Vinyl Still Spins

By The Franklin Lakes Journal

Published: March 30, 2009

Technofiles have won the minds of the world’s music lovers with the ease, efficiency, convenience and low cost associated with digital recordings. iPods, MP3s, file sharing, CDs, and a host of other technologies have made many Americans semi-dependent on digital sound recording. While Franklin Lakes, Oakland and Wyckoff are still ruled and populated by generations that came of age with analog sound, most have embraced digital recordings with enthusiasm.

Audiophiles, though, are not going gently into that goodnight. Vinyl record sales doubled between 2007 and 2008 to almost 2 million. Vinyl, or LPs, for those too young to know, are records upon which music has been recorded. It is played on what is known as a phonograph or turntable, and it sounds better than a CD or any digital recording; this is a scientific fact: digital recordings will never equal the quality of a analog recording. The technofile will argue that the human ear cannot notice the difference, and there abounds countless dissertations on a variety of mathematical formulas ready to prove the belief. But at the end of the day, facts are facts, and the audiophile will always win the argument.

Physically, digital recordings cannot record all the music, it is the nature of the beast. Digital recordings are a series of numbers that convert into sound, but between each number there is a space. The technophile will argue that this space is inconsequential, while the audiophile is not willing to surrender any of the music.

Lovers of vinyl records will describe the ritual of playing a vinyl record, examining the album cover, its artwork, its readable text, removing the record and placing it on the turntable and gingerly placing the needle to play a favorite song. The physical connection between listener and music began well before the music actually started. Then, the sound came forth in its exactness, nothing removed by the imposition of “ones and zeros”. There was an effort, however slight, that brought ritual to the whole experience.

Below are two videos, the first on the left a display of how a turntable actually works using Billy Joel’s The Piano Man as an exhibit. The second video on the right offers unrefutable evidence concerning the higher quality of analog versus digital sound recordings.

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