Technology

CDs are just digital files plus waste. Vinyl is a musical ritual.

What is everyone's opinions on the sound quality of vinyl?

I understand the collectibility of physical media, and the novelty of owning a vinyl and the machine that plays them. The large art piece that is the case (and often the disc itself). Showing support for your favorite artists by owning physical media from them.

Those are great reasons to collect vinyl.

But a lot of my friends claim vinly is of higher audio quality than anything else, period. This is provably false, but it seems to be a common opinion.

How often have you seen this and what are your thoughts on it?

And I bet horse carriages outsold the Ford Model-T this year too

Because CD is a medium for data shrinking in popularity and vinyl is a token of being cool growing in popularity, of course it does.

I want to know what “other” is that is also clobbering CDs. Can’t say it’s streaming because it’s physical media. The article mentions that half a million cassettes were sold, but that doesn’t really answer the question. That “other” takes up a lot of space relative to CDs so I’m pretty curious.

I knew piracy was eating into music sales but poor artists and distributors only generating less than $2 of revenue in the US per year? That’s like 1 CD in a clearance sale. They should start a charity.

If you’re curious, nearly half a million cassettes sold last year, too, according to Billboard.

I'm more curious about who's still selling music on cassette and who's willing to buy it.

Wow. What is that ‘other’ physical medium? Is MiniDisc also coming back and beating CDs?

Vinyl, which tends to be pricier than the newer format, also far outstripped CDs in actual money made, raking in $1.4 billion compared to $537 million from CDs.

Vinyl is definitely overpriced these days. I do love all the art and care that artists seem to put into their vinyl releases, but typically I'm spending $30-$50 on a new vinyl release. But what am I going to do? Not buy that limited edition colored vinyl gatefold with art and lyric pages?

Hipsters paying 2-3x as much for a vinyl LP which objectively has worse audio quality than a CD.

This is dumb. Just going to be used for collectors editions with different songs and shit.

To each their own I guess.

One of my favorite things about vinyl is having to flip the record over. I think it demands more active and respectful listening.

I was thinking about investing in a vinyl player recently and was really sad to learn Vinyl is actually worse for audio quality. The standard thickness of the disk is a physical limitation for frequencies which means the sound gets "squished."

A whole $1.91!! Wow!

Vinyls are great, but I can't copy them to my phone so I still have to buy a CD with it.

I don't really buy vinyl to listen to it, but for the larger cover art and liner notes

Only a few more years now till the retro sound of CDs comes back into style. I realize vinyl is a great and unique user experience with a specific timber, and more enjoyable to collect.

It's kind of funny when you hear about the "analog warmth" when albums were being digitally mastered as early as the late 70s... And pretty much all re-releases are digitally remastered.