https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jan/28/vinyl-record-r...
My question is, do people actually listen to the vinyl tracks or do they listen to the much higher quality digital file while holding the album?
It didn’t even occur to me that people would buy vinyl and not actually use it until an artist I like finally restocked their discography on vinyl and fellow fans on reddit said they don’t (and won’t) own turntables but were excited to buy the records anyway. The records don’t offer anything over the CDs (same booklets, etc) except their physical size. Kinda frustrating having to compete for limited copies with people who don’t even own turntables. Wish they’d reprint, there’s clearly demand.
Lorde’s newest album is released on vinyl, but not CD (to reduce waste, I believe?) To cover off the ‘see them on the shelf’ aspect of CDs, they’ve made a ‘music box’ that’s printed with the album art and has all the stuff you’d get in the CD case except the CD and gives a download code instead. I thought that was an interesting way to sell something to fans in the age of streaming.
Anecdata aside, this is a really interesting question and I’d be really curious for some data. I’m curious for how well Lorde’s thing sells, too.
Intrinsic limitations of the medium mean that it's more or less impossible to get a signal to noise ratio of more than 75 dB, channel crosstalk under -45 dB, or THD+N under 0.1%, or a frequency response of about 30 Hz to 13 kHz plus or minus 1 dB
Even a mediocre CD player will do 80 dB, -70 dB, 0.01%, and 20 Hz - 20 kHz plus or minus 0.5 dB respectively. Most of them are better than those numbers.
And once you get to or above 192 kSa/s MP3, let alone more modern CODECs, you can do better still.
Can you hear the difference? Absolutely. Many people prefer vinyl because it sounds "warmer", or because the hiss and crackle bring on (movie-induced?) nostalgia for their childhoods.