bigfeat's Blog

I can't speak to the current state of cd quality vs Vinyl, but I can tell you categorically, every single one of you would be blow away by the difference in quality if you listened side by side to one of the early '80's Mobile Fidelity Limited half speed Mastered vinyl releases against the same recordings cd releases. Dark Side of the Moon and Little Feat's Waiting for Columbus are two good examples. Of course if you don't have a fairly high end cartridge on your turntable and high quality (likely component)audio gear, that difference will be greatly diminished. But with a great HiFi the difference in both overall tonal balance but even more in three dimensionality are striking.

I defer to Adam on today's technology, but if the mastering is now being done with higher digital resolution, and the vinyl is pressed from that same digital master while the cd pressing is done at a lower sampling rate, then the Vinyl could possibly sound considerably better I would think. Of course at least until it gets worn, warped or scratched!

You know in my experience I've developed the opinion that the industry pays attention only to individual acts, not markets or scenes. Once in a great while a handful of acts from the same area gain recognition at the same time and the press or other media anoint the market as a scene. As for the public, I think it's about the same, it's all about the individual artist, not where they are from. Just not sure it's all that possible to "create" the recognition of a scene. I guess I'll pose this question... when was the last time you spent money buying a compilation from somewhere instead of an individual artist's cd? Maybe you'd listen to one if it was given to you, and sure, we could spread around Maine artists by making one, but it's more likely that what comes of that is someone discovers one act they like, buys their cd and they gain a new fan. That's a good outcome for a Maine artist and something we could be happy to help with, but I don't think it's going to create a "scene" platform that's going to make things any better for other artists. Every act will have to do it on their own merit.