lp

Confessions of a female audiophile

Women sometimes buy quality audio, but that doesn't make them audiophiles.

With rare exceptions, all the audiophiles I've known are men. The unifying mantra for audiophiles is that there's always something, maybe an amplifier or speaker just out a reach that might get them a little closer to the music. Audiophiles are gear junkies. They want to have Aretha Franklin or the New York Philharmonic or their favorite music sound like it's in the house. Audiophiles crave an emotional, visceral connection with their music.

That pretty much sums up Margery Budoff's audiophile urges. Like most audiophiles I know, Margery had an unusually strong affinity for music at a young age. She described herself as "A child musician with an industrial design fetish." Even as a little kid she loved the look of stuff, especially older, big and clunky 1950s and 1960s record players.

The first record Margery bought was "Telstar," then Dionne Warwick, then the Rolling Stones. The record player was the thing that could "Decipher the secret code encrypted in the records. I wanted to hear the sound in all its glory. That's how I became an audiophile."… Read more

Best Buy offers thousands of LP records for sale online

Best Buy may be known for selling the latest in technology, but it seems the retailer hasn't forgotten about people who still love the old-school way of getting their music.

Recently I remembered that big-box retailer Best Buy had an exclusive on last year's long-awaited Guns 'n' Roses release, "Chinese Democracy," and that the release included vinyl. And I read last month that the chain is running a pilot program to stock vinyl in 100 stores. (Eight whole square feet!)

But until a friend pointed me to the site today, I had no idea that you … Read more

Seagate's desktop hard drive gets extra green

To celebrate Earth day, Seagate announced Wednesday the availability of its new, extra-low-power desktop hard drive, the Barracuda LP (LP stands for low power).

If Western Digital's new WD RE4-GP desktop hard drive has no spinning rpm specification, Seagate's Barracuda LP has a rather unconventional spinning speed of 5,900rpm.

Generally, the spinning speed is associated with the performance of hard drives. For example, drives with 5,400rpm tend to have a lower performance than those with 7,200rpm, which is the current spinning speed of most desktop hard drives.

However, the faster the hard drive spins, the … Read more

LP revival: Fact or fantasy?

I'm not sure why, but there's a never-ending stream of articles cheering on vinyl's comeback. I guess if it's a slow news day, editors can't resist plugging in yet another story about booming LP sales, and they always claim something along the lines of "Kids are digging the grooves, they've seen the light, and now crave analog sound!"

Puh-leeze!

Don't get me wrong; I wish it were true. Maybe in some alternative universe, vinyl is flying off the shelves, and kids are ditching their iPods and buying turntables.

Back here on the Earth we know and love, 2008 sales of LPs were up 89 percent, from 990,000 in '07 to 1.88 million in '08. That's hardly a boom, now that CD sales are in the hundreds of millions. The best-selling LP of 2008 was Radiohead's "In Rainbows," which sold a piddling 28,800 platters. Second-place honors went to another British band, The Beatles, which sold 16,500 "Abbey Road" LPs. If those numbers are accurate, and Radiohead's Thom Yorke and company were trying to live off LP sales, they'd have to get day jobs.

So sure, there's more and more new and reissue vinyl, and that's great, but only a teensy-weensy number of people buy new vinyl. Most of my vinyl-loving buddies regularly score free records on the street, or pay a buck or two for used vinyl to play on their megabucks high-end turntables. Again, no problem there, but it's not the same as a true vinyl resurgence. That's just media hype.

I love vinyl because it looks cool and sounds great. I own around 4,000 LPs. And I'm hoping that the vinyl revival keeps growing. But the market for physical media--CDs and LPs--has nowhere to go but down. More than anything else, people want cheap or free music, playable anywhere they want. … Read more

Check price guides before unloading old vinyl

I don't consider myself a vinyl collector. Although most of my music is on vinyl--about 700 records, compared with less than 200 CDs and a smattering of digital-only files--I buy it because I like the sound, and pay little attention to original labels versus reissues, imports versus domestic, cover art, and all the other arcana that collectors concern themselves with. Still, like anybody else who haunts record shows, I've always hoped in the back of my mind that I'd stumble on the next Butcher Cover--that's the original cover of the Beatles album "Yesterday and … Read more

Will iTunes kill the CD?

We're getting close to the day when a major artist or group releases a download-only album. Maybe it'll be the next Rolling Stones or Sufjan Stevens album. That'll be a dark day.

Just last week, I went to my local record store to pick up "Hemispheres," the new release of Bill Frisell and Jim Hall, a jazz guitar duo. I left the store empty-handed.

Next, I checked on Amazon.com. It stocked the album in MP3 format only. Great, but I refuse to pay $17.98 for a crappy-sounding MP3.

Next, I checked the record … Read more

JVC's UX-LP5: An affordable iPod audio system with some power behind it

JVC has three new micro systems for 2009, including with the UX-LP5, which features a retractable front flip dock for iPods.

While this model doesn't offer the touch-sensitive controls and motion sensor of the step-up UX-GN6, it does have many of the same features, including a video output so you can play back iPod-stored video on a connected television, a front audio input for connecting other audio products, CD playback, and an AM/FM tuner.

It's worth noting that while the UX-GN6 is listed as having a total power output of 120 watts, the UX-LP5 is a 70-watt … Read more

JVC's snazzy new micro audio system

JVC has three new micro systems for 2009, with the line-topping UX-GN6 featuring a motion sensor and a touch-sensitive illuminated control strip that JVC calls a "laser touch operation" panel. And, as you can see from the picture, it's got the requisite iPod dock.

Motion sensors were featured on some Logitech iPod clock radios last year and we expect to see more clock radios and micro systems offering this feature going forward. In this implementation, the feature enables you to wake-up the UX-GN6 from standby mode by simply waving your hand in front of the system. (We'… Read more

Do you still buy CDs?

The numbers are grim, all right, but the music industry still sells hundreds of millions of CDs each year. That's a lot of discs, and sales of downloads won't surpass silver discs for a while.

According to some industry sources, as recently as 2006, CDs represented more than 80 percent of the music sold in the United States. A recent report projects that it won't be until 2012 that download sales surpass CD sales. So fess up. A lot of you are still buying discs, and I want to know who you are.

I'm doing more … Read more

Testing made more pleasant: HP's LP2275w

If it were up to me, a new monitor would break CNET's performance record every week. When a display performs well, the actual testing is just a little less stressful, since I'm not considering putting my fist through it every five minutes (I tend to overreact).

A monitor hasn't impressed me since reviewing the Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP. The HP LP2275w is currently the top performer in our DisplayMate-based performance tests. I'm kind of a sucker for wide viewing angles, and the HP monitor has one of the best I've ever seen.

According to HP, … Read more