Vinyl Gets Its Groove Back

theodp writes "Time reports that vinyl records are suddenly cool again. Vinyl has a warmer, more nuanced sound than CDs or MP3s; records feature large album covers with imaginative graphics, pullout photos, and liner notes. 'Bad sound on an iPod has had an impact on a lot of people going back to vinyl,' says 15-year-old David MacRunnel, who owns more than 1,000 records."

Comments

Oy vey

[i_liek_turtles]

You know your format is doomed if you consider a 15 year old your "expert" to quote.

Re:Oy vey

[mrbooze]

Here's my theory about audiophiles obsessed with vinyl. They're like guys who think that if they store a woman properly and only have sex with her very carefully, she won't lose her virginity.

Me, I like my music like I like my women: sturdy, affordable, and able to hold up to repetitive playing.

But punched cards are best

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>I haven't heard a hurray for punchcards post recently.

Newer technologies just don't give programs the same nuanced performance and octagonal algorithms as punched cards. The clean edges of a punched bit totally rule over the bits on magnetic media that require a dedicated computer just to recover them from the noise. All that extra work to reconstruct a bit makes them tired, and fatiguing to debug.

Face it: programs run off hard disks just have grainy memory usage and an indistinct sound stage.

But punched cards are a distraction from the real issue, which is that only a vacuum tube computer can do justice to the best algorithms.

Re:"Suddenly"?

[flyingsquid]

Vinyl? Give me a freakin' break. Vinyl is for pussies. REAL audiophiles use wax cylinders. And we only use organic beeswax, gathered from our own honeybee colonies, which feed exclusively on a diet of Brazilian orchid nectar. Anything else and you're just an amateur.

Some people will say it costs too much, but I disagree. Sure, building the audio system of my dreams cost $750,000, not to mention my job, my house, and my marriage. But my system makes Britney Spears sound like fucking Beethoven!

Re:"Suddenly"?

[Dogtanian]

But my system makes Britney Spears sound like fucking Beethoven! What does Britney Spears fucking Beethoven sound like anyway?

Re:There is a zero-wear player

[CastrTroy]

Dust isn't your problem. It's your wife's job to make sure there's no dust in the house. If there is, she's not doing her job right.