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It is more romantic to put on a vinyl record than to play digital music. The physicality of it is a ritual that leads us back into a more physical world, where

It is more romantic to put on a vinyl record than to play digital music. The physicality of it is a ritual that leads us back into a more physical world, where the things that exist are what you can touch and feel, and every action and reaction comes naturally as a result of raw physical contact, with nothing in between.

Farbklex 1y ago
Yes, ritual is the right word. I used to do it quite a lot during COVID with cassettes and CDs while working. Helped me to more consciously get into work mode.
Wowfunhappy 1y ago
...okay, but like, couldn't we choose a medium that doesn't physically wear out from repeated playback? CDs just seem so much better. Yes it's technically digital, but can you tell?
- bradly 1y ago
  One nice thing about buying vinyl these days is that they almost all come with a DRM free digital download of the album as well. Buying physical records is what has caused my digital music collection to grow the most since my Hotline 1.2.3 days.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- bluedino 1y ago
  You can't scratch an mp3, ruining your copy.
  - Wowfunhappy 1y ago
    Hard to play without a screen though!
    - vel0city 1y ago
      I've had several MP3 players with more screen than any hifi CD player. Track number, maybe folder number, current time.
    - redwall_hp 1y ago
      The iPod Shuffle managed it.
      - Wowfunhappy 1y ago
        Oops, yes! I should have said "hard to use" instead of "hard to play." With an iPod Shuffle, you needed a screen to load new music. The process of managing your collection happens on screen.
  - 10729287 1y ago
    It can bitrot tho.
    - danaris 1y ago
      They're very easy to back up.
- baq 1y ago
  Content for vinyl is mastered differently than for streaming, not sure about cds, but wouldn’t be surprised.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    Early CDs would sometimes be made just from the vinyl master. They didn't sound very good.
    - M95D 1y ago
      Are those the CDs with the pre-emphasis flag? I really hate those.
- t_mann 1y ago
  CDs degrade pretty fast. I know people with CD collections that are basically unplayable now. And the typical plastic cases don't even make for nice shelf deco like books or paper-based vinyl cases.
  - Wowfunhappy 1y ago
    These are easily fixable problems! M-Disc exists for disc longevity. High quality cases exist. I realize this isn't the world we live in so I guess I'm just yelling at clouds. But come on, Vinyl is just so obviously a bad way to preserve music...
    - 6581 1y ago
      M-Discs are available as DVD and Blu-Ray only, not as CD.
      - Wowfunhappy 1y ago
        Oops, yes you're right! I bet that could change pretty quickly if a big corporate customer wanted them, though.
- Arubis 1y ago
  Depends on your perspective. If you’re into the ritual and interested in close, intensive listening, there’s a certain magic and immediacy to knowing you’re using a physically destructive playback mechanism—that this right now is the best this record will ever sound again. As for myself, I have young kids and this sort of thing doesn’t make the cut these days, so I stream everything. It all feels background-y and I haven’t fallen in love with an album in years and years.
  - tavavex 1y ago
    > there’s a certain magic and immediacy to knowing you’re using a physically destructive playback mechanism—that this right now is the best this record will ever sound again Maybe I just don't get it - I'm much younger than the average HN user, growing up with physical media but not physical media that rapidly degraded on use like how vinyl does. But to me this sentiment is so alien that it seems like some kind of a milder nostalgia Stockholm syndrome. When we think of other physical media, no one ever romanticizes that type of thing because degradation never really existed there. Would you want a photograph that faded away a significant amount each time you looked at it? A book that had the ink on its pages visibly rub off? To me it just seems that the hard technical limitations of a long bygone era (that some people would've undoubtedly hated at the time) were given a mystique to them when people come back to them. Is the harsh fact of media degradation really inherently "magical"? Or is it that people ascribe good qualities to it because it's just the way it was?
    - ragall 1y ago
      > Would you want a photograph that faded away a significant amount each time you looked at it? Yes! > A book that had the ink on its pages visibly rub off? Yes, old paperbacks were exactly like that.
- reaperducer 1y ago
  CDs just seem so much better. Yes it's technically digital, but can you tell? I didn't think so, until a couple of weeks ago. I was in a record store and it had a CD player on sale for $30. One of those cheap blister-pack jobs. Just for a laugh, I bought it, and a couple of CD versions of records I own. (Genesis, New Order, R.E.M.) I thought "digital is digital" so it shouldn't matter that it was cheap. It wasn't great. I sounded very flat. Even with my expensive headphones, it just didn't sound right. I'm not sure if "mechanical" is the right word, but it was noticeably different, and I'm not someone who has perfect hearing. It just sounded... boring. So I compared the CD sound with the record versions that I rip with a $20 USB dongle and Audacity. The record rips sound much better than the CDs. Maybe someone with perfect hearing will think otherwise. But I'm not an audiophile. I'm just a guy who likes gadgets.
  - Kirby64 1y ago
    Digital is digital, but you’re ignoring multiple places where things might not be the same: That $30 CD player… if it’s connected to headphones, how were the headphones driven? Especially if you have nice headphones, it’s very easy for a cheap device to not be able to competently drive them. Vinyl vs CD mastering is a thing. There could be differences there. Additionally, depending on how you ripped the vinyl (especially with a “cheap dongle”) that may introduce its own color to the record. There’s a reason why music collectors differentiate between every single source, because often there are differences (sometimes small, sometimes big) between the various sources.
  - phs2501 1y ago
    Usually that means the record was mastered differently (because you literally physically can't make a record as "loud" as a CD). It's not the CD's fault, it's the mastering engineers.
    - maqp 1y ago
      Yeah it depends on where the producer expects the CD to be played. 99% of music is made to be played on radio / in car etc., a noisy environment, where you don't want to be adjusting the volume knob all the time. So the dynamics are stripped in mastering phase. Music that gets pressed on vinyls isn't mastered for car-play, but home stereo equipment, so it makes more sense to have larger dynamic range. CDs have objectively lower noise floor (less hissing), and more dynamic range (difference between loudest and quietest note), but it's the mastering that usually destroys the sound. And nothing can be done about it on consumer end. Except find a less remastered version of the album in a thrift store that isn't scratched to oblivion. There's really no reliable way to tell if a CD is going to have high dynamic range, except perhaps niche audiophile studios like https://www.stockfisch-records.de/sf12_start_e.html https://www.stockfisch-records.de/sf12_start_e.html, but https://dr.loudness-war.info/ https://dr.loudness-war.info/ has fantastic list of records with their dynamic ranges, so you can check before you buy, and you can also explore and find new stuff to use to listen to your speakers ;)
- throawayonthe 1y ago
  you can tell, and it sounds better :p
- numpad0 1y ago
  > Yes it's technically digital, but can you tell? yep
Scene_Cast2 1y ago
I'll copy-paste a comment I saw on Nikon Rumors (not sure whether it's copypasta or not) --- I drove my electric BMW the other day, blasting a simulated V8 noise from speakers. It was a cold grey murky day but no rain. I stopped by the gas station to fuel my stomach by a bag of chips and the Snickers bar, because I went without eating a breakfast that morning. I saw a lonely dog by the roadside. It looked sad. I took my digital retro-styled camera with film simulation function out of my retro Billingham bag and took a photo. A little speaker in the camera has simulated the film advance noise just like in the past. Doggo looked at me with its sad eyes and went away. I took a glimpse of a photo of a dog and pressed "film grain +2" in the menu. Lovely shot. I'll post it to the Insta, probably. Then I entered the store, bought my bag of chips and the Snickers bar and saw a vinyl record corner. Man, I love vinyl. Those digital files pressed onto tangible, tactile surface. An AI-generated woman looked at me from the record artwork. Fonts were crooked. The price was $8.99 with a discount. I knew it's a pop record right away. Though, I'd love to blast an IDM track from speakers in my electric BMW alongside with simulated V8 noise, a pop record with vocoder vocals and autotune is also good. I took a record to place the vinyl on the bookshelf in my room. I know I'll be listening to the music via Spotify anyway. Man, I love vinyl. Just like film photography, it reminds me I'm alive. I'm real.
- deadbabe 1y ago
  That piece is more about inauthenticity of faux replicas rather than true anachronisms. It would be a different message if he was driving a true V8 and using an actual film camera.
  - simpaticoder 1y ago
    Indeed. What the GP is talking about would be a record player that requires vinyl, but plays only enough of the vinyl to do a Shazam-style identification and then stream the remainder, adding vinyl-sounding noise with a DSP. (Alternatively, the stylus is entirely fake and contains a camera that identifies the album by label, and is moved toward the center using a stepper motor.) I really hope no-one ever makes such a monstrosity.
steveBK123 1y ago
I've gotten into vinyl in my 40s after never having owned it before. I came of age in the cassette and CD transition era and was quickly on to MP3s in my teens. I enjoy the Vinyl & CD vibe of being fully offline. And it's also interesting how much stuff from 90s/00s era, particularly electronic music and the various remixes never made it on to streaming platforms. I assume some of it is just complexity of licensing some niche pressing of Artist C remixing a song by Artists A&B, etc. Sometimes I see some of the 2-3 CD live albums make it onto a streaming platform with like 1/3 of the songs greyed out missing due to licensing.
thewebguyd 1y ago
To add, as a vinyl enjoyer, it's also that putting on a record is a deliberate action. I'm putting it on with the intent to listen and enjoy it vs. most often when I open up Apple Music it's just background noise while I'm working on other things, where I just hit shuffle on my 10k song+ library. When I put on a record it's because I want to sit with it and listen to that specific album. Plus there's the aspect of actually owning your media and not simply leasing it with a monthly subscription.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  Many (or at least some) vinyl record albums were also not just a collection of 10 tracks but were crafted to be a complete experience. You listened to the album not just one song. With streaming being the predominant way music is consumed now, people mostly just listen to one song by one artist before bouncing to something randomly selected to be next in their playlist.

Farbklex 1y ago

Yes, ritual is the right word. I used to do it quite a lot during COVID with cassettes and CDs while working. Helped me to more consciously get into work mode.

Wowfunhappy 1y ago

...okay, but like, couldn't we choose a medium that doesn't physically wear out from repeated playback? CDs just seem so much better. Yes it's technically digital, but can you tell?

bradly 1y ago
One nice thing about buying vinyl these days is that they almost all come with a DRM free digital download of the album as well. Buying physical records is what has caused my digital music collection to grow the most since my Hotline 1.2.3 days.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
bluedino 1y ago
You can't scratch an mp3, ruining your copy.
- Wowfunhappy 1y ago
  Hard to play without a screen though!
  - vel0city 1y ago
    I've had several MP3 players with more screen than any hifi CD player. Track number, maybe folder number, current time.
  - redwall_hp 1y ago
    The iPod Shuffle managed it.
    - Wowfunhappy 1y ago
      Oops, yes! I should have said "hard to use" instead of "hard to play." With an iPod Shuffle, you needed a screen to load new music. The process of managing your collection happens on screen.
- 10729287 1y ago
  It can bitrot tho.
  - danaris 1y ago
    They're very easy to back up.
baq 1y ago
Content for vinyl is mastered differently than for streaming, not sure about cds, but wouldn’t be surprised.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  Early CDs would sometimes be made just from the vinyl master. They didn't sound very good.
  - M95D 1y ago
    Are those the CDs with the pre-emphasis flag? I really hate those.
t_mann 1y ago
CDs degrade pretty fast. I know people with CD collections that are basically unplayable now. And the typical plastic cases don't even make for nice shelf deco like books or paper-based vinyl cases.
- Wowfunhappy 1y ago
  These are easily fixable problems! M-Disc exists for disc longevity. High quality cases exist. I realize this isn't the world we live in so I guess I'm just yelling at clouds. But come on, Vinyl is just so obviously a bad way to preserve music...
  - 6581 1y ago
    M-Discs are available as DVD and Blu-Ray only, not as CD.
    - Wowfunhappy 1y ago
      Oops, yes you're right! I bet that could change pretty quickly if a big corporate customer wanted them, though.
Arubis 1y ago
Depends on your perspective. If you’re into the ritual and interested in close, intensive listening, there’s a certain magic and immediacy to knowing you’re using a physically destructive playback mechanism—that this right now is the best this record will ever sound again. As for myself, I have young kids and this sort of thing doesn’t make the cut these days, so I stream everything. It all feels background-y and I haven’t fallen in love with an album in years and years.
- tavavex 1y ago
  > there’s a certain magic and immediacy to knowing you’re using a physically destructive playback mechanism—that this right now is the best this record will ever sound again Maybe I just don't get it - I'm much younger than the average HN user, growing up with physical media but not physical media that rapidly degraded on use like how vinyl does. But to me this sentiment is so alien that it seems like some kind of a milder nostalgia Stockholm syndrome. When we think of other physical media, no one ever romanticizes that type of thing because degradation never really existed there. Would you want a photograph that faded away a significant amount each time you looked at it? A book that had the ink on its pages visibly rub off? To me it just seems that the hard technical limitations of a long bygone era (that some people would've undoubtedly hated at the time) were given a mystique to them when people come back to them. Is the harsh fact of media degradation really inherently "magical"? Or is it that people ascribe good qualities to it because it's just the way it was?
  - ragall 1y ago
    > Would you want a photograph that faded away a significant amount each time you looked at it? Yes! > A book that had the ink on its pages visibly rub off? Yes, old paperbacks were exactly like that.
reaperducer 1y ago
CDs just seem so much better. Yes it's technically digital, but can you tell? I didn't think so, until a couple of weeks ago. I was in a record store and it had a CD player on sale for $30. One of those cheap blister-pack jobs. Just for a laugh, I bought it, and a couple of CD versions of records I own. (Genesis, New Order, R.E.M.) I thought "digital is digital" so it shouldn't matter that it was cheap. It wasn't great. I sounded very flat. Even with my expensive headphones, it just didn't sound right. I'm not sure if "mechanical" is the right word, but it was noticeably different, and I'm not someone who has perfect hearing. It just sounded... boring. So I compared the CD sound with the record versions that I rip with a $20 USB dongle and Audacity. The record rips sound much better than the CDs. Maybe someone with perfect hearing will think otherwise. But I'm not an audiophile. I'm just a guy who likes gadgets.
- Kirby64 1y ago
  Digital is digital, but you’re ignoring multiple places where things might not be the same: That $30 CD player… if it’s connected to headphones, how were the headphones driven? Especially if you have nice headphones, it’s very easy for a cheap device to not be able to competently drive them. Vinyl vs CD mastering is a thing. There could be differences there. Additionally, depending on how you ripped the vinyl (especially with a “cheap dongle”) that may introduce its own color to the record. There’s a reason why music collectors differentiate between every single source, because often there are differences (sometimes small, sometimes big) between the various sources.
- phs2501 1y ago
  Usually that means the record was mastered differently (because you literally physically can't make a record as "loud" as a CD). It's not the CD's fault, it's the mastering engineers.
  - maqp 1y ago
    Yeah it depends on where the producer expects the CD to be played. 99% of music is made to be played on radio / in car etc., a noisy environment, where you don't want to be adjusting the volume knob all the time. So the dynamics are stripped in mastering phase. Music that gets pressed on vinyls isn't mastered for car-play, but home stereo equipment, so it makes more sense to have larger dynamic range. CDs have objectively lower noise floor (less hissing), and more dynamic range (difference between loudest and quietest note), but it's the mastering that usually destroys the sound. And nothing can be done about it on consumer end. Except find a less remastered version of the album in a thrift store that isn't scratched to oblivion. There's really no reliable way to tell if a CD is going to have high dynamic range, except perhaps niche audiophile studios like https://www.stockfisch-records.de/sf12_start_e.html https://www.stockfisch-records.de/sf12_start_e.html, but https://dr.loudness-war.info/ https://dr.loudness-war.info/ has fantastic list of records with their dynamic ranges, so you can check before you buy, and you can also explore and find new stuff to use to listen to your speakers ;)
throawayonthe 1y ago
you can tell, and it sounds better :p
numpad0 1y ago
> Yes it's technically digital, but can you tell? yep

Scene_Cast2 1y ago

I'll copy-paste a comment I saw on Nikon Rumors (not sure whether it's copypasta or not) --- I drove my electric BMW the other day, blasting a simulated V8 noise from speakers. It was a cold grey murky day but no rain. I stopped by the gas station to fuel my stomach by a bag of chips and the Snickers bar, because I went without eating a breakfast that morning. I saw a lonely dog by the roadside. It looked sad. I took my digital retro-styled camera with film simulation function out of my retro Billingham bag and took a photo. A little speaker in the camera has simulated the film advance noise just like in the past. Doggo looked at me with its sad eyes and went away. I took a glimpse of a photo of a dog and pressed "film grain +2" in the menu. Lovely shot. I'll post it to the Insta, probably. Then I entered the store, bought my bag of chips and the Snickers bar and saw a vinyl record corner. Man, I love vinyl. Those digital files pressed onto tangible, tactile surface. An AI-generated woman looked at me from the record artwork. Fonts were crooked. The price was $8.99 with a discount. I knew it's a pop record right away. Though, I'd love to blast an IDM track from speakers in my electric BMW alongside with simulated V8 noise, a pop record with vocoder vocals and autotune is also good. I took a record to place the vinyl on the bookshelf in my room. I know I'll be listening to the music via Spotify anyway. Man, I love vinyl. Just like film photography, it reminds me I'm alive. I'm real.

deadbabe 1y ago
That piece is more about inauthenticity of faux replicas rather than true anachronisms. It would be a different message if he was driving a true V8 and using an actual film camera.
- simpaticoder 1y ago
  Indeed. What the GP is talking about would be a record player that requires vinyl, but plays only enough of the vinyl to do a Shazam-style identification and then stream the remainder, adding vinyl-sounding noise with a DSP. (Alternatively, the stylus is entirely fake and contains a camera that identifies the album by label, and is moved toward the center using a stepper motor.) I really hope no-one ever makes such a monstrosity.

steveBK123 1y ago

I've gotten into vinyl in my 40s after never having owned it before. I came of age in the cassette and CD transition era and was quickly on to MP3s in my teens. I enjoy the Vinyl & CD vibe of being fully offline. And it's also interesting how much stuff from 90s/00s era, particularly electronic music and the various remixes never made it on to streaming platforms. I assume some of it is just complexity of licensing some niche pressing of Artist C remixing a song by Artists A&B, etc. Sometimes I see some of the 2-3 CD live albums make it onto a streaming platform with like 1/3 of the songs greyed out missing due to licensing.

thewebguyd 1y ago

To add, as a vinyl enjoyer, it's also that putting on a record is a deliberate action. I'm putting it on with the intent to listen and enjoy it vs. most often when I open up Apple Music it's just background noise while I'm working on other things, where I just hit shuffle on my 10k song+ library. When I put on a record it's because I want to sit with it and listen to that specific album. Plus there's the aspect of actually owning your media and not simply leasing it with a monthly subscription.

SoftTalker 1y ago
Many (or at least some) vinyl record albums were also not just a collection of 10 tracks but were crafted to be a complete experience. You listened to the album not just one song. With streaming being the predominant way music is consumed now, people mostly just listen to one song by one artist before bouncing to something randomly selected to be next in their playlist.