FWIW, almost all vinyl records produced today will come from a digital source. Even if the music was recorded directly to tape, there’s very likely a step of getting that audio into the digital domain.
Also, for what it’s worth you can find online audio tests (https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/...) that let you test if you can hear the difference between CD quality audio vs high bit rate mp3. Basically nobody can determine the difference with accuracy.
That may be one point for some people, but not mine. I have my music on vinyl and that is how I listen to it. Regardless of the quality or analog vs digital or any of that, if I want to own an album, it needs to be available on vinyl for my to purchase. There are albums I want that I cannot purchase today. This is _my_ walled garden.
You still see cassettes used today because of the ease of home distribution, and bridging the gap between those indie music makers and music consumers like myself is something I am looking forward to.
- I prefer to own vs rent music
- I prefer physical to digital (albums often come with digital downloads)
- I enjoy listening to full albums
- I enjoy the album art, liner notes, posters, special releases, etc
When I was a teenager I recorded vinyl, cassette, cd and even music from the radio on reel to reel tapes just because I liked using the Akai reel to reel tape deck my father was no longer using. Everything in it felt just more satisfyingly sturdy and mechanical to use than my other audio devices made with shitty plastics.
Sometimes the ritual matters more than the outright audio quality.
If I’m reading this right, he owns vinyl music recordings for the purpose of playing back music.
That can't be the reason, USB sticks are much easier to get/make/distribute
They usually include the digital download as well so maybe it is just a fun way to get the digital music?
All things that MiniDisc took inspiration from. It added metadata, near-infinite rerecordability, and on-the-fly track division, combination, and rearrangement.
Never took off in the US, more popular in Europe, very popular in Japan. They were expensive and the first device’s encoding chip gave poor results on a battery that could barely record an hour.
In this sense, the appeal is not just in the tangible record but also in the ritual of listening to it on a turntable. That process of choosing a record to play and then listen to it is quite a deliberate one, and you probably wouldn’t do it if you didn’t intend to appreciate it. It’s a hobby or an enthusiasm you have and there’s an effort involved in curating your record collection.
I compare that to the process of opening up Spotify of Apple Music where most of that intentionality is stripped away. It serves a totally different purpose as a passive activity, not unlike leaving the radio on in the background, rather than an occasion you’d take time to enjoy.
In my imagination I just picture those scenes in the Bosch TV show where he puts on a classic jazz record, with the view of LA sprawling into the distance in the background. And it wouldn’t be a vibe if he just said ‘Alexa play smooth jazz.’
A few years ago, I realized that the use case for CDs no longer held. Vinyl will persist for experience seekers, lossy audio (MP3 et al) for convenience seekers including streaming, but the audiophiles are now being served by FLAC downloads, which can exceed CD quality. If you poke around bandcamp you’ll find many labels selling vinyl with associated 24bit/96k FLAC downloads tossed in as part of the deal.
In practise, popular music recorded on CDs often had poor mastering (see "loudness wars") where the dynamic range was reduced to make the recording sound louder.
that’s an entirely subjective statement which critically hangs on what “quality” means to the audience.
i don’t agree, but then i’m not limiting myself to define quality in terms of how some signal reproduces sounds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_culture
"Refuge from the grinding frustrations of the hearing world", appreciation of the quality of no sounds, sort of like John Cage's 4'33" but quieter.
Ideally one would own 2 different recording of the songs they like. One for good listening environments and high quality equipment, one for more hostile environments. Or have devices that apply dynamic range compression on the fly when needed.
tl;dr version - because i prefer it. doesn’t make it right. doesn’t make it wrong. makes it what it is.
* i prefer the weightiness of vinyl (although it make moving flat a pain in the arse)
* most of the stuff i buy is limited run stuff that wont exist again, each release i buy is its own thing that wont exist again — even later pressing runs can come out different
* a lot of the time, someone putting out a small limited release is a good signal to me they give a shit about what they’re doing, so i pay attention more to what they’ve done, and i enjoy it more as a result
* i like having a wall shelves filled with vinyl in my flat, i like collecting stuff
* i like putting records on and sitting and listening to them and watching them go round and round on my decks, i like interacting with them, i like the feel of them, they feel more intimate than just plugging a USB in and going through a menu
* i’m forced to listen as the artist intended - ain’t no skip or shuffle button!
* beat matching with vinyl is far more of an art form - there ain’t no magic “sync” button when you’re mixing with vinyl
* i think it sounds better
* it’s the hobby i picked and i enjoy it
There's no bit corruption with vinyl like with digital storage formats or disk rot like with cds.
Chemical degradation of CDs can occur over time even in a relatively stable environment. Flash memory is also known to be volatile and most people aren't storing data on flash memory in a redundant storage system.
>If you're that worried, use ZFS or something similar.
I'm not personally storing stuff on vinyl, nor am I "worried", although I have bought a few vinyl that are over 50 years old that play perfectly.
I thought the whole point of vinyl was that it maintains analog from recording to playback