Why do you listen to records?

I am tempted to say we listen to vinyl records because we are mainly old guys who grew up with them.

Yet I can't. My daughter and two sons (aged 37, 25 and 23) all do it too.

on Saturday i had some visitors; two long time audiophile friends and a music lover/non audiophile. we began with a track list my friend brought of a dozen excellent well recorded country/folk vocals on streaming digital. "his" music he lives with daily.

we all very much enjoyed them and i’m happy that my Roon history will now have them as i will be able to revisit them as it’s music i like but don’t really know that much. not in my normal personal wheelhouse. it’s a great part of collective listening is new music horizon’s it opens. the gift that keeps on giving. really outstanding unpretentious music. in the past when i hear country music i like i have wished i knew more about it. this can help me to get into it. it has real feeling to it. not as much of a construct as most pop/light jazz.

after we finished those, i played 4 quick cuts of vocals on vinyl that i thought my friends would enjoy to give them a sense of how vocals on vinyl compared.

1--Crosby Stills and Nash, 45rpm single disc ’Lady of the Island and Helplessly Hoping.
2--Eagles Live, 33rpm ’Seven Bridges Road’
3--Nat King Cole, Love is the Thing, 45rpm---’When I Fall in Love’.
4--the non audiophile visitor mentioned he liked opera, so i also played Pavarotti singing ’Nessun Dorma’ from a 1973 recording London box set of Puccini’s Turandot.

no; i did not go to the trouble to find and play the digital versions of those analog recordings; but i have in the past heard all of those many times on digital because the music is superb and i love it. they are nice on digital.

the digital vocals were fully satisfying. they pulled you in and the flow and boogie factor of the recordings touched all the bases. it’s a playlist i will explore. honest and pure. but the vinyl vocals were on another level of human touch. obviously iconic recordings each one. great artists. degrees more real and pulsing with real tactile energy. kind of laser focused and profound. transcendent. a more physical experience. leaves you breathless. makes you forget everything else. where i like to be.

i’m just relating my own perceptions. there were plenty of oohs and ahhs from my visitors but i don’t want to speak for them.

we played music for 2 more hours before we ran out of time and there was more of that stuff, i’m just citing one part of the session.

1) I love how they sound

2) I truly enjoy the process and the inconvenience the digital-philes hate

3) The nostalgia

4) LP’s just sound better.

I am not going to argue the virtues of one format versus the other I enjoy both. However I have more of a connection to the music when I clean my LP, place it on the platter, set the speed, clean the needle and drop the needle in the grove. Do not get that when I pick a play list and hit play, same  with CD’s no connection to the process or the music. 

Because it's fun!

But that's also the reason I listen to CDs and streaming services. 

Nostalgia, enjoying the process, historic significance… all great reasons to enjoy vinyl.. But if they sound better, more musical, more natural, it is because of your components (your digital end) not because of the format. Vinyl used to be the only option, then superior until digital was improved, now at nearly all price points digital can sound as good or better.