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  • I'm a huge huge fan of music, a big ol' nerd about it and I've been collecting records for like 13 years. My reasons are similar to others mentioned already. I usually listen to super underground DIY stuff and I love to support artists who come to my town, and my local record store. I like the intentionality of listening to a record; I can put it on as background music but even then I need to look over each album, pick it out and put it on instead of just quickly choosing a random playlist and not even looking at the artists. The physical ritual is really comforting.

    My record collection also kinda functions similarly to a photo album for me. Each record reminds me of when I bought it, when I was super into the artist or which show I was at when I got it. Super nostalgic. I'm also just a very tactile person so the tactile aspect just changes the quality of listening to music, idk.

    Also, once rapidshare/music blogs kinda died out and streaming services really took over, it's been almost impossible for me to remember new artists that discover that I like. When I used to peruse the blogspots, I'd actually read reviews, download like 2 dozen albums and listen to them and they'd end up in my normal rotation. With streaming services I have sooooo much access to so much music which I love, but it all kinda blends together and I forget to really spend intentional time listening to them

  • Another reason that no one has really mentioned here is that mastering tracks for vinyl is different from mastering for digital/CD/streaming in such a way that the tracks basically have to have some amount of dynamic range due to the physical limitations of a needle riding in a groove. Since the late 2000s, the major labels have been stuck in sort of a "loudness war" where they brickwall the shit out of every mix and/or master so that it is as loud as possible for the duration of the song, thus forcing anyone within earshot of a radio or muzak system to listen to whatever is playing. With vinyl, mastering engineers tend to be a little more careful, since brickwalled tracks can cause the needle to skip/bounce.

    Unfortunately, sometimes it's still not enough to fix a final mix engineers' fuckups, e.g., with Metallica's Death Magnetic. The original mix/master of that thing is a brickwalled clusterfuck -- you can hear the mix pumping, clipping, and farting out on snare hits, and the vinyl sounds just as bad, because mastering engineers can only polish a turd so much.

    • I like old music. Particularly rock from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s. Jazz from the 1950s, 1960s. A lot of music over the last 30 years or so drive me crazy and I hate it. I use an equalizer when I watch movies because the TOO LOUD / TOO QUIET problem is even more annoying. Usually equalizing does the trick. But some damn tv series figured out an extra-annoying way of making songs TOO LOUD so I either turn down the volume or skip the scene.

      I'll leave this here.

      Loudness war

      The loudness war (or loudness race) is a trend of increasing audio levels in recorded music, which reduces audio fidelity and—according to many critics—listener enjoyment. Increasing loudness was first reported as early as the 1940s, with respect to mastering practices for 7-inch singles. The maximum peak level of analog recordings such as these is limited by varying specifications of electronic equipment along the chain from source to listener, including vinyl and Compact Cassette players. The issue garnered renewed attention starting in the 1990s with the introduction of digital signal processing capable of producing further loudness increases.

    • I have not located a CD that sounds exactly as good as a canadian issue Dreamboat Annie LP.

      • Yeah; I've noticed over the years that a lot of those mid-80s CD reissues of albums released in the 70s and early 80s just sound like sterile ass because they more or less printed the studio's archival masters to CD format. The assumption was that if you had a CD player, you must be some kind of mega-rich audiophile, and therefore you also must have an outboard equalizer, and it would be untoward for the mastering engineer to make assumptions about how much bass you want coming out of your bespoke quadrophonic setup. The mentality shifted drastically by around 1991-92 which, incidentally, was around the same time everyone realized that they could cram a pair of boxed subwoofers and a Rockford Fosgate amp into their rusted out Pontiac Grand Ams.

        But yeah, growing up listening to the first two Dio albums on cassette (so many times that I had to transplant the tape at least twice) and then hearing the same albums on CD for the first time was pretty underwhelming because of the aforementioned "just print the DAT masters to CD" approach. I guess my shitty Emerson shelf system wasn't bespoke enough.

        Edit: It's also really difficult for those earlier masters because if the studio doesn't have the original tracks from prior to the mastering stage, their options are really limited as far as what they can do on a remaster, and even then, a lot of drum recordings tended to be just two room mics aimed down at the kit, so you can't really go back and isolate kick/snare/cymbals/toms and apply different volume, panning, EQ, and compression to each track to give the other instruments more "space." Track extraction tooling has gotten pretty damned fancy in the past 3-5 years, though, so it might be possible now, if the digital artifacting isn't too obvious.

  • I need something large and fragile to take up space in my luxurious spare room I don't have.

    • I don't want to start a struggle session but as nice as physical media is - I don't miss records. They get warped or they get scratched. In some alternate universe if a record was somehow the same high fidelity but the size and weight of a cassette - I might actually buy some. I would have some. But I don't know how the windows would work on the cover of Physical Graffitti. Holograms I guess. Or then again - something better.

      It’s the little differences. I mean, they got the same shit over there that they got here. But it’s just - it’s just their physics is a little different. And you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese? A Royale with Cheese.

  • I only buy vinyl records of albums that I really love or are otherwise Meaningful to me in some way. Otherwise, I shoot for cassette tapes, and CDs when I wanna but physical media. I just really like the physicality of it.

    The ceremony of deciding what to listen to. Taking the media out of the case, putting it on the turntable, and having to be intentional about flipping to the next side. It's all a nice break from the ethereal, instant gratification machine that is my phone

    1. Shits usually cheap (I only buy old records)
    2. No loudness war bs (I only buy old records)
    3. Big sleeves are cool

    I'm equally into taping Bandcamp albums though, I have brainrot for physical music. However most of my listening is on a 512gb sd card in a Fiio M7.

  • I like vinyl because you get big artwork and often a cool poster. And these days it comes with a download code to grab it in flac

  • I did grow up with a record player and a black and white tv in the house, so my interest exists for a few different reasons. It is kinda funny seeing Zoomers getting into it, but they're cool collectibles and the sound quality/experience on vinyl is something special. I still mess with cassettes and cds for that reason, but I had to sell off my vinyl so they wouldn't warp under the subpar AC that I deal with these days.

  • Becauzee how will I warm my grippers with my grailzzzzzz and then listen to Taylor swift😭😭😭😭😭😭🔥🔥😭🔥🤩😭🔥😭🤩😍🔥🔥 on my crobsley

29 comments