An excellent argument for physical artifacts. I take an archivist’s point of view and digitize my photos and music for convenience then store the original for long term stable preservation. But I keep everything locally, unlike my kids who seem content to rely on an unchanging world where everything will be around forever.

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.

but why a vinyl instead of a cd? or a mp3 on an iphone/sdcard/hard drive?

For me, I choose vinyl because I had to pick one of those and I really enjoy 1.) listening to full albums 2.) Album art and 3.) That act of collecting something physical.

There is an argument that the loss of dynamic range and other factors in the compression required in mp3 or CD recordings make the latter inferior to vinyl. This was a prolonged debate forty years ago

CDs have better quality than vinyl in every way. If you want the sound of a vinyl, apply the modulation and record the result on a CD.

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.

> CDs have better quality than vinyl in every way.

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.

That's why some deaf people feel superior

huh?

Deaf culture, presumably.

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.

Dynamic range compression is not "required", it's a choice of the mastering engineer. You can produce MP3 or CD recordings with higher dynamic range than vinyl if you want to.

This is the reason why classical music CDs (and radio) usually sound much quieter. More dynamic range.

Dynamic range compression is often used on most mainstream music because said music is rarely listened in perfect conditions in one's living room. They need to sound decent enough in the street, in a car, on a metro/train during rush hours, in the kitchen while cooking, on the beach, from allkinf of devices from crappy smartphone headphones, phones and computers integrated speakers or cheap bluetooth speakers.

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.

not the parent.

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

>but why a vinyl instead of a cd? or a mp3 on an iphone/sdcard/hard drive

There's no bit corruption with vinyl like with digital storage formats or disk rot like with cds.

If you store files properly they won't corrupt. If you're that worried, use ZFS or something similar.

>If you store files properly they won't corrupt.

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.