Vinyl sounds better (shots fired)

@atmasphere 

Thank you. It’s good to hear that confirmed by someone with personal experience. Your contributions here are highly valued. 

Listening to vinyl is 100x the cost, labor, space and inconvenience of digital. And the consensus among the intelligentsia of the audiophile community is that the "vinyl zealots" are delusional people with more money than brains, who believe the propaganda after drinking the analogue Kool Aid. Seems like a lot of heat generating from a "debate" that's more like a potluck supper with the Hatfields and the McCoys. If the Luddites (like me) enjoy the listening experience that analogue provides, what skin is it off your rather prominent proboscis? 

@mambacfa

Brilliant satire. I especially liked “the intelligentsia of the audiophile community” - a contradiction in terms if ever I heard one.

If the geniuses in the music industry could master CDs and digital files properly, Luddites like us wouldn’t need to take refuge in vinyl.

Incidentally, I just realised another major benefit of the sound of vinyl replay.

There are many artists and albums that I found to be impenetrable on the fully digital formats. Yet on vinyl, they are accessible.

For example, I attempted to get to grips with the discography of Yes beyond the handful of popular classic albums from the seventies on streaming. It wasn’t until I heard the unfashionable ends of their catalogue on vinyl without the harshness previously experienced, that I realised most of their albums are enjoyable listens. On vinyl their music just flows effortlessly.

It’s no coincidence that the few Yes albums I liked, were the ones I’d heard on vinyl long before CDs ever existed.

Of course streaming is the technically superior format. Unfortunately, we are not hearing its full potential because of the mastering of the albums that are available to us.

@newton_john 

I briefly entertained the idea of replacing old vinyl records with new Cd's, probably sometime in the 90's, not sure when. I soon found that the new Cd's that I would buy, had somehow lost a great deal of the original information (music). It didn't take me long to give up on the idea. Lucky for me, I have never gotten rid of a single album/LP. Some got destroyed by pets or kids but I never intentionally got rid of them. I will never regret that decision. 

There was a brief time when records had fallen out of favor. You would be hard pressed to even find a cartridge for your turntable. I was a bit shocked by this but after maybe 10 years or so of that nonsense, it started popping up everywhere. Funny how that goes.

I do not stream but from what people say about it, I am convinced that it can be very good. It can only be as good as whatever source they had in the first place and I don't know if it can equal an original master tape or not. The digital format should be truly unlimited as to it's capabilities so maybe it will someday replace all other sources. I do not know. It will not replace it in my home. I may add it someday but I'm in no hurry. I still buy Cd's and albums all the time. Cd's (Sony?) chose to limit to 20hz to 20khz. I have no idea why. Easier?, all we can hear anyway? They are also limited by the bit/sample rate. SACD was better but didn't catch on for whatever reason. Streaming is the answer for a lot of people as to the enormous library and you don't have to store records or cd's somewhere. It is good enough so that people are able to compare one record pressing or cd or whatever to another. This is what we used to do over on the vinyl asylum all the time and was how we would learn which pressings to look for. I'm impressed that streaming is able to capture that. Some Cd's are much better than others as well but they are never quite what the best vinyl copy was. It's not up to me, it's just how it is.