"Music Sounds Better on Vinyl", I am so tired of this argument being brought up by the layperson Options

[ozmosis82]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mona-elyafi/..._b_1008876.html

Ugh.

Of special note is the 5th paragraph where she basically shoots herself in the foot:

"Now I don't pretend to be a tech whiz by any means and I am sure I know absolutely nothing about how it all works and why, but the one thing I know for certain though is that music sounds better on vinyl."

If they approve my comment, it should be the first one.

[polemon]

I believe, that what she's referring to, is the romantic value to playing records. The clicks and pops of the record, actually adds to the experience of listening to records.

Digital music (no matter what physical media it is on), is clean and sterile. I believe this is why she claims that vinyl sounds "better" (except if they're encoded badly. Then, they're just digital junk).

I's like saying a printed book is "better" than eBooks. The advocacy for Vinyl is quite similar to that of reel-to-reel tape. I'd even argue, that the open reel advocacy is even more militaristic, since it is of audiophile, high quality and doesn't introduce the clicks and pops of vinyl. At the same time, the machinery looked awesome, with large tape wheels spinning on the machine.
I like vinyl as well. But I'd never claim we should go back to them.

It's like having a vintage motorcycle in the garage that you take for a ride on a nice Sunday.

[musicollector]

I believe, that what she's referring to, is the romantic value to playing records. The clicks and pops of the record, actually adds to the experience of listening to records.

Digital music (no matter what physical media it is on), is clean and sterile. I believe this is why she claims that vinyl sounds "better" (except if they're encoded badly. Then, they're just digital junk).

I's like saying a printed book is "better" than eBooks. The advocacy for Vinyl is quite similar to that of reel-to-reel tape. I'd even argue, that the open reel advocacy is even more militaristic, since it is of audiophile, high quality and doesn't introduce the clicks and pops of vinyl. At the same time, the machinery looked awesome, with large tape wheels spinning on the machine.
I like vinyl as well. But I'd never claim we should go back to them.

It's like having a vintage motorcycle in the garage that you take for a ride on a nice Sunday.

I was spellbound by this thread. I still have LPs, cassettes, 45's and open reels ranging from hundreds to thousands for each category. Before digital came along, I swore up and down that LPs were the best of the breed and my reels sounded fabulous. It did take me a while to get used to CD's when they first arrived. Being in the music business, I still remember, like yesterday, when PolyGram unveiled the new John Cougar album on CD at a listening session in 1983. The next month, I won my first CD player, a single-play Sony model, from CBS Records. The rest is history!

Today, I hardly play any LP that is available on CD because, in contrast to her, I despise pops and clicks! Be that as it may, I still go back to my vinyl or open reels when the song or album is not available anywhere in any format. And, I have a LOT of rare material. In those cases, I digitize the songs and live with the pops and clicks...just too lazy to process them out. I really hated cassettes because of the ubiquitous hiss but they were portable. What else could I use in the car? If I turned on noise reduction, despite what Dolby said, I could hear the high frequencies being chopped off. (Before that, 8-tracks didn't get any points form me, either. I mean, who would want a song fading off in the middle just so the track could change?!) Something was missing. So, I played my cassettes with no NR but equalized the hiss as much as possible. Of course, using CRO2 tapes were costly and economically prohibitive. Open reels were right behind vinyl, but I had that annoying hiss even if I recorded at 15 IPS. So, I was ecstatic when digital came along. I can also imagine the ecstasy radio stations felt when digital came along. Working in radio, I found the wow on the odd startup and cueing up records, etc. very laborious and mundane. CD's changed all that.

Today, there is no need to fast forward or rewind with instant access to any portion of the song or painless repeats. Hiss is hisstory! Portability is out of this world! Songs can be emailed to and from distant shores in seconds! No need to physically handle media anymore. No cleaning with multiple brushes or annoying static. No degradation of sound quality when copied. No misplacing the stylus off the outer edge of the record. I still feel romantic looking and handling records thinking of the Good Old Days. But, they remain in my library as beloved icons of an era when they served their purpose VERY well. Long love vinyl. But, I'll defer to digital.

Oh, I still love listening to my reel-ro-reel machine and dig watching those reels roll.

[MichaelW]

I still feel romantic looking and handling records thinking of the Good Old Days.

A Japanese company sells CDs that are miniature reproductions of the original LPs. But the real hipster marketing play would be to sell mockups of LPs together with the digital version. You'd read the sleeve, handle the disk with a fake groove, and think about the Good Old Days whilst listening to proper reproduction. And your collection could once more take up major wall-space.