HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

I have something of a "vinyl habit" and I am becoming more and more of a vinyl geek with every passing month. Record Store Day (RSD) drop 1 was last Saturday and there were a number of LPs I fancied until I saw the price. Everything I was interested in felt overpriced to me. Clearly value for money is subjective but when the record companies are asking for between £10 & £18 for a single and £25 to £40 for an LP I feel they are taking the piss. Why do I say that, well they have already paid for everything in the process apart from the pressing and distribution. Personally I am not in the least bit bothered what colour the LP is or whether there's X number being made available. What I am bothered about is the sound quality. With this in mind I will ignore RSD drop 2 and continue to focus on Discogs and other sources for my vinyl.

All part of the the 'fun' in owning a tt nowadays: Not only that, I don't think they seem to care how it's produced, can often come with more 'pop and clicks' than a a well used old LP: I haven't purchased many, about 5 in the last couple of years, not one in the last year, and none are what you'd call immaculate

I have never bought a record in rsd.

Don't buy that many from discogs , genesis live long and shorts and Kate Bush sensual world in past 12 months ,because they were considerably cheaper than eBay .

And what is it with the price of Richard Hawley vinyl of historic lps

I confess I have idea why people are playing so much right now, I have very good quality LPs that I have bought of ebay in the past 24 months for £6/7/8 that are now £20 to £30. Because so much of the current vinyl output is to my ears rubbish I have started to focus on the people mixing & mastering the output. Tom Walker is a good example of this. I like what he does, I have seen him live twice however his LP is flat, compressed to hell and will join a lot of others like Amy Winehouse on ebay when I finally get round to clearing out the duff recordings.
By way of contrast irrespective of whether you like Simply Red or the Style Council you should try the LPs than Arun Chakraverty was involved with, in this case Picture Book & Cafe Bleu. Everyone who has listened to them on my system has been completely wowed by clarity and presence of the music.

Latterly I've found that most 'sales' are nothing of the sort, particularly anything internet related. I look at the offerings available on RSD, but unless it's something of real interest I very rarely bite as most of them seem to be repackaging's of old output. I mean how many reissues of Kiss LP's do you need? (0?).

Still if it helps keeps record shops, companies and artists solvent then more power to it.

The original premise of RSD is a fine one, its simply become a victim of its own success and now I feel record company greed is creeping in

nilsatisnisioptimum wrote: ↑Fri Jun 18, 2021 12:59 pm The original premise of RSD is a fine one, its simply become a victim of its own success and now I feel record company greed is creeping in

To my mind, that sums up the situation in one sentence.

I try to avoid new pressing because (1) the price is far too high and (2) the thing that really annoys me is that the covers on a lot of reissues look like they have been scanned. Record covers from years ago look great to me - reissues look cheap and nasty. Still, the music business will always try to screw the punters for as much as possible. Remember that they made a lot of money when cd was at its most popular.

In an interesting turn of events I have just bought Bernard Butler's wonderful People on the move LP which was a recent RSD drop 1 release. eBay has a very large amount of the RSD releases listed where I presume the majority of the sellers are seeking to make a quick quid or two. I put 3 of Bernards LPs on my watch list and out of the blue late last night one of the sellers made me an offer to buy it for £5 less than recent shop price. The LP is brand new and sealed and I am looking forward to giving it a spin. I suspect a lot of the ebay RSD sellers might get their fingers slightly burnt