Quote:
Originally Posted by usuallee
As a vinyl enthusiast I must respectfully object to this and the other dismissive comments. True, it's a fiddly format and there are about a thousand ways to get vinyl playback wrong. But that's part of the charm. To get good results you have to invest in a half decent turntable, cartridge, and preamp, and put in some work to get it right. But if you do that, the results can be truly magical. Forget about clicks and pops - they don't exist with a clean, good condition record in a proper setup. Also, the records themselves and their sleeves are fascinating historical artifacts and are beautiful to display.
These are some of the many valid reasons why vinyl has made a comeback. It's just plain wrong to dismissively chalk it up entirely to hipster-ism. Though admittedly, that's a part of it, and I'm as baffled as anyone at the cassette resurgence.
Don't get me wrong, I love digital music. Digital can sound great, too. I love playlists and on-the-fly song queuing. I have a full Roon setup, and a Qobuz subscription. But digital recordings are often brickwalled (no dynamic range i.e. "loudness war") which is impossible with vinyl, and the sound can be quite sterile and even harsh at times in certain recordings.
Anyway I just had to stick up for vinyl and offer a counterpoint to some of the comments. I guess my point is, as is the case with pbooks and ebooks, digital and vinyl both have different charms, as well as less charming aspects. There's room for both.
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Sorry, but there are
NO valid reasons for vinyl to come back. And your arguments here demonstrates exactly why. The "charm" of putting it on. That's a statement demonstrates it is more important to be able to get the LP out, inspect it, clean it with that absurdly expensive brush, carefully put it on the turntable, check the speed is right and then carefully lower the needle than to actually listen to the music. ritual is more important.
Then there is highly specialised equipment to try and effort to get the best out of the format. Which is really only going to be noticeable under perfect circumstances. I'm not going to attempt to argue if analog can produce better sound than digital, but, most people can't tell the difference, and hardly anyone actually listens to music in circumstances were they would be able to tell. And be honest, exactly how much do you have to pay to completely remove all that noise? And personally, one of the first CDs I played was Suzanne Vega's "Solitude Standing". The first song is sung a capella. The complete and utter lack of any noise convinced me that I wasn't going back to LPs.
I will admit that I miss LP covers. Some had lots of interesting things in them. Some where completely boring. Of course, CDs usually have the same details, but in smaller booklets. But, if I am honest, I read them once, and never again. And I can find all that information and more online if I need it. And I never had any desire to hang LP covers on the wall as decoration. If that was desirable, a poster based on the cover would be better.