Sean Gill - Guitarist

Yes indeed, vinyl. And I want to say upfront here I will probably anger a lot of you vinyl fans. That's ok, we can all listen to music our own way. These are my opinions, backed by 25 years in music, and as many backed by science and facts as I could muster. But that probably doesn't matter anyway.

Here's what prompted me to write this. A little while back a friend of mine gave me a small record player. We're both old enough that records were still the primary medium when we were younger, and I have a lot of fond memories of the records I used to listen to. Now, all of my records, my parent's records, and my grandfather's collection I inherited are all at my mom's house 1200 miles away. So today I finally stopped into a shop to pick up a few records, just to have something to play. I got Al DiMeola's Land of the Midnight Sun, an Edvard Grieg recording, and an oddball with Bernstein conducting the French National Orchestra in Ravel's Bolero on one side, and a couple of guys doing Bolero with Moog synths on the other. I'd also not yet heard new vinyl in person, so being interested in something thick and heavy I picked up the newest Nightwish album (double, and not cheap).

The old records sound fine. Sound the way they should I suppose, largely because they were originally made with vinyl in mind. On to Nightwish. It sounds like horseshit. Through the mini speakers, through headphones, through my computer speakers (a nice set of Edifiers) and through my recording studio speakers. Nasally to the point of irritation, thin on lows even with the turntable's bass boost on. People complain about mp3s being compressed, about modern music being over compressed, but this vinyl sounded mashed flat. I hate it. Was this just lazy mastering for the vinyl version? I don't know. The mp3s I have of this album sound better. I have another prog metal band's vinyl album on preorder, we'll have to see how that sounds. This reminded me again of the first cd player my family had, and the transition from vinyl to cd.

My parent's stereo system was middle of the road stuff. Not the cheapest but not from some high end specialty store. Probably over the years the pieces were acquired my parent's spent maybe $1000 on all of it (this would have been about 1984 their main system was complete). No tubes in the amplifier, and the speakers weren't shaped funny, unless rectangles make you laugh. But there was an equalizer. 12 band stereo graphic EQ, and it was always used on records. Sometimes different records were set with different eq, but it was always used. Along comes the first cd player in 1990, and it doesn't sound good with eq... in fact, to eq isn't necessary at all. CDs sound better without it, and in may ways right at the beginning sounded better than vinyl. No hiss, no static, no worn needles. Even those early cd players were much less likely to skip if somebody stomped on the floor or bumped the entertainment center. They were smaller, more portable, less fragile. They were longer and didn't have to be flipped. I liked cds.

Can vinyl sound good, even great? Of course, but my experience then and now shows me that at least some really good and preferably great equipment is needed. CDs and mp3s (and other digital files) need at most a few hundred dollars of equipment for playback. I'm pretty convinced that without at least a good eq vinyl won't sound as good as it should. At least not more modern metal and prog music. Music with many layers and dense guitars. Vinyl is a type of sound, and some people like it. I like it for some kinds of music. But different doesn't mean the same thing as better. Except maybe for some combo jazz recordings, vinyl does not sound like being in the room with the band (and digital sounds just as good there anyway). I've been in all kinds of bands, heard all kinds of bands, in all kinds of venues. Just because it's vinyl doesn't make it like being there.

The science-y stuff: What about the raw sound? What does science say? (and here I may not just be picking on vinyl, I'll also say that things like Neil Young's Pono are utter bullshit, too). You can look for yourself the data on what range we can hear, sample rates, and all those dry details. I don't want to make this essay a novel, so I've linked to a few articles discussing the mechanics of sound, our perception of it, how we hear based on experience (say 50 year old trucker vs 30 year old music major), and our potential emotional bias. I've included a few interesting quotes. There was a time when mp3s were standardly put out at 128k rates. These do sound awful, they were awful from the start, but nobody uses these anymore unless you're desperate to save hard drive space. Vinyl colors the sound, does not show true, and that's the point. Like 8mm film, or red vs white wine, or Strat vs Les Paul, you pick it because of what it imparts to music. Or much like saying you have to record with analog gear and 2-inch tape. Some people like that because of the color and imperfections that gear imparts to the recording. But it's not for everyone, not for all music, and not "better" in a quantifiable way. To say vinyl is more true to life is ridiculous.

• There wasn't a study of vinyl vs cd, but someone did do digital vs high quality tape, and I think it's relevant. Read the full story here.

Geringer and Dunnigan used identical microphone and mixing board setups to record four different concerts, each time using both a digital record and a high-quality analog cassette recorder (the MR-3 from audiophile favorite brand Nakamichi). They then had 40 music majors listen to the recordings, either with loudspeakers or headphones, while letting them switch between each recording at will. The test subjects were not aware of which was the digital recording, and which was the analog one. They were then asked to record their preferences.
It turns out that the music majors had a significant preferences for digital. "Participants gave significantly higher ratings to the digital presentations in bass, treble, and overall quality," Geringer and Dunnigan write.

Also from that article:

Perhaps the best audio-based case for vinyl is actually precisely the fact that it does mess up the original recording. A lot of vinyl fans talk about the "warmth" of records, particularly of the low-end. But, as Pitchfork's Mark Richardson puts it, "the 'warmth' that many people associate with LPs can generally be described as a bass sound that is less accurate." The difficulty of accurately translating bass lines to vinyl without making grooves too big means that engineers have to do a lot of processing to get it to work, which changes the tone of the bass in a way that, apparently, many people find aesthetically pleasing.

"Warmth" also comes from flaws in record players. As the University of Waterloo's Stanley Lipshitz once explained to Popular Science, speaker sound and the needle's height fluctuations can cause the record to vibrate, which the needle in turn picks up and translates into a "warmer" seeming sound.

Is it wrong to prefer that "warmer" sound? Of course not! It would be as preposterous to rule that out as a legitimate source of aesthetic appreciation as it would be to discount distorted guitar lines for being "less faithful" to the original guitar sound. Audio distortion can be beautiful and there's nothing wrong with liking it. But there's also something to be said for listening to music as its creators meant it to be heard, and precisely because of their "warmth" vinyl recordings sound rather different from what artists hear in the studio.

"As a recording engineer, when I go to a digital recording, what I did is exactly what I get back," Metcalfe explains. "When you record in the analog domain, what you're hearing there is different from what you sent in."

• Some explanation (with additional links you should read) of analog and digital. And some further nerdy explanations you should read.

• Some talk, mostly about the 'experience of vinyl'.

• An NPR transcript. This one I think is most notable for the "experience vs sound" ideas. The record store worker prefers vinyl, clearly for the feel of the process. The two recording engineer professors go for digital because it far more accurately gives them back what they recorded in the studio.

Well, I mean, I grew up listening to records up until about '85, when the CD was already out. And I was involved in testing loudspeakers up at the National Research Council in Canada. And we were testing cartridges at that time, and it was quite apparent that the amount of distortion coming out of these devices was very high compared to CD. So what we found was that vinyl was a limiting factor in our ability to do accurate and reliable listening tests on loudspeakers, and we had to find a more reliable and more accurate medium.

And this, also from the NPR article, which I think many vinyl purists get completely wrong; cds have more dynamic range. Don't confuse the loudness wars of the past few decades with the use of digital audio. Fighting to be louder isn't the same as having a wider range of soft to loud. Vinyl is actually more compressed than digital in that regard.

The term can sometimes be applied to vinyl in that the physical limitations of what the medium is able to store and reproduce is such that it can be advantageous, particularly in the lower frequencies, to reduce the dynamic range - meaning the low notes that are being captured - to reduce the dynamic range to do a couple of things.
One, it's going to prevent the needle from jumping right out of the groove if it gets too extreme. The other is that if we reduce the overall dynamic range going to the disc itself, we can actually fit more material, more length, onto each side of the disc.
With CDs, there isn't that trade-off. We have a, you know, easily, 80, 90 dB or more of dynamic range to work from, and we don't have to worry about any - although, unfortunately, it's very popular to put dynamic compression on a lot of modern music, but it's not a - it's not necessary. Technically, it's more an aesthetic choice or trying to be louder than the other band on the street.

And from the previous Sound Matters article:

there are many other factors to consider here, including the fact that digital recordings have the ability to products greater dynamic range without noise floor issues, amongst other advantages.

Is vinyl elitist? I think maybe for some. My cheap little player might be fine for some old records I have for nostalgia, but if I really want to surround myself with music I'd have to spend a lot more money and I can't do that, and neither can a lot of other people. I have around 800 cds and probably at least a few hundred digital-only albums. I cannot fathom the space I'd have to have to store all of those on vinyl. Ok, I'm a music geek and probably have more music than the average person, but even a few hundred records is a devotion of space not everyone can make.

And on the musician side, vinyl is stupidly expensive for us indies. The best deal I've been able to find is $20 per record with a minimum of 1000 copies. $2000, plus set-up, plus packaging, plus mastering for vinyl, plus god knows how much for shipping 1000 albums, plus the expense of me shipping them back out in packaging that will protect them well enough. On top of that, every album my band Strange Land has made would have to be a double. Even bands backed by big labels have to charge $20-$30 for new records. I'd probably have to charge at least $30 for a single record to break even on those numbers. My cds cost less than $3 each to make and ship to me, with full color artwork and at least 4 panel booklets.

Is vinyl just a hipster fad? To some extent I think it probably is. Like growing a handlebar mustache and riding a pennyfarthing. Hell, I still love books even though I have a kindle. There is something to be said for the physical thing, but that doesn't mean it sounds quantifiably better. And every now and then something old becomes new again. Nostalgia isn't always a bad thing, but it can be taken too far. And the way some people talk about it, to me, it has the same feel as listening to someone go on about the organic free-range tofu dog chews that they just have to buy at Whole Foods but they were out today, oh, no! First world problems.

Is it wrong to listen to vinyl, to prefer vinyl? Of course not. Yes, there is something to be said for the experience. The act of placing the needle, cleaning the record, the larger format for art. It can be like a Japanese tea ceremony. Enjoy it for all it's worth. I will enjoy it from time to time myself. One thing I look forward to is going through all my grandfather's old records. I'm sure most of them have never been reissued on cd, that will be fun. But check your emotions when discussing it with others. Vinyl isn't better, and it's measurably not better for capturing pure sound, and I'm finding it seems bad for some kinds of music. It's just different and some of you prefer that. Keep in mind also that it is very expensive to make vinyl and some of us independent musicians just can't afford it. This has been a hot-button topic for a while and my opinion won't change that. If anything though I would hope to shift the thinking away from "better" to "my preferred experience".

I've been lately thinking about the past. Hopefully not in a mopey, nostalgic way. It just seemed like a good time to look back and see where I've been. It's a personality flaw of mine to never stop and smell the roses. I'm always charging on to the next problem, often causing myself stress in thinking I'm not getting anything done. I have to remind myself sometimes that I have gotten a few things done.

The quick list and brief rundown of every band I've ever been in. There may be a few short lived entities I've forgotten. Like my first live performance ever. My freshman year of High School, some homecoming function. I remember playing a few Metallica covers. I can't recall what the name of that group was. Some of my dates are fuzzy, too. It's still kind of surprising to me how much I've done, how many bands are on this list. And if my count s right today today I've been involved in one way or other with 22 official album or ep releases.

Perpetual Motion - (c. 1991-1992?) mostly Metallica, Maiden and Primus covers, a few originals, played some shows, morphed into:
Three Blind Mice - (c. 1992-94) played shows, recorded: S/T, Red Beans and Mice
Fishboy - (c. 1993-1996) mostly a duo project, a couple acoustic shows, recorded: Elders, Driving Down This Road, Improv
Big Brown Newport - (c. 1994-1996, semi-active again as of 2010) I played bass, played a lot of shows, recorded: BBNII, Part Time, Mogwai, Appleton Session
Strange Land - (c. 1998-present) lots of shows, recorded: Foundation ep (1999), Anomaly (2001), ProgPower ep (2002), Blaming Season (2004), Catharsis (2008), Singles (2011-12), ∆v (2014)
Catherine Scholz (c. 1999-2000?), played shows, help record/engineer some songs for an ep.
ABS Blues Band (c. 2008-2010), played some shows, mostly covers, a few originals. No completed recordings
Soaker - (c. 2005) recorded some tracks, no shows
The Well - (c. 2008-2010) played shows, recorded some demo tracks
Trinity Demask (c. 2010-2011, still on call to sub) played a bunch of shows
Delusionist - (c. 2010-2012) played shows, recorded demos
Solo - (c. 1998-present) played a heap of shows, recorded: Book Of Ashes (1999), Driving Empty Miles (2001), October Dust (2004), This Is What It Sounds Like Inside My Head (2007), Anode (2014), untitled/unreleased (2014)
Stone Soup Soldiers - (c. 2010-present) studio project, recorded: Street Art (2012), various film work

Other notable groups:
Greater MKE Youth Jazz Ensemble
UWM Jazz Ensemble (recorded a cd)
Wisconsin Conservatory of Music Classical Quartet

I've been awarded an engineer of the year award from the progressive rock hall of fame (sadly mostly defunct). I've teaching private music lessons since 1993. I've taught at many different locations, and even have a student online in New Zealand as of this writing.

I have a number of songs placed with song libraries, and the Stone Soup Soldiers project has had some success with independent films and the Outdoor Channel. In 2014 played occasional bass and guitar with The Most Ever Company, led by composer Dexter Ford. Mostly oddball prog influenced by Captain Beefheart, Zappa, Yes, and others, along with random covers (sometimes played straight, sometimes mutated).

Sean Gill - Guitarist

Pages

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

Writing on Medium

Thursday, July 21, 2016

Moving

Friday, July 3, 2015

Oh no, he's gonna talk about vinyl records

Friday, May 22, 2015

The new album

Thursday, February 26, 2015

The new album is almost done

Sunday, November 23, 2014

Online Lessons

Sunday, November 16, 2014

History in progress