July 4, 2025 • 11 mins
In this week’s monologue, Ed Zitron talks about why you should get into vinyl, and why analog music is so much fun in the digital age.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
All Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to your weekly Better
Offline Monologue. I of course amed Xytron, and this week
I'm going to be talking about something completely analog vinyl. Okay,
it's not completely analog. There's some electricity anyway. Now, some
(00:24):
of you might have paid attention. Now. I've been talking
the last few months about my mental health journey and
all that shit, and a big part of feeling better
about myself has been finding ways to relax. I'm not
like a lot of people, so I've had to I
have to teach myself things. I really have to sit
down and say, like, look, Heed, you're gonna try and
work out what relaxing feels like. And I've literally had
(00:44):
to teach myself and I'm getting close. And a lot
of this has been about returning to older music and
letting things just kind of play instead of pecking around.
So the older music in questions like Joe Cocker, Charles Mingus,
Lee Morgan, Derond do Van Morrison. And as part of this,
I decided to get into vinyl because I was walking
around with my dear friend Tory Elliott wired and she
(01:05):
said we're gonna go on a field trip and I said,
I don't like change. Where are we going? She took
me to Music City in in New York City and
it was just full of Vinyl, and I thought, you
know what this looks like fun. I want to get
one of these every week I'm in New York. So
I have been doing so and it's been great. Genuinely,
it's been wonderful for me. And I want to kind
(01:25):
of walk you through why and how vinyl works, because
surprisingly enough, there's not been a ton about it. There's
been a lot of audio pervert stuff and there's been
people saying, oh, Vinyl's having a resurgent fuck all that.
I just want to talk about listening to him. So
if you don't know how it works, it is delightfully analog.
And I did not know how it worked before, so
I had to look it up. So a record player
(01:47):
is made up of a few pieces. The platter where
you put the record, the belt that spins the platter,
the spindle, which is the thing that you put the
record on like the hole in the record goes on that,
the motor which turns the platter to spin set record,
under tone arm which holds the needle, or the stylus
which sticks on to the record and goes along the
grooves of the record, sends the signals to the cartridge,
which is the little box on the top of the
(02:07):
stylust that takes the vibrations and turns them into electric
call signical signals that play music signicholls. We're not editing it.
I'm just gonna let that one fly. Now. If I
miss the piece there, do not bother correcting me. I'm
not going to edit it. I'm not going to fix it.
But in simpler terms, it's quite literally a record player
go BurrH Now, I basically only spend my money on
diet coke and going to baseball, so I allowed myself
(02:29):
a little bit of an extravagance. So I got myself
the Orbit basic turntable from Uturn Audio, which is the
wirecutter's budget pick, along with their Ethos speakers, which sent
me back about a ground. You can go cheaper on
record players than speakers, but I think this is absolutely
a place where you get what you pay for. Based
on a little googling, it seems getting a cheaper record
player can literally destroy the records, because if the needle
(02:50):
and the cartridge aren't good, it scrapes them. I didn't
really understand why, but it sufficiently scared me. I'd also
already bought the other things, so it didn't really scare
me that much. I should know. I've got the all
Big Basic because it has a preamp built into it,
meaning that you can just plug it directly into some
speakers rather than having to get a separate amplifier. If
you're not super technical, just know that this means I
(03:10):
plug go red and yellow cables, red and white maybe
into a speaker, rather than a giant box that has
a bunch of other stuff. I also got something called
a Q lever, which is a little arm that delicately
raises or lowers the arm and the stylus onto the record.
You need one of these. You must have one. It
might ape like hands would probably just shove the needle
repeatedly into the record, destroying a beautiful relic of the sixties. Anyway,
(03:35):
all this took about ten minutes to set up, and
it was mostly because it was learning how record players
work as like when, and also I was on two
hours of sleep. I'm thirty nine years old. I shouldn't
be taking a red eye. You have to loop the
belt around the platter which the round bit and then
click some stuff into place, then connect the speakers with
the cables that come with it, and there you go.
You just kind of start playing records. Now, as far
as actually getting records, I'm a nasty freak, So I
(03:57):
decided to go to a website called discogs dot com,
which is both a great place to organize what records
you have and by the ones you've done. I decided
to get a selection of classics from the sixties and seventies,
originals Joe Coccus with little help for my friends, Charles
Mangus Is Black Saint and The Sin Lady, Lee Morgan's Cornbread,
Van Morrison's Moondance, in part because I wanted to hear
them as they were played on release, and in part
(04:18):
because these are records that came out with my mum
was in her twenties, which is when I moved to
New York. So I was kind of like, mather fuck it,
play records like my mum. I also got a few
newer records and remasters of things like Queens of the Stone
Age's Songs for the Deaf and working with the Miles
Davis Quartet, as well as this insanely high end limited
edition pressing of Miles Davis's Kind of Blue because I
was curious and I had some Amazon credit. Now, the
(04:41):
reason I got such a selection was I was curious
whether things sounded different based on how old they were,
and whether the whole vinyl sounds better thing was a myth.
And the answer is yes, they do sound different, and no,
it's not really a myth at all. The original fam Mingus,
Morgan and Morrison all sound different old, but not in
a way that's crackly or bad. The percussion feels a
(05:03):
bit more present, and the bastones are a bit more forceful.
It feels I don't even know how to say it,
because I'm not a music journalist, but it feels round her.
It feels more alive, and I realized this might be psychosomatic,
a thing I'll say later, but and I'm going to
be honest, like Cocker's help. With help from my friends,
I've listened to this album a great deal digitally. It's
(05:25):
down pitch and it has a softer field to it,
and it just sounds different in a nice way. Describing
sound with words is difficult, which is why I'm not
a music journalist. But the way these record plays was
and is incredibly special. And what was heartening was even
the cheaper by which I mean thirty bucks records I got,
like Herbie Hancock's Imperior and Ile or Aren't Blackie's Caravan,
they still played marvelously. And I must say Caravan is
(05:48):
a fucking incredible record. Just the drums at the beginning
is insane. I stood up and I did the Leonardo
DiCaprio pointing thing at my record player. And all of
this is possible because we kind of live in the
golden age of vinyl. We've got these dedicated audio engineers
who dig out master tapes and perfectly press them onto
these gorgeous records and they sound amazing. And my favorite
(06:10):
example of that is this UHQR pressing of Miles Davis's
Kind of Blue or mentioned earlier, and it came from
this company called Analog Sounds, and it just sounds insane,
like the instruments are in the room and Miles Davis
is watching. We write a post saying what if Anthony
boor Daines saw JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. I don't think Miles
Davis would love that. I think I think Charles Mingus
might have liked jojo, but I don't think Miles Davis
(06:32):
would have. This is based on my very thin knowledge
of jazz history. Email me if you have any thoughts
about this, what famous musicians would or would not like jojo?
But nevertheless, the UHQR stuff is insane. I'm going to
put a link to them in the notes I'm going
to there's a story from the Times I believe about them.
It's just there are people dedicated to vinyl right now,
(06:53):
more dedicated than any tech ceo, and they love it
and perhaps it will destroy them like a cursed ambula,
but they have found this incredible way of recreating music.
I guess if you could even call it that, and
it sounds just bonkers. I've already ordered a few others
because I really wanted to hear Steely Dan's dirty work
(07:13):
on an extremely expensive vinyl. And I'm not even being sarcastic.
That song is a complete banger. And if you disagree
with me, you're simply wrong. I love listening to vinyl
and it's changed how I listen to music for the better.
The convenience of digital audio means that I have this
kind of bad habit. I imagine some of you do
as well. I skip around, I repeat songs. I find
myself stuck in these musical ruts. I'm just listening to
(07:36):
one or two songs again and again and again because
of my emotion, or stay because I want to feel
a certain way up, because I want to sustain or
mood or banish a mood. And while that can be useful,
kind of takes the fun out of music at times.
Vinyl obviously naturally forces you to sit with at least
one side of it, and I found myself keeping going regardless,
(07:59):
like I'll flip it o now. Redditors and engineers will
argue that vinyl does not sound better, but I am
moron fully disagree. I've listened to LPs I'll Sleep when
You're Dead maybe one hundred times in MP three that song.
That album even got me through college. Without it, I
would have probably got on the train out of Aperistwyth
and simply never returned. I wouldn't have gone back to
(08:19):
London either, But that album helped me. And I will
tell you the vinyl based version is different. The sensor
more insistent. It feels dystopian and brutal. It's overwhelmingly dire,
and it's because vinyl sounds warmer and more present. And
I don't know if this is all in my head.
I really do not, but I am someone that is
(08:40):
naturally a bit cynical, and I'm just having more fun
listening to music than I ever have in my life.
Instead of those loops, instead of finding myself kind of
just using music as a tool, as just a thing
that exists in my life, it's become this deliberate, not
even moodsetter, because sometimes you know, you might feel like
an album, you don't feel like a song, and you'll
(09:01):
find yourself really enjoying something you didn't really think of.
Marjorie with a little help of my friends. For example,
a song that I on my MP three's would skit
every time has this warm Hammond organ shit to it.
This just sounds marvelous. And you can also talk about
music in this incredibly insufferable way like I am right now.
(09:22):
But I don't know insufferable or not. I'm having the
time of my fucking life with this, and I really
recommend you do too. The ritual of putting on a
record feels good, the sounds amazing, and we're in this
digital age defined by convenience of a joy, and it's
a deliberacy and a way of focusing more. Even if
it's on in the background, it feels more significant. I
(09:45):
don't know, I'm talking in the wanky way that i'd
usually make fun of AI people for. But this is music.
You can be emotional, you can be esoteric with the
things you love. You're not hurting anyone. Telling people that
vinyl is super period or makes you feel better because
it is a very personal experience and you can quite
(10:05):
literally travel back in time. You can pick up things
from the sixties or the seventies and hear it as
they were then. And yeah, there are some crappy vinyl pressings.
I'm hearing that No Doubt's Tragic Kingdom just doesn't have
a good vinyl release, which sucks because that's one of
my favorite albums. But it's helping me return to albums
I love and listen to them deliberately and with just
(10:27):
a whole new different sound stage. I guess you'd call it.
I don't know whether or not this is exact or our,
whether it's anything more than just the ritual and the
environment that's making me feel this way. I feel fucking
good doing it, and I can't. I just cannot recommend
it enough. Give it a go if you've been considering it.
(10:48):
I found peace and happiness now peace, and I think
you will too,
All Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to your weekly Better
Offline Monologue. I of course amed Xytron, and this week
I'm going to be talking about something completely analog vinyl. Okay,
it's not completely analog. There's some electricity anyway. Now, some
(00:24):
of you might have paid attention. Now. I've been talking
the last few months about my mental health journey and
all that shit, and a big part of feeling better
about myself has been finding ways to relax. I'm not
like a lot of people, so I've had to I
have to teach myself things. I really have to sit
down and say, like, look, Heed, you're gonna try and
work out what relaxing feels like. And I've literally had
(00:44):
to teach myself and I'm getting close. And a lot
of this has been about returning to older music and
letting things just kind of play instead of pecking around.
So the older music in questions like Joe Cocker, Charles Mingus,
Lee Morgan, Derond do Van Morrison. And as part of this,
I decided to get into vinyl because I was walking
around with my dear friend Tory Elliott wired and she
(01:05):
said we're gonna go on a field trip and I said,
I don't like change. Where are we going? She took
me to Music City in in New York City and
it was just full of Vinyl, and I thought, you
know what this looks like fun. I want to get
one of these every week I'm in New York. So
I have been doing so and it's been great. Genuinely,
it's been wonderful for me. And I want to kind
(01:25):
of walk you through why and how vinyl works, because
surprisingly enough, there's not been a ton about it. There's
been a lot of audio pervert stuff and there's been
people saying, oh, Vinyl's having a resurgent fuck all that.
I just want to talk about listening to him. So
if you don't know how it works, it is delightfully analog.
And I did not know how it worked before, so
I had to look it up. So a record player
(01:47):
is made up of a few pieces. The platter where
you put the record, the belt that spins the platter,
the spindle, which is the thing that you put the
record on like the hole in the record goes on that,
the motor which turns the platter to spin set record,
under tone arm which holds the needle, or the stylus
which sticks on to the record and goes along the
grooves of the record, sends the signals to the cartridge,
which is the little box on the top of the
(02:07):
stylust that takes the vibrations and turns them into electric
call signical signals that play music signicholls. We're not editing it.
I'm just gonna let that one fly. Now. If I
miss the piece there, do not bother correcting me. I'm
not going to edit it. I'm not going to fix it.
But in simpler terms, it's quite literally a record player
go BurrH Now, I basically only spend my money on
diet coke and going to baseball, so I allowed myself
(02:29):
a little bit of an extravagance. So I got myself
the Orbit basic turntable from Uturn Audio, which is the
wirecutter's budget pick, along with their Ethos speakers, which sent
me back about a ground. You can go cheaper on
record players than speakers, but I think this is absolutely
a place where you get what you pay for. Based
on a little googling, it seems getting a cheaper record
player can literally destroy the records, because if the needle
(02:50):
and the cartridge aren't good, it scrapes them. I didn't
really understand why, but it sufficiently scared me. I'd also
already bought the other things, so it didn't really scare
me that much. I should know. I've got the all
Big Basic because it has a preamp built into it,
meaning that you can just plug it directly into some
speakers rather than having to get a separate amplifier. If
you're not super technical, just know that this means I
(03:10):
plug go red and yellow cables, red and white maybe
into a speaker, rather than a giant box that has
a bunch of other stuff. I also got something called
a Q lever, which is a little arm that delicately
raises or lowers the arm and the stylus onto the record.
You need one of these. You must have one. It
might ape like hands would probably just shove the needle
repeatedly into the record, destroying a beautiful relic of the sixties. Anyway,
(03:35):
all this took about ten minutes to set up, and
it was mostly because it was learning how record players
work as like when, and also I was on two
hours of sleep. I'm thirty nine years old. I shouldn't
be taking a red eye. You have to loop the
belt around the platter which the round bit and then
click some stuff into place, then connect the speakers with
the cables that come with it, and there you go.
You just kind of start playing records. Now, as far
as actually getting records, I'm a nasty freak, So I
(03:57):
decided to go to a website called discogs dot com,
which is both a great place to organize what records
you have and by the ones you've done. I decided
to get a selection of classics from the sixties and seventies,
originals Joe Coccus with little help for my friends, Charles
Mangus Is Black Saint and The Sin Lady, Lee Morgan's Cornbread,
Van Morrison's Moondance, in part because I wanted to hear
them as they were played on release, and in part
(04:18):
because these are records that came out with my mum
was in her twenties, which is when I moved to
New York. So I was kind of like, mather fuck it,
play records like my mum. I also got a few
newer records and remasters of things like Queens of the Stone
Age's Songs for the Deaf and working with the Miles
Davis Quartet, as well as this insanely high end limited
edition pressing of Miles Davis's Kind of Blue because I
was curious and I had some Amazon credit. Now, the
(04:41):
reason I got such a selection was I was curious
whether things sounded different based on how old they were,
and whether the whole vinyl sounds better thing was a myth.
And the answer is yes, they do sound different, and no,
it's not really a myth at all. The original fam Mingus,
Morgan and Morrison all sound different old, but not in
a way that's crackly or bad. The percussion feels a
(05:03):
bit more present, and the bastones are a bit more forceful.
It feels I don't even know how to say it,
because I'm not a music journalist, but it feels round her.
It feels more alive, and I realized this might be psychosomatic,
a thing I'll say later, but and I'm going to
be honest, like Cocker's help. With help from my friends,
I've listened to this album a great deal digitally. It's
(05:25):
down pitch and it has a softer field to it,
and it just sounds different in a nice way. Describing
sound with words is difficult, which is why I'm not
a music journalist. But the way these record plays was
and is incredibly special. And what was heartening was even
the cheaper by which I mean thirty bucks records I got,
like Herbie Hancock's Imperior and Ile or Aren't Blackie's Caravan,
they still played marvelously. And I must say Caravan is
(05:48):
a fucking incredible record. Just the drums at the beginning
is insane. I stood up and I did the Leonardo
DiCaprio pointing thing at my record player. And all of
this is possible because we kind of live in the
golden age of vinyl. We've got these dedicated audio engineers
who dig out master tapes and perfectly press them onto
these gorgeous records and they sound amazing. And my favorite
(06:10):
example of that is this UHQR pressing of Miles Davis's
Kind of Blue or mentioned earlier, and it came from
this company called Analog Sounds, and it just sounds insane,
like the instruments are in the room and Miles Davis
is watching. We write a post saying what if Anthony
boor Daines saw JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. I don't think Miles
Davis would love that. I think I think Charles Mingus
might have liked jojo, but I don't think Miles Davis
(06:32):
would have. This is based on my very thin knowledge
of jazz history. Email me if you have any thoughts
about this, what famous musicians would or would not like jojo?
But nevertheless, the UHQR stuff is insane. I'm going to
put a link to them in the notes I'm going
to there's a story from the Times I believe about them.
It's just there are people dedicated to vinyl right now,
(06:53):
more dedicated than any tech ceo, and they love it
and perhaps it will destroy them like a cursed ambula,
but they have found this incredible way of recreating music.
I guess if you could even call it that, and
it sounds just bonkers. I've already ordered a few others
because I really wanted to hear Steely Dan's dirty work
(07:13):
on an extremely expensive vinyl. And I'm not even being sarcastic.
That song is a complete banger. And if you disagree
with me, you're simply wrong. I love listening to vinyl
and it's changed how I listen to music for the better.
The convenience of digital audio means that I have this
kind of bad habit. I imagine some of you do
as well. I skip around, I repeat songs. I find
myself stuck in these musical ruts. I'm just listening to
(07:36):
one or two songs again and again and again because
of my emotion, or stay because I want to feel
a certain way up, because I want to sustain or
mood or banish a mood. And while that can be useful,
kind of takes the fun out of music at times.
Vinyl obviously naturally forces you to sit with at least
one side of it, and I found myself keeping going regardless,
(07:59):
like I'll flip it o now. Redditors and engineers will
argue that vinyl does not sound better, but I am
moron fully disagree. I've listened to LPs I'll Sleep when
You're Dead maybe one hundred times in MP three that song.
That album even got me through college. Without it, I
would have probably got on the train out of Aperistwyth
and simply never returned. I wouldn't have gone back to
(08:19):
London either, But that album helped me. And I will
tell you the vinyl based version is different. The sensor
more insistent. It feels dystopian and brutal. It's overwhelmingly dire,
and it's because vinyl sounds warmer and more present. And
I don't know if this is all in my head.
I really do not, but I am someone that is
(08:40):
naturally a bit cynical, and I'm just having more fun
listening to music than I ever have in my life.
Instead of those loops, instead of finding myself kind of
just using music as a tool, as just a thing
that exists in my life, it's become this deliberate, not
even moodsetter, because sometimes you know, you might feel like
an album, you don't feel like a song, and you'll
(09:01):
find yourself really enjoying something you didn't really think of.
Marjorie with a little help of my friends. For example,
a song that I on my MP three's would skit
every time has this warm Hammond organ shit to it.
This just sounds marvelous. And you can also talk about
music in this incredibly insufferable way like I am right now.
(09:22):
But I don't know insufferable or not. I'm having the
time of my fucking life with this, and I really
recommend you do too. The ritual of putting on a
record feels good, the sounds amazing, and we're in this
digital age defined by convenience of a joy, and it's
a deliberacy and a way of focusing more. Even if
it's on in the background, it feels more significant. I
(09:45):
don't know, I'm talking in the wanky way that i'd
usually make fun of AI people for. But this is music.
You can be emotional, you can be esoteric with the
things you love. You're not hurting anyone. Telling people that
vinyl is super period or makes you feel better because
it is a very personal experience and you can quite
(10:05):
literally travel back in time. You can pick up things
from the sixties or the seventies and hear it as
they were then. And yeah, there are some crappy vinyl pressings.
I'm hearing that No Doubt's Tragic Kingdom just doesn't have
a good vinyl release, which sucks because that's one of
my favorite albums. But it's helping me return to albums
I love and listen to them deliberately and with just
(10:27):
a whole new different sound stage. I guess you'd call it.
I don't know whether or not this is exact or our,
whether it's anything more than just the ritual and the
environment that's making me feel this way. I feel fucking
good doing it, and I can't. I just cannot recommend
it enough. Give it a go if you've been considering it.
(10:48):
I found peace and happiness now peace, and I think
you will too,
Host
Ed Zitron
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