Which recordings are better on a record?

[72gmc]

It looks like I'm lucky enough to inherit a turntable, which is going to put me back in the record game after years away.

I'm a child of the 70s and 80s and my tastes to date largely revolve around rock, pop, folk/americana, jazz, and a bit of classical. And classic comedy albums, and whichever genre you assign to Steely Dan.

Which recordings do you consider "better on a record" than other formats, for reasons of sound quality or track order or other? Feel free to go outside of my stated tastes for a great album.

[j44ke]

Yo Yo Ma's Bach Six Suites, 1983 recording

[thollandpe]

I had a pal that loved to debate analog vs. digital for playing music. He bought me a copy of Sade’s Diamond Life after one go around.

Ingénue By k.d. lang is another great example of a phenomenal voice (on a phenomenally engineered album) that can come alive as you listen.

Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind by Linda Ronstadt to round out the genre.

[robin3mj]

Roberta Flack’s Quiet Fire
Duane Allman Anthology
Linda Ronstadt Heart Like a Wheel
Anything by Scratch Perry/Upsetters

[Tom]

Many many many years ago as digital recordings started I had the acquaintance of a musician who played French horn professionally and at that time he said digital simply didn't recreate the nuances of the tone he could hear. I don't know how much it has improved but I bought an arrangers keyboard to learn piano on and it recreates the sympathetic harmonies when you strike one key and on a real piano when you let off you can hear others vibrating. My teacher thinks that's way cool and in school his professors would be frustrated because he learned everything by ear.

[72gmc]

Thanks for the suggestions so far. Records are available with the turntable, of course, but my tolerance for Montovani is limited …

[Mabouya]

Led Zeppelin IV, so you can play "Stairway to Heaven" backwards.

[echappist]

It looks like I'm lucky enough to inherit a turntable, which is going to put me back in the record game after years away.

I'm a child of the 70s and 80s and my tastes to date largely revolve around rock, pop, folk/americana, jazz, and a bit of classical. And classic comedy albums, and whichever genre you assign to Steely Dan.

Which recordings do you consider "better on a record" than other formats, for reasons of sound quality or track order or other? Feel free to go outside of my stated tastes for a great album.

There's something magical about hearing bossa nova or jazz standards (played in the style of pre-bebop) played on a record. It's probably placebo, but it just feels "warm" for whatever reason.

[rwsaunders]

Check the performance of your stylus with Queen’s Night at the Opera and roll into Deep Purple’s Machine Head for good measure…turn your amp to 11 before the stylus hits the grooves of Highway Star.

[72gmc]

Check the performance of your stylus with Queen’s Night at the Opera and roll into Deep Purple’s Machine Head for good measure…turn your amp to 11 before the stylus hits the grooves of Highway Star.

It’s a Rek-O-Kut Rondine and I’ve read that the tone arms are heavy on those turntables, which should affect stylus choices … time to learn.

[rwsaunders]

It looks like it’ll be fun to experiment with…they’re beasts from what I remember and welcome to a new rabbit hole.

[sk_tle]

If you also happen to still have an old ZX spectrum in the basement you might want to dust if off and buy XL1 album from Pete Shelley as it had a special track which was a program file you can load on the computer to get lyrics and visuals.

[Bob Ross]

Which recordings do you consider "better on a record" than other formats, for reasons of sound quality or track order or other?

I will go to my grave vehemently insisting that the only recordings which are "better" on vinyl in terms of sound quality are those that were incorrectly or improperly mastered for digital formats.

(And/or those which we grew up listening to on vinyl and so associate those analog artifacts with the other fond reminiscences/nostalgia that pervade our listening memories.)


However, the issue of "track order" immediately calls to mind the US (Capitol Records) release of The Beatles' Rubber Soul: Say what you will about compromising the artists' intent blah-blah-blah, the tunes and order on that US issue kicks the snot out of the UK (EMI Records) version, in terms of flow/continuity and consistency.

...of course, that opinion may also have a lot to do with fond reminiscences/nostalgia that pervade our listening memories, so... :shrugs:

[Tom]

However, the issue of "track order" immediately calls to mind the US (Capitol Records) release of The Beatles' Rubber Soul: Say what you will about compromising the artists' intent blah-blah-blah, the tunes and order on that US issue kicks the snot out of the UK (EMI Records) version, in terms of flow/continuity and consistency.

...of course, that opinion may also have a lot to do with fond reminiscences/nostalgia that pervade our listening memories, so... :shrugs:

Maybe, maybe not. I'm learning how to play the piano in my retirement and my teacher is a young fellow with a graduate degree in music education. (Who tends bar at a local establishment because, as he put it, public school teachers are not valued especially ones in the arts.) He puts a lot of emphasis on music theory. We're doing a lot of fundamental stuff and at the end of one session he briefly brought up tendency tones. I did a little reading and basically certain tones in the diatonic scale tend to want to fall into other tones. The leading to the tonic made perfect sense based on the major scale but 2 to 1, 4 to 3, 6 to 5, I wondered why. So I asked him - is there science behind it or is it just that we're used to hearing it because that's how western music's been composed all along?

His answer was that it is both. Everybody wants to go to the tonic because your ear hears them resolve to home and also they want to change only a little or it sounds jumpy to your ear. It's not a hard and fast rule, obviously, but your ear wants to hear a phrase resolve. So that's how they tend.

The order of the album probably is better, plus that's how you have heard it all along.

[72gmc]

I mentioned track order on purpose, of course, because I still remember my first “oh no” moment with digital music (via Apple) when an album I loved played out of order. Apple’s paradigm for track sequencing, which probably made a lot of sense in an engineering discussion in Cupertino, signaled to me that no one was safeguarding the artist’s choices for flow or side A vs side B.

I’ve also asked my college age kids which albums I should get and our lists overlap much less than they used to.