Genuine question, for vinyl lovers. Is it really worth it when you can stream it all for next to nowt in Dolby Atmos etc?
Obviously there’s a financial outlay per album, but also, can you actually be bothered to take it out the sleeve, put the needle on it etc, when you can just Alexa to do it all for you?
I can imagine getting into it for a few days/weeks and then six months down the line just thinking “why did I buy that turntable and all those LPs?”.
My living room setup is a Dolby Atmos speaker setup with Focal Aria 926 fronts, Dali Opticon 3 rears, Dali altecco atmos and a BK elec Monolith+ subwoofer. I listen to music through a Lyngdorf TDAI-1120 stereo amplifier for 2 channel and a denon 4500 receiver otherwise.
Most my listening is done through Spotify, but this year I bought my favourite bands new album on vinyl and then bought a Fluance RT-82 turntable.
Since then I've I've bought/been given (my dad gave me the last of his old vinyl collection, but bought most of it) 65 LP's which discogs tell me are worth from a median value of £1,500 to a max of £3,000
Audio wise, a high quality digital is higher "quality" than analogue on paper, but analogue has a nice sound to it, truer to how it should be, especially if you have the right equipment and it's a good quality master.- and many digital files are mastered poorly. Playing the same song side by side however you get more objective fidelity on digital than an LP, however a CD has even higher fidelity still, so we can put aside sound quality as neither will sound bad and if people wanted sound quality they'd be buying well mastered CD's and high end cd players.
Atmos for music imo isn't something I'm interested in; for movies I love it but my listening position changes when listening to music and therefore height and positioning isn't needed and to be honest I'd rather listen through good headphones than most speakers and with good headphones you already have a very wide sound stage in stereo anyway.
I quite like having a physical collection of something, especially having it look nice to use/play, and there are usually lyrics, photos, stories etc to look at inside the sleeve.
Your collection is your collection and has a value, digital things like Spotify accounts can disappear at any time - Spotify for example has never made a profit - it's a long game but they could lose that game and then you have to start again. Even if Spotify, or whatever service you use, stays around forever you still have licensing to deal with - music is available then it's not, so you lose access to it.
It's also not that cheap - you have basic Spotify, apple etc but the high fidelity versions of streaming services like tidal or qobuz cost more, and that's a subscription for essentially the rest of your life, when you stop it you lose everything.
In terms of listening habits, it makes me listen to albums more in their entirety. I've always been guilty of skipping to songs I like. You can do that with vinyl but it's harder, so I listen to things properly which has given me more appreciation.
I will usually sit and listen to at least one album a day. It's hardly any effort really - it takes about 30 seconds to get a record out and out it in the record player and engage the stylus.
This post on Reddit sums it up nicely
"I want to start off by saying that I also think digital is the way forward due to its reliability and lack of defects. However at this moment in time, vinyl has some major benefits which justify its existence even when technically superior mediums like CD are available.
Digital releases have been engaging in a 'loudness war' for over a decade now. What this means is that the quiet parts of a track have had their loudness increased to match the louder parts of the same track. In the process of this loudness boost, the dynamics of the original track are lost which results in a more fatiguing and lower quality file. Here is an image which demonstrates the extent of bad mastering which is so prevalent on CD's. As you can see, the peaks which were prevalent in the top example are made redundant in the second one where nearly the entire song is made to be that loud.
The reason this is done is due to evidence that louder mastering boosts sales and attracts more attention on small tinny speakers incapable of reproducing a track with a high level of dynamics. Since vinyl is not such a popular medium and is mainly targeted towards audiophiles and 'music afficianados' there is little incentive to apply the same process to vinyl releases. Even if there was a desire to apply loud mastering to the medium, physical constraints do not allow for such an extreme level of compression and loudness as seen on CD. The end result is that vinyl usually has substantially better mastering than their CD counterparts; look at the dynamic range in the CD version (1999) of Californication compared to the vinyl version (1999). This can make the difference between a tiresome wall of sound and a pleasing listening. You can read more on the effects of the loudness war here.
Another point, which is completely subjective, is that using a turntable to listen to music is much more involved than the simplicity of playing something on a computer or CD player. The user input required with a turntable; adjusting the platter, rotation speed, dropping the needle and swapping sides turns it into something of an activity whereas other methods of listening can often be something in the background. Again, this is completely subjective but there is no denying that there is a certain appeal to vinyl in the sense of it being a focal point. The larger artwork (12" compared to 4.75"), along with art inlays, also adds to the idea of vinyl demanding more attention - of being an item with similarities to a book, something to hold and flick through.
There's also the simple reason that people like to have hobbies or collections - vinyl has far more novelty to it than collecting CD's and is somewhat interesting to others. It's a good conversation starter and is quite well suited to social listening.
You understand that "some people use records due to the nostalgia" but you disagree with "those who think that vinyl is actually better quality, and give that as the reason why they use it." I hope I've helped show you that the qualitative benefits of vinyl don't rely on the supposed technical benefits of the medium but in the mastering of the information itself and also in its ability to engage the listener. The intent and focused listening that comes about as a result of flicking through LPs and picking one out, like you would at a library, invokes an emotional engagement unlike digital mediums - this in my opinion is far more important than sampling rates, noise levels and convenience when it comes to the perceived quality of any medium."
pressonvinyl.com
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