After reading that sales of vinyl records have almost quadrupled in the past four years, I was wondering about other ways that hipsters contribute to the economy. I found an item reporting that PBR sales were up 20% last year, but I couldn’t find any statistics on moustache wax. Since the retail sale of fixies is banned in the United States, the hipster fascination with those deadly machines is still part of the black-market economy.
Hipster Economy
by @mistermix.bsky.social| 162 Comments
This post is in: Popular Culture, Get off my grass you damned kids
DFS
True, complete fixed-gear bikes are still kind of a gray-market thing. Companies selling fixie parts, though, are springing up all over. A bunch of outfits that used to focus on BMX bikes have made a killing expanding into the fixie market.
Linkmeister
Thank you for telling me something I didn’t know. I’d never heard of “fixies” before.
Germane Jackson
I wouldn’t put vinyl buying in the hipster category. Now that they’re putting download codes w/ records it’s just a superior product. Sounds better, cheaper, looks cooler, etc.
Jebediah
God damned hipsters ruined MY fascination with those deadly machines, I tell you what! I long-term borrowed my brother’s several years ago (no retail sale!) but then there was an explosion of kids rolling around town on them, with their youth and skinniness and poor bike handling…
I didn’t see an official declaration of open-threadness, but here goes – for those who saw the post about our adoption of the teeny tiny Juno, she and Otto are getting along as big brother/little sister with such love and cuteness that sometimes I am just fit to bust.
And if that happiness attracts any sour turd-tossers to the thread, I sincerely apologize to all.
Comrade Mary
I think a fixie with brakes is permitted for retail sale — it’s just the purist’s brakeless fixie that is iffy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Huh. Fixies, PBR and vinyl, but mustache wax? Sometimes I’m happy to be middle-aged and out of touch.
Daddy-O
My psycho-billy buddies have increased the sales of hair pomade, I’m sure of that…
;-)
ploeg
You can’t get fixies in discount stores, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t buy them at retail from Local Bike Shops (LBSs) as track bikes.
Comrade Mary
Let’s say that Walmart started selling fixies. Would the same hipsters that drink PBR buy up these bikes? Can you buy from Walmart ironically?
Daddy-O
@efgoldman: Glad to see you’re not an old fuddy-duddy music enthusiast, telling kids to get off your lawn. I’m a professional musician, been listening to hi-fi for nearly fifty years myself.
Digital is the last word, except for LIVE. And if live music is coming through a sound system of ANY kind, can either improve the quality of the music or not. (I meant live, as in listening to REAL voices and instruments, un-amplified)
I have friends who swear on their mother’s graves that the latest Beatles releases, the mono singles and the (IIRC) original mixes, sent them to the moon when they heard them. And they demanded that I worship them unequivocally, as they did.
But I couldn’t tell the least bit of difference, and my ear is GOOD. I think it’s all in their heads, and that’s good enough for the both of us…
Comrade PhysioProf
Fixed-wheels are perfectly legal so long as you have brakes. And while a rear brake may be legally required, it is functionally unnecessary. However, you’ve gotta have a fucken death wish to ride a fixed-wheel on the road without a front brake.
Daddy-O
@Comrade Mary: I think it’s more about cheap than ironic or hip. Wal-Mart is a matter of taste for Kids These Days. They certainly aren’t drinking PBR because it’s exotic or irresistibly delicious…
I boycott Wal-Mart, and Lowe’s, of course, because the Walton Family has enough of my money already.
;-)
Montysano
@efgoldman:
Yeah…. I don’t know of any.
I’ve done a number of A/B tests over the years with albums where I had both analog and digital copies. The digital is usually easy to spot; to my ear it sounds “smaller” (typically due to lack of dynamic range). At the end of the day, I don’t really care. Spinning vinyl is more fun. The glow of tubes is nice. YMMV.
RSA
__
Interesting! I didn’t know that. I used to work with a bike messenger, some of whose friends rode fixies, and I’d always just assumed…
Zach
@Comrade Mary: I think that would be more hip than buying the bikes that Urban Outfitters started selling.
bjacques
Twenty years ago (*sob*) I think the magazine Motorbooty did a great article on the Bank of Coolness and Credibility International (BCCI – referred to a banking scandal that’s quaint now). Certain things musicians and other pop-cultural heroes did counted as deposits, while others, like contributing to a Christmas album, counted as withdrawals.
Napoleon
What type of moron would want a fixie, unless it was for some highly specialized use like racing (and even then I can’t imagine it is a good idea)?
shecky
Fixed gears are banned from retail sales? There are a couple shops that sell pretty much only fixies around here. All built up, too. Color coordinated fixies are all the rage with the kids these days. I mean, like, 7th grade kids.
Walmart did have a fixed gear at least a few months back, online. Heads exploded after seeing that one. Combined with the tweens taking up the track bike, I think hipsters might be moving on.
russell
I’d say twenty years ago you could probably hear a real difference between digital and analog sound, nowadays not so much.
I don’t know what’s up with the kids these days everywhere, but here in Boston it’s all about the pork pies.
It’s like Ben Webster’s hatrack exploded all over Central Square.
Comrade PhysioProf
Several reasons:
(1) Cheaper than free-wheel bike.
(2) Lighter than free-wheel bike.
(3) Much less maintenance than free-wheel bike.
(4) More FUN to ride than a free-wheel bike.
Montysano
@Daddy-O:
It’s not either/or for me. I own a lot of digital music. I still shoot and process my own film, but I certainly have a digital camera.
With this type of reissue, and with vinyl as well, I think it’s instructive to hear, as much as possible, what the artist originally had in mind. On a lot of my digital music, it’s not a question of what sounds better but more that, in many cases, it certainly sounds very different. Remastering to digital is not a transparent process.
GeoX
The legal problem with fixed-gear bicycles is the lack of brakes, correct? I’m somewhat curious, then: I ride a unicycle. No brakes on that sucker either–but no legal issues, as far as I know. What’s the difference?
shecky
@Comrade PhysioProf:
Yeah, brakeless is a really stupid pose, no matter how you cut it. Just yesterday I was following a brakeless knucklehead trying to stop down a moderate hill. Took him about sixty feet of skidding to slow down enough to actually begin braking. How fucking retarded is that? How much more hip is that, from just skidding down the hill on a mountain bike or beach cruiser? Signalling, maybe, about how much money you like to spend uselessly on bike tires?
At least he gave himself that extra sixty feet.
13th Generation
@Daddy-O:
I think you mean “SAMs”, not “Lowes”.
Also too, hipster kids have been drinking whatever cheap beer is fasionable and ironic for as long as I can remember.
Comrade Mary
@Comrade PhysioProf: True, but you get a lot of those advantages with single-speed, too. Still, I’d love to try a fixie, but they’re hard to find in my size. Maybe that’s a winter project for me: find some dorky little mountain bike and convert it to a fixie by spring.
Bubblegum Tate
@Germane Jackson:
Me either, but that’s because I have been DJing and collecting records for more than 15 years, and I am most assuredly not a hipster.
Also: I’ve been informed that Tecate is the new PBR.
Amanda in the South Bay
Don’t forget skinny jeans, flannel shirts and wool stocking caps when its 95 degrees out.
sherifffruitfly
Not this idiocy again. Sigh.
Ok…. So vinyl sales increased from (minuscule) to 4 * (minuscule)?
What percentage of music sales is vinyl? Now tell me more about this supposed “economy”.
There will always be a small number of deadenders who religiously refuse to advance with the times. Not a big deal. Pretending that they’re meaningful, however, is just silly.
jimBOB
I (happily) dumped my vinyl over the PITA factor.
• You have to be a fanatic about cleanliness (and even then you get lots of clicks, pops and surface noise).
• Vinyl takes much more storage space than an equivalent set of CD’s.
• If you are listening while doing something else, you have to stop and flip the things at least twice as often.
• CD’s play anywhere you have any sort of player, including a DVD player. Try spinning vinyl in your car.
• Unless the pressings were done well, you can get hairy nastiness on the final tracks of a side, where the grooves are moving much slower past the stylus.
I’ll grant you that album cover art is bigger and nicer, and that mp3 encoding can sound like crap. But no, I’d never go back to vinyl.
Comrade PhysioProf
@Comrade Mary:
It’s kind of hard to explain why, but the physical sensation of pedaling a fixed-wheel–once you get used to it–is really awesome, and quite different from a free-wheel bike, even a single-speed. One cool thing you can do is make (or buy) a rear wheel with a flip-flop hub, that is fixed on one side and free-wheel on the other.
silentbeep
Classic contribution by the hipster economy:
pbr
I know some of y’all aren’t so crazy about Sully, but he had a really relevant post about the “hipster economy” today
What Hipsters Drink
Evan
http://www.walmart.com/ip/700C-Men-s-Mongoose-Cachet-Fixed-Speed-Bike/13398142
They’re also great for getting into shape in the spring, and much better for riding in severe weather than most road bikes. Heavy rain, snow and ice were no problem last winter on my fixie.
PBR is better and cheaper than Budweiser.
Depending on the mastering, records can sound quite a bit better than CDs. Listen to old Springsteen records for example, as the production is excellent. Pay special attention to the snare and cymbal hits. If it was recorded on shitty equipment, however, a record is only good to hang on your wall.
I’m pretty up front about my record collection mostly being for show, making me look cooler. Nothing like putting on a Voidoids or Sparks record to make all your hipster friends ooh and aah.
Omnes Omnibus
@jimBOB: I have stuff on vinyl that I cannot find in other formats. I suppose I could get one of those mp3 converters, but I don’t really feel like it.
Napoleon
@Comrade PhysioProf:
Your number 4 is a subjective thing but the first 3 are, imo, at the cost of safety (and I am someone who uses riding shoes and pedals w/ clips sometimes).
shecky
@Comrade Mary:
Very true. For me, the joy is just riding the fixed. The feel and control is simply unsurpassed. There is more of a connection between the machine and the road. It’s just more fun. More challenging, more demanding. Low cost is mostly an illusion unless you’re a master scavenger.
WereBear
@Jebediah: Hooray for Juno and Otto! I’m so glad.
We have friendship improvements at our homefront, too.
Click here to see Olwyn & Tristan sharing a play moment.
Bonus Cuteness!* Click here to see him letting his toy win.
*This picture contains such enormous cuteness BJ readers are advised to evaluate their ability to handle so much squee potential.
Nylund
You can buy fixies in stores. I think that with a break, its perfectly legal to sell them. And, I think without a break, it is still legal to sell it if the intended use is a velodrome (ie, a proper bike track). Of course, after you buy it, one may not follow that rule much like those “water pipes” that are “for tobacco use only.”
Long story short, you can buy them, but in some towns, you’ll have trouble with the cops if caught biking brakeless.
I’m an old fart now, but in my younger days, I really loved riding fixed. Its so quiet and smooth and you’re in so much more control (after the initial adjustment). When I ride my “normal” bike to work now, I still miss doing track stands and skid-stopping. Simply put, its really fun (and the constant pedaling is better exercise.) Not to mention, when you live on a fifth floor walkup, you really appreciate having a super light bike. You can easily lift one over your head with one arm.
Comrade PhysioProf
@Napoleon:
If you have a front caliper brake, a fixed-wheel is just as safe as a free-wheel bike.
GeneJockey
@Comrade PhysioProf:
1-3, I’ll grant – with the caveat that the lightest CF-framed bikes are now easily under 15 lbs, which is hard to do with a steel-framed ANYTHING.
But I have to take issue with #4.
That depends entirely on the riding you like to do.
I don’t think most fixie riders could do the climbs and descents that make riding in the SF Bay Area so much fun. 4 miles of 7% average grade – up OR down – would be next to impossible on a fixie, especially the 15-20% grade on the inside corners.
This is especially true for old fat guys like me!
Montysano
@sherifffruitfly:
Spoken like a good little consumerbot.
Comrade PhysioProf
@GeneJockey:
Gotta grant you that riding Bay Area hills on a fixed-wheel is non-starter! That said, I have been amazed at some of the hills I’ve seen SF bike messengers riding on fixed-wheels.
Evan
@Omnes Omnibus
If you have a record player and a decent stereo system, you can just use the line-in jack on a computer. Those USB turntables are decent quality as turntables if you’re not a freak, but the A-D circuits are way shittier than what you’ve already got on your sound card.
debit
Of my two most recent fixie sightings, I don’t know who had more hipster street cred: the guy on the fixie with dreads, smoking, and with a Kmart boombox duct taped to his jacket, or the guy on the fixie with a keg strapped to his back.
GeneJockey
My hat’s off to anyone who can ride anything up some of those. Hell, even with a triple!
Violet
@WereBear:
That second photo is the cutest thing I’ve seen in ages. The first is pretty cute too, but the second one..those eyes! My teeth ache just looking at it.
jeffreyw
@WereBear:
The squee is strong in that one.
WereBear
I’ve got nothing against analog, but I have not the money or time or room for vinyl. And I had half a wall of nicely maintained records, and a pretty good setup at one time.
But geez, convenience has got to stand for something, people. I lived through 8 tracks; it was better than the radio, but there are many Bill Cosby routines that are embedded in my mind with the click clack in the middle because my father listened to them in the car.
jeffreyw
Toby is taking a “wait and see” ..uh, stance.. towards Homer.
WereBear
@jeffreyw: Hey, not reacting much to him IS a great thing.
Montysano
To wander off into true old fart territory, though, I’ll say this:
1. I generally don’t care for re-released versions of albums that contain “bonus” tracks at the end. It’s jarring to come to what was once the end of a piece of work….. and then it keeps going;
2. My music collection is fairly large, but contains very few Greatest Hits collections. Anyone whose only exposure to Bob Marley (for example) is via his gazillion-selling hits package is missing a lot of great music.
J.W. Hamner
You wound me sir… I buy either vinyl or mp3, nothing in between. Though I’m probably guilty as charged in the (aging) hipster department.
Germane Jackson
@sherifffruitfly: Vinyl accounts for something like 5% of sales iirc, which is not insignificant. Also, preferring vinyl to cds or mp3s is not a matter of refusing to change with the times. It is a matter of recognizing a superior technology, which for listening to music, vinyl is. I’ll grant the obvious convenience of iTunes, etc., but vinyl is better-sounding, cooler, prettier, cheaper, and makes listening to music a more visceral, active experience.
Montysano
@GeneJockey:
I do some occasional bicycle commuting, on a mountain bike set up for street riding (smooth tires, toe clips, etc). A friend insisted that I give his fixie a try. Not so good…. I’m a fat-assed middle aged dude living in Appalachian foothills country. I need gears.
jeffreyw
@WereBear:
Yeah, wish I could say the same thing about Bea. Mrs J says Bea and Homer came nose to nose for a second this morning without any fur flying so that’s good. Oh, and she announced today that Homer has officially gone from “foster kitty” to “adopted kitty”.
Larkspur
@Amanda in the South Bay: Yeah, Amanda, and then, have you noticed? When it gets cold and foggy, out come the tank tops, sandals, and shorts.
Sometimes knucklehead kids are a lot of fun. I’m pretty old, so I can talk to anyone now, even teenagers. I’m not their mom (maybe I even used to babysit their moms), and we all know that there will be no asking out on dates, or flirting, and since my Cool factor has long since expired, we can just be kind of normal.
Unless, you know, they plan to resort to fisticuffs for some reason, in which case I can do a real effective crazy brane-eatin’ crone impression.
Derelict
@efgoldman:
True dat! I have a friend who’s a major snob in all sorts of things–including wine and music. He’s already fallen for some truly cheap rotgut in an expensive bottle (another friend and I poured out the expensive stuff into our own cheap bottle, and gave him the equivalent of Muscatel–he loved it).
But his whole “Vinyl is how music was really meant to be heard” schtick is more than annoying. He wasn’t too appreciative of my crack that, if vinyl is music is meant to be heard, then how come Bach doesn’t include pops, clicks and hiss as part of the score?
MTiffany
Other than prying money loose from mommy’s and daddy’s wallets? None.
Xecky Gilchrist
Point me to one – just one – true double-blind test that shows more than random preference for analog over digital, vinyl over CD, or tubes over solid-state.
but but but warmth!
Tyro
I’d never heard of “fixies” before
I had. They’re for small children. I got a regular bike when I was 10, like everyone else.
Lighter than free-wheel bike.
Cripes. That extra pound from the gears? Please– it’s like the claim about how the “chain is shorter” because it goes straight to the wheel rather than being slightly angled to accommodate the multiple gears.
Tyro
Vinyl might not be how music is “meant to be heard,” but when they’re giving away crates of it, you’d be nuts not to buy a turntable so that you can listen to it all.
Cat Lady
@WereBear:
That kitteh actually makes me feel… funny. So. Much. Cute.
Andy K
@bjacques:
Motorbooty FTW!
I wish Barry and Mark would get it going again. King Oed Rock? The Stooges Wax Museum? Pure fucking gold!
Martin
I’ve yet to see someone over 18 riding a fixie. They’re very popular with junior high kids, so I’d put them in the same category as legwarmers and other ‘Dear God, what can I do to appear cool, even though adolescence has me by the balls’ fads.
My 12 year old son was somewhat bemoaning appearing uncool on his quite nice mountain bike. I told him to work to make some place at the top of a hill the cool place to go and his problems would be solved.
Ash Can
What the hell is a “hipster,” anyway?
srv
@GeneJockey:
We have wiggles with lower grades that will get you most anywhere, save Twin Peaks.
That said, I see super-lite fixies climbing pretty steep all the time. It’s the downhill that would be insane.
Ross Hershberger
I quit listening to vinyl because CDs were more convenient. And technically I’m an audiophile.
Then I modded a B&O linear tracking turntable and added an RF remote control for all functions. Now I can skip past Stairway to Heaven from 400 yards away and I listen to records again.
Cat Lady
Way OT, but is anyone but me interested in the former Air Force Officers giving a news conference in Washington tomorrow about UFOs they saw on duty way back when, and believe disabled nuclear missiles at the time? I’ve tried linking to the story about 10 different times today, but for some reason I can’t explain, and frankly is freaking me the fuck out, every comment I put a link in to the story has disappeared into the void. (FYWP!) I know these allegations aren’t new, but it’s curious to me that these guys want to give a joint press conference, and that the National Press Club news conference is being fairly widely promoted, even on Foxnews.com, which I can’t get to link either. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
srv
@Ash Can: Actually, I don’t even call them hipster in the bay. More like trusters/trustafarians and richsters.
Origuy
Do hipsters drink absinthe? There’s a few producers in the US now, although they don’t use wormwood. I’ve never tried it, with or without the wormwood.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Derelict: if vinyl is music is meant to be heard, then how come Bach doesn’t include pops, clicks and hiss as part of the score?
hee hee
I’ll have to remember that. I always figured the whole vinyl snobbery thing was yet another of the zillion ways for Boomers to tell us GenXers “your music sucks,” but I guess there’s more to it than that.
srv
@Xecky Gilchrist: Show me any double-blind that shows a preference to CD’s over compressed mp3 through a tinny set of earbuds.
95% of folks can’t tell the difference, and no audiophile would ever contest that. Just like they think American Idol is high culture.
D-boy
NBA Jersey sales
http://deadspin.com/search/hoopsters/
Cacti
The most memorable thing about vinyl was the album art.
Origuy
@Cat Lady: I haven’t heard anything about it, but remember that the National Press Club will rent a room to just about anyone to hold a press conference. Birthers love to make their announcements there.
Xecky Gilchrist
@srv: 95% of folks can’t tell the difference, and no audiophile would ever contest that.
Just like I didn’t!
WereBear
@jeffreyw: Ooooh. I am not surprised. I hope Bea comes around. But a week can make a world of difference; then Homer is no longer “new.”
Brachiator
Vinyl record sales are trivial compared to digital sales, and overall there has been a contraction of the recorded music business.
Hipsters aren’t contributing much to the economy with their antiquarian ways. And the market for antiquarian audio gear, from tube amplifiers, turntables, etc., is soooo tiny as to be almost nonexistent.
I don’t know. I’ve always found going to actual musical performances to be a more visceral, active experience.
I’ve had some good stereo equipment (with especially fond memories of an old Yamaha amp), but I never cared as much about trying to reproduce the perfect sound as going to hear musicians. And here, I got more pleasure in smoky jazz clubs with crappy acoustics than listening to friends’ audio gear.
Also, a lot of audiophiles I’ve known have absolutely terrible taste in music. I remember one guy who would have near orgasms listening to a sound effects disc, and he would always go for the best recorded versions of Beethoven instead of the best performances. The audiophiles cared more about sonics than music. Strangely, that’s how most of them are wired.
WereBear
@Origuy: It. Is. Awesome.
I mean, it’s a strong liqueur, so you definitely get a buzz, but my husband swears the herbs add a little somethin’somethin’. Very nice. Worth trying.
The box I bought said, “Now with wormwood!” So it has that going on, too.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ross Hershberger #67: what a fascinating interview (and I *love* what you said about your wife)! Thanks for sharing the link.
@everyone with kitteh pictures: they are All. So. Cute.
Cacti
@Ash Can:
The children of affluent yuppies who like to drink PBR and dress in thrift store clothing.
burnspbesq
@efgoldman:
There’s no such thing as a true double-blind test, so just stop right there. I’ve been playing music for 49 years. I trust my ears, and my ears tell me that analog wins over digital, every time. CD-resolution is the minimum acceptable, and in most cases even a 96/24 AIFF file ripped from vinyl sounds better than a CD, in ways that aren’t even remotely subtle. Vinyl vs. CD? Even my kid, who mostly listens to unlistenable MP3s, can tell the difference.
People who bag on audiophiles are engaging in class jealousy. Nothing more, nothing less.
As coincidence would have it, I just got home from a vinyl swap meet. Organizing my loot as we speak.
Cat Lady
@Origuy:
Ah, I didn’t realize that. Maybe they’re birthers and UFOers about to announce that they’ve got proof that Obama is actually from Alpha Centauri, sent to disable our nuclear defense system with his secret Soshulistfascistmuslim agenda.
burnspbesq
@Evan:
I use Audacity, a free, open-source piece of software, to rip vinyl to 96/24 AIFF files. Cable runs from the outputs of the phono preamp to the line in on the MacBook Pro.
burnspbesq
@Xecky Gilchrist:
Your music does suck.
Look at it this way: when I wanted to piss my parents off, I played the Who as loud as possible. When my kid wants to piss me off, he plays Katy Perry as loud as possible.
stuckinred
@burnspbesq: Wonder what I should do with my 1000+ records?
Amir_Khalid
@Brachiator:
True. And as I recall from my own period of dabbling in audiophilia, these are also the people who buy exquisitely made “audiophile” recordings of boring music, or overpriced “audiophile” pressings of CDs that in fact sound exactly like the regular CDs. It’s not about the music for this lot; it’s all about “my gear/discs are better than yours”.
stuckinred
@burnspbesq: Dylan killed my old man in 64, he would go totally nuts.
300baud
@GeoX:
I see three practical differences between a unicycle and a brakeless fixie:
1) Unicycles don’t normally go as fast,
2) Bikes are much harder to stop than unicycles,
3) Jackass unicycle riders are not a problem.
PeakVT
Fixie = foolish. You can strip down a bike pretty far without getting rid of the freewheel.
Vinyl = vain. Buy a better pair of speakers if you want better sound reproduction.
stuckinred
@Ash Can:
Ginsberg
Howl
These little weenies just swiped the phrase.
stuckinred
These latter day “hipsters” are also the kind of people that just have to say “I’m WELL” and “No Problem”. Like fucking fingernails on a chalkboard.
ajr22
Hipsters support the retro NBA jersey industry. This a fact, just go to any music festival.
300baud
@burnspbesq: “There’s no such thing as a true double-blind test, so just stop right there.”
Why’s that?
“I’ve been playing music for 49 years. I trust my ears, and my ears tell me that analog wins over digital, every time.”
They recently did a great set of brain imaging studies on wine drinkers. They gave them 5 glasses of wine at 5 different price levels with 5 different pedigrees, and they measurably had 5 different experiences. The problem? There were only 3 kinds of wine involved.
My point being that your ears don’t tell you anything; it’s your brain telling you things. Brains lie to people a lot, so being sure doesn’t say much about being factually correct.
jimBOB
There’s no such thing as a true double-blind test
cuz I said so!
I trust my ears, and my ears tell me that analog wins over digital, every time
and there’s no such thing as confirmation bias!
UPDATE: Damn, 300baud beat me to it.
Montysano
@burnspbesq:
Again, IMHO, the big difference is dynamic range. It’s not that CDs can’t reproduce decent dynamic range; they’re capable of greater range than analog. But for reasons that baffle me (to make a record “louder”), most commerical CDs are highly compressed and have little range. For example: the first Gnarls Barkley album was a fine piece of work, but the CD was hard to listen to.
So yeah…. ripping vinyl to CD can have a very nice result. In fact, I just ripped Michelle Shocked’s “Short Sharp Shocked” this afternoon. Produced by Pete Anderson, it’s a great sounding LP.
stuckinred
David Strathairn wants to know too!
Martin
Huzzah! Audio geek war!
Put me down with Brachiater for preferring live performances. Heading off to one in about half an hour.
@burnspbesq:
How about mockery? $11,000 for speaker cables:
I bet Republican economic proposals make perfect sense to these folks as well.
Cacti
@300baud:
In medicine, they refer to it as the placebo effect.
mr. whipple
@Martin:
Sonic dust? Fucking hucksters.
Montysano
@Martin:
Again: it’s not an either/or thing. I’ve seen 3 good shows in the last 8 days: Carolina Chocolate Drops, Rosie Ledet, and Here Come The Mummies.
I’m afraid that the Mummies costume schtick gets in the way of the fact that they’re a blazing-hot band of Nashville studio pros. 4-piece horn section FTW.
Jebediah
@Napoleon:
Well, I don’t think I am a moron. Along with all the other answers you’ve already gotten, riding a fixed gear does wonders for pedalling circles. For competitive cyclists, that is important.
And this, from Tyro-
Lighter than free-wheel bike.
I don’t understand. Are you denying they are lighter? I have a custom-made aluminum/carbon road bike, and my fixie is, in fact, considerably lighter.
Some folks have alluded to the fun feel of riding one – I think part of it is, without the ability to freewheel, you have a feeling of being more “connected” to the road. For some, it is worth the extra effort and the learning curve. (But I don’t ride without a front brake.)
NonWonderDog
@Martin:
They’re only $5,250 cables, but this is the definitive audiophool cable review:
I have to agree about vinyl having better dynamic range, though. The loudness war hasn’t quite swallowed up vinyl, probably because it’s not possible to make an LP that loud. CDs should sound better than vinyl, but you can’t discount the effect of record label idiocy. Ripping the vinyl to CD or mp3 is often the way to go.
Dick Woodcock
I still love vinyl, but I’m definitely not a hipster or an audiophile. It’s what I grew up with. Clicks & pops in a vinyl record don’t bug me a bit, but the jangly sounding cymbals of a bad mp3 rip drive me nuts.
I haven’t bought any new vinyl in close to 10 years, but that’s because back then it was cheaper than a CD, but now they charge the same price. I really liked getting the same music for $7.99 on vinyl that was $15 or more on a CD.
I know I’m not an audiophile, because once I got that record home, I would record it straight to cassette, or CD, or MP3 (depending on the time period) so I could listen to it conveniently. 75% of my music listening these days is through the stock stereo system in my Pontiac through my mp3 player playing through the cassette player. As long as the mp3 is ripped at 192K or above, I can’t hear the difference in my car. I don’t find the need to rip my music to flacs or ogg or any thing like that because I’ve lived through crappy ass cassettes. Mp3s at 192+ are just fine by my old ears.
stuckinred
@Dick Woodcock: My double albums still have stems and seeds in them. Try cleanin a lid on a cd cover!
Martin
Oh, and lets not forget the $1000 HDMI cables. Remember, HDMI transmits a purely digital signal.
Jebediah
@WereBear:
Wicked cute! Thanks!
300baud
@GeneJockey:
I’m with you on all of that, GeneJockey. Although I’m bit suspicious about the “lighter” argument, in that for urban riding I don’t believe that a 3% weight difference in bike+person+cargo makes any practical difference. Seems more about style.
I’m in SF, and a lot of the brakeless fixie riders are absolutely terrible. It bugs me how much a few bad riders can give all of us a bad name, and I’d love to see the cops ticket my fellow riders more frequently. Especially the dolts without brakes.
I thought this rant from a Chicago bike builder complaining about the fixie fashion victims was pretty swell:
http://ask.metafilter.com/89865/Whats-up-with-the-fixies#1320166
Maxwel
Pabst Blue Ribbon – swill.
Fixies – used only on flat terrain.
Vinyl – used by people who can’t otherwise figure out what to do with their Wall Street bonuses.
Sentient Puddle
I tend to agree with all this about vinyl and probably don’t have the ear to tell you the difference between an MP3 and CD mix, but…
@Daddy-O:
The mono mixes ARE different. Observe:
Stereo
Mono
That one may be one of the more extreme examples, but for someone like me who had the stereo version of Sgt. Pepper practically carved into my brain from listening to it so much, hearing the mono mix was almost a total mindfuck.
(What’s it, three links before a post goes into moderation hell?)
Brachiator
@Montysano:
RE: Put me down with Brachiater for preferring live performances. Heading off to one in about half an hour.
It’s a matter of priorities, especially if you don’t have a boatload of money to spend on live concerts and on audio equipment.
One of the most amazing things is how the quality of music can come through despite the limitations of recorded media. One of the best performances I’ve ever heard of Schubert’s String Quartet Number 14, Death and the Maiden a 1930s recording of the Busch Quartet, remastered in 2006 as part of the EMI classics series of “Great Recordings of the Century.”
A taste here.
Jebediah
@PeakVT:
For some, the freewheel is what isn’t wanted. Foolish for you, maybe. Valuable training for some, fun for others.
What is the point in being so judgemental about something you don’t care about?
stuckinred
@Sentient Puddle: I dunno, I linked to the Seeds and Blue Cheer and it didn’t fly.
mr. whipple
Be sure to sample way above 44.1 kHz to capture the pops and dust in all their sonic analog glory or else you’ll get a hollow, tinny cd-type sound.
Montysano
@Brachiator:
Well, for the three concerts I listed, I spent a total of $40.00. I’d much rather see a smaller act in an intimate setting than see a mega-band with 20,000 other people. The Chocolate Drops, from 10′ away and with a full moon rising behind them, was pure magic. And I don’t spend much on gear; my rig is vintage and worth less than $1K.
Jebediah
@Jebediah:
Replying to myself is certainly not hip, but here goes – my crankiness notwithstanding, I’m still in for bagging on hipsters and bad/dangerous riders. I’m just referring to maligning the existence/usefulness of fixies.
As for bike weight – I am fully aware that for most of us, myself included, many more pounds need to come off the body than the bike. But, given the same rider, a light bike accelerates faster, and for some folks, that is enjoyable all by itself.
I belong to a West Los Angles bike club, and I see a LOT of disposable income represented by very expensive bikes. I will not dispute that a lot of very light bikes are ways of showing off one’s income. I had to do a lot of scrimping to get my Russ Denny (Southern California framebuilder – I highly recommend him) and it will not be replaced unless it is stolen or broken. I admit that I question the need for a new Colnago/De Rosa et al every year.
Ross Hershberger
All forms of music recording and reproduction drastically alter the original performance. CD and vinyl have different strengths and weaknesses. You pays your money and you takes your pick. And if you really think that one or the other reproduces accurately, you argue about it.
That is all.
maus
@Martin: That has as much to do with hipsterism as homeopathy.
Joel
just for reference, there’s no need for fixies to be death machines. It’s those fucking hipsters who use fixies without any brakes installed that make them so.
I built a fixie nigh ten years ago, with inspiration from Sheldon Brown, who is about as bike-dork-non-hipster as you can get.
dmsilev
@Martin: I can beat that. How about a $500 Ethernet cable? Read the customer reviews, they’re hilarious.
dms
misterarthur
re: Fixed gears. I believe you are mistaken. Here’s a selection of Bianchi Fixed gears, for example: http://www.bianchiusa.com/bikes/fixed-gear/
Brachiator
@dmsilev:
And this always reminds me of the wonderful faux reviews of Tuscan Whole Milk on the amazon site:
maus
@misterarthur: Hipsters don’t use track bikes.
Ross Hershberger
Those Bianchis have brakes. I believe what’s illegal in most places is anything without brakes.
last winter I stripped and modded an old Peugeot 10 speed into a one-speeder with coaster brake. It’s a fun town bike that I don’t have to think about when I’m riding it.
quaint irene
Vinyl sales up? Vintage LP’s are the one thing that never seems to sell on Ebay.
RedDirtGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The only guy I know who uses mustache wax is middle-aged.
burnspbesq
@300baud:
Something very much like placebo effect. Everything after the first thing you hear is judged by reference to the first thing.
GeneJockey
@300baud:
Fixies USED TO BE what roadies road on flattish empty roads – like Canada Road – in the winter/early spring to help spinning.
The idea of riding in The City without brakes just seems nuts. Cars do the damnedest things, usually with no warning, and that’s out in the ‘Burbs and the rural roads. The City is ten times worse.
Bubblegum Tate
@burnspbesq:
What’d ya pull?
GeneJockey
Regarding audiophilia, I confess to a flirtation with it long ago that left me with a nice system – which I could afford because I didn’t have any kids, or mortgage.
I am, however, a firm believer in the Placebo Effect, so even when I hear a difference due to something I’ve done, I don’t really trust it.
For that, my blind tester is my wife. One time I replaced my basic heavy gauge speaker cables with higher-grade ones. My wife was out at the time, and I had it all cleaned up before she got home. She came into the living room and after a minute or two asked what I had done to the stereo, it sounded much better.
The same thing happened when I finally got my old tube preamp, which had been out of service for a long time, back. ‘What did you do? It sounds so much better!’
Bubblegum Tate
@quaint irene:
Depends on what you’re selling. One guy I know recently paid off his student loans and bought a new car by selling his record collection on eBay (he’s not even 30 yet, the fucker). He happened to have a nice array of albums that are very hot in digger/collector scenes right now–Brazilian stuff and somewhat obscure psych rock–so he was able to sell them off one at a time and fetch serious dollars (over a grand apiece for several of them).
Mike G
I work on a college campus, and double-decker bikes seem to be the bicycle-hipster item du jour:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnwilliamsphd/3288928346/
Ross Hershberger
I had the same experience. While my girlfriend was out I changed the speaker cables, and nothing else. She cam in and immediately asked what I’d changed. And she’s not an audiophile. Here ‘stereo’ was a car cassette deck rolling around loose in her van. Women have better hearing than men.
That said, I’m agnostic in teh wire wars. I’m a tech, and when I want to change something I have circuit topology, active device selection, operating point, impedance, etc. to work with. Like being able to change the displacement, compression ratio, valve timing and ignition map on an engine instead of swapping brands of oil looking for more performance.
scarshapedstar
Don’t forget American Spirits.
But yeah, fuck fixies. I don’t know how many times I heard “why don’t you just make it fixed-gear, dude?” in Little Five Points, aka Hipsterville Atlanta. Mostly from people who owned cars and just rode bikes for the hell of it. I had a bike and a subway pass and that was it; I biked 12-20 miles a day on actual streets in a hilly city. Damn right I want a mechanical advantage.
I’m aware that bike messengers ride fixies, and I’m also aware that they speed up and weave through traffic at red lights instead of stopping. More power to those who survive, I guess, but it gives the rest of us a bad name and sooner or later there’s gonna be a nasty head-on collision followed by a crackdown.
Ross Hershberger
One more, then I need to finish writing this quote.
I don’t mind Hipsters’ eclectic tastes. You like Jamaican Bluebeat? Fine. What bothers me is self inflicted selective anhedonia: the refusal to enjoy – and in the worst cases, to tolerate – anything outside your specific preferences. Bluebeat is good, but that doesn’t make everything non-Bluebeat crap.
Anne Laurie
@Jebediah:
__
I, for one, am happy to hear good news about Otto & Juno! Thanks for the update!
Anne Laurie
@russell: I swear, the “pork pie” has to be the single ugliest fad hat ever invented, not excluding the jesters’ cap’n’bells and the Dr. Seuss raver special. Which is exactly how the Rat Pack era hipsters wore the dam’ things — as comic accessories intended to announce that they were so double-super-kool that even walking around wearing an overturned basket named after a downmarket food item on their head would not decrease their coolness. The way Sammy Davis’ funny-once has been “repurposed” by wet little gonks is just… aggravating.
Anne Laurie
@jeffreyw:
__
Congratulations, on both counts.
Amir_Khalid
@dmsilev: I’m still amazed by that the audacity of one. For that kind of money, you can get Cat 5 cable by the kilometer!
Daddy-O
@13th Generation: Lowe’s is owned by Wal-Mart, as well as Sam’s, IIRC.
So I shop at the Home Depot–ANOTHER gigantic corporate entity, one of the last left standing.
Daddy-O
@Cacti: To me, the most memorable thing about vinyl is turning the volume up past 6 or 7 and dropping the needle…and that silky, ‘warm’ sound of the groove as it wound around to the first sounds coming. Even the stuck-in-your-memory particular pops and clicks of each album’s flaws are, after a certain number of repetitions, simply part of the songs.
No replacing that one.
Daddy-O
@stuckinred: ha ha
Reminds me:
No stems, no seeds that you don’t need,
Acupulco Gold is—
SSSSSSSSS!
Bad-assed weed!
What a coincidence–a buddy just lent me a bunch of old original underground comix. I laughed my ass off last night at the old chestnuts of the Freak Brothers…
Good times.
John Bird
Well, hipsters are largely educated and left-wing, so their effect on the economy also includes voter turnout for the Democrats and their economic policy.
I’m sorry, was I supposed to mock them or something?
Xecky Gilchrist
@burnspbesq: Your music does suck.
Shrug
Daddy-O
@Sentient Puddle: There’s a huge difference. I only listened to the first ten seconds of each…but the mono’s pitch is less than but near a half a tone higher than the stereo.
Something’s wrong with one of them, and if my ear is correct, it’s the mono. I’d guess it’s whatever file got placed on this particular YouTube. But if they RELEASED a song that was that much off the original–speeded up? I guess–that’s fucked up, man.
Try playing a guitar with it. It’ll be in tune with one, and out of tune with the other. Maybe there’s a better YouTube example?
Okay, listened to more of it…there’s more reverb, more effects…and your (or someone else’s) comments about a mix not being the final say is true enough. Mixing is an art all by itself.
I guess all I’m left with is a lack of being impressed by these changes. But if they pleased somebody’s sense of esthetics, then it was worth the job. Forgot to mention, but like you, I have these songs embedded in MY brain, too, and I wouldn’t have it any other way!
;-)
John Bird
@Ash Can:
As far as I can tell, ‘hipster’ usually refers to anyone under 30 who is not a Republican. Often, hipsters will tell you that they are not hipsters, but merely people under 30 who are not Republicans. As you can see, those people are clearly lying.
russell
That, my friends, is known as one low-ass bar.
Analog vs digital:
Go find a 20khz signal and see if you can hear it. If you can’t you probably cannot hear the diff between analog and digital.
Just saying.
I used to buy vinyl because it sounded better, but that was because my turntable was about 100 times better than my CD deck.
Now I just live off of my ipod. Yeah, it’s less of an audiophile experience, but there are only so many hours in a day.
burnspbesq
@Bubblegum Tate:
Highlight of the day was an unopened copy of the Phil Ochs anthology, “Chords of Fame.” Also got a set of the Rachmanninoff piano concertos played by Rachmanninoff, and a recording of “The Rite of Spring” conducted by Stravinsky. Plus a pile of old Jimmy Smith on Blue Note.
russell
It was pretty hip on Lester Young. It’s been all downhill from there.
I blame Salmagundi.
Xenos
@Montysano: I am no specialist, but the highly compressed music seems designed for people listening with a lot of background noise – like when you are driving a car, or for playing at a party, or during dinner. Back in the day recording LPs to audiotape seemed to do the compression automatically, but when recording LPs on Audacity you can adjust the range for what sort of use you have in mind.
I don’t know if new music is being mixed in order to sound good on Ipods… the quality of earphones is so variable that I doubt one could effectively do that.
jethro
I sold all my vinyl in the 90s and went for CDs, but I’ve recently converted back.
Increasingly CDs are compressed and brickwalled to buggery, and the vinyl release (in most cases) is not subject to such audio horrors.
I usually buy cheap used vinyl in good condition (sometimes I can get boxes of records for $10 or so), but I’ve bought some new vinyl recently. I rip to FLAC using Audacity so I can listen in the car, at work, etc.
I’ll still buy CDs if they are cheap enough, but CDs as a format are dying anyway (witness Best Buy’s recent decision to reduce CD floor space). The future is vinyl and downloads.
Ross Hershberger
I think one of the reasons that people think CDs sound bad compared to vinyl is that typical production values for recorded music have absolutely gone to hell. Pop music mixes are just awful, and not just the teenybopper stuff. Compressed, filtered, tweaked, etc. You occasionally find really great recordings on CD and they sound outstanding. Lots of recordings from the vinyl age were lousy as well, but the general standard was higher. And the goal was listenability in a living room, not cutting through traffic din to be audible on earbuds.
Ross Hershberger
I think you’re half right. the dominant distribution mode for popular music has always been driven by convenience rather than quality. Cassettes out sold records for years before CDs came along because they were small, relatively durable and were portable. Vinyl will persist as a purist medium but will never be more than a small fraction of the volume of the digital media.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I still pull out the vinyl on occasion and have a nice collection of it but prefer to use cd most of the time. I have copied some vinyl to cd to preserve them and like both though I think some of my vinyl sounds better than the cd version (retail or recording).
I have the Monty Python Instant Record Collection and there are messages on the vinyl (written around the label in the center). On one side is a message to “Mom” that they will be late getting home because they are recording a new album and on the other side it says that the album is a winner, has a code number on it and says to contact Chrysalis Records for a prize.
I never did because I thought it was a joke. Maybe I passed up a bunch of cash?
The coolest thing about vinyl are the sleeves and jackets. Usually they were just artist info and song lists, sometimes the lyrics were tossed in and then you had artwork and humor like Zappa’s One Size Fits All.
Fun stuff.
Mnemosyne
@russell:
No one has looked good in a pork pie since Buster Keaton.
300baud
@burnspbesq:
You say double-blind studies of vinyl versus digital are impossible because: “Something very much like placebo effect. Everything after the first thing you hear is judged by reference to the first thing.”
Really? Any you can’t think of any possible way to control for that? And further, you’re pretty sure that nobody ever has or will think of a solution?
Anne Laurie
@Mnemosyne: That is not a (shudder) pork pie Mr. Keaton is wearing — that’s a boater. Boaters are perfectly seemly hats for shading one’s eyes (and, if one is fair-skinned or balding, one’s scalp) from the summer sun.
bjacques
@103 NonWonderDog:
I can’t tell if that’s parody or not. “PRAT?”
There are great parody “positive” reviews of overpriced speaker cables on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B000I1X6PM/ref=cm_cr_pr_link_1
Because the manufacturer goes after and deletes every negative one.
pto892
Modern recording techniques do suck, badly. They’ve compressed, squeezed, and filtered the music right out of the signal. Vinyl isn’t better by any means, or rather it shouldn’t be better but go ahead and find something produced during the golden age of vinyl. Zappa or Steely Dan are good examples-the production standards were such that they got the most out of the what should be a terrible means of recording and playing back an audio signal. Because I am cheap I like to buy vinyl whenever I can, so the recent hipster resurgence of vinyl is pissing me off-they’ve driven the prices up enough to make CD’s look good. A decent RIAA preamp, a good turntable and cartridge, and a quality soundcard and patch cord is mandatory to get the signal off the record on onto a portable audio device, but that’s neither difficult to do nor does it need to be expensive. Cripes, I’m still using my 25 year old denon turntable, which I bought new once upon a time. I’ve got LP’s which were bought used 25 years ago which still play fine. As to golden ears-feh. I have a diagnosed hearing loss and doubt I can hear anything above 15Khz at all, so I don’t need magic speaker cables, gold plated contacts, cryo treated tubes, or other audionut crap. If it sounds good to the end user should be the standard. Too old to be a hipster, I do it this way because it works for me.
Ross Hershberger
Pace
Rhythm
Acceleration
Timing
I hesitate to admit that this is a characteristic by which audiophiles evaluate things.
Ross Hershberger
There are several reasons that modern digital recordings sound different. It’s certainly possible to make a good sounding CD. I have a number of them that are stunningly good.
Music listening has changed. LPs were a living room thing. You had big speakers in a room and maybe you made an effort to place them appropriately and sit more or less in the middle for best stereo sound. That was the market that record producers had in mind.
Modern digital audio also has to take into account the car/computer/portable market. In the case of many pop recordings they get played on computers and iPods the majority of the time. The parameters for making the recording listenable are different, and they’re contrary to the requirements of the JBLs-and-an-Ampzilla-in-the-recroom model.
Sentient Puddle
@Daddy-O: No fuck-ups in whoever loaded those on to YouTube, those versions are what you hear on the actual CDs (or records, if you want to go back that far). For whatever crazy reason that nobody thought to correct, there’s a half-tone difference between the two mixes.
For my money, the stereo version sounds more “right” to me as well, but given how The Beatles treated the mixing process (in which they basically abandoned the stereo version to whoever and didn’t care much about it), it’s quite possible that the mono mix was the original, and whoever did the stereo mix accidentally slowed down the tape somewhat.
Alien-Radio
I think it’s all been covered so far. but just to reiterate, CDs produce better quality sound, even if I hadn’t started to get nightclub induced loss there’s no qualitative difference between CD and vinyl at the sampling frequencies involved the human ear isn’t anatomically designed for it.
what does vinyl offer? physical feedback when DJing, the opportunity for rediculous collectors packaging and a better investment than the stock market.
The difference is the mastering, everything gets remastered louder nowadays so there’s less dynamic range. I’m not really affected by it that much, but the difference between something mastered in the first part of the 90’s and now is fairly obvious when you run the recordings through a sound meter
I mostly DJ on CDs because although I buy and play vinyl, and I buy CDs the dance music market has gone Digital in a big way (small market, novelty driven, DIY ethic, very tight money on the publishing end) most things get released in FLAC and you either burn that to CD (modern CD DJ decks are a wonder to behold) or If you want to be really flash use Traktor or Ableton on a laptop. So you buy the FLAC play it and you buy the CD or Vinyl to stick it on a shelf.