I have recently gotten back into vinyl after 15 years. All things being equal I prefer the sound over cd's. The only down side of vinyl to me is the time limitation of one side of a record. But other than sound quality there is something special about record albums. From the early seventies thru the mid eighties I aquired hundreds of records. Even though I didn't even have a turntable in my system for many years and at times thought I never would again I would not sell my albums. They just ment to much to me. Cd covers and packaging can't compare to LP's. Almost all of my friends that are big music fans reguardless if they care about stereo equipment or not still have all their old albums stored safely away somewhere in their house. I haved looked through their collections drooling over items I would 'kill' for but knew better than to try to buy them. This emotional attachment to vinyl may sound irrational but I have found it to be true.
Why vinyl?
I understand the thoughts of a lot of you that digital is harsh and bright and has an edge. I know that analog has a warmer fuller sound, otherwise why would so many people put up with the inconvenience of records, cartridges, cleaners, tone-arm adjustments, etc. I used to be there. Of course all I had was a Garrard direct drive turntable. If the idea is to get as close as possible to the original source, why has not open-reel tape made a huge comeback. After all that's how most of the stuff was recorded in the first place. Very few were direct to disk recordings. Why would dragging a stylus through a groove be better than the original? There used to be a company out there called In-Synch that used the original masters and sold cassettes of them, dubbed at 1:1 ratio. I was the happiest person in the world when CD's came out and I could throw out my disk-washer and everything else that went with it, including the surface noise and the TICKS and POPS. Just something I've wondered about.