OPINION - of vinyl and digital formats

It probably has nothing to do with the bands... 'probably just an another try by a struggling EMI, who sold Olympic Studios (Hendrix, Stones, Purple, Floyd, Bowie, Lizzy) in 2010 and have even considered selling Abbey Rd. For me it's a no-brainer, the majority of pre-1990 recordings and hardly any rock was recorded digitally or made for digital formats even uber-technically clean-sounding things like 90125 by Yes were recorded to tape and mastered for vinyl. So it makes sense if you want to listen to any of those releases as they were intended it's still best to get a good record deck and try and find a reasonably healthy original copy. 

It's just a pain in the arse when they release every other format under the sun but ignore the original production format. It would be so great to see good quality 180g re-pressings of some of these classic back catalogues, the Beatles, AC/DC, Zep, 'Floyd, Marillion LPs as they were intended from original analog masters that haven't been digitally converted somewhere along the way. Sadly most are as even if the analog recording reaches the cutting lathe un-noodled with most lathes now use a digital delay in the creation of the vinyl masters they use to make the A & B-side stampers for pressing the records.

It's a sad thing that production budgets for music, excluding self-financed independent acts, have gone from hundreds of thousands in the '70s and '80s to maybe 10/20K or less, that everything is rushed, done digitally and for cheap, that new bands aren't supported and developed like they were, 'given the chance over 3 or 4 albums to become successful, establish a following or a brand, that great studios are shutting, great engineers and sound technicians are hard-pushed to find steady work, that the art of making records and quality of recordings is a ghost (in most cases) of what it used to be but hey the world changes and it's not the 1980s, it's just that the word 'BUSINESS' has now grown to become a lot more important than the word 'music'.

Sad thing is it seems it's not only Boo! for us but it's Boo! for them, the majors, but hey who cares about quality 'wh3n you can list3n to a stol3n d1g1tr@sh v3rs10n 0f pr3tty mu$h @nyth1ng y0u l1ke 0n th3 1nt3rn3t @nd wh0 n33ds g00d f00d wh3n you can 3@t p0t n00dl3$'.

pads 

('Pads' is the pen name for a respected folk and rock performer and session musician)