A 2016 Analog Business Update Presented at the L.A. and O.C. Audio Society Gala

AnalogPlanet Editor Michael Fremer addresses the L.A. and Orange County Audio Society Gala and gives them the facts and figures that prove that the "analog revival" is real.

COMMENTS
Anton D's picture

I enjoyed that!

Thanks!

misterc59's picture

Awesome news and presentation

Regards,
Terry

Wimbo's picture

I've never given up and where I used to work,all the Sales guys had decent tables.Linn and up.

Ortofan's picture

... Clearaudio, Thorens and/or Pioneer?

Manimaldoug's picture

Your living the dream Michael! Don't let the Tools wake you up baby. Vinyl rocks

Concerto_7708's picture

Can I send you a Pocket Oxford dictionary TOOL? The latest edition comes with a CD which should make your cup runneth over.

All the best and Season's Greetings!

Concerto_7708

hifitommy's picture

i was there and it's always good to hear/see Mikey in LA. it seems LP is back for a while. my friend holds a garage sale every /Saturday and is now averaging about $400 each time with a bit of a rise here in Xmas season. he makes sure the records are cleaned with a spin clean and there are very few complaints.

i was one of those that did not dump his LPs with the advent of CD in the mid 80s. it seemed to be foolish to dump for me when i already had a good tt setup.

Long live vinyl.

...tr

PAR's picture

OK lots of pressing, lots of discs sold and lots of turntables and cartridges. However to enable this to continue there needs to be a supply of lacquers for cutting, lathes to cut them on and cutting heads to cut them with.

I understand that:

1. There may be now only a single source or lacquers and that this is a tiny operation with elderly staff.

2. No one is building cutting lathes anymore.

3. No one is building cutting heads any more. Those in existence have to be repaired by one man band operations (at great cost) as the original manufacturers offer no support. Cutting stylii are also now difficult to source ( I heard that those that are mainly available are made by a lady either close to retirement or who has recently retired).

Is this correct? Comments please.

kkatseanes's picture

Thanks for sharing your address. Very enjoyable. Here's something I've recently discovered that confirms your evidence.

I'm sure many heard this, but just in case some others haven't, the news out of the Berlin Philharmonic confirms MIchael's findings. As we know, Berlin used to record on Deutsche Grammophone, then on Sony, but launched their own label in April of 2014, with their recordings of the Schumann symphonies, on CD, Blueray, but also as a boxed set on vinyl. This surely was a sign something was not only alive but thriving in the vinyl world. But the latest announcement from Berlin is that their next recording project is a direct-to-disc limited edition vinyl set of the Brahms symphonies. Here's a link on their website about the project.

https://www.berliner-philharmoniker-recordings.com/

When arts organizations as influential and important as the Berlin Phil begin to turn to vinyl in dedicated ways such as direct-to-disc, even eschewing simultaneous digital media release, this is a much stronger signal that vinyl, regardless of numbers sold, is regaining a powerful position in the marketplace.

To me this is amazing news and confirms everything you say in this address Michael.

Michael Fremer's picture
is here....for review. ASAP
Glotz's picture

Dude, your tribute to AJ was just so heartfelt and awesomely real...

Thank you. Really awesome story for this time of year.

OldschoolE's picture

Mikey,
Please don’t take the bait of these non-self-educating ignoramuses like the appropriately named “Tool”.
They are a complete waste of time and energy. They exist for one purpose and one purpose only and that is to bring everyone else down. There are too many of them in the world now and part of the solution to that is to ignore them. By responding you are only feeding them. You will never convince these people or even get them to stop and think for two seconds. They don’t want to.

If they are happy with their music media and such, fine. They can have their thing and we have ours. (They are clearly not happy otherwise they would not spend time coming into sites like here to make trouble). They are not going to convince anyone to take their side (which frustrates them as well). They want to be the smartest one in the room while proving they are idiots at the same time. Most of these guys like that are full narcissists and likely have a mental disorder attached. You can’t reason with them.

Just to touch on the points Tool was trying to make and losing ground on. I can choose to eat at McDonalds all day, but I prefer better quality food which doesn’t even have to be fine dining for anyone's sake. He was trying to slash the point about quality using that argument, which is putting the cart before the horse. He is equating quantity with quality assuming that more is better.

Can he explain why we don’t see many CD players anymore except the cheap ones at the Walmart that won’t last a month or the few uber expensive ones costing thousands.

I also wonder, can Mr. Tool explain why so many brick & mortar shops either no longer carry CDs or those that do have very small selection still sitting unsold? Can he explain why record shops who used to let you turn in used CDs for credit no longer do so and don’t even carry CDs anymore, but now carry only vinyl in most cases? Gee, do you think it could because vinyl sells far better than CD and people are looking for vinyl records, not CDs? Nah, couldn’t be that obvious fact. (I’m being sarcastic).

He can't even get past the point that an analog rig doesn't have to cost thousands to sound great. As all know here, you can change and improve the sound of your analog setup just by changing the platter mat or cartridge, etc. You can make a big leap just by changing a $50 cart for a $100 cart. You can do it with a $250 TT or even a stock legacy table (provided cart and arm are a match). Try doing any of that with CD.

To be clear, I am not anti-CD or such. There is a place for music on all media. There are well done CDs out there (I own plenty) and especially for certain genres or releases that will just never be on vinyl for one reason or other, but to make baseless argument on non-sequitur items is for the foolish. Do I think the CD is going to make a come-back? No, I just don’t see it, but folks who have CDs are not going to stop listening to them and nobody is asking them to do so. Let’s not discount the fact that the used CD market is still strong and legit on the internet and that’s good. It all boils down to preferences and we all have our own. I prefer many things on vinyl rather than CD, that’s me. To try to make everyone else conform to one’s wishes is madness in its worst form.

jkingtut's picture

The Gallo winery in Napa had some really great stuff, or maybe it was the Robert Mondavi who knows, by late afternoon I was just a tool of the grape...

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