Vinyl is cool and cozy but I couldn’t be bothered. It’s a bad tech / product overall.

Too much space, too clunky of a tech to not lose interest in a few months and I don’t believe there’s an audio difference a human ear can notice. So you’re just having a bunch of square posters that you sometimes look at - might as well just do posters then.

Vinyl. Grew up on the sound

Hard no. Hauling this shit around and finding a spots for it is not something I would’ve chosen if I didn’t already have the nostalgic attachment.

That being said! Can’t lie I do still love it.

I still buy music CDs, and rip them to digital media. CDs are a lot easier to rip to digital media, but vinyl is cooler, but I listen to local music mainly through strawberry media player (or USB stick in a car)

These days I try to buy either DRM free flax files. If I really like the art or the artist in addition to wanting to regularly actually listen to as an album, then I may try to buy vinyl + flac files. If it’s at a show I’ll buy whatever is available that I can play because at that point it’s more about the merch than music. I’m probably going to pass on the wax cylinders and I may think long and hard before buying a cassette.

Neither. CDs are only useful as a digital copy and 700MB is a quick download, and many discs can fit as FLAC on a microSD the size of my pinky nail. It might even be cheaper nowadays for them to mass produce 512 MB micro SD cards to put FLAC albums on them. If anybody wanted physical albums. It would be hilarious to just have a QR code on a tiny cardboard envelope.

If we want analog music, which is a cool idea, we should replace vinyl with something better. We can still use an optical laser disc but encoding stereo audio tracks as analog laser etches rather than zeros and ones. That way we could reduce the cost, and increase the quality at the same time. Might even be able to print them on glass for longevity. Then you might have an audiophile quality LP that doesn’t need to be flipped. Also in terms of longevity - an analog laser recording could be reverse engineered and listened to after the apocalypse, while binary CD format is a bit more opaque.

I collect both but have begun focusing more on CDs for their portability, price, and their ease of digitization. I’m actually in the middle of extracting CDs I recently picked up at the thrift store as I type this. I have an MP3 player and I load them on there, keep them on my hard-drive AND a separate back up. I still have CDs from the 90s and have had no issues with them playing or being digitized.

Vinyl, without a doubt. Because it’s analog.

CD’s are lossless 16-bit/44.1 kHz PCM digital audio. You can already get that in file form. Why would you want digital audio that’s stored on media that degrades? It doesn’t sound any different than the digital file…it’s quite literally (not figuratively literally but literally literally) the exact same data.

I was in the record business from the 70s through the early 2000s, and oversaw the transition from LPs to CDs. I had a huge LP collection (50% classical), which I transitioned to a huge CD collection, and got rid of most of the LPs. I still have the entire collection.

CDs were the better format by a long ways, but I totally understand why people love vinyl. For one thing, the large format cover. I remember working for a classical record label, and we were looking at the final cover proof of the last LP we were releasing before going all CD, a particularly beautiful photo of the Alps, and my boss saying “Aren’t you going to miss the big cover art?” And all of us nodded solemnly. It really felt like a funeral, like I was saying goodbye.

I also remember wondering how people were going to clean their weed, and roll proper joints without an LP with a gatefold cover.

Properly keeping a vinyl collection is a chore. First of all, if you are doing it right, ALL of your LPs are in a poly sleeve for protection, so the process for playing an LP is this:

• Remove the album from the shelf, where it is properly stored upright and tight.

• Remove the LP from the poly sleeve

• Remove the inner sleeve/ dust cover from the cover.

• Remove the LP from the inner sleeve/ dust cover, carefully using fingertips on the edges and label only.

• Hold the LP, and look at it from the edge, to see if there are any obvious warps or kinks. Of course there aren’t, you store it properly, but you look anyway.

• You blow off any obvious hairs or dust.

• Set it carefully on the turntable, trying to put the spindle through hole on the first try, without rubbing it around, making nearly invisible, but bothersome, marks around the hole, that will irk you every time you see them.

• Carefully clean the surface with a Discwasher or some other cleaning device.

• Use a stylus brush on the needle to remove any schmutz.

• Carefully place the needle on the surface, and relax for the next 20 minutes as you listen to your music. Or dance. Or my personal favorite: Air Guitar (I play for real, I’m allowed).

• Flip the record, repeat the entire cleaning process, and drop the needle.

• Reverse the process, put the LP back into the inner sleeve, put that in the cover, put the album back in the poly sleeve, and slip it back into its proper place on the shelf.

That’s a lot more complicated than simply dropping a CD into a drawer and pushing a button.

The psychological result of all those steps, EVERY time you want to play music, is that it starts to feel like a ritual, and takes on a feeling of importance. The music you listen to, the LPs that that you fuss over, that you preserve, and collect, take on a personal and cultural significance, that you feel a need to protect.

As new formats came along, CDs, then Digital Downloads, the ritual was removed, and music stopped feeling important. In the 60s and 70s, music was a significant factor in ending the Vietnam War, but it is hard to imagine today’s music industry mobilizing against the government. Most people don’t take their music as seriously as they did back then.

Yet some have rediscovered the satisfaction in having such a strong, PHYSICAL relationship with their music collection, and are collecting LPs again.

I get it. Music has ALWAYS been important to me, so I don’t need the ritual to remind me anymore anymore, or maybe doing the ritual 100,000 when I was young wove it into my DNA. Either way, CDs have the durability, combined with the punchier sound quality, ease of use, and longer duration, and I was hooked the first time I saw one. I’ll take the advantages of the CD over The Ritual any day.

If I was doing it as a way to acquire music to listen to, CDs, it’s easier and more convenient to rip them to a computer, they take up less storage space, and are more tolerant of a bit of neglect.

If I’m just looking to collect something for the sake of collecting something, probably vinyl.

Depends on what you use it for. I love buying records and listen to them only in a specific way. I listen to records only in the living room with a chill vibe. I enjoy the intentionally of picking a record and turning it over. I lose that for CDs but do enjoy them in the car when I get sick of the radio

CD"s. I’m old enough to have had a vinyl collection before CDs came out. The first CD I bought was Brothers in Arms, the sound was revelatory, ditched my dozen or so LPs

Same as I do now.

CDs.

You can rip CDs to digital easily. You can get them cheap at resale shops and garage sales.

I buy and listen to vinyls, but also I moatly only buy them for my top 5 artists, partly for display. I do buy some if Infind them cheap or they are special, but I don’t really collect vinyls. They are impractical.

If I was starting today probably CDs because the price difference is significant. Ive collected vinyl since the 80s though and acquired the bulk of my collection when former vinyl enthusiasts foolishly unloaded their collections for pennies on the dollar to get cds instead. I dont buy many new LPs nowadays and stick to thrift stores and discogs bargain deals.

I like the ritual of playing a vinyl, they require intention.

Second hand CDs are very cheap and much easier to rip.

I don’t collect either but when I buy something I buy vinyl, they feel more like a physical object.