7 ms·

Vinyls are not necessarily the inferior technology. Given the choice, I'd prefer to play vinyl in some cases. In social settings vinyl's short length and need t

Vinyls are not necessarily the inferior technology. Given the choice, I'd prefer to play vinyl in some cases. In social settings vinyl's short length and need to be flipped creates a dynamic social environment. Someone has to regularly choose new music to play, acting with intent to do so. Someone has to regularly walk to the machine. These create dynamism and flow. CDs are much longer, and less tactile. There's less of the my turn your turn, who is going to flip the thing. They sound worse, if clarity is your goal. And they are huge and wear out. I agree with you 99%, I just wanted to point out that across some dimensions they are the superior technology.

sambapa 7mo ago
Vinyl is for plebs, hiring troubadours for your party is the way.
- meekins 7mo ago
  Please recommend a troubadour who knows the Neat Records, Guardian Records n' Tapes and Heavy Metal Records singles catalogues and I'm sold :)
  - sambapa 7mo ago
    Known repertoire is a function of BAC only.
dijit 7mo ago
This is like saying “Candles are superior to lightbulbs because they burn out quicker and thats an advantage in some situations”. I’m not sure how, its an aesthetic choice but an inferior technology by every metric that counts. Candles still have a place, we still buy them, but we can’t reasonably call them superior either- even if, candles actually would have a real advantage of not requiring power. Vinyl doesn’t even have that.
- bob1029 7mo ago
  You have to look beyond the audio engineering on this one. Using constrained mediums on purpose is often how the best artistic expression is achieved. For example, if the artist knows their channel is noisy and band-limited they can get a lot more liberal with the kinds of samples they use throughout. CD/SACD is kind of like 4K for television. The medium becomes so transparent that it causes upstream shocks in every other part of the process. You can no longer rely on the camera or audio chain to cover it up (unless you hobble yourself intentionally).
  - ratmeadow 7mo ago
    With this logic you can argue the best audio medium is dirt because if you made good music with dirt, the music must have been so incredible to have counteracted the flaws of dirt as a medium. Ignore the fact that dirt cannot be used as a music medium. (Vacuous truth)
    - atoav 7mo ago
      Yes, but your "IF" is doing the heavy lifting here and it would be your burden to proof how dirt would be a means of artistic expression before anybody could take your argument seriously. As a musician myself I can assure you that the high stakes releases for any musician are vinyl releases. They also happen to be the ones with which most musicians earn the most money. Now technologically vinyl isn't superior (and anybody who claims it is is an idiot in the sense of the word), but technology isn't everything. A noisy casette tape can evoke the same (and sometimes more) feelings than the digital recording. A vinyl record with a big cover, an inlay with band info, that you specifically chose to put on the record player while reading the liner notes and examining the design is in a ritualistic sense a thousand times more gratifying than having spotify select a song for you without knowing why, in the background of the daily life. That is like the difference between a candle light bath and getting wet in a rainshower. Now that doesn't mean people will be binary either 100% vinyl or 100% digital. Vinyl is for the special occasion or for DJ sets, digital is for everything else.
      - 7mo ago
adrian_b 7mo ago
For me the fact that vinyl discs wear out is their decisive disadvantage. Many decades ago, those who bought vinyl and desired adequate audio quality never listened to vinyl discs, but they copied them immediately to magnetic tapes and always listened only to the tapes, keeping the vinyl discs only as a master source, to avoid wearing them out.
- Lio 7mo ago
  I mean, yes they do wear out but the rate is pretty slow if you look after them. I have some of my father’s old early LPs and they still sound pretty good. You can get rid of a surprising amount of surface noise with a static gun and a line contact stylus (where shape is close to that of a cutting head so you get the biggest contact patch). I think most people only copied to cassette if they want to use a Walkman, play it in the car or give a copy to a friend. It generally wasn’t for sound quality.
  - bluGill 7mo ago
    He said tape not cassette. Tape would mean real to real tape in this context - cassette doesn't make sense. Tape can be wider than cassette, only two tracks, and run faster - all give you a lot better sound quality. Not as good as a good digital system and it costs more but still very good.
    - Lio 7mo ago
      I actually still have an old Grundig reel to reel somewhere, although I can't claim it as ever really hifi. I would stand by recording to reel to reel tape for quality being even less common recording to cassette tape. Quality domestic reel to reel decks were just not that widely owned here. Maybe it was different where you lived.
      - bluGill 7mo ago
        They we never common from what I know. However again the context is people who care about sound quality and in that group I believe they were much more common.
UltraSane 7mo ago
Any media that is actively damaged during every use is inferior.
- Aldipower 7mo ago
  Not if you see it from an artistic perspective.
- ahhhhnoooo 7mo ago
  The best meals I've ever had were damaged by their use, and many were quite artistic.
badgersnake 7mo ago
There’s always one.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
Copernicron 7mo ago
I would argue that vinyl sounds better thanks to the Loudness War[0]. CD is technically superior and should sound better but it's been compressed to hell and back during mastering in ways that vinyl simply can't be due to physical limitations. All that wonderful technology and they can't simply let it be so we get good sound quality. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
- 6yyyyyy 7mo ago
  You can fix this by dubbing the vinyl onto a CD-R. It'll sound identical and you won't need to mess with the turntable more than once.
Kirby64 7mo ago
But that has nothing to do with the technology per-se. You could recreate this by just having CDs that don’t use all their space for music and having more of them, if the goal is dynamism. It’s a restriction, not a benefit. You could do the same exact thing with an iPod with playlists that are shorter, and not auto playing after the playlist ends.

sambapa 7mo ago

Vinyl is for plebs, hiring troubadours for your party is the way.

meekins 7mo ago
Please recommend a troubadour who knows the Neat Records, Guardian Records n' Tapes and Heavy Metal Records singles catalogues and I'm sold :)
- sambapa 7mo ago
  Known repertoire is a function of BAC only.

dijit 7mo ago

This is like saying “Candles are superior to lightbulbs because they burn out quicker and thats an advantage in some situations”. I’m not sure how, its an aesthetic choice but an inferior technology by every metric that counts. Candles still have a place, we still buy them, but we can’t reasonably call them superior either- even if, candles actually would have a real advantage of not requiring power. Vinyl doesn’t even have that.

bob1029 7mo ago
You have to look beyond the audio engineering on this one. Using constrained mediums on purpose is often how the best artistic expression is achieved. For example, if the artist knows their channel is noisy and band-limited they can get a lot more liberal with the kinds of samples they use throughout. CD/SACD is kind of like 4K for television. The medium becomes so transparent that it causes upstream shocks in every other part of the process. You can no longer rely on the camera or audio chain to cover it up (unless you hobble yourself intentionally).
- ratmeadow 7mo ago
  With this logic you can argue the best audio medium is dirt because if you made good music with dirt, the music must have been so incredible to have counteracted the flaws of dirt as a medium. Ignore the fact that dirt cannot be used as a music medium. (Vacuous truth)
  - atoav 7mo ago
    Yes, but your "IF" is doing the heavy lifting here and it would be your burden to proof how dirt would be a means of artistic expression before anybody could take your argument seriously. As a musician myself I can assure you that the high stakes releases for any musician are vinyl releases. They also happen to be the ones with which most musicians earn the most money. Now technologically vinyl isn't superior (and anybody who claims it is is an idiot in the sense of the word), but technology isn't everything. A noisy casette tape can evoke the same (and sometimes more) feelings than the digital recording. A vinyl record with a big cover, an inlay with band info, that you specifically chose to put on the record player while reading the liner notes and examining the design is in a ritualistic sense a thousand times more gratifying than having spotify select a song for you without knowing why, in the background of the daily life. That is like the difference between a candle light bath and getting wet in a rainshower. Now that doesn't mean people will be binary either 100% vinyl or 100% digital. Vinyl is for the special occasion or for DJ sets, digital is for everything else.
    - 7mo ago

adrian_b 7mo ago

For me the fact that vinyl discs wear out is their decisive disadvantage. Many decades ago, those who bought vinyl and desired adequate audio quality never listened to vinyl discs, but they copied them immediately to magnetic tapes and always listened only to the tapes, keeping the vinyl discs only as a master source, to avoid wearing them out.

Lio 7mo ago
I mean, yes they do wear out but the rate is pretty slow if you look after them. I have some of my father’s old early LPs and they still sound pretty good. You can get rid of a surprising amount of surface noise with a static gun and a line contact stylus (where shape is close to that of a cutting head so you get the biggest contact patch). I think most people only copied to cassette if they want to use a Walkman, play it in the car or give a copy to a friend. It generally wasn’t for sound quality.
- bluGill 7mo ago
  He said tape not cassette. Tape would mean real to real tape in this context - cassette doesn't make sense. Tape can be wider than cassette, only two tracks, and run faster - all give you a lot better sound quality. Not as good as a good digital system and it costs more but still very good.
  - Lio 7mo ago
    I actually still have an old Grundig reel to reel somewhere, although I can't claim it as ever really hifi. I would stand by recording to reel to reel tape for quality being even less common recording to cassette tape. Quality domestic reel to reel decks were just not that widely owned here. Maybe it was different where you lived.
    - bluGill 7mo ago
      They we never common from what I know. However again the context is people who care about sound quality and in that group I believe they were much more common.

UltraSane 7mo ago

Any media that is actively damaged during every use is inferior.

Aldipower 7mo ago
Not if you see it from an artistic perspective.
ahhhhnoooo 7mo ago
The best meals I've ever had were damaged by their use, and many were quite artistic.

badgersnake 7mo ago

There’s always one.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

Copernicron 7mo ago

I would argue that vinyl sounds better thanks to the Loudness War[0]. CD is technically superior and should sound better but it's been compressed to hell and back during mastering in ways that vinyl simply can't be due to physical limitations. All that wonderful technology and they can't simply let it be so we get good sound quality. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

6yyyyyy 7mo ago
You can fix this by dubbing the vinyl onto a CD-R. It'll sound identical and you won't need to mess with the turntable more than once.

Kirby64 7mo ago

But that has nothing to do with the technology per-se. You could recreate this by just having CDs that don’t use all their space for music and having more of them, if the goal is dynamism. It’s a restriction, not a benefit. You could do the same exact thing with an iPod with playlists that are shorter, and not auto playing after the playlist ends.