some appreciate and I can understand that. I grew up with them too. That said, after growing up with records, reel to reel, tapes, Zip disks, floppy disks, SACDs, Laser disks, CDs and mini discs DVDs and Blu-Ray, I'm very wary of any physical media, how pathetically fragile and short lived it is. My physical media today comes in the form of an 8tb external HDD for leaching and spreading media. Which is also fragile but has redundant backups...

That said with records, wow, flutter, hiss/noise, degradation, wear, ease of selection and size to store are all factors that are strikes against records for me. Digital is undoubtedly the superior archival format, it has better quality as the bitrate is theoretically infinite and even when it's comparable to record it is still superior from a reproduction POV. Records are limited at a physical level to the fidelity possible.

It's like valve amps. I love them too but they have more distortion, in different octaves. Some prefer this. You can get around it with Class A biased or up to a certain level with high end transistor amps. But of course they don't have the same 'tone' as a tube. Hearing a live guitar through a super high end tube amp (e.g.a 200W Mesa valve head) is nothing short of magic.
That said we have stuff like AxeEffect(sp) and similar. These pro boxes can emulate an amp to the point where you (at a pro level) will not tell the difference in 99% of cases. I wonder if we can't simply do he same for records :p (runs off before the record aficionados get the pitch forks out)

Each has its place, record, tube, digital alike.

But yes it seems mostly new-wave hifi hipsters getting into it for trends.
 
High quality audio storage combined with down sampled digital audio streaming....
 
cditty said:
At least grab a used SL1200 and a great cartridge if you do this.
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Bearing in mind that the SL1200 was classed as more of a DJ's turntable as opposed to a high end device, the price of a high end turntable by far exceeded that of an SL1200 in the day. Some of the direct drive units today for around $500.00 are actually quite nice with built in preamps suitable for modern receivers with no phono input. Comparable to a 30yo SL1200 with the same cartridge.
 
BulletDust said:
Bearing in mind that the SL1200 was classed as more of a DJ's turntable as opposed to a high end device, the price of a high end turntable by far exceeded that of an SL1200 in the day. Some of the direct drive units today for around $500.00 are actually quite nice with built in preamps suitable for modern receivers with no phono input. Comparable to a 30yo SL1200 with the same cartridge.
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Mind you that I am a DJ, so I have a bias to that machine. It's torque was revolutionary and cartridge production has never stopped. Many of my mixers still use the vinyl time sync Serato records to interface with their digital libraries for the tactile feel. A modern cartridge in a used 1200 with properly adjusted weight & anti skating is still a strong machine to be matched. Plus it's rubber bottom makes it the most feedback (from bass) resistant turntable ever.

Oh, the yards I mowed to buy the first ones. Great memories. I still like my current instant access digital setup better. :)

In fact, one of my projects is to at some point package and sell all the rare 12" remixes and other albums I have.
 
cditty said:
Mind you that I am a DJ, so I have a bias to that machine. It's torque was revolutionary and cartridge production has never stopped. Many of my mixers still use the vinyl time sync Serato records to interface with their digital libraries for the tactile feel. A modern cartridge in a used 1200 with properly adjusted weight & anti skating is still a strong machine to be matched. Plus it's rubber bottom makes it the most feedback (from bass) resistant turntable ever.

Oh, the yards I mowed to buy the first ones. Great memories. I still like my current instant access digital setup better. :)

In fact, one of my projects is to at some point package and sell all the rare 12" remixes and other albums I have.
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I remember having an SL1300 in the day, that was a nice turntable. No way I could justify true high end. :)
 
cditty said:
This is craziness... I have played records, carts, cd's, and of course moved to hard drive/ssd automation in radio. It is amazing what you can sell someone these days. Beyond the crazy price of records, they are playing them on junk 200+ dollar turntables with cheap cartridges sold in these stores, destroying their precious $30 records on each play.

At least grab a used SL1200 and a great cartridge if you do this.

Digital revolutionized my personal and work life. I am not going backwards. Like fidget spinners & slime, this too shall pass.
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All I can say is try to educate them. If they destroy it with poor choices for playback it's on them. Maybe the rest of us that understand it will have some real money since we know how to clean, setup and take care of our records. I have many records that are from the 70's, I bought them used, played them hundreds of times, they still sound great. They have been properly cared for. If I just threw them on any old table and cartridge and didn't clean before playing, they would be a scratchy mess.
 
triwolf said:
It's been debated for a long time, there are pros and cons. Digital is quite good, analog has more "samples" but does have some noise problems, it's a trade off. An LP sourced from analog tape will sound better than digital no doubt. In any event people like vinyl and I think it's here for a while until something else new and shiny gets people's attention. The larger art and colored vinyl seem to be in high demand at the moment.
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Analog doesn't have jack. LPs are quite literally worse in every regard compared to Redbook audio. Even on a purely theoretical basis (infinitely hard record, infinite torque/hp rotor, zero weight perfectly dampened heads, etc), vinyl has worse audio reproduction than Redbook audio and real world vinyl isn't anywhere close to theoretical vinyl. Realistic limitations of vinyl also significantly reduce the frequency response and dynamic range of vinyl, esp in the higher frequency ranges. Not to mention, actual quality equipment for vinyl playback is insanely expensive and boutique. The gear realistically available to people for playback is generally horrid.

The only analog medium that comes anywhere close to Redbook audio is large format reel to reel tape that is simply impractical anywhere outside of a recording studio.
 
aaronspink said:
Analog doesn't have jack. LPs are quite literally worse in every regard compared to Redbook audio. Even on a purely theoretical basis (infinitely hard record, infinite torque/hp rotor, zero weight perfectly dampened heads, etc), vinyl has worse audio reproduction than Redbook audio and real world vinyl isn't anywhere close to theoretical vinyl. Realistic limitations of vinyl also significantly reduce the frequency response and dynamic range of vinyl, esp in the higher frequency ranges. Not to mention, actual quality equipment for vinyl playback is insanely expensive and boutique. The gear realistically available to people for playback is generally horrid.

The only analog medium that comes anywhere close to Redbook audio is large format reel to reel tape that is simply impractical anywhere outside of a recording studio.
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This... There might have been an argument forever the hell ago when the SOURCES were analog, but the chain is as digital as you can get these days... Making any difference in sound largely the same thing as distortion, or a loss of S:N.
 
aaronspink said:
Analog doesn't have jack. LPs are quite literally worse in every regard compared to Redbook audio. Realistic limitations of vinyl also significantly reduce the frequency response and dynamic range of vinyl, esp in the higher frequency ranges. Not to mention, actual quality equipment for vinyl playback is insanely expensive and boutique. The gear realistically available to people for playback is generally horrid.

The only analog medium that comes anywhere close to Redbook audio is large format reel to reel tape that is simply impractical anywhere outside of a recording studio.
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I get your position. However your last statement says a lot. Redbook audio is the digital framework for transfering analog to digital. At the time redbook was put together, every audio reproduction was done from tape. With the exceptions of the rare direct to vinyl(disc) recordings (wonder how much they are worth today, gotta google it). When the reel to reel masters were etched into vinyl a little was lost. To digital, a little is lost. The debate is about if the digitization @ 44.1 khz loss is better than the loss at 15 or 30 ips(inches per second) being placed on a 33 1/3 rpm album. There is minor loss going from analog to analog and you dont insert new artifacts that werent there in the first place. Some can hear the artifacts which is why sacd's and supersampling have come out.

If sacds are closer to a tape master then redbook isnt the final chapter. 16bit redbook digital has been surpassed by higher rate digital in the whole production chain with the exception of the microphone, which is still analog. I dont think that I would feel the same way comparing todays audio mastering to vinyl. Redbook is a fair discussion though. Its not as clear because a CD is not a 100% error free copy of the original. Vinyl is truer to it {IMHO}, but isnt as durable. A cd is a lossy format. Vinyl is the first lossless format.

The debate goes on......
 
Khahhblaab said:
I get your position. However your last statement says a lot. Redbook audio is the digital framework for transfering analog to digital. At the time redbook was put together, every audio reproduction was done from tape. With the exceptions of the rare direct to vinyl(disc) recordings (wonder how much they are worth today, gotta google it). When the reel to reel masters were etched into vinyl a little was lost. To digital, a little is lost. The debate is about if the digitization @ 44.1 khz loss is better than the loss at 15 or 30 ips(inches per second) being placed on a 33 1/3 rpm album. There is minor loss going from analog to analog and you dont insert new artifacts that werent there in the first place. Some can hear the artifacts which is why sacd's and supersampling have come out.

If sacds are closer to a tape master then redbook isnt the final chapter. 16bit redbook digital has been surpassed by higher rate digital in the whole production chain with the exception of the microphone, which is still analog. I dont think that I would feel the same way comparing todays audio mastering to vinyl. Redbook is a fair discussion though. Its not as clear because a CD is not a 100% error free copy of the original. Vinyl is truer to it {IMHO}, but isnt as durable. A cd is a lossy format. Vinyl is the first lossless format.

The debate goes on......
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No there isn't debate, not for anyone who understands the physics and science of audio recordings. Vinyl literally has worse sound reproduction than redbook audio. And you certainly do insert artifacts going from analog to analog, this is true even for copying a 2" master to another 2" master with the best reel to reel that has been or ever could be made. SACD and BR-A is basically snake oil as well. There is a point in recording/mixing to say 24/96-192 due to mixing issues, but once mixed/mastered, 16/44 is no different than 24/192 on any audio equipment available in the world, blind testing can't tell the difference (unless you are literally making your recordings for animals like dogs).

But literally vinyl is always a downgrade compared to redbook for distribution as vinyl strictly has worse frequency response and dynamic range. Now what you can argue is that CD mastering can be worse than vinyl mastering (aka The Loudness Wars), but CD will always give a better representation of a given master than vinyl.

Also fyi, redbook audio is the standard for CD audio. It isn't a framework for transferring anything. It is literally the specification for the audio on the disk (bit rate, sample rate, encoding, ECC, etc).
 
Arcygenical said:
This... There might have been an argument forever the hell ago when the SOURCES were analog, but the chain is as digital as you can get these days... Making any difference in sound largely the same thing as distortion, or a loss of S:N.
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Not even when the sources were analog. Redbook audio has same/better SnR, dynamic range and frequency response as 2" reel. The only thing that 2" reel potentially has on Redbook is frequency range above 22KHz. And I say potentially, because most ,even before CDs filtered, out anything beyond 22 KHz (and generally even lower), as it was generally artifacts and noise. If you really wanted to record audio beyond 22KHz, you pretty much needed rather specialized equipment that also recorded at much higher speeds(tape IPS) to reach the required frequency response.
 
haven't Googled yet, but I would not be surprised if vinyl has a significantly longer lifetime than digital recorded standalone media forms.
 
I collect LP's for the same reason old men build and collect train sets. Its just something that interest me, plus getting a first pressing from 30 years ago and seeing all the artwork on the cover is like a time capsule to me. I am by no means a hipster, i just like music and the history behind genres and bands. I have thousands upon thousands of mp3's on my pc, but its just not the same as owning physical media. And CD's are lame as fuck.
 
otherweeb said:
haven't Googled yet, but I would not be surprised if vinyl has a significantly longer lifetime than digital recorded standalone media forms.
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Probably, the beauty of digital is it can change forms easily. For archival use vinyl can be decent but still requires some care including periodic rotation to ensure/minimize out of roundness issues (environmental controls for archival media are of course obvious and universal). For long term archival purposes, we really haven't come up with anything better than vinyl yet. It can last for hundreds of years and has generally simple playback requirements. So if you want to archive audio that could potentially last through a civilization collapse, vinyl is probably the right right choice regardless of its fidelity limitations.
 
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