Article: "Spin Me Round: Why Vinyl is Better Than Digital"

First of all, although I part ways with the author numerous times, there is real content here. Those who responded specifically on issues of audio quality either didn’t read carefully enough, didn’t understand it or chose to respond with issues of your own agenda. That is fine. This is a social site and we all want to have our voices and concerns heard.

This misunderstanding also is true  for those digital defenders who jumped into a discussion of quality digital reproduction. If you did that, you were not paying sufficient attention. The author states he is speaking of the paradigmatic content in which each format is played. We audiophiles are a strange minority and little about our musical reproduction proclivities is paradigmatic of anything. It is 100% unarguable that most listeners of digital music use compressed media and often as background. That may well change but for now it remains true.  
The paradigm of each reproduction format shapes the aesthetic experience of the music for most who participate in that format. Does anyone here doibt that? Why?

This entire debate over vinyl vs digital, and for me digital is CD or SACD...I don't stream music; seems to ignore the fact that all we listen to is dependent on the recording process. 
The studio, the recording equipment,  engineer, the producer, how it has been finally mixed. I have over 1500 LP's and over 1500 CD's...I have vinyl that sounds better than CD and I have CD that sounds better LP. 
It's all about how that recording was made as much as the format used for the end product.

It is 100% unarguable that most listeners of digital music use compressed media and often as background. That may well change but for now it remains true.
The paradigm of each reproduction format shapes the aesthetic experience of the music for most who participate in that format. Does anyone here doibt that? Why? Report this

Nobody can contest that....

And nobody can contest the fact that bad digital format mostly in use among young listener create bad habit and dont work very well for a most educated music evolutive perception...

When db level and binary rythm count more than timbre perception, there is a problem for sure and it is very easy then to satisfies ourselves with a compressed digital small phone....We dont generally listen Bruckner symphonies with a compressed digital phone... 😊

But the fact that vinyl listeners are generally more musically educated dont means that digital is less able to deliver subtle natural "timbre" perception than vinyl with losless format...

Digital is more practical for use not more musically perfect and not less perfect than vinyl....

It is not only the paradigm of the format, analog or digital, that dictate the aesthetic; it is also some particular aesthetical paradigm which can also easily satisfies itself with the more practical compressed digital format...It is a 2-way phenomenon...

Being an audiophile i use losless digital never compressed format ....

Merry Christmas to you....

Utter rubbish.

I’ve tried to show that vinyl records and associated equipment offer certain features of appreciation and evaluation that are unavailable in digital formats. Auditory features are warmer, richer, and deeper, and there are also tactile, visual, and epistemic features that expand the artistic platform and enrich the aesthetic experience.

There is mainly 2 groups of argument by the author of the article...

First: auditory features, warmer,richer, and deeper...

That makes no sense, because the primary musical sound phenomenon is not "warm" or "cold" or "clean" it is the accurate timbre instrument rendition and perception...And the acoustical setting of the listener room will way more impact the timbre perception than the vinyl choice versus the digital choice...The perception of depth in sound is also way more increased by acoustical room control than by choosing a vinyl versus a dac....

The writer speak also of the esthetical tactile and esthetical visual aspect of the vinyl object, but it is no more music here, it is fetichism....😊

And for the epistemic feature, if i listen music from my computer files and dac i can access way more visual and written information than the few pages of a booklet...I can activate a silent film akin to the music for example... Etc


Only one thing is true  the tactile aspect of the object is no more there, but contrary to sex, music dont need to be touch by hand... 😊

This article reflect only the writer taste absolutely nothing else...Except the sociological evident fact that compressed files are not good neither esthetically nor pedagogically ... And he is right about that because younger poor listener choose a digital format that is portable and low cost(phone) for a music that is more commercially produced than really refined...