There’s a certain je ne sais quoi about listening to an album as it was intended to be heard. Vinyl enthusiasts mention the warmth of the sound and the tangible quality of holding your favorite album, but there are plenty of reasons to invest in a vinyl collection.
The Character of the Sound
While digital formats might capture more range and reproduce sound more purely, vinyl has a warmth and character all its own. Especially if your record player is connected to a tube amplifier, the reproduction of sound from vinyl results in a natural fuzziness in the low-mid frequencies. Vinyl is less accurate than the dynamic range and clarity of an uncompressed digital file, but many people choose analog specifically because of its idiosyncrasies.
The Experience
More than the sound quality itself, the experience of owning a record and sharing an album with friends opens up a whole other aspect of the music-listening journey. Unlike digital music files, choosing your record is a process that links you to the music in question on a level the digital age hasn’t matched. The convenience of digital means you can access pretty much any song you want; the physicality of vinyl means the albums you have mean more to you. Putting on a Spotify playlist at a party is background noise, whereas a record collection centers the event around your music selection.
The Intention
It isn’t easy to skip songs on a record. You are listening to an album from cover to cover, as designed by the artists and engineers who recorded it. The connection between listener and artist is strengthened, producing an even tighter bond between you and the music.
The Community
There’s nothing quite like having a go-to record shop you can count on for some amazing new finds. Purchasing a digital file or grabbing a CD from your local Target doesn’t have the same connectedness between consumer and music.
Music is all around us, but, nowadays, that typically means in a digital format. Rather than turning to Pandora or Spotify for your music needs, investing in vinyl will offer you a new way to hear the music you love, and you’ll find that once you start your record collection, you won’t be able to stop.