I bought a stereo system specifically to play what's left of my old vinyl collection, plus what ever new vinyl records I buy, because vinyl roared back into people's consciousness sometime earlier this century. In trying to replace some of the records I desperately sold to record stores for cigarette money in the nineties, I found that some of the reissues don't cut it. My reissue copy of Neil Young's Live Rust seems to suffer from a bad master recording. Either that or a bad pressing. Some of the record plays fine, but on the first side a lot of static comes forth during the acoustic performances.
I noticed static on the reissue of the Talking Head's Remain In Light, too. My stereo plays other reissues fine, such as the two Stevie Wonder reissues I have, Innervisions, and Songs In The Key of Life. I guess the issues with the Neil Young and Talking Head's records have to do with bad masters or bad pressings. I can't tell, and that's just the problem with vinyl; very temperamental. Those are major label reissues. The Bad Brains self-released reissue, forget about it. The refund period expired on my receipt from the record store, and I don't even want to listen to it all the way through. I haven't even touched on the problems with buying used vinyl, such as pops, skips, and worn out grooves.
The CD section at Half-Priced Books doesn't have a lot of people combing over it when I go in there to shop, and I can usually find some things I like for about six or seven bucks. CD's can have defects, but they seem a lot less common than defects found on either new or used vinyl. The only one I've ever encountered with CD's is skips, unless I get a scratched up copy of someone else disc I'm borrowing. For music to buy, there's the allure of flawless digital download copies, but there's no artwork or liner notes with those.
I noticed static on the reissue of the Talking Head's Remain In Light, too. My stereo plays other reissues fine, such as the two Stevie Wonder reissues I have, Innervisions, and Songs In The Key of Life. I guess the issues with the Neil Young and Talking Head's records have to do with bad masters or bad pressings. I can't tell, and that's just the problem with vinyl; very temperamental. Those are major label reissues. The Bad Brains self-released reissue, forget about it. The refund period expired on my receipt from the record store, and I don't even want to listen to it all the way through. I haven't even touched on the problems with buying used vinyl, such as pops, skips, and worn out grooves.
The CD section at Half-Priced Books doesn't have a lot of people combing over it when I go in there to shop, and I can usually find some things I like for about six or seven bucks. CD's can have defects, but they seem a lot less common than defects found on either new or used vinyl. The only one I've ever encountered with CD's is skips, unless I get a scratched up copy of someone else disc I'm borrowing. For music to buy, there's the allure of flawless digital download copies, but there's no artwork or liner notes with those.
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