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#393: Format of Choice

RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#393: Format of Choice

What is your audio format of choice?  Which is the one that makes up the majority of your collection?

In addition to occasionally speaking in the third person, LeBrain has specific wants and needs in his music collection.  I have a fast and loose set of rules when it comes to choosing the format on which I buy new music.  Some prefer the ease and speed of downloading from iTunes.  Others prefer the so-called “warmth” of vinyl.  How do you decide what formats to buy your music on?

Here are my collection priorities:

#1.  Compact Disc

99% of my collection is on CD.  I have many reasons for this.  One is the superior sound quality:  a CD just sounds better than an mp3.  A CD won’t crash like a hard drive.  The oldest CDs in my collection are over 25 years old, and still look and play perfect.  They have always been stored in their CD cases after use, in a cool dry place.  They do not suffer from CD rot, which is a deterioration of the aluminum layer inside a CD due to oxidation.  The discs may not last 100 years, but I am confident that most if not all will be enjoyed through my lifetime.  CD rot can be minimized or prevented just by handling your CDs correctly.

I have chosen CD as my #1 format for other reasons other than longevity.  They are easily transferred to mp3 for better portability (they are already easily portable).  Playing mp3 files in a mobile environment like my car can only extend the life of the source CD.  Also, compact discs are easy to store and just look cool when all lined up in my collection!

I buy almost all my CDs online now, and they ship fast and easy.  Most of the time the packages will even fit in my mailbox, saving me a trip to the post office!  For these simple reasons, CDs are the lion’s share of the LeBrain Library.

#2. Vinyl

IMG_20150420_174459Today’s vinyl LP has been around since 1948, and even then the technology wasn’t new.  It merely updated and standardized something that had been playing on gramophones for a couple decades.  They used to be made out of substances such as hard rubber and shellac, but vinyl proved to be versatile and enduring.

Since vinyl has been around so long, and couldn’t even be killed off by the cassette or compact disc, it is safe to say you should always be able to buy something to play an LP.  However, an LP doesn’t have the longevity of a CD in terms of a long playing life.  Your CD laser never makes contact with the plastic, but your stylus does contact the surface of the vinyl.  The force of friction means that every play will wear down your LP, even if it’s only microscopically.  The key is to use good clean equipment and records.  If you do, a record will outlast a temporary format such as VHS or cassette tape.  Minimizing friction-causing dust particles extends the life of both LP and needle.

For all these reasons, vinyl is my second priority in format collecting.  They are bigger and take up more room, but when I want the warmth of an LP or just bigger cover art, there is only one way to go.  180 gram vinyl is especially nice to hold and listen to.  For buying old albums affordably, vinyl is a great alternative to CD.  Some old metal albums have had limited CD releases in other territories, making them expensive and hard to get once they go out of print.  Vinyl can be a cheaper alternative for your collection.

Vinyl bonus tracks are a slam-dunk reason to buy an LP.  Alice Cooper’s Welcome 2 My Nightmare is a great example of an LP that has a track unavailable on any other format (“Flatline”).  And of course Jack White took the idea of LP bonuses to the ultimate level with his “Ultra LP” version of Lazaretto.

#3.  Digital download (mp3)

I hate paying money for something that does not physically exist.  If I have to, I will, but I only “have to” when there are bonus tracks unavailable on any physical format.  Given the choice and the money, I will always buy the physical version, not just 1’s and 0’s floating around on a magnetic hard drive.  I hate that you (usually) don’t get any info or liner notes with an mp3.  I hate that your hard drive just needs to have a nice crash for you to lose this music that you paid for.  I understand the convenience, but digital downloads do not service my needs.

I know there are high quality download formats such as FLAC, but that still doesn’t solve the problem of not being on a physical format that won’t crash, and my issue of paying for a non-physical entity. I also know that a lot of people don’t care about these things, and I wanted to understand why. I asked one reader why he prefers his iTunes:

“Here’s my deal: At the time when iTunes first came out, I had three young daughters. Getting to the record store (when there were record stores) was tuff to say the least, let alone the cost as well! I just couldn’t drop $20 all the time. Sure, I made exceptions and I bought actual product like Maiden and Rush, but iTunes became my way of music buying. Especially re-buying albums I had owned on cassette or vinyl. I just re-buy them on iTunes and download straight to my iPod! Now that my daughters are teens, I have just stayed the course with iTunes. I pre-order product from them, like the latest Priest, and the Van Halen live album. Convenience is just the way of life for me now! Don’t get me wrong though, I would still enjoy buying the actual product, but man it does boil down to affordability! iTunes delivers that and I can stay current with adding to my dinosaur rock collection! Ha!”

#4.  Cassette

IMG_20150420_174810Once the mighty majority of my collection, cassettes have been reduced to a mere novelty.  I treasured them for portability and convenience, but now I loathe them.  I debated putting mp3 last on my formats of choice, but the truth is, cassette is far worse.

Cassettes have several things going against them.  The first is moving parts.  A CD or LP requires no moving parts, but a cassette has spindles and rollers that rub against and wear the magnetic tape.  Sometimes a cassette’s parts can be too tight inside, causing it to warble when you play it.  But it’s the analog tape itself that is the real problem.  Even brand new, a cassette will not sound as rich as an LP because it’s not capable of reproducing the same range of frequencies.  A cassette has a built-in high level of static noise.  Then once you start playing it, magnetic particles begin to wear off.  In fact over time, tapes will degrade to be unlistenable, no matter how well you take care of them.  Even worse, record companies used the worst quality tape for their releases.  If you bought a cheap blank Sony tape, you would have better quality than a store-bought record label’s cassette.

The poor sound and lack of longevity are the two main reasons I’m still replacing all of my old tapes with CDs and LPs.  Anybody got a copy of Bonham’s Mat Hatter on CD for me to upgrade to?  How about Wolfsbane’s first?  Still looking for those!

#5. Miscellaneous

Not really ranked last, I just wanted to mention other formats that I own music on.

5.1 surround sound can’t be encoded on a standard CD, so DVD and Blu-ray have to step up to the plate.  I have several Rush, Queen, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple albums (among many others) that have been given official Quadrophonic or 5.1 surround mixes.  Often, these mixes include bits of music that are not in the stereo versions, such as guitar solos and fills.

The problem with DVD and Blu-ray is that I only have one home theater system.  I only have one place, one room in the house, where I can listen to these special albums.  I can’t play them in the car, on a walk, or at the cottage.  As such, a Quad or 5.1 release gets limited listens at Chez LeBrain.

How many people are there like me?  Let me know your favourite formats in the comments section!

#378: “Kick it Kevin, do something Kevin!”

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RECORD STORE TALES MkII: Getting More Tale
#378: “Kick it Kevin, do something Kevin!”*

If you’re like me, then you absolutely hate it when a piece of your valued technology goes on the fritz.  It happens frequently enough.  Something stops working, and you try to get it functioning again.  For men at least, our first reaction is usually to give the malfunctioning piece of tech a good whack.  You might give it a swift kick, cross fingers, and sometimes that’s all it takes!  Kick it, and it’s suddenly back to life.  A loose connection, perhaps.  Or maybe there’s something mystical about the art of kicking something to make it work again.  Whatever the case may be, fixing one of our modern tech items by ourselves is becoming increasingly more difficult today.  Certainly, a kick rarely works anymore.  All of us will have to replace at least one tech item in our households this year.  Be it your audio device, stereo component, TV, gaming system, computer, or even just your microwave, everything we buy today has a built-in short-term lifespan.

When I was working at the Record Store, it seemed that at least two of our seven CD players were always broken at all times.  When the main store player broke, we’d swap it out with one of the customer listening station players.  Disc players don’t seem durable anymore.  Yet somehow I still own my mom’s original 5 disc CD changer from 1991 (a Sony about the size of a battleship), and it’s the most reliable player in my home.  It’s probably also the oldest piece of tech in the house.  That old Sony keeps on ticking, no kicking required.  Every once in a while it needs a good cleaning, but then it’s good to go once more.

Here’s another interesting fact about my Sony.  It’ll play anything.  Be it a DualDisc or an old cheap Canadian independent CD from the early 90’s, it can play it.  Neither my PC nor laptop will play those things without an annoying amount of artificial digital noise.  My 24 year old Sony will.

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That one CD player aside, everything else here seems to constantly be on the verge of collapse!  I had to buy a new blu-ray player last spring.  The old one refused to boot up anymore.  The original wasn’t a cheap player: I paid almost $500 for it, in 2010!  I was beyond upset when I had to replace it (with a $120 Samsung from Walmart) but the new player has all sorts of bells and whistles built in that the old one didn’t!  The ability to play Netflix, Youtube, or video files off a flash drive were all new to me when I bought it; the old player couldn’t do those things.  (I almost feel like I should have waited before making the switch to Blu.)

More than just the Blu-ray player, everything else here busts eventually.  Both Jen and I have owned Hipstreet brand mp3 players that broke within mere weeks.  I had to replace my car stereo two years ago (I drive a 2010).  Speaking of car stereos, two weekss ago my left door side speaker started cutting in and out!  The following week, it died altogether.  I gave it several good solid boot kicks, but it did not help and I had to have it fixed to the tune of $200.  A similar problem happened in my old Plymouth Sundance.  The left door speaker blew but the car was on its last legs and it wasn’t worth spending money on.  T-Rev came over one night to help me pry the door panel off; we were hoping it was just a wire that came loose.  We never figured it out, but we did damage the door panel in the process.  I never want to pry off another door panel.

Let’s not even talk about computers!  I’ve had to replace more power supplies, fans, cards, routers, monitors…hell, just last week, one of the ethernet ports on my router died.  No idea why, it’s just one of those things that happens, isn’t it?  The nice thing though, about being forced to replace something like that, is that you are almost certain to be upgrading every time.  Since the technology becomes fancier over the years, if you blow a hard drive you’ll most likely be replacing it with a bigger and faster one.

Faster, sleeker, tricked out…technology keeps getting more exciting, but more disposable.  When I was a kid, it didn’t seem that way.  Each family had a VCR…that was their VCR.  They didn’t go and buy a new and better one every two years.  Each kid had a ghetto blaster.  That was their ghetto blaster…it was expected to last many years.  If it broke, you fixed it or got it fixed.  That’s how it went.  Today, we go buy a new one, and pay a recyling fee to throw out the old.  Seems to me like it’s not the technology that’s broken, it’s this disposable culture we live in.

* The title refers to an on-stage meltdown by the band Extreme last year. Their own technology went sour and they were having sound issues all night. Nuno walked off stage…Pat walked off stage…leaving singer Gary Cherone and drummer Kevin Figueiredo up there trying to play “Get the Funk Out” by themselves. After Cherone begging “Kick it Kevin, do something Kevin!” the drummer too left the stage, leaving everyone in puzzlement.

GALLERY: Alice Cooper vs. the Decepticons

In Getting More Tale #347.5: Days of Christmas Past, you may recall our good buddy Aaron sent me another Mystery Aaron Mail (M.A.M.) parcel.  It finally arrived, several days behind schedule, but safe and sound which is the main thing.  With Aaron’s encouraging “Give’r!” I tore into the packaging, to discover the treasure seen below.

Raise the Dead – Live From Wacken is Alice Cooper’s latest offering, one I had been excited to get!  One thing you have to credit Alice Cooper with is changing up his setlist tour after tour.  No two tours offer the same highlights, hits and surprises.  At a glance, I can see this 2 CD/1 Blu-ray set contains the following interesting choices:  “House of Fire” from  1989’s Trash, “Caffeine” from the recent Welcome 2 My Nightmare, the favourite “Department of Youth” from the original 1975 Nightmare, and oldies-but-goodies “Killer”, “Dwight Fry” and “Go To Hell”.  This is rounded out by numerous covers, perhaps from Alice’s soon-to-be-unleashed covers album?  “Break On Through” outta be good.

Finally this is Alice’s last release with Orianthi on guitar, who has since split to play with Richie Sambora.  I’m glad she has been captured live in concert in hi-def on Blu-ray.  Thank you, Aaron, for this gift!  The 2 CD format means that I can listen to it in the car, and the Blu-ray gives me Orianthi in 1080i hi-def, according to the specs!  There’s also a 20 minute interview and 5.1 surround mix.  Gonna be a rockin’ Christmas if this is any indication!

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This last set of pictures is a Christmas gift to myself, from myself!  I ordered this guy back on November 11, and he only just arrived today.  His name is Ratbat, and he is the Decepticon fuel auditor.  In the Marvel comics series, Ratbat emerged as a bureaucrat on Cybertron who eventually came to Earth and took leadership of the Decepticons,  a title he held for 11 issues of the series.  For this reason, and for the reason that he transforms into a cassette, he is always high on my collecting priority list.  I have a Masterpiece edition Soundwave figure, and I had five of his cassettes.  All but Ratbat.  Ratbat was only available with a special black Masterpiece Soundwave figure called Soundblaster.  Although I would love to, I can’t afford to buy the same toy over again in a different colour just to get Ratbat.  So I figured I’d never get one.

My buddy Jason then suggested I check out some the sellers on eBay, selling KO (knock-off) Ratbat figures.  Knock-off figures are exactly what the sound like.  Somebody copied the mold and made their own figures.  Some are shit quality.  Some are much better.  Ratbat is one of the figures.  There are two flaws in the paint of the cassette, but I’ve bought official Hasbro and Takara items new out of the package with similar flaws, so I can’t that’s particularly troublesome.  There was also a teeny tiny extra bit of plastic in the jetpack assembly that I had to lightly shave down in order to transform nice and straight.  Again, this can happen with a KO toy, but it can also happen with official Hasbro toys too.  Ratbat (KO) came with no box, but did come with a microcassette case, and only cost me $20 plus shipping from China.  MP13B Masterpiece Soundblaster, the official Takara release including Ratbat, is “on sale” right now at Big Bad Toy Store for $129.99, plus shipping.  I think I made a good choice.  Here’s Ratbat with Soundwave and all his cassette buddies!

VIDEO: Mike and Aaron Go to Toronto…Again!

MIKE AND AARON GO TO TORONTO…AGAIN!

It’s finally done!  Enjoy this video souvenir from our (Mike and Aaron) 2014 Record Store Excursion in Toronto .

 

Of the albums I bought in Toronto, one stood out as an immediate killer.  Just an awesome disc, that I’ll be reviewing tomorrow.  See if you can guess which one blew me away.

For the videos from 2012 and 2013, click here!

WE’RE BACK: Toronto Record Store Excursion 2014 success!

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Aaron and I have returned safely from Toronto, with treasures in hand! He has posted to the KMA a non-spoiler update regarding the trip. We both did very well. As a “Taranna First” I was providing live photographic updates of the trip via social media.

As I did on the previous two trips, I took plenty of photos and video with the intent of creating another great trip video! With that in mind, we don’t want to spoil too much about our adventure, so this is just a brief preview. Of note, Aaron bore gifts, and one of them is a book that I am just as happy to get as I am some of my musical finds. Aaron also helped add to my 6″ Stormtrooper army!

The sad news: Even though I was quite confident that we would find at least one item from somebody’s KMA Holy Grail list, we did not. I was sure that we would at least be able to find one of Sarca’s, such as the Ray Lyell CD. I was surprised that we didn’t. I might have an easier time finding it locally.

Having said that: I encourage you to check out the KMA Grail list and add your own long-sought albums to it.  Though we did not have luck with it this time, we did look hard.  The more people who participate in the Holy Grail list, the better, so as my buddy Aaron would say GIVE’R!

Enjoy the photo gallery, and if you missed the videos from the 2012 and 2013 trips, you can check those out below.

LeBrain (who, I am glad to say, did not fart once in Aaron’s car this time.)

First time owning this album!
Neat gifts! Keepers!
6″ Black Series Stormtrooper
Rutles
Kensington
A
ML
1 box and 4 bags of treasure!

2013: PART 1

2013: PART 2

2012:

#326: Not the Best Buy (RSTs Mk II: Getting More Tale)

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RECORD STORE TALES Mk II:  Getting More Tale

#326: Not the Best Buy

I don’t shop in the big corporate record stores that often anymore. Hell, I don’t even really shop in stores anymore! I used to, even at the big stores. When I started working in Cambridge, my buddy Chris and I would go to Future Shop once a week at lunch time to check out the new releases. I would typically buy a new movie and a new CD release at least once a week, sometimes more.  I’d stock up on blank CDs, or just impulsively buy a guitar there.  It happens!

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We would do the circuit around the store. We’d start with the new releases up front, then head to the movie section. I would detour over to CDs while Chris would look at electronics and computer games. We’d meet up at the bargain bin as we left. It’s there that Chris and I acquired two copies of Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield on DVD for $4.99 each. The girl at the front counter was jealous and asked if there were any left! She always knew us as the “Tuesday new release guys”. We sometimes wondered if she thought we were a gay couple since we rarely went in without the other!

Sometime in the last few years, both Future Shop and Best Buy (which are the same company) really started to change. They moved the music and movie section to the very back of the stores, providing more room for cell phones and tablets. It was a sign that things were getting worse for people like myself who enjoy owning physical product. Chris is similar to me. He likes to own “whole collections” of movie or TV series. Some of us are just like that.  He always likes to own the ones he really loves. (Such as the Police Academy series. Yes Chris I just outed you.)

So, we stopped going to Future Shop at lunch. In fact we haven’t been in ages.  Same went for Best Buy.  Strangely enough, a Best Buy soon opened in Cambridge, right next to the Future Shop.  Even the new Best Buy store didn’t have much in the way of music and movies, so we just stopped spending our money at lunch time.

IMG_20141004_123453I can tell you exactly what CD it was that I purchased the last time I bought one at Best Buy. It was the 2 CD/1 Blu-ray/1 DVD version of Led Zeppelin’s Celebration Day (2012) which was a brand new release.  And even a release that monumental was hard to find at Best Buy!

I walked into the store a few days after the initial release.  I saw that all they had on the front “new release” display was the DVD combo sets. I went over to the Zeppelin section in music – nothing there. I checked the same in the movies.  Nada.  Then I found a Zeppelin display at the side of one of the aisles. All they had there was CD and DVD; none of the 2 CD/1 Blu/1 DVD.

I found a customer service person that wasn’t chatting up her co-workers, and asked her where they kept the brand new Zeppelin Blu-rays?

In the back room, apparently! She found one for me and I purchased it, a little confused why a Led Zeppelin new release on the hot newest format would be in their back room.

So I bought the package; the very last CD set I have purchased at Best Buy. Best Buy have really abandoned the physical music releases, and that’s too bad. I used to enjoy buying music and movies at that store due to the prices, two nearby convenient locations, and the fact that I could usually find everything I was looking for. No longer. Sorry Best Buy: you and I are no longer besties!

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Part 158: Shrink Wrap (A Video Tutorial)

RECORD STORE TALES Part 158: Shrink Wrap (A Video Tutorial)

One of the most comment questions we had at the Beat Goes On when selling new CDs in shrink wrap:  “Can you open this for me?”