If you’re going to own a physical copy of your favorite records, nothing beats vinyl in my opinion. The presence of vinyl has a palpable quality that can’t be recreated in the digital sphere: the huge artwork, the musty smell, the ritual of flipping a disc from one side to the other – it has a tangible character that can’t be replicated in the digital arena. It’s a classic, but vinyl fans frequently discuss the warmth of sound.
There’s a lot of discussion regarding this aspect of the vinyl sound, and there are a lot of variables at play — far too many to describe in this essay. When people talk about the “warm” component, they’re most likely referring to the inherent distortions in the vinyl format, which produce a unique, characterful sound that some people love.
Cards to Download
When most freshly issued vinyl albums come with a digital download code, it’s no surprise that customers don’t regard vinyl vs digital as an either-or choice. Although it’s a shame that more of them don’t offer lossless formats, most of them do provide a high-quality 320 kbps MP3 file, which in many cases will sound better than streaming on Spotify.
Vinyl Screams for Attention
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: in the digital age, our listening habits as consumers have grown extremely fickle. As we live our switched-on lives, there are so many demands on our attention that fewer listeners make time to devote 100 percent of their attention to music.
Maintenance and upkeep
To effectively maintain a record collection, you’ll need to know how to store vinyl records to prevent deterioration or damage, how to clean your vinyl records on a regular basis, and how to conduct some basic turntable setup and maintenance duties. No one said it would be simple, but nothing worthwhile is ever easy in my experience.
Damaged Easily
It may sound absurd now, but damaged vinyl records were a major source of frustration for consumers at the time. Of course, the great majority of skips were caused by a combination of poor maintenance and low-quality playback equipment, but regardless of how ludicrous this demonstration may sound.
Noise on the Surface
On an analog medium like vinyl, surface noise in the form of clicks, pops, and small hiss can be mostly eliminated through record care and cleaning, but some quantifiable surface noise in the form of clicks, pops, and minor hiss will always be present.
Errors are being tracked.
Addicted to Audio’s turntables with a pivoting tonearm can only line up perfectly with the grooves at two positions across the record surface due to simple geometry. This inherent mismatch causes tracking mistakes, which are audible as distortion when played back. The issue is exacerbated by the progressive loss of linear resolution as a recording advance.
