Why vinyl?

From the second article:

"As for the actual sound quality, the argument is debatable at best, and completely moot at worst. Only the most discerning audiophile can spot the difference on any kind of respectable sound system"

Obviously this guy is not an audiophile, therefore he is unqualified to comment as such. He speaks on a purely superficial, business oriented level, without concern to sound quality. Next time he needs to put down his pen (oops..I mean laptop...cause who uses a pen to write an article anymore? too "inconvenient") and breathe before writing an article out of spite after being scolded by vinyl head DJ's about his decision to switch to digital.

"The medium is the message, and when it comes to being a DJ, the message is digital. Resist if you will, but the future is clear – music technology is going to continue to evolve with or without you."

The *medium* is the message? Wow this guy is really lost. I can see why he would prefer digital over vinyl as a medium for DJ's simply due to convenience, but he seems to think that DJs are the only crowd keeping vinyl alive. I find that hard to believe. He takes a shot at audiophiles "holding on" to records, when the whole basis of the article is convenient transportation of his media as a DJ. An unbalanced argument that holds no merit, as far as I'm concerned.

I've been into vinyl for two years. I think it's unbeatable (and its advantages most obvious) with any music recorded in which the engineer's aim was to preserve the original acoustic as well. As an orchestral musician for 26 years, I've never heard instruments better resolved. I did the SACD thing, and it was an improvement over CD, and I've also auditioned high-end players, up to 10K extensively. No contest. Maybe someday there will be a digital breakthrough.

If you hear a well produced/mastered piece of vinyl and the same well produced/mastered piece on CD in a good system, I believe you will have your answer? Is vinyl more troublesome than just popping in a CD and pressing play? Well hell yes but, for audiophiles convenience is not the #1 priority. Sound quality is. There are some really good digital front ends out there but, for me, they can't compete with a high quality vinyl setup.

Regardless of the content of the articles, the thing that poped out at me, was that the anti-vinyl article was written in 2006, whereas the pro-vinyl article was written, a year later, in 2007. Apparently as time goes by, things are getting better for vinyl, and worse for CD.

As far as the content of the articles, I disagree with both of them. In the first article, obviously this guy is out of touch, as the current vinyl boom is not being driven by us audiophiles, (we are way too few in number, IMHO), but instead is being driven by the college crowd, who, for some reason, (hopefully, because they sound better than CDs!), have determined that vinyl is worth buying, and hence the industry is now producing it in greater numbers than they have for the past decade. And in the second article, personally, I think CDs will remain the industry standard means of distributing music in a non-downloadable format. (At least for the near future, until something cheaper and smaller come along anyway.)

My two cents worth anyway.