Amoeba Music Opens the (Digitized) Vinyl Vaults!

By Michael Lavorgna • Posted: Dec 6, 2012

Speaking of digitizing vinyl , thanks to reader "CG" for pointing us to this fascinating development over at Amoeba Music:

Vinyl Vaults is our boutique, curated collection of digitized vinyl and 78s, available for download exclusively here! Vinyl is the ultimate expression of an artist's work, and we're doing our best to preserve our history! Enjoy the depth and warmth of these vinyl masters, and for the full sonic impact upgrade to M4A (Lossless) or WAV Files.

45rpm singles and 78s start at $3.08 for the WAV version and full LPs in WAV format start at $11.98. The selection is eclectic and filled with rarities (I think that's the gist for a number of reasons including copyright concerns) from blues to jazz to ragas to rags to rock n roll to Abbott & Costello and more from the 1920s to the 2000s.

I downloaded the Digitized 78 of Scrapper Blackwell's "Hard Time Blues" / "Back Door Blues" and they were delivered in 16/48 format and sound for the most part like a 78-transfer—immediate, punchy with some background hiss to remind you you're listening to a recording from 1931 (with scant musical information above 5kHz in this case). I wish these were 24-bit transfers but I can always do those myself.

You can check out Amoeba's Vinyl Vaults here & now!. I also can't help but think (hope?) this may be the first such offering of more to come from other like-sources.