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Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

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Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#21

Would some one please enlighten me as to what on God's green earth is going on with vinyl? It's less dense, lower-quality, degrades with use, and is more expensive. It's probably less environmentally-friendly, too (though I'm not sure what it's target demographic is, so I don't know if that means much). Why is vinyl popular, all of a sudden? I had to rip all my grandmother's vinyl records, once, and it was a pain in…

People like it.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#22

Would some one please enlighten me as to what on God's green earth is going on with vinyl? It's less dense, lower-quality, degrades with use, and is more expensive. It's probably less environmentally-friendly, too (though I'm not sure what it's target demographic is, so I don't know if that means much). Why is vinyl popular, all of a sudden? I had to rip all my grandmother's vinyl records, once, and it was a pain in…

This 2013 article explores it

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/29-does-vinyl-really-sound-be...

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#23

Would some one please enlighten me as to what on God's green earth is going on with vinyl? It's less dense, lower-quality, degrades with use, and is more expensive. It's probably less environmentally-friendly, too (though I'm not sure what it's target demographic is, so I don't know if that means much). Why is vinyl popular, all of a sudden? I had to rip all my grandmother's vinyl records, once, and it was a pain in…

Hipsterism

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#24
post #8

Would some one please enlighten me as to what on God's green earth is going on with vinyl? It's less dense, lower-quality, degrades with use, and is more expensive. It's probably less environmentally-friendly, too (though I'm not sure what it's target demographic is, so I don't know if that means much). Why is vinyl popular, all of a sudden? I had to rip all my grandmother's vinyl records, once, and it was a pain in…

The quality isn't necessarily worse. Vinyl is analogue, and so good quality vinyl has a different sound to the same audio played from a CD. That isn't to say that all vinyl is better, just that the best vinyl is better than the best CD recordings.

Worse is a subjective assessment, but it is necessarily lower fidelity.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#25
Vinyl is one of those old-school technologies that seems like it's from the future. Somehow we turned sound into a disk. You can see and feel the sound and then a tiny needle will reproduce the original sound just by touching the disk. And in very high quality!

Blows me away every time I think about it. And we could have kept going: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#26
post #8

Would some one please enlighten me as to what on God's green earth is going on with vinyl? It's less dense, lower-quality, degrades with use, and is more expensive. It's probably less environmentally-friendly, too (though I'm not sure what it's target demographic is, so I don't know if that means much). Why is vinyl popular, all of a sudden? I had to rip all my grandmother's vinyl records, once, and it was a pain in…

The quality isn't necessarily worse. Vinyl is analogue, and so good quality vinyl has a different sound to the same audio played from a CD. That isn't to say that all vinyl is better, just that the best vinyl is better than the best CD recordings.

No it's not. If there's a digital recording of a band and you can either listen to that exact set of bits encoded losslessly, for example from a flac file from a cheap usb key, Vs whatever the hell happens when you convert those bits into analogue and press them into some plastic with demonstrably worse track separation, distortion, and which physically degrades during each play even in optimal circumstances and where slightly moving the little box doing the playback can cause permanent damage to the vinyl then clearly the choice isn't based on sound quality.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#28
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nostalgia and appearance. Old cars drive like crap and are unsafe, but popular for the same reason.

I understand that, but old cars are a hobby of a limited number of people, not of "Joe Average". This would be like old cars out-selling new ones.

In this analogy 'new cars' (CDs) have already largely been antiquated by the new technology of personal teleportation (audio files distributed over networks.)

The market for new cars still exists because some people don't like teleportation. Some people worry that teleportation recreates you imperfectly on the other side and thus prefer a new car. But that demographic is shrinking. Teleportation is simply so convienent that the overwhelming majority of consumers think the price worth paying.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#30

Would some one please enlighten me as to what on God's green earth is going on with vinyl? It's less dense, lower-quality, degrades with use, and is more expensive. It's probably less environmentally-friendly, too (though I'm not sure what it's target demographic is, so I don't know if that means much). Why is vinyl popular, all of a sudden? I had to rip all my grandmother's vinyl records, once, and it was a pain in…

It’s a pain in the ass to change the music so it’s easier to focus on it. Just my perspective.
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