Vinyl Record Pressing Plants Struggle To Keep Up With Demand

An anonymous reader writes The WSJ reports that the revival of vinyl records, a several-year trend that many figured was a passing fad, has accelerated during 2014 with an astounding 49 percent sales increase over 2013 (line chart here). Some listeners think that vinyl reproduces sound better than digital, and some youngsters like the social experience of gathering around a turntable. The records are pressed at a handful of decades-old, labor-intensive factories that can't keep up with the demand; but since the increased sales still represent only about 2 percent of US music sales, there hasn't been a rush of capital investment to open new plants. Raw vinyl must now be imported to America from countries such as Thailand, since the last US supplier closed shop years ago. Meanwhile, an industry pro offers his take on the endless debate of audio differences between analog records and digital formats; it turns out there were reasons for limiting playing time on each side back in the day, apart from bands not having enough decent material.

Comments

Not really missing vinyl

[rbanzai]

I was born in the 1960s so I was brought up on vinyl, but I was bummed at all the hissing and pops and crackles even though I tried to take care of my records. The clarity of CDs was a revelation even though a certain warmth was sacrificed.

I won't ever miss the defects of vinyl, but today's common digital formats sacrifice far too much information, leaving the listener to "enjoy" the watery tones of overcompressed music.

Re:Not really missing vinyl

[Twinbee]

Could that 'warmth' simply be emulated by an adjustment of the equalizers? Perhaps an increase the amount of bass or mid-range may get the effect you're looking for.

If so, digital can emulate the older vinyl, but the reverse isn't true.

Re:Not really missing vinyl

[Anonymous Coward]

All modern DACs (other than some silly audiophile freaky-fringe products) have output reconstruction filters that mean there are no stair-steps on the output.

Re:Not really missing vinyl

[hey!]

I grew up in an urban, blue collar neighborhood in the 60s; we didn't have much (any) exposure to live music. But my mom had that depression era better-yourself ethic, so she amassed a fairly complete record collection of classical "standards", and bought a pretty good component stereo to play them on. But I never saw her listen to any of them. Having these meant we were cultured people to her, but she was too busy getting things done to waste time sitting around listening to music.

I on the other hand had plenty of time, and listened to everything. When I was older I saved up my paper route money and bought a high end audio-technica cartridge, then began adding to the record collection.

When I was sixteen I got a job at the hospital which paid good money; 20 hours a week at $3.75/hr which was good money back in 1977. I took my new found wealth and bought my very first opera tickets. I remember sitting in the audience and being shocked when the music just came out of nowhere, without the preliminary low hissing and popping I associated with the start of music. But that was nothing to what followed.

The music had color, depth and dimension I'd never imagined music having. Even though by then I had a pretty good sound system, what came out of it was a washed-out echo of the real thing. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. I can't describe it, except to say that if music coming off a vinyl record was a strong cup of coffee, then live music would be shooting cocaine directly into your veins.

That experienced killed my budding audiophile tendencies. To this day if I had a thousand dollars to spend on music, I'd spend it on performance tickets rather than upgrading my sound system.

As for CDs, they seem to be all over the place to me. Early on there were a lot of bad CDs because of bad engineering. Some were released with their vinyl oriented RIAA equalization intact, which is just plain dumb. People like to argue about technology, but I think recording engineering is an often overlooked factor in what comes out of your speakers. I have an MP3 album of the original cast recording of "Hair", and it sounds great over a good pair of earphones. It's not because of some kind of magical MP3 pixie dust, it's because the original recording was done so competently. If something is missing in the original master tapes, no amount of lossless encoding and copper-free speaker cables will conjure it back.

Re:Not really missing vinyl

[aaaaaaargh!]

No, it can't be emulated by equalization. If at all it could be emulated by special DSP effects that also add some special distortion. There are plenty such effects available (in fact, a bit too many), but it's usually a horrible idea to slap one of those over an already mastered track.

The real problem has nothing to do with the warmth of vinyl, though. The real problem is that as a result of the infamous loudness war digital CDs are nowadays mastered in a completely different way than vinyl records, a way that is so overcompressed that it completely destroys the sound quality of the music - and provably so, as you can measure the horrible effects of this mastering precisely. It's not a subjective thing at all. Vinyl records have become much louder over the past few decades, too, but they have physical limits that digital media like CDs don't have. If a vinyl record was mastered like a CD, the needle would literally jump out of the track. (With adequate mastering CDs would be superior to Vinyl in almost every respect, but the reality is different due to the way mastering engineers were and are still forced to squeeze every inch of dynamics out of productions.)

Things get much worse with modern digital formats like MP3 or AAC. These would be barely tolerable with very careful mastering, but with modern "loudness competitive" mastering they create even worse artefacts than CDs due to intersample peaks and the interplay with the lossy recording process. Mid/side processing can reveal the horrible blubbering effects that these formats produce in case you can't hear them. (Although, if you can't hear them then you're probably deaf anyway and it won't matter.)

There is great hope that once broadcast stations have adopted new loudness measurement standards like EBU R128 the problem will vanish over time. These standards level the broadcast signals not to standard amplitude levels but according to broader loudness criteria - measuring mean values and taking into account the dynamic range of the audio material using standardized procedures. With these new standards we will hopefully get some dynamics and audio quality back to digital media which are principally vastly superior to vinyl.

Re:Not really missing vinyl

[Solandri]

The little "steps" in digital audio are so small and so fast, that no one can hear them.

No, those steps don't exist. The digital sample is basically the minimum information needed to code the original smooth analog signal. The DAC takes that minimum digital info and can convert it back into the complete and smooth original analog signal.

You're thinking of the digital signal as discrete but continuous steps in time. It's not continuous. It's an instantaneous measurement of the analog signal at regular time intervals. The digital signal at any point in time says nothing about the signal immediately before or after that point in time. The DAC "fills in the gaps" by interpolating a smooth and analog signal. If the frequency limit is half the sampling rate, that interpolation is perfect and there is only one unique analog solution to any set of digital samples. And that unique solution is a perfect reproduction of the original analog signal (within the frequency limit).

Watch the first 10 min of this video. It explains it technically, graphically, and experimentally using an oscilloscope and both analog and digital signal generators.

Re:Not really missing vinyl

[50000BTU_barbecue]

"It is simply not possible to get a full-wave 20kHz signal out of a standard 44kHz sample rate,"

What the hell are you babbling about? A 44.1KHz system is band-limited to 22KHz and you can ONLY get a sine wave out with two data points!

Jesus Christ already!

What does "full wave" mean anyways? Are you one of those types that throws technical-sounding jargon around without a clue?

Re:Not really missing vinyl

[itzly]

Around the 3:10-3:20 mark you can see both the LED on the blue case of the sampler indicating it is running at 44 kHz, and a moment later you can see it on his screen.

unless the equipment is literally "making up" parts of the curve on the fly.

In a way it is making it up, because it knows the signal is made from a combination of different sine waves between 0..22 kHz. Within that range, there is only one unique solution, and the machine knows how to find it.

Re:Not really missing vinyl

[doublebackslash]

First I'd love to cite an extremely good video on this topic https://www.xiph.org/video/vid...

I'll try to distil down the relevant portion here.
Nyquist showed us that a bandwidth limited signal sampled by a discrete time system can be reproduced perfectly using 2n samples per unit time where n is the bandwidth of the signal in hertz.

Perfectly isn't hyperbole here. That is mathematically shown.

The other half of digital audio is the accuracy of measurement of those discrete samples. “Bit depth” or bits. While we can reproduce a signal perfectly with perfect samples there is some noise that is added by imperfect sampling of a signal. This is mathematically identical to tape hiss and can be manipulated to less noticeable frequencies using a technique called dithering.

Digital audio can and does faithfully reproduce the original signal with levels of noise below human perception even at a meager 16 bit depth and 48KHz sampling rate (44.1 is also very popular but 48 allows easier low pass filter design).

The stair-steps don't come out of the audio jack, the signal is reproduced by the imaging circuit.
Fast attacks that fall “in-between” the samples are NOT delayed or lost since, again using Nyquist, the signal can be perfectly reproduced (and this is demonstrated directly in the video).

There is a lot of myth and misunderstanding when it comes to digital audio, and there is a lot of truth too. The loudness wars, as other posters have pointed out, has done more to damage the reputation of digital audio than anything else and there are plenty of examples of compressed (both kinds) audio sounding just terrible. One being too low a data rate combined with a terrible encoder, the other just using a small fraction of the overall dynamic range. Those are real issues but they aren't fundamental to signal reproduction.

Hope that explains some of it!

Re:Not really missing vinyl

[ponos]

If it were that simple, we could also completely emulate any instrument like a piano or a violin. Electric pianos can do wonders (I own one) but they can't copy the real thing (which I also own). The point is that a turntable is, in that sense, a complex transformation, like an instrument. You may like it or hate it, but it isn't that simple to emulate.

That being said,I'm sure people have mentioned the simple pleasure of actually owning stuff (instead of a virtual license to some bits on some server). Vinyl has that.

Re:Not really missing vinyl

[hairyfeet]

You ain't telling me nothing because I have a customer who has all the early Kiss albums on the very first CD releases and he came to me complaining that "These new CDs don't sound right, I think my PC is messed up" but when I threw an MP3 rip of Strutter from his first run CDs in Audacity? There was peaks, valleys, actual HEADROOM on the recording. Took the exact same song from the exact same album from his recent box set? it was just a fucking wall, literally it was just slammed to the max from the first note to the last and sounded like shit.

So if you like classic albums? Get 'em on the first CD releases, you can probably find 'em on eBay. Avoid any new releases like the plague as the loudness war just shits on every thing it touches. Didn't matter the artist either we tried several from his collection and it was all the same, the first run CDs sounded great while the later releases? Garbage.

Re:Not really missing vinyl

[ChrisMaple]

In the early days of CDs, delta-sigma devices were not always used. Some systems used a true analog 44.1 kHz sampling rate using high precision devices from Burr-Brown and others. These devices would indeed produce stair-step patterns, and even with severe analog filtering some 22.05 kHz and aliased nearby frequencies would appear in the output. Young people with exceptional hearing could detect it, particularly after some training.

Technology has improved, and it's no longer difficult to design a system without that problem, but there was a time when it was a problem.

not lossless

[itzly]

Vinyl is the only consumer playback format we have that's fully analog and fully lossless

The article itself gives plenty of examples why vinyl isn't lossless, and it's easy to name a few more.

Re:not lossless

[FalstaffsMind]

My daughter is into vinyl and I understand why. It's not necessarily about sound quality, although songs produced for MP3 are clearly produced differently. They are optimized for ear bud listening as opposed to being played on an old pair of floor speakers. The sound tends to be unabashedly electronic and lacks the lushness of old recordings. What really make vinyl attractive is the experience of going to the record store with friends, leafing through the albums and finding one you want. Then taking it home, and listening to it with your friends, not just the hits, but the whole album. You become a fan of a band, and not just songs. Then there is the album art. Back in the day, that was part of the reason you bought a record. Album art was an expression of the band just as much as the music was. I think a good analogy is the people who prefer books to reading on a Kindle. Sure, it's the same text, but for many people, there is something undefinable missing when they read on a Kindle. There is something about the cover, the turning of the page, the smell. And that undefinable something makes it better.

Re:not lossless

[Dogtanian]

Vinyl is the only consumer playback format we have that's fully analog and fully lossless

The article itself gives plenty of examples why vinyl isn't lossless, and it's easy to name a few more.

This comes across as a second-hand, simplistic interpretation of something that was a fallacy to begin with. This is a fallacy that's either explicitly or implicitly used as the (flawed) basis of arguments, even on Slashdot.

The fallacy is that because "analogue" as a *purely abstract* concept can in theory have infinite precision- as opposed to digital (which by definition has a clearly-defined level of precision)- then an analogue medium like vinyl records must inherently be able to hold more detail than a digital one like (e.g.) compact discs.

Problem is, that argument could then be applied to any analogue medium (not just vinyl), so that e.g. a cheap, worn-out audio cassette recording made on a portable recorder in the early 70s must also be inherently superior to a CD, or even to a 24-bit, 96KHz digital master(!!!)

This makes the flaw in the argument more obvious, but it's still a flaw when applied to vinyl. The problem is that we're talking about actual, real-world examples of analogue media, not the abstract concept. In real life, no analogue medium can have infinite bandwidth, so they quite obviously *do* have inherent limits of precision and quality- just not as clearly delineated as those of digital. (*)

Of course, you might argue that we could engineer our analogue media to higher standards... but similarly, we could (theoretically) engineer a higher resolution and sampling rate into digital media, so there is no inherent argument in that either way.

Furthermore, by definition, a "perfect" analogue copy would require infinite perfection in the duplication process (clearly impossible) and the ability to verify this to infinite levels of precision (ditto). So by definition *any* analogue copy will be imperfect.

This isn't to say that CD is better than vinyl, or that digital is better than analogue. Maybe vinyl *is* better... maybe not. What it *is* saying is that the "analogue is infinite and digital is limited" argument *in itself* is flawed, and not a valid basis for drawing a conclusion either way. One can make comparisons where either is the clear winner- a good quality analogue turntable setup (and LP) will quite obviously sound better than a grungy 4-bit digital sample "bit bashed" through a C64 or Atari 800 sound chip. But the aforementioned 24-bit, 96KHz digital master will blatantly knock spots off an analogue C90 cassette recorded in 1973.

(*) One may be scientifically able to calculate the meaningful upper limit of cassette bandwidth and the noise floor by (e.g.) looking at the maximum theoretical magnetisation possible, spacing of the grains, et al... both in theory and in practice. I can't tell you what those limits are, but I can be quite confident that they'll exist, and hence dictate the maximum sound quality.

One word:

[Exitar]

Hipsters.

Not convincing at all

[paskie]

Audio is just a crazy world of snake oil and placebo.

Really, the argument that's supposed to convince us is this?

> That warm vinyl sound: "I think this is what people like about it: it pins very closely to the way that human beings hear music organically," Gonsalves said. "It's very mid-range-y and very warm," a sound that flatters the fuzzy guitars of rock 'n' roll.

I'm sorry but I just don't buy it. There seems to be no obvious reason why you couldn't easily hack up a digital audio filter that makes stuff "sound like a vinyl". I'd even wager that it already exists?

Especially when you skip the compression and use FLACs. (But no, I'm not that kind of person who would claim to be able to distnguish 320kbps mp3 from a FLAC.)

Some

[Chas]

Some listeners think that vinyl reproduces sound better than digital

And some people buy Gold-plated Monster cables and Macs too. It just proves there's a sucker born every minute (at least).

some youngsters like the social experience of gathering around a turntable.

That's mainly because most youngsters' "social experience" has been limited to school (see "Lord of the Flies") and texting. Actually, y'know, MEETING UP with someone is a HUGE novelty these days. The turntable's just incidental.

Just part of the complexity collapse

[Sqreater]

People are starting to draw back from the overwhelming complexity in all things.

Re:Just part of the complexity collapse

[50000BTU_barbecue]

Maybe to a mundane person, but anyone with at least the curiosity of a mollusc might try to understand something beyond the level of the UI.

Re:Sounds Better?

[itzly]

No need to spend $5000 on a DAC. The chips themselves are less than $5 a piece, and will get you 384 kHz, 32 bit stereo. Microelectronics has improved so much the last couple of decades, but if people are still willing to pay '70s prices for stuff, somebody will find a way to charge that amount.

Guy making mint on vinyl says vinyl better! WOW!

[Chas]

Meanwhile, an industry pro WITH A VESTED INTEREST IN THE SUCCESS OF VINYL offers his take on the endless debate of audio differences between analog records and digital formats

There. Fixed that for you.

NO DRM!

[TarPitt]

The best thing about an analog format is no digital rights management. You buy it, you own it. You will always be able to listen to it, no-one will be able to revoke your license.

Digital formats and DRM have made music a transient, throw-away experience.

With vinyl, the recording has history. The vinyl you buy in middle school will be still playable in middle age.

Re:Sounds Better?

[dotwhynot]

I don't have a horse in either race, but I'm curious - Have any blind studies been done to determine if vinyl does indeed sound better? My audiophile father-in-law would tell you HD-CD sounds better than vinyl, but I don't have the ears to tell either way...

Yes. These are from my days of reading high-end hi-fi magazines that don't have the content online, so I don't have links, but one of the more definitive double blind studies proved that people who claimed they preferred the LP sound over CD (including both "golden ear" audiophiles and professional sound people) indeed were able to reliably identify and prefer the LP sound in controlled double blind experiments. But, when the same experiment compared with CD-R recorded from LP as source, they were not able to identify the difference at all. CD-R from LP as source was equally preferred over CD as LP.

This corresponds exactly with the science of the technical characteristics of the two technologies, signal theory and human hearing. The "warm, analogue" LP sound carried perfectly over to the CD-R, as it is distortion characteristics of LP playback that CD is perfectly able to replicate (Nyquist theorem).

HDCD is a different discussion. I was myself a HDCD supporter in my (luckily now behind me) audiophile days. But HDCD mainly sounded better because the mastering was better, not because of technical specs of the format. HDCD productions took greater care with quality of mastering, not at least avoiding the overuse of dynamic compression.

Put your money into speakers

[retroworks]

Ah, yes.... I rather vaguely remember a series of experiments I attended a couple of decades ago. My colleagues and I participated in several hours-long, herb-fueled, analysis sessions comparing cassette tape, CDs, and vinyl, with and without equalizers. We listened in sessions controlling for acoustic, heavy metal, synthesizer, etc.. I'm pretty sure the committee's conclusion was "put the money into the speakers". But I think we forgot to write it down anywhere.

Re:Put your money into speakers

[clonehappy]

As a youngster growing up in the 1980's, countless dozens of hours were spent both in my own basement and the basement of my childhood (well, still) best friend's parents house listening to vinyl, cassettes, and analog FM radio. I later became a smalltime audiophile, I don't buy Monster Cable or equipment that costs more than 4 figures, but I still enjoy a good audio listening experience.

About 5 years ago, my friend's parents finally retired and I was around to help them move out west. While the old Pioneer receiver we used to jam out on had long since died or been retired to the local landfill, the off-name floor speakers were still there. I believe one had the same old lamp sitting on it that it always did, and the other one was just sitting there in the corner. They told me to put them out to the street.

Of course, they went in the trunk of my car, where I promptly took them home and stored them in my garage. This summer, as the garage had now collected enough surplus computer and electronic equipment to need it's twice a decade cleaning, I found the old "Utah" speakers and decided to hook them up to my receiver and see if they were dead or alive. I flicked on the local "oldies" station (meaning 70's and 80's music now) and I was immediately transported back in time. Radio still sounded today like it sounded back in 1986. The speakers provided all the "warmth" and "fullness" that people are always chasing after.

This may sound like a no-brainer, but speakers determine what you hear. Those speakers are now a permanent fixture out in my garage/man-cave. No, they don't sound like any of the big-name equipment I run in the home theater. But they are immersive with only 2 channels in a way a 9.2 surround system can never match. And when I sit outside on the weekend, enjoying a few beers and some (sometimes herb-fueled) tinkering with Linux boxes and electronics, to me at least, it's like going backwards to a time when things were still exciting, the guy on the radio was someone everyone knew, and you had the whole world in the palm of your hand.

I do apologize for waxing nostalgic on a public forum, and I do love my new technology, but damnit sometimes it's nice to just sit back and enjoy something simple that you love. I can understand the value to youngsters of sitting around listening to a piece of tangible vinyl that you can hold in your hand, look at the album art, read the lyrics (all without a LAN connection or Wi-Fi AP being involved) rather than some logical arrangement of bits on a chip or spinning platter. So yes, of course, put your money into speakers (or vinyl, or whatever makes you happy)! I recommend garage sales, swap meets, and flea markets!

Also, DJs

[Voyager529]

While "Hipsters" is the go-to answer to why vinyl records are all the rage, DJs are another part. Some songs are still pressed on 12" singles (most commonly EDM and hip-hop; frequently with instrumental versions as well), but the best selling vinyl pressing for quite some time now has been the Serato Timecode record. It allows DJs to use standard Technics 1200s (and newer models, like the Numark TTX and the Reloop 7000s) to still spin and scratch records, but without being limited by what's actually being pressed because it manipulates MP3 playback on a computer.

Amongst the reasons these records sell so well is because instead of having hundreds of records that get 1-2 plays a night, the same pair of records are played all night, so it's entirely realistic to go through a pair a month, depending on how much pressure is put on the needle. Serato is (or was-for-a-very-long-time depending on who's numbers you believe) the most popular DVS platform, with Traktor in second place, though it's more popular with DJs who use (MIDI) Controllers instead of vinyl. Serato and several other DJ software titles now support the vast number of controllers that have been released, so overall interest in DJing with timecode vinyl isn't quite as popular as it once was. Still, while Jack White’s Lazaretto sold over 75,000 copies this year, it pales in comparison to the number of club jocks who buy timecode records, in pairs, monthly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Warmth and Vinyl compression and more

[doginthewoods]

Having been around mastering engineers and lathes "back in the day", and during the change over from tape to digital, I can contribute a couple of points: 1 -tubes - for a long time lathes, and mastering consoles used tubes which naturally warm up sound. Tubes handle even harmonics differently from solid state. Mastering consoles also used stepped EQ's - that is, instead of a continuously variable resistor, they used a gang of military spec resistors on a rotary switch, and some mastering engineers swore the stepped mastering consoles sound better. 2 - LPs come compressed- way back it was discovered that the needle couldn't track lows and highs well - the needle would skip and bounce, so the RIAA came up with this compression / restoration scheme that rolls off the top and bottom during the cutting process, and restores it in the amplification process. That is why you LPs will sound thin if they are not plugged in to "phono in". That input has the RIAA curve circuitry built in, while the other inputs are "flat". With the development of laser beams in place of a needle, tracking is more accurate, but, because of the cutter. the RIAA curve is still needed. 3 - and one other thing and that is tape. Almost all LPs are made from recordings made on magnetic tape, and tape saturation will warm up a track. The signal alteration during the recording process - from microphone to console (desk) and through signal processors, to multi track tape machine to 2 track mix down, then over to the mastering lab to be mastered and made ready for the cutting lathe - a master cut onto acetate, then metal copies of that are made for the pressers, which use injection molded vinyl to create the finished product, is way different. Today, it's microphone into a digital recorder of sorts - Pro Tools, Cubase, even Garage Band, etc., then completely produced and mastered and outputted in digital. The only issue is file format degradation if the end product winds up as an MP3 or 4.

Loudness race

[tepples]

CDs were mastered without too much level compression until roughly the advent of the Discman and other portable CD players. The cheap op amps used these players couldn't drive headphones at a volume that overcomes outdoor background noise. So labels started using level compression to master their albums hotter. Pushing everything up to full scale meant kick drums no longer had any punch to them. By the time of Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers and Ricky Martin's debut album, levels had become so hot that they were audibly clipping.

Re:Sounds Better?

[Kohlrabi82]

It is well known that differences in audio quality between digital formats (CDs, MP3, FLACs, etc.) to Vinyl are due to different mastering for the respective media. HA has also set up a wiki page regarding misconceptions about Vinyl mastering and Vinyl as a medium. Vinyl is an inherently flawed medium, with problems like wear, necessitating expensive gear and knowledge for playback, and low audio quality compared to digital media. That some people still prefer Vinyl releases shows that they either don't really have good hearing, or that contemporary music is mastered so that a medium with roughly 13 bits of dynamic range is sufficient for even "critical" listeners. That means CD quality audio is simply excessive for that audience. Interestingly enough the same Vinyl crowd will glady buy 24bit/192khz releases, which are even more excessive.

Re:I like my men in vinyl whilst having the homose

[Mister Transistor]

Not to mention how the hell are we gonna clean weed on CD covers or iPods?

You could de-seed a whole oz. in 5 minutes on a good double album and a card back in the day.

But then, the weed today isn't half seeds like it used to be, either...

Tick (1.8 sec), TICK (1.8 sec), tick (1.8 sec)

[dpbsmith]

Different technologies have different characteristics, and I guess one has to use one's personal weighting function. I had a pretty good system (AR turntable, top-of-the-line Shure cartridge, electrostatic earphones) and I love digital audio and honestly don't know how anyone can stand vinyl.

I used a dust bug, I used a DiscWasher, I treated my records very carefully, but there always came the dreaded moment when I would hear: "tick." And at that point, I'd always tense up, and only relax 1.8 seconds later if I didn't hear a second "tick." Three consecutive "ticks" 1.8 seconds apart would seriously interfere with my enjoyment of the sound. My success rate on removing them by cleaning was very low--more often then not, the cleaning attempt (even with the best D4 fluid etc.) would simply add a very delicate, light background crackle.

And I am not even talking about tape hiss, surface noise, warp wow, rumble, and a little trace of 60 Hz hum that I never could quite get rid of. And ugh, getting to the end of a symphony and having the big loud glorious coda come up in the inner groove (vinyl was pretty good at the outer edge, but no-kidding-obvious-problems in the slower-moving inner grooves).

And taking the occasional bad pressing back to the record store and arguing with the store clerk about exchanging it.

And changing the darn record every 20-30 minutes... and feeling guilty if I left it unattended and came back later to find it had been playing the end-groove for hours.

Even with a good tonearm and lightweight cartridge, vinyl does not sound as good on the tenth playing as it did on the first.

Digital audio may have its faults and if people enjoy the characteristics of vinyl, there can be no dispute about tastes. But to me the positives outweigh the negatives--by about a factor of ten.