Why vinyl?


I understand the thoughts of a lot of you that digital is harsh and bright and has an edge. I know that analog has a warmer fuller sound, otherwise why would so many people put up with the inconvenience of records, cartridges, cleaners, tone-arm adjustments, etc. I used to be there. Of course all I had was a Garrard direct drive turntable. If the idea is to get as close as possible to the original source, why has not open-reel tape made a huge comeback. After all that's how most of the stuff was recorded in the first place. Very few were direct to disk recordings. Why would dragging a stylus through a groove be better than the original? There used to be a company out there called In-Synch that used the original masters and sold cassettes of them, dubbed at 1:1 ratio. I was the happiest person in the world when CD's came out and I could throw out my disk-washer and everything else that went with it, including the surface noise and the TICKS and POPS. Just something I've wondered about.
elmuncy

Showing 1 response by ntscdan

Really bad analog to digital conversions is a good reason.
Sure the Rolling Stones and Beatles etc get state of the art treatment but if you like music from the 60s or minor artists the vast majority of it is awful. This holds true especially for soul and other popular music. I just listened to a great album by Shirley Ellis with her hit "The Name Game". Mono vinyl from 1963 and absolute incredible fidelty and recording quality. I pulled out one of those compilation CD's that had the track. It was like a different song. Probably some fifteenth generation dat dub. If you like modern recordings that are digital to begin with CD is fine, but if it's old stuff that you like you are missing out with the silver disc. My set-up cost an unreasonable amount of money but it does give me satisfaction each and every day. A bargain actually.
The CD version of Donovan's Mellow Yellow can't touch the Epic mono version. Incredible sonics for a pop album.