Why do YOU love Vinyl/or hate vinyl

I've read through most of the posts.  The extremists either hate or love digital or vinyl (or R2R).  I have heard many systems where the sound detracts from the recording/performance.  This is the problem. 

I have higher end electronics which provide superior sonic reproduction.  Pop and clicks are not a problem 95% of the time unless the LP was pressed on poor quality vinyl or the LP was abused by the prior owner.  The vast majority of my 25,000 LPs do not have pop and click noises.  Those that have those noises are so quickly dispatches by my analog equipment that they do not detract from the performance. 

As to hiss, my older recordings often were recorded in the late 50's and 60's on 1/4" tape which had hiss.  If one doesn't hear the hiss on a digital transfer, they are missing the high end.   Early full track recordings from the early 50's had virtually no hiss.   

As to digital recordings, I have 7,000 and have been fortunate to have excellent remastered CDs.  Only since 2006 have I enjoyed CDs due to superior DAC/players.  I have remastered CDs which kill the original LPs which can sound like mud or bright and compressed.  I also have LPs that sound more open and tonally right on LPs than CDs despite good remastering. 

The mastering of the format is generally the key to great sound.   I have excellent sounding Heifetz CDs and mediocre remastered ones.  Likewise, LPs.  Heifetz on 78s are a hassle to play but also can sound great, better than the LP and CD masterings. 

I totally disagree with the camps of digital versus analog.  I have friends who are in either camp and three friends who, like me, savor all formats (except cassette).  As to cassette, I have made fabulous sounding recordings on a high end Tandberg in the 1980s but switched to R2R and now digital.  Pre-recorded cassettes generally suck (sorry but having had about 500 of them, all other formats except MP3 are superior).  

I too enjoy both digital and analog formats, I don't rate one as objectively better than other. I have optimized both my setups over many years of equipment upgrades, provenance of recordings greatly determines sound quality hierarchy.
I also enjoy the unique qualities of the listening experience of both formats. With vinyl I listen to entire albums, concept albums make sense when played in their entirety. Also, vinyl lends itself to focusing more on one artist. With digital (streaming and/or rips from my thousands of cds) my listening sessions are free form mixes, a stream of consciousness experience. Sometimes its amazing where these mixes go!

I wasted a lot of my life pursuing allegedly "accurate" sound instead of enjoyable sound.  Which is "accurate" but if a decision has to go one way or the other, "enjoyable" is the right way to go.

LOL, looks like a bunch of us who enjoy vinyl just don't pass Mach12's Audiophile Purity Test.  We better hand in our audiophile cards, pronto!

I have listened to a (mostly) all digital system since the late 80's, and up until recently spent most of my time streaming my ripped CDs and Tidal to my system, using my ipad interface.  With countless songs at my fingertips I found myself surfing music more than really listening.  I couldn't even remember most of the artists I listened to on Tidal.

It was setting up my turntable again that made me notice how much more I pay attention to the music when spinning vinyl.  I upgraded to a nice new turntable and it's aided my focusing more on music than I have in may years.  It's routine now for me to sit down for at least an album side, often a whole album.   Just tonight I listened to 4 whole albums!


Anyway....this doesn't support Mach12's thesis so I suppose he'll ignore that data.  Now, where did I put my audiophile card again?......

I like the ritual of playing vinyl and how that ritual can extract a different type of focus from me. I like the manually of being in touch with the materials and objects. I like looking at the turntable work and the vinyl spin. I like witnessing the outlandish subtlety of the tonearm floating along the groove. I like the cover art I can hold in my hand ... a digital image doesn’t accrue history and change in its journey through time like my album covers do; instead they inhabit an abstract realm ungrounded in the physical world. I like the programmatic imperative of the LP side, of one thing following another, of (over?)determined sequence which must be physically intruded upon and intercepted to upset. I like the needle touching vinyl and introducing ’anticipatory sound’ then tracking the groove and reproducing music. I like being forced to get up out of my seat to flip/remove/replace/insert and being forced to give myself over to the process instead of distracting myself. I like the inscrutable struggles that inhere in relating to the mechanical nature of TTs and analogue ... it’s like a relationship and shifts around. I like locating the hole. I like looking at vinyl after it’s cleaned gleaming. I like the goodies and posters that come with albums (I still have my DSOTM poster with green infrared photo of the Great Pyramids of Giza). I like the labels, the colored vinyl, the smell of papers. I like the surprises (I once took my parents Panasonic TT receiver and speakers outside into the backyard on a bright summer morning while laying out catching some rays ... at one point the sound started becoming weird ... the vinyl had softened in the sun and was melting and drooping over the side of the platter as it played like Dali’s soft watches). I like that you have to be there. HERE. Not just anywhere, the music is where the TT is not where you are. I like the moments bodies have hit the ground hard and the needles jumps. I like flipping through the stacks in record stores and how one gets their flip finger tuned up and dialed in ... where else in life does one get an opportunity to exercise their flip skills like that? I like how moving heavy stacks of albums reminds me how cumbersome and recalcitrant the material world is and that I have to relate to it and cannot escape it. I like how the embodied actions of spinning vinyl can, at times, have a nostalgia wired into them which sometimes connects with the music being played and with memory and which all on occasion align themselves in a manner that elicits felt emotions that are not summoned simply by the sounds alone.

I don’t like that TT drive belt salesmen can retire rich after a career selling $30 rubber bands.