Who's still listening to vinyl?
Although I don’t personally have a turntable, my father has a killer stereo setup, and I can attest that vinyl actually sounds better than a CD. Granted, there are cracks and pops, but the music sounds so much more full, and natural. It really is striking.
Oh boy, you just opened a whole case of worms right there. You might as well come out and say that solid state amps suck ass, and that the only proper way to listen to music is through a tube amplifier (with the speaker cables properly suspended from ceramic hangers, of course).
That being said, I kind of agree with you. I say “kind of” because I’m torn. The scientist part of me believes that Nyquist was on to something, and that a digital medium is fully capable of reproducing sounds a human would find indistinguishable from the original analog form, given a high enough sampling rate. But I’ve heard the same things you have, hence the whole being torn bit.
I think there’s a few logical explanations (though partial they may be) behind this. First, and probably foremost, the greatest advantage CDs had over LPs when they first came out was their dynamic range advantage. However, the record industry has gradually eroded this advantage, thanks to most people and the Loudness War (the animation there is particularly telling).
Part of the problem is also the listening habits of people. Very few people just listen to music anymore. Music has become too damn convenient, to the point where more often than not, music serves as little more than background noise. Back when LPs were popular, it took effort to listen to music, so people generally sat down and enjoyed it when they put a LP on. These days, not so much.
And honestly, I think the last part is nostalgia. The pops and clicks aren’t true to the original performance of an album, but depending upon age, they’re original to the first time we heard “Hotel California” or “Dark Side of the Moon.” All in all, it combines to make us want to listen to vinyl.
Of course, this is comparing vinyl and CDs. Compare vinyl to a shitty MP3, or vinyl to SACD or the like, and it’s entirely different ball game…
