Most people who are truely
passionate about
music are usually passionate about
vinyl. I know I am. My friend exposed me to the
wonder of vinyl
records about a
year ago and I haven't gone back. Everything about them is
beautiful. Vinyls release the
real, soft,
pure sound of the music. I love the simple
perfection of
analog: the
slow spinning of the
turntable, the
stylus vibrating in the
grooves,
resonating every note perfectly, being able to watch, feel the music as it plays. Vinyls have
emotion. It's not a little
computer coverting
1s and 0s on a round piece of
plastic back into sound. How
soulless. Records
are sound. They are the
embodyment of the music, and how it was intended to be. CDs may sound "
cleaner" but the sound is so hard, so
sharp, so
impersonal.
MP3s have even less soul. In fact MP3s soul has been cast into hell. They take away physical media all together. Now you don't even have your plastic disc with 1s and 0s. You don't have something you can touch or see. With MP3s all you have a is magnetic plate inside a big metal box, or a little peice of circut board encased in plastic. That's even more impersonal than a CD. MP3s remove so many elements from the song, degrading the 1s and 0s of the CD even further for its cute little compression scheme. The sound is sharper than a knife. It's music with square edges. It's so bitter, so heartless, even moreso than CDs. Is it worth trading the lifeblood of your music so that you can store 1000 soulless, recordings on your magnetic plate?
Don't get me wrong. I still buy CDs now and then and do download MP3s. But if I could I would abandon them. Unfortunatly you can't play vinyls in the car, nor can you take them on a walk. And sadly many artists don't publish their music on vinyls anymore. Also many older albums are out of print on vinyl making them difficult to find. CDs and MP3s are a necessary evil these days.