It’s not that I don’t get the appeal of having larger artwork. But the medium itself in the way it’s used and produced doesn’t make sense. The whole audio production pipeline is digital. Producers take analogue audio, introduce quantisation and digitisation errors immediately to be able to use their fancy computers to produce the music (which introduces even more errors due to all filters being digital) just to then dump that digital piece of sound into an analogue medium at the very end. Nothing is gained except the digital-analogue-conversion happens before creating the medium whereas with CDs you do it after reading from that medium. Which is a stupid idea, as dust and other issues will then mess with the result you’re hearing.
Now, if you’re a producer that actually uses an all-analogue workflow, ignore this, I don’t mean you. You also have my deepest respect for enduring that pain. Please point me towards some records that actually did this though.
Yeah, I think you’re right when it comes to quality alone. Especially with that last text.
To me, vinyl has the following qualities that I like:
I can probably come up with more reasons. These are not all unique to vinyl.
There are lots of downsides as well, like price, conveniance, dust, no streaming on the go and so on.
I still like my records though.
Not sure if I agree with you or not. I think technically you are right. But there is a lot more to it than pure quality and conveniance.
But… Aren’t all those reasons also applicable to a CD? I mean, yes - you need a drive to play it and some speakers, but that’s also true to some degree for a vinyl record
CDs still have a specific digital format that needs to be read in a specific way. The sounds on vinyl are literally etched sound waves. The needle is picking up those vibrations and increasing their volume. There’s not really any need for translation or decoding, the sound is just the sound.
That is not true. Records have a massive EQ curve applied before writing to vinyl, and after the stylus reads the waves on vinyl. Yes, there are errors with digital music but there is noise with analogue methods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization
He isn’t talking about noise or quality I think.
He is talking about how there is no digital bullshit needed to play it in a time of rampant enshittification.
You could put it on pretty much anything made in the last century or even make it yourself and it will just play.
Yeah what I meant in my comment was that vinyl is so simple I can understand the full system from the record to the music reaching my ears.
Given enough time and resources I think I could build a really crap turntable + amp + speakers myself and explain every step of the way.
A CD player uses lasers, processors, DACs and a lot more that are way over my understanding.
The point being, low tech is nice. Keep it simple 😄
Analog processing is more complex than your statements.
Care to elaborate?
It might be more complicated than I understand it to make it sound good, but compared to a CD player setup it is simpler.
I think my point still stands :)
I already brought up the RIAA EQ curve. Plus you have all the effects like compression, limiting, distortion etc. Plus you’ve got the whole process to make a record. For a CD digital files are simply written to disc. With a record when you send the plant the audio there is really no telling how the record is actually going to sound due to all the hidden processing that is applied.
That isn’t what the text actually says though.
“Producers take analogue audio, introduce quantisation and digitisation errors immediately to be able to use their fancy computers to produce the music (which introduces even more errors due to all filters being digital) just to then dump that digital piece of sound into an analogue medium at the very end”