Why vinyl?

I dabble in both worlds. I also have an SACD player. Elmuncy, to appreciate vinyl you need to clean the LP's with more than disk-washer. I listened to vinyl again about 6 months ago, after about 16 years of 'perfect sound forever'. In a good system, it immediately sounded better than my SACD and CD's. Sure it had surface noise, but a VPI 16.5 w/ Disc Doctor brushes clean the old albums up very nicely. Surface noise is down over 90%. About the only time I hear pops anymore is in between tracks. As for the sound, listening is believing. The LP's are warmer, lusher, with more soundstage depth. It's more 'real'. That being said, I still do listen to cd's. When I'm busy or just plain lazy. CD's are definitely less maintenance. When friends come over and listen, they kick themselves for selling all of their LP's. My $2250 analog setup (that includes the VPI 16.5 record cleaner) easily sounds better than my $3500 cd player.

When CD's sound can match that of a good analog rig then I am all for it. In the meantime, vinyl still sounds far superior when done correctly, I think most who are comparing first hand would agree.

That's an interesting point about "why not tape?". Another question I've asked myself a few times about vinyl is whether the more limited selection of new releases is another form of audiophile I-only-listen-to-certain-recordings. This, of course, is a non-issue for somebody who listens to largely older music, but I like to listen to a lot of new releases.

I not only really like the convenience in terms of playback of CD, I also like the more limited storage space req's as well as the ability to have a complete system with fewer components / space. I also agree that while CD's are not perfect sound, now or forever, that digital is where the focus is going to be going forward, and there's some really neat stuff happening there. With storage becoming cheaper by the second, there will be more cool stuff.

None of this is said to suggest that vinyl isn't what those who have vinyl setups say it is, and certainly not to say they're wrong. I like convenience and efficiency, and to be honest, I never sit here and think, "man that CD playback is full of glare and harshness." In fact, I'm usually sitting here with a big smile on my face. I accept that I quite possibly don't realize what I'm missing, and someday I might explore that, but I learned a long time ago that sometimes you just ride happiness without asking a lot of questions.

To answer your question from the viewpoint of someone who still uses open reel tape as a source in his system, the problems are as follows:

1)Commercial open reel tapes are copies, not original masters. In this sense they are removed several generations from the original just as an LP or CD copies are.

2)As volitile as LPs are, tapes are often more so. Oxide shedding, stretching of the backing material and magnetic print through are common problems. Many compositions are particularly sensitive to temperature, heat and light.

3)The range of music available on open reel tape was quite small compared to the LP and the Compact Casette.

4)Most commercially sold open reel tapes are recorded at 7.5 ips. This is a very compromised speed from a sonic standpoint; archival quality machines found in studios generally run at 30ips.

I still believe that the more sources the better and even have a modified 8-track in my system as well as the tweaked Revox A-77 open reel machine. Most of my listening is still done with LP, as much to do with the depth of my collection as anything, with CD and FM tied for second followed by open reel and 8-track.

Viridian, Good Post.