The Sacred Ritual of Vinyl: A Return to Mindful Listening

@unreceivedogma 

Nice post. I admire your attic biz and what you do with it. Very cool. I’d check it out if I didn’t live in the middle of nowhere MO. I share the vinyl experience as you do and have enjoyed turning many people onto it or back into it. Done correctly, it can be very damn good. Maybe streaming can as well, I don’t know and don’t really care. It certainly has a lot of users/followers. Probably something to it, I just don’t need it, having a good vinyl and cd collection that I will probably keep adding to until I’m dead and gone. 

As with you, I nearly always prefer the vinyl version over the cd of the same recording. More often than not, it seems that more effort was spent getting it right on the vinyl copy. Not always but it’s rare to find the cd copy to be better. I also agree that clean vinyl in perfect condition, has zero noise. Some people think vinyl listening is about nostalgia, and noisy popping sounds of an old beat up record. That is completely ridiculous and I despise noisy vinyl. Take good care of it and you can listen to it nearly forever, a lifetime anyway. 

I sat and played several records for a guy 14 years ago. He said he hadn’t heard a record in 20 years, having moved to cd’s only. He was amazed by it and said that it was like being there. I just said that was the whole idea. This guy had a wife who was a pianist and lived with a grand piano in his home. He knew what live music sounded like. We listened to all classical selections, good recordings from Crystal Clear, Telarc and possibly a couple other high quality recordings. This is just one memorable experience. There have been many. 

I also agree about the art. Albums have fun and interesting art work, many times from the people who also perform the music. Makes it kind of fun. There are also picture disks which are nice works of art. Colored vinyl is a big thing now, which is OK and often colored vinyl is more pure and often goes with good recording practices as well.

Years ago, we had fun, silly stuff like a giant rolling paper inside (who did that, can’t remember?) or a newspaper (Jethro Tull, Thick as A Brick). The James Gang, first album, Yer Album would say turn me over and play me again at the end. Silly crap  like that. It was just fun. A different time in our world. Vinyl can kind of transform us back to that time. That’s about the only nostalgia in it for me. It does remind me of old times but the listening is really just about the music and how well we are able to do it at home. It can be quite amazing. Very nice post. Thanks.

I had a neighbour who was a pianist and had a grand piano. When she visited and heard my hi-fi she said "My God, it's like the piano is in the room" - which was nice, but I know that when I listen to her playing an actual piano at her house it sounds different, mostly because it is much louder. I think our expectations have a great deal to do with how we appraise the music we hear.

@unreceivedogma

Thank you for starting this thought provoking thread. I did say that I'd come back to it after I given the topic further thought. That turned out to be quite a trip, but here I am again with my response. This is going to be speculative but has some grounding in relevant scientific literature.

Over the past few years, I have significantly upgraded both the turntable and digital source in my hifi system. That has significantly improved the sound quality of both these sources. Yet, my preference for vinyl records has become even more pronounced than it ever was. Often, I can get into the vinyl versions of albums that were impenetrable on streaming or FLAC files. Also, I never get bored with vinyl as I can with digital sources and can enjoy listening almost indefinitely.

Your use of the phrase “mindful listening” suggests one’s state of mind may be of significance in listening to vinyl records. Clinical trials have shown that mindfulness can induce altered states of consciousness (ASC). Moreover, there is a significant body of research indicating that ASC such as absorption and trance are involved everyday music listening (see Critical Listening and Altered States in Misc Audio part of this forum, particularly the most recent posts pages 4 and 5).

Therefore, I don’t think it is completely out of the question that there is something about vinyl records that more readily gets me and maybe others to this receptive ASC condition of absorption, which is likely to enhance our enjoyment of music. It just doesn’t seem to happen so much with a purely digital source.

ASC are highly subjective so there will be a range of responses by different individuals. Perhaps those who prefer the pristine sound quality of digital sources are appreciating music intellectually, whereas we who like vinyl are experiencing it on a more visceral level.

To give just one example of many, I have been listening to FLAC rips of the original CDs of Suzanne Vega’s 2014 Close Up box set for ten years. Recently, I acquired the vinyl versions of these albums. I really liked them and wondered what makes the vinyl versions sound so good. It is hard to explain this in words. The best I can do is say it seemed as if they had a sheen like texture and a slight crunchiness that really hits the spot.

Remembering a thread here on the sound of vinyl, I switched to the FLAC versions for the sake of comparison. These were of superb sound quality being crystal-clear. However, they lacked the sheen of the vinyl and weren’t as enjoyable a listen. The difference was quite marked. I’ve always thought the digital versions were good, but it seems the vinyl has something extra that makes it special. Of course, this is only one example, but it is typical of my experiences with vinyl.

The sacred ritual of vinyl that you so eloquently describe would clearly be a key factor. However, its sound is also involved. This might an artefact of vinyl itself, something the turntable/cartridge/phono stage adds, a consequence of different mastering or caused by some other factor. Possibly it is a combination of these factors. Given the subjective nature of ASC and our responses to music, this is going to be difficult to pin down. One possible factor I would rule out is analogue versus digital encoding – there is often digital signal processing in the chain both before and after the vinyl record.

Not only are our responses subjective, but we also listen on different equipment in different circumstances. Yet I regularly listen to vinyl records on a range of gear from modest systems to extremely expensive but always feel the same about vinyl.

In summary, it seems to me that the feeling vinyl evokes is a trigger for my mental state that makes music more real and enjoyable. Digital sources don’t affect me in quite the same way, although I wouldn’t dispute that both formats have their pros and cons.

People who are very young will not remember a time - mostly the '60s, when album covers were works of art.

Sticky Fingers - The Rolling Stones. A ZIPPER on the album cover! Naturally, people were shocked! SHOCKED, I tell you!!!

Buying an album back then was always about the record, but MAN, did we have the best album covers of ALL TIME!

How about the Beatles 'Yesterday and Today' the butcher cover with the chopped up dollies.