There is another side to the euphoria surrounding vinyl, particularly from music fans that simply view LPs as an inferior format.
And, one mostly driven by nostalgia instead of sound superiority and factors like ‘warmth’. Like this recent reader, who clearly delineated six reasons why vinyl totally sucks… and one reason why it doesn’t.
Vinyl sucks because:
The static clicks and pops ruin the sound, and I haven’t yet seen a setup that didn’t have them. This far outweighs whatever alleged resonance it may or may not have. The static makes vinyl unlistenable.
It is extremely fragile and degrades a little with each play even if you take perfect care of it.
Is big and bulky and heavy, and so is the equipment needed to play it.
You have to flip the record for side 2.
No easy skipping of tracks.
It’s harder to rip into your computer.
The only win for vinyl that I can think of is that the cover art and liner notes are bigger and cooler.
So I guess I just don’t comprehend the whole vinyl thing, and I’m old enough to have bought vinyl in the 70s when it was all there was.
Signed,
B…
Totally TRUE I will add the subsonic rumble and the constant scrape in the surface by needle
I too am old enough to have bought vinyl in the 1980s and it was fun to collect, buy and sell for a few years. But I never liked listening to vinyl, the whole process of flipping the disc every 20-odd minutes was just irritating, so I moved to CDs and never looked back. I have to admit I bought a few nice vintage vinyls when it became trendy some 4 years ago but guess what I still prefer to play the cds or downloaded files of the same albums…
I bought some Pink Floyd albums way back in the 90’s when I was a teen and finally bought a turntable to play them on 2018. Awful is all I can say the CD’s sound far superior. The pop, hiss, etc drove me crazy. My interest in vinyl lasted all of an hour tops and I returned the turntable. I’ll keep the records because I am a huge PF fan. CD is a better format and far cleaner if you want to hear music and not effects.