Digital is far better than vinyl

@arafiq 

I soaked red bricks 🧱 in a vintage French wine for a minimum of 24 hours and then covered the marinaded bricks with aluminum foil. How warm and engaging the music sang. 

@ghdprentice 

+1 Count Basie 

Every time it rains it rains pennies from heaven ….

I was born and raised in an analog cabin in the backwoods on a dirt road. It was made by stacking unwanted vinyl records into logs. The gaps between logs were filled with obsolete 8-track tape. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. 

When the modern world of CDs came about, my dad abjectly refused this devilish technology and would not let them enter the door of the record store he and my mom owned. Needless to say, his record store went the way of the incense shops because he refused to adapt. 

It didn't matter that we had a hand-crank Victrola in the parlor for the collection of rare 78 blues and jazz, it didn't matter that his belt-drive turntable played first pressings with precision and nary a pop or skip. His equalizer was always set to flat and unplugged. Only one person could be in the room to listen to Sketches of Spain (his favorite album at the time) as your body interfered with the soundstage. None of this mattered when the CDs began arriving via my Columbia House CD membership. I would secret off to my room and put the digital magic disc into my CD player and turn up the volume to enjoy the absolute clarity and instrument separation my father could only dream about.

When my father passed away, I wrapped him in the album covers of his favorite artists and had him embalmed with 180gr vinyl. The coffin was pressed by the original Mobile Fidelity lab. Thank god dad died in 1998 because he'd be turning in his grave if he found out his coffin had been pressed using MoFi's OneStep. 

Sooo, psychedelic mushrooms are legal in your state...

On the one hand, it takes me 45 minutes, 55 seconds to listen to a 45 minute long CD. That’s if the CD has been put away properly in its alphabetical position and I can readily find it. It takes me 51 minutes to listen to a 45 minute long vinyl record. That includes removing the record from its jacket, de-ionizing, cleaning, cueing the tonearm, taking the preamp off mute and jumping into my seat before the music starts. And I hope that I don’t nod off at the end of the playing side of the record just to be jolted out of my slumber by the loud "CER-CHUNK, swap, Car Chunk" when the stylus drops into the holding groove. Even better these days, I can stream for hours with my iPad in my lap never getting up out of my chair. And if I nod off, I wake up to some strange song I have never heard that Roon has selected for me.

So for an old guy like me, digital has its benefits. On the other hand, vinyl still rocks. Nothing better than listening to music while watching the tonearm bob up and down in the warm glow of tubes.