@mulveling is spot on.
1. the lp collector's price advantage over digital long ago disappeared decades ago. Even more important, the LP has become a fetish/ fad item driving up the price further.
2. digital playback has improved a lot
3. Driven by point 1, the world supply of original and analog represses from the era has diminished so much, except for classical. The jury is out on new LP reissues, many of which are mastered at 16-bit, 44 kHz. The AAA recordings are 50-200$ each.
3. here is the critical point: it depends on what type of music you listen to and when it was made
- If the music was born digital, play it back on digital equipment. I agree that 70s new wave sound awesome and better on LP, because point 3. If you think analog production of born-digital sounds better, just EQ it.
- Some music/recordings benefit from analog playback, which more pleasingly reveals the sound of the decay of instruments in the reverberant room in which they were recorded, so most classical, jazz, or folk from the 1950s - 70s. The complexity of the sound waves of massed instruments, acoustic instruments, voices, again, in a physical space, in my opinion, still isn't captured by digital recording or remastering (not arguing that the technology cannot capture it, but perhaps some other decisions are being made that produce less-pleasing recordings). Per New Wave and soul, I also love the way analog represents the artifacts of studio recordings. This is not a music snobbery argument, just a "right tool for the job" thing. If those recordings of those types of music are not important to you...
Finally, if you don't have a collection already, for all the reasons above, I would not start.
