I found vinyl a few years ago and have been hooked since. Although I do admit I do listen to my ipod more, it is only out of convenience. Lets face it, you can?t carry 50+ vinyls and the turntable plus all the other shit you need to listen to vinyls with you wherever you go. This is what cd and mp3 players are good for. So don?t take this as an attack on ipods and people who use them, I have one and use it daily.
As I type this im sitting in my room listening to meddle by Pink Floyd side one, and before that it was herb alpert, iv been listening to music all day actually. But itunes and my ipod have both not been touched in days. I find it hard sometimes going from at home listening through halfway ok equipment or grados to my el-cheapo headphones through my ipod with mostly lossy data. This is because of a flaw digital audio will always have, compression. Even with FLAC and other lossless data types you will have to at one point convert the song from analog to digital. Music is not digital(ok some is, but forget that for now) it is analog, we speak in analog, instruments are in analog, we even hear in analog. So any time there is a conversion from analog to digital, its going to have to be converted back to analog.
Music, studio to listener (1: song played in studio 2: song mixed 3: master made 4: song pressed/burned/downloaded 5: song played 6: listener hears)
In analog:
The artist plays their song in analog, then it is mixed in analog(pre 80s?) and a negative master copy of the song is made and can be used to press a master record which is then used to replicate and distribute, the listener plays the analog media and finally hears the song in analog. No ware is there a need for the song to be converted from analog to digital.
In digital:
The artist play their song in analog, then converted to digital for mixing on a computer, then send the music files to a type of distribution, that be a factory for burning of cds or directly by the internet to the downloader?s hard drive. The song is played in a digital music player and is converted to analog through the speakers for the listener. The song must be converted at least twice and probable more in order for is to reach the listener.
Vinyl is just more natural sounding because it is analog. It does not matter how low a compression rate is or how big the file is, a digital music track can never match the quality you get with a piece of vinyl and a needle.
(i write my fb notes in word then copy paste them...)