Vinyl, Tape, CD or Digital?

[NebachadnezzaR]

I always end up ripping my cd's and just listening to the mp3's, but I can't stop buying them because I'm fan of "physical" stuff, whether it's music, games, movies, whatever. It just feels right, to feel the cd in your hand, look at the booklet, smell the fresh scent of the cd...(ok, now this is getting weird...).

I'm not a fan of vinyl just because I didn't "grow" with it, if you know what I mean, and tapes are simply outdated.

[corn619]

I always end up ripping my cd's and just listening to the mp3's, but I can't stop buying them because I'm fan of "physical" stuff, whether it's music, games, movies, whatever. It just feels right, to feel the cd in your hand, look at the booklet, smell the fresh scent of the cd...(ok, now this is getting weird...).

I'm not a fan of vinyl just because I didn't "grow" with it, if you know what I mean, and tapes are simply outdated.

Tapes are a horrible medium.

[aaron]

buy the wax, download the tracks.

i like owning the albums i've illegally downloaded on vinyl if applicable, but i'll pick up the cd if that's all it's available on. working on evening out my collection all the time.

tapes seem to be making a comeback with hardcore bands recently.

[IcKy99]

vinyl hands down is the best. a thick 180 gram record can produce bass depths no cd can do. plus records are usually cheaper than cds.

[lordofduct]

wow some vinyl fans here.

Don't get me wrong, I love vinyl for a few reasons, but it just isn't for me.

First off, they are HUGE and take up a ton of space.
They scratch easily and degrade each time you play them.
They are not portable.
I for some reason can't change a track with out "skirk, reeeek, wrappa wrappa, padunk"... people grab their ears in agony every time.

Tape is an obvious NO

That leaves CD and Digital.

And personally I'm going with digital. When it comes to music for me I don't really care about the packaging or anything, I just want my music. And I want lots of it. And I want it with me at all times.

In school I lugged around a giant box of tapes in my backpack, then when CDs were cheap enough it was a giant book of CDs... I look back and WISH we had MP3 players back then, it would have been so much easier.

I like that too. I like opening up rhythmbox and seeing 10,000+ songs sorted by artist/album/genre/etc, I can quickly scroll from this album to that and play a tune. I don't like it I just click to another tune. No need to pull out the CD book and dig around in it.

I want to go out for the day, maybe a walk down to the bank, or over to the grocery store. I don't know what mood I'll be in 10 minutes from now let alone 2 hours from now when I'm a couple miles from home. I want my music with me God damn it!

There are several audio formats in digital form that have large audio fidelity and have much larger ranges then vinyl... though they aren't distributed very often... though in all due respect modern music today usually is recorded in digital formats and actually sticks into the usual audio range of most audio distribution methods. Especially the kind of music I listen to!

Lastly if I just got a new tune that I am really loving. And I think, "Oh man, Adny/Edd/Jewels/Mark/etc might love this song, man they live 1500 miles away... oh hey, I got a server!!!"




Now all we need are books that can automatically change their text to a new book. e-books haven't taken off I bet mostly because staring at a lit screen just sucks... I mean I don't want to sit at my desk all day reading a book. It's rather annoying and uncomfortable. Now if I had it in my hands and could go sit under a tree at the park and flip open a digital display and scroll through a library of books... OH MAN I'd cream!

Then again I couldn't fold the cover back, hold it in one hand, and scribble little quips on the edge of the page pointing out my favourite lines.

My fav past time, ALL TIME, is going to the used book store and picking up an old tattered book that has been through like 20 people's hands and then go through reading it and stopping to check out everyone's thoughts they jotted on the edge. Despite the anonymity, it feels as if you really know the person for just a moment.

Nevermind, books need to stay just as they are. They are perfect as is. Cheap to make, cheap to buy, I can beat on em' and add character, and the used book store is real fun. A real air of mysticism in there. Oh God I wish my city had used book stores... Christian books stores don't count! They certainly wouldn't be carrying the latest book I'm reading, "A Handmaid's Tale".

[Krooze L-Roy]

^^Excellent post. Respect+

[Snickerd00dle]

vinyl hands down is the best. a thick 180 gram record can produce bass depths no cd can do. plus records are usually cheaper than cds.

depends on what you are buying, but yeah, most of the time much cheaper

[MrPopo]

Thank you, LoD, for giving me a chance to pimp out the Kindle. Although I don't own one (the selection isn't quite there yet for my interests) a couple of my buddies have one, and I gotta say that it's actually really good. The screen is very readable without generting a feeling of eye strain. I frequently see people on their way to work reading through theirs. If you're considering taking the plunge to digital books, the Kindle is the way to go.

[marurun]

Unless you have good quality audio equipment, I'd say CD or digital is the way to go. With cheap or low quality components or headphones/speakers you're not going to notice much difference. If you have nice equipment and you are actually going to sit and listen to your music, not simply use it as a background score to your erstwhile life, I suggest CD (depending on the CD) or vinyl. Vinyl has limits as to how mangled the music can get during mastering, so vinyl is less susceptible to the loudness and dynamic compression issues that plague most recent CD releases. If you can find older, lower volume, or simply much more carefully (and respectfully) mastered CD releases you may find them to sound just as good as vinyl if not better on good equipment.

If you are into classical music go with CDs. Most classical music publishers are very careful with their classical recordings. While they'll be impossible to listen to adequately in any but the quietest, most fancy cars (due to background noise and the high dynamic range), they'll sound wonderful during dedicated listening with good quality equipment.

Avoid CDs produced by Rick Rubin. All the magazines and bands talk him up as such a great producer, but many of the albums over which he presides are ruined in the mastering phase by too much dynamic compression and loudness. Not necessarily his fault, but it's happening to an awful lot of his clients.

With the right equipment, your best option may be to buy vinyl and rip it to a high quality digital format. If you use a high enough encoding rate it should sound just fine since the mastering of the vinyl will keep it from having dynamic compression and loudness issues. You can then use some kind of volume normalizer to help keep all your ripped tracks at about the same level.

Oh, and before I forget, avoid tapes at all costs. I had a couple when I was younger that I listened to all the time, and the tape got stretched so they started sounding weird.

[Ack]

Pfft, I see no love for the might Studio 8 in this thread.

We all need to buy more 8-tracks!