Rebuilding Collections

Updated

4/28/2018 - Periodically I'll update as this particular collection grows...Today, we'll add Somewhere in Time :) 

Having a few days to kill

Yesterday I had to have a procedure done on my shoulder. Maybe I'll get into this in another post, maybe not. In any case, it's given me a few days off of work with nothing to do but take some pretty decent pills. 

With that in mind, I've gotten it into my head that I need to do a couple of projects. First, binge watch some 90's TV shows; Second, collect some data here where I hope to have a relatively stable place to store it. 

Give me an hour, or so, and I'll probably be off to some other fairly pointless exercise. 

Building a collection...again

I got into building my music collection in the 80's when cassettes were the thing. I still have quite a few of those items laying around, but that medium was an obvious dog. Tapes were very fragile, prone to damage, and frequently degraded simply by sitting. Periodically I work through replacing those digitally, but some of the albums are pretty hard to find. Anyway, from there I moved onto CDs. Much better medium. I've had a few of those become damaged and degrade over time, but for the most part if they were retail disks they've held up pretty good over time. 

Now, in true hipster fashion, I'm working on building a vinyl collection. I've got some originals from the late 60's and 70's that I've been dragging around for years, but no Iron Maiden. This will be the fourth time I've built that collection - Tapes/CDs/digital, and now vinyl.

Why vinyl?

Ok, so I admit it. There's the retro hipster cool factor. Moving on...

Digital recordings appear to have the highest longevity potential, but the quality really isn't always there. Yes, there are lossless formats and I do have many tracks in lossless formats in my collection, but I listen to digital music on the go. I use Google Play for digital music, I don't manually sync, I just stream. This means high quality MP3, but I listen on a phone or PC with my Shure se425 earbuds. You can hear a quality difference, and it's usually not hard to detect. So, I want something better for dedicated music listening. 

Ok, so what about CD? Yes, technically speaking, CDs are technically superior. Go read up on it. The problem is that often CDs are mixed for ear candy which translates to heavy on the bass and other effects that can't be done on vinyl without causing the needle to bounce out of grooves. Ear candy, but not a balanced mix. 

Back comes vinyl. Due to technical limitations that CDs don't suffer from, vinyl can often have much more balanced mixes that give clarity and independent voice to each of the tracks. For casual listening, you probably won't notice, but if you pull out your quality headphones and do a back to back listening of your favorite tunes on classic vinyl and then on CD you'll notice that the CD initially sounds much more tasty like a cake with a whole pile of frosting, but the vinyl will be much more detailed. Subtleties that can't be heard on CD will be clear on vinyl. For me, this makes for a more immersive listening experience. This doesn't matter to everyone, but I get a lot of enjoyment out of it. 

In any case, progress in rebuilding the Iron Maiden collection again: 

Iron Maiden

Title: Iron Maiden
Original Release: April 14, 1980
Original Label: EMI - Harvest/Capitol

Label: Sanctuary Records
Barcode: 0 881034 112477
AISN: B00MIWRMQI
Iron Maiden [LP] Get Yours Now!

Killers

Title: Killers
Original Release: February 2, 1981
Original Label: EMI

Label: Sanctuary Records
Barcode: Gotta go look at it...
AISN: B00MIWRN8A
Killers [LP] Get Yours Now!

Number of the Beast

Title: Number of the Beast
Original Release: March 22, 1982
Original Label: EMI

Label: Sanctuary Records
Barcode: 0 881034 112514
AISN: B00MIWRCKE
The Number Of The Beast [LP] Get Yours Now!

Somewhere in Time

Title: Somewhere in Time
Original Release: September 29, 1986
Original Label: EMI

Label: Sanctuary Records
Barcode: 0881034121448
AISN: B00MG4CVAU
Somewhere in Time (1998 Remastered Version) Get Yours Now! 

Powerslave

Title: Powerslave
Original Release: September 3, 1984
Original Label: EMI

Label: Imports
Barcode: 0825646248698
AISN: B00MG4CVAU
Powerslave [LP] Get Yours Now!

Book of Souls

Title: Book of Souls
Released: September 4, 2015
Label: BMG
Barcode: 4 050538 153514
AISN: B0100V4VSK
The Book Of Souls [3 LP] Get Yours Now!