apparently all these are formats are going to be replaced by streaming so perhaps that should be a forth option?!

agreed and the fact that the available content is a long way from being comprehensive at the moment especially for a prog fan. I reckon I would be lucky to find 20% of what I own currently available for streaming.

Anyway I love the small crackling, watching the needle slip into the groove, as well as the mad people who sell you vinyls.

 

I'm too old and also like to scroll through the physical stuff on my shelves, but habits change and possibly 1 or 2 generations further they will find it crazy to keep physical records at home. How many paperwork at home has been replaced by electronic files? invoices and receipts, bank statements, salary sheets, photo albums and so many others.

I still collect cds, mostly because there are some artists who are damn near impossible to get on vinyl(Good luck finding an early Porcupine Tree album), and because I don't want to be one of those  connoisseurs who look down their nose at anything digital(pronounce with extreme prejudice and a sourpuss mouth). CDs are great and less a hassle than a scratched vinyl.

I have a fair deal of MP3s as well, but that's mainly from bandcamp artists and other such acts that don't produce actual releases(or they do, but it's only on 8track or cassette tape).   

yeah I like buying vinyl off those mad sellers, who are always eccentric. I bought Rush's signals on vinyl last monthoff a dealer who knoew too much about music. I used to buy off a guy who owned a second hand record store and he was eccentric and knew everything too. It must go with the territory.

Anyway CDs are still easier to keep so its a moot point with me. Vinyl for the nostalgia, CDs for posterity.

Digital is simply technological - not everyone wants to deal with that. Though I do big time for ease of obtaining!

Vinyl vendors are a special breed. They're all somewhere around 60 to 70 years old, longish grey hair, unshaved, perhaps a bandana, glasses hanging around their neck in some orangy string. They've been to every concert with PinkFloydKingCrimsonJethroTullTangerineDream insert big/small/obscure name here, and they enjoy talking about them in the shop - preferably over a beer and a cigarette(in some instances pipe). 

What a life, I wish I was a vinyl vendor (only that I'm 46, no money to invest and scared of wanting to keep all the albums for myself and spending more money than making any )

To think that I could wear bandanas all day long...

For me  it is  the vinyl quality I  dislike.

you absolutely covered my thoughts, past and present and activities man!

Digital download - never bought anything and never will.

I also moved recently, I have a bit of everything but most of my current collection is CD, and I'm not sure you can say that CD music is easier to move / takes less space than vinyl LPs,

CDs are smaller but also wider, so I'm not sure of the total result in terms of volume and weight to be moved (of course digital music is in another league).

Sure, for something like a car audio system, LP is far too big and not convenient, but in terms of CD taking generally less space / weight than LPs I'm not 100% convinced.

One of the record stores in my city has a guy that pretty much exactly fits that description but not the others.

I will acquire music in whatever format I can so I may listen to it. Truthfully although I do enjoy vinyl it has become my least-collected format, just because I do a lot of my listening while working on my computer and vinyl is a lot harder to digitize, unless it is new vinyl with a download card in which case it costs $30 for an album that costs $12 on CD.

I tend to go for CD first unless the cost is prohibitive, in which case unless it's an album I really really love digital is the way to go.

CDs I still buy if I really love a album that's new to me, but I've gotten used to the modern iTunes/Spotify habit of creating collages/playlists--I rarely listen to a whole album start to finish anymore, so the whole digital & computer storage system works great for me. Plus, I'm too old to keep adding more physical junk to my shelves/storage. 

Digital gets my nod for convenience and expedience. But, for recorded music, I do love vinyl best (100% virgin vinyl Japanese presses are preferred though I know of the health hazards involved therein) (probably cuz that's what I grew up with).

 

It does. Miles better.

 

CDs are very unrealistic tonally and have a 2 dimensional soundstage.

 

Vinyls, played on a top quality player, have a solidity, tonal accuracy and depth of soundstage no CD player I have heard can get near.

 

I went out to find a CD player (I do have about 100 CDs) which could give a sound as good as my Pink Triangle Anniversary/SMEV/Lyra Lydian. I had a budget of £3000. In the end, the dealer got up to a £10000 player and it still didn't get close. I couldn't hear subtle details I KNEW were on the disc so I didn't buy.

 

 

 

Obselete? Funny - there's far more vinyl available now than for years and turntable sales are higher than they have been since the early 90s. And vinyl was the only format that has seen sales growth in the last 5 years.

Same, but I buy vinyls of albums I really love. I wish Neal Morse would release his albums on vinyl. I'd get them. But yeah I most get Cds. But I feel its a tie between the two, but there is something very special about vinyl!

Nah, I too like the classicism of vinyl but let's be honest, besides the size of the artwork, what is its real advantage? Let alone a very important feature, vinyl does not have the 'skip to next track' function, so useful when you listen to modern Dream Theater 

When CD's came out I waited a while before taking the plunge but the ability to listen to an album as a whole (rather than 2 20+ minute halves) and not having to worry about pops/scratches/warps made it worthwhile.  Nowadays, maybe 5% of my collection is digital but CD is still the king.

Of course they can, but there is no demand. Anything that alters the basic concept and material would be seen as sacrilege. 

 

The polymer used (poly vinyl chloride acetate) is ancient technology and the material science of polymers has advanced considerably in 50 years - creating a polymer that is resistant to scratches and is stable over a wide range of temperatures is easily achievable with modern plastics. If the technology had continued unevolved since the 1940s then albums would still be made of shellac and the merest thought of changing to vinyl now would meet with huge resistance from the diehards and so it would be with changing from vinyl to a more robust plastic.

 

It is also possible to engineer play-back mechanics that do not touch the groove, working laser transports have been around for decades but the development of them stalled because of low demand. Since laser transports could play normal vinyl albums without the laser physically touching the platter it would be technically feasible to cover the grooves with a coating of clear varnish, making them practically scratch and dust proof. Modern discs playable only on an analogue laser transport could be easily made to have a scratch-proof clear layer to protect the audio tracks.

 

Using the same technology as CD and laser discs (a laminate of acrylic and aluminium), it is also feasible to record analogy waveforms direct into the aluminium layer that could be played back using a laser, this would require two parallel tracks to record stereo, but that is not difficult to achieve technically.

 

The playback time is limited by the width of the groove, which is goverened by the size of the stylus, using lasers the grooves could be much thinner and the playback time increased.

 

The problem with all those approaches is the vinyl enthusiast themselves. Because they are discerning (read: finickety) they would detect faults and discrepancies in the new technology even if none actually existed, and they would continually harp back to the authenticity of the original vinyl album and elliptical diamond stylus.

 

Gerinski wrote: Nah, I too like the classicism of vinyl but let's be honest, besides the size of the artwork, what is its real advantage? Let alone a very important feature, vinyl does not have the 'skip to next track' function, so useful when you listen to modern Dream Theater

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What?

 

I agree...it doesn't sound better....and I grew up with vinyl and still have about 400 pieces of it.

I wish people would stop saying vinyl doesn't sound so much better. It does.

I've heard CDs all my life, since I was a kid. I changed recently to vinyls and the difference is HUGE. The instruments sound better, I noticed a lot of details that one couldn't hear before in the CD. And you can feel the difference by far.

Research about the difference on the internet. Watch youtube videos playing the same record on vinyl and cd. You will see the difference.

 Think about that for 1 minute.

 

If you don't see what's wrong with that statement then I have some snake oil I can sell you.

He does have a point though - we'll definitely see the difference.

For convenience - CD

For practicality - Digital 

This answer is as arrogant as those who claim the music they love is the only 'good' music and look down their noses at anyone who disagrees.

There is no uniform, best experience when it comes to a hobby or enjoyable task. There are only your personal experiences. What you describe may be something that makes music worthwhile to you ... but that doesn't mean anyone else has to agree. If some snob came to you and said, "I only listen to music live, trying to capture that moment in recordings just removes all the experience, the screaming crowd, the sweat and smell of beer, the stories etc..." you probably wouldn't agree.

I buy tons of music and have an entire room in my house dedicated to storing my music collection and listening to it. One of my best friends is a huge music lover, but he deletes music all the time, only keeps songs he likes, his music collection is a living, breathing thing, not a monster that accumulates dust and takes up space. We both love music in our own way and neither of us would enjoy music the same if we were to swap.

 

worst is ipod.  Having one small gadget  with 10,000 tracks is convenient, is it?  How long will it take to listen to all that?  And who listens to music for convenience anyway?

Couldn't one also say that people who don't play an instrument (or sing) are not true music lovers? Or that people who don't go to live music concerts are not true music lovers? Or that people that only like/listen to studio recordings because they dislike the flaws and changes in the songs' live performances are not true music lovers? Or that people who don't like classical or __________ (fill in your choice of music genre) music are not true music lovers? 

I guess my points are:  What is music (and who gets to define it) and what constitutes a "love" for music?

That is relevant. The growing easy abundance of music has likely some impact on the listening experience. There are plenty of popular sayings in the sense that 'something scarce or which takes effort to get is more valued' and 'the more plenty something is, or if it comes without any effort, the less it gets appreciated'.

Getting a new album in the 70's was an event, you would focus on listening to it and squeezing the last drop out of it.

Nowadays getting an album is just pushing a key, often listen to it once and leave it in the hard drive until who knows when.

 

People who say otherwise have simply never heard a truly top flight vinyl player, like a Pink Triangle Anniversary, Nottingham Analogue Annalog or a Wilson Benesch Full Circle (never mind the ridiculously expensive decks costing £250k).

Most images designed for 12" album covers look awful shrunk down to CD size.

Most images designed for CD size inlays look awful enlarged to a 12" album cover.

 

Most album cover images are not scalable. Design the image to fit the format - it's not rocket science.

Not just bigger, but with vinyl you had the album covers that were not just a flat sleeve, but artistic statements...The "Thick as a Brick" foldout newspaper, "A Passion Play" theater program, "Sticky Fingers" working zipper, "Brain Salad Surgery" foldout cover, "The World Became the World" island pull out, etc.  Plus many included extra artwork large enough to put on your wall - the Pink Floyd DSOTM poster, ELP 12" x 12" band photos, Beatles White Album poster and band photos, and it goes on and on...

Great point.  Getting into a prog album ended up being a matter of digesting it in ~20 minute chunks.  When I got "Brain Salad Surgery", I had to listen to "Still You Turn Me On" just to get to "Karn Evil 9"...Greg Lake was one sneaky producer 

Unless your eyes are 8" apart this is never going to work as a 12" cover, gatefold or not:

 

 

The music is brilliant but the artwork on the cover and lyric booklet are utterly sublime.

 

Getting it on CD would be like eating beef wellington out of a newspaper.

I very occasionally download stuff that I can't find elsewhere. 

 

Er no - I mean Grave New World by Strawbs.

No - I want "Glad Day" by William Blake, which is the front cover of Grave New World. But the Buddhist artwork on the rest of the album cover and lyric booklet is equally magnificent.

The point is, the CD artwork is just useless by comparison.

"No - I want "Glad Day" by William Blake, which is the front cover of Grave New World. But the Buddhist artwork on the rest of the album cover and lyric booklet is equally magnificent.

The point is, the CD artwork is just useless by comparison."

 

I agree the artwork is great so I pull out the vinyl to gaze upon while I listen to the CD.

Nuff said,,?

 

I totally agree with you. Playing vinyl is great because it feels authentic, but iPods provide a convenient way to enjoy music.

about the same, but with *clunk* *whrrrr* *clunk* every 8 minutes.

 

Really not an enjoyable way to listen to a 20 minute prog epic.

I can't remember much about the quality though, I guess I had little to compare to but the radio and that vintage mono 'suitcase' vinyl player with a speaker in its lid. But I seem to remember that it allowed quite long recording time, maybe 2 LP's per tape reel? (not sure at all, just trying to remember)

Good thing it was obsolete by the time an album like Amarok was released

 

 

 

 At times it seemed like it wasn't so much arbitrary as down-right vindictive.

Ya, I remember my Selling England by the Pound 8-track had a fadeout/track change right before the "They call me the Reverend..." section of Epping forest...used to drive me nuts