> It's absolutely, 100% fine for someone to say that they subjectively prefer the sound quality of a record player to a CD.
I love listening to vinyl. But I’m not gonna lie to myself and say “it sounds better”. The engineer/scientist in me knows it doesn’t, and the pragmatist/experimentalist in me knows that even if I can reliably detect differences between a good digital recording and a good vinyl copy of a song (which I’m not convinced I really can) there is nit nearly enough difference ever to say one is better than the other.
I like the ceremony of playing vinyl. It adds to my enjoyment, but in the kind of way that a Japanese tea ceremony “improves the taste” of tea.
Also, a long time back I realised that listening to hifi _gear_ leads only to criticism and unhappiness, while listening to great music leads to joy. So I mostly have given up critically listening to “gear”. A great song or album can be a thing of joy coming out of your laptop speakers. Coltrane or Ellen Allien or Polyphia are no less amazingly talented in shitty phone earbuds compared to my thousands of dollars of living room hifi. I’m too old to want to argue about “clarity of soundstage” or “time alignment in the tweeter crossover”, I just want to rock out or dance or groove along to great tunes. I can do that with a 100% analog signal path in my lounge room, or in cheap Bluetooth earbuds inside my motorcycle helmet with a 97db noise floor…
I love listening to vinyl. But I’m not gonna lie to myself and say “it sounds better”. The engineer/scientist in me knows it doesn’t, and the pragmatist/experimentalist in me knows that even if I can reliably detect differences between a good digital recording and a good vinyl copy of a song (which I’m not convinced I really can) there is nit nearly enough difference ever to say one is better than the other.
I like the ceremony of playing vinyl. It adds to my enjoyment, but in the kind of way that a Japanese tea ceremony “improves the taste” of tea.
Also, a long time back I realised that listening to hifi _gear_ leads only to criticism and unhappiness, while listening to great music leads to joy. So I mostly have given up critically listening to “gear”. A great song or album can be a thing of joy coming out of your laptop speakers. Coltrane or Ellen Allien or Polyphia are no less amazingly talented in shitty phone earbuds compared to my thousands of dollars of living room hifi. I’m too old to want to argue about “clarity of soundstage” or “time alignment in the tweeter crossover”, I just want to rock out or dance or groove along to great tunes. I can do that with a 100% analog signal path in my lounge room, or in cheap Bluetooth earbuds inside my motorcycle helmet with a 97db noise floor…