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I'm a music collector and saw this coming. "Music" went from a product you buy, into a service you pay to gain access to. You don't pay for music, you pay daddy Spotify for access to HIS music.
Vinyl has turned back into the only form of physical music collection.
Hipsters paying 2-3x as much for a vinyl LP which objectively has worse audio quality than a CD.
concidering walmart doesn't sell normal cd players in store but does sell record players, I'm not surprized.
I don't really buy vinyl to listen to it, but for the larger cover art and liner notes
Because CD is a medium for data shrinking in popularity and vinyl is a token of being cool growing in popularity, of course it does.
It's to bad there's no good record players made anymore. Or cassette decks. It's all the cheap bottom of the barrel mechanisms now. No quality Japanese equipment like there used to be.
Reloop/pioneer/insert 100 other brands here: am I a joke to you
Vinyls are great, but I can't copy them to my phone so I still have to buy a CD with it.
Aux cable from the out port to input on PC. Open recorder app and hit record. Save files. Upload to phone.
As someone who used to be a member of what.cd, and still has a bunch of incredible sounding FLAC vinyl rips of albums, this definitely is not true.
Such an amazing resource that was, not only did it have the albums available, but several different pressings, source media, and versions of each one. Something no commercial entity can come close to offering at any price.
It's not true that I cannot copy my vinyls to my computer? Okay how do I do that then? It just has the red and white left and right cables going to an amp, and then my receiver. Kinda new to vinyls over here
I still reminisce about my Oink ratio. Seeded Rosetta Stone on a university connection. Access to the school's radio station's library.
Probably the closest I'll come to generational wealth, my grandchildren could have leeched music on my account and I'd still be positive.
My record player has a USB port...
Oh , mine doesn't . I'm new to vinyl, and have less than 10 in my collection. My turntable was given to me by a friend.
So yours can copy to a computer via USB?
CDs are this odd junction between quality, inconvenience, and low cost, one that makes it niche. They are a physical product and thus higher quality, so to speak, than digital music. Yet vinyls are higher quality (in the hand) and more novel due to the design options. Then they are lossless but even personally ripping is far less convenient than digital music, much less inserting the disc with every use. The others combined— a vinyl copy for display and pirating/a lossless streaming service like Qobuz or Apple’s— costs more for what can be seen as a minimal improvement in the other categories.
So I’m not surprised. Vinyls are a neat little souvenir of songs or albums I enjoy, and though I’ve never actually played a single one, they’re still something I like to collect. Can’t say the same for CDs.
Vinyl isn't lossless. First they start with a master - either analogue or digital, then they strip out high/low frequency and compress the dynamic range to make it fit the format, not waste space or jump tracks. Also, the act of pressing discs introduces errors, and the playing equipment can introduce noise like wow, flutter, hisses and pops. I bet some record players, especially ones with USB connections or equalizers probably toss in some adc / dac conversion in there too depending on how they do their thing. There are losses end to end in other words.
CDs are also downsampled from studio tracks, but the format has a higher frequency and dynamic range so providing a CD and vinyl record were from the same master you are going to get a truer, better quality audio from the CD every single time. Also, since it's digital (with error correction) you are getting EXACTLY what was put on the disc. You could rip it to FLAC or some other lossless format and it would be bit for bit identical.
Then they are lossless
LOL, they are lossy after every playback.
Though admittedly music CDs are not that much qualitatively different in practice.
Your comment illustrates well which kind of people affects the market in this area, though.
Then they are lossless
Vinyl? No, not at all. Pressing the platter is already the lossy part, playing has less dynamic range. Some just like the mechanical part and scratching noises better.
Only a few more years now till the retro sound of CDs comes back into style. I realize vinyl is a great and unique user experience with a specific timber, and more enjoyable to collect.
It's kind of funny when you hear about the "analog warmth" when albums were being digitally mastered as early as the late 70s... And pretty much all re-releases are digitally remastered.
Exactly, although CD isn't so much "retro" as it is a high frequency, high dynamic range audio recording. The only reason vinyl sounds "warm" is because their dynamic range & frequency is compressed so the needle doesn't bounce out of its groove.
While it's possible for a CD to receive a terrible master, if the mastering across formats is the same and other biases are eliminated (i.e. proper A/B testing) then CD will be objectively better sounding every single time.
the retro sound of CDs
Your mistake is equivocating digital with analog. There is nothing "retro sounding" about CDs, you can download lossless digital versions of albums that are identical to what you'll find on a CD.
That's technically true, but it is entirely possible CDs come back as a retro meat-space alternative to the corporate streaming dystopia we're headed towards, or using CDs as a secondary retro proxy to feed nostalgia for production mastering trends of the 1990s-2000s era.
Only a few more years now till the retro sound of CDs comes back into style.
I liked the artwork on the disks themselves, and the feeling of opening a box, taking the disk out with that cracking sound, pushing a button on the drive and seeing and hearing it open, and then the sound of spinning when it's being read.
Every bit as "warm" as vinyl in my opinion (born in 1996, so of course it is).
