The usual crew who end up chatting have been discussing vinyl, digital and ways of listening to music in what was a fish thread. So let's put this subject in its place!
To start, I see vinyl as dating people. Some, like myself, no longer have vinyl (a flood from a broken pipe got my record collection years ago). But we grew up working overtime to try to get a decent sound system. Others grew up when vinyl was obsolete, and what my students called "vinyl players" were heading for landfill. Now, my daughters both collect vinyl, and after years of headphone music, are into the depth of how sound can be free and in the air around them. They have usb turntables and inexpensive but worked out sound systems.
This makes old geezers like myself pioneers, connected to the younger vinyl freaks. There are 3 record stores uptown in my small city, and their painfully cool, snotty attitude clerks are like clones of their grandparents. There are eternally sneering 23 year olds out there, unchanged since 1978.
I pity those poor in betweener old people who missed on both eras of vinyl. They are old beyond their years, and beyond their ears. Like fish food, they have fallen between the large rounded pebbles of technology.
I used to play my Dad's old wax records (that he got from his Dad), let alone vinyl. A lot of that 1920s music sounds far superior digitized now. Technologically, it isn't either or, and I'm not sure the playback or delivery technology is what we're looking at. The biggest issue to me is ear buds, which ruled for a long time. They individualized music, and they have their uses. I don't want to listen to country music on a bus, and my dentist's love of Nashville nasal twangers is worse than her needles and drills. But I think people like to get together and talk about what they're listening to when they listen at the same time. Music isn't meant to be choked into our ears. I think there's a rebellion of sorts against private music and an understanding that it's good for music to fill a room (if the listeners are consenting adults). When I'm alone in the house, or in the fishroom (with its garbage sound system), loud music flows around me. It should be in the air, no matter how you access it.
Thoughts?
To start, I see vinyl as dating people. Some, like myself, no longer have vinyl (a flood from a broken pipe got my record collection years ago). But we grew up working overtime to try to get a decent sound system. Others grew up when vinyl was obsolete, and what my students called "vinyl players" were heading for landfill. Now, my daughters both collect vinyl, and after years of headphone music, are into the depth of how sound can be free and in the air around them. They have usb turntables and inexpensive but worked out sound systems.
This makes old geezers like myself pioneers, connected to the younger vinyl freaks. There are 3 record stores uptown in my small city, and their painfully cool, snotty attitude clerks are like clones of their grandparents. There are eternally sneering 23 year olds out there, unchanged since 1978.
I pity those poor in betweener old people who missed on both eras of vinyl. They are old beyond their years, and beyond their ears. Like fish food, they have fallen between the large rounded pebbles of technology.
I used to play my Dad's old wax records (that he got from his Dad), let alone vinyl. A lot of that 1920s music sounds far superior digitized now. Technologically, it isn't either or, and I'm not sure the playback or delivery technology is what we're looking at. The biggest issue to me is ear buds, which ruled for a long time. They individualized music, and they have their uses. I don't want to listen to country music on a bus, and my dentist's love of Nashville nasal twangers is worse than her needles and drills. But I think people like to get together and talk about what they're listening to when they listen at the same time. Music isn't meant to be choked into our ears. I think there's a rebellion of sorts against private music and an understanding that it's good for music to fill a room (if the listeners are consenting adults). When I'm alone in the house, or in the fishroom (with its garbage sound system), loud music flows around me. It should be in the air, no matter how you access it.
Thoughts?
Love is in the air 
