For us, playing one quality record on an excellent rig is a musical immersive experience unmatched by the possibility of playing a million digital files.
Of course, I’m speaking about older records, not some of the trash that is being reproduced today. Locate the older vinyl - it’s supreme, it’s the secret sauce. The older music was essentially made for one format, not a hodgepodge of diffident ones. Earlier artists maximized their music for one format - vinyl - and you can hear the difference. That’s one reason older music still out sells whatever this newer stuff is called today. Ted Gioia of the Atlantic states, “Old songs now represent 70 percent of the U.S. music market.”
Digital can be an excellent photograph of the original, but not the vinyl reality. The realized warmth, richness, and depth of vinyl add to our listening experience. While listening to vinyl takes a little bit of enjoyable time, the ritual from shelf —> to sleeve —> to stylus is unmatched for us.
For us, there’s nothing like flipping vinyl. Vinyl is lossless, digital isn't. With vinyl we are drawn “closer to” the intent of the original artist.
Please don’t get me wrong, we love digital too. We’ve put a tremendous effort in getting the very best digital we could. And we own it. However, at my death if I was given one last request song, I would choose it on vinyl, not digital.
Viva la vinyl!
