Get Thee to a Record Player!

This past weekend I had the pleasure of sitting with some friends and listening to records—yes, LPs, on a record player. Rarely do I find myself sitting around with people just listening to music, but it’s something I wish that I did more often. It was such a pleasant experience (it didn’t hurt that we were listening to Otis Redding), and it got me thinking about vinyl.

Over the past year, there have been a slew of articles about the reemergence of vinyl as a musical format. Publications such as the Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, and even the Wall Street Journal have featured articles about the increase in popularity of record players and their accessories. While the sales figures of practically every other form of physical music format have crashed in recent years, LP sales have increased.

So, why vinyl? Who are these people buying LPs? Well, some are audiophiles—people who pride themselves on listening to only the highest quality audio. LPs are attractive to audiophiles because, unlike digital formats like the CD or mp3, LPs produce analog sound, i.e. the vibrating sound wave of the original sound is replicated precisely in the grooves of a record, without any sort of approximation. Digital media, on the other hand, rely on 16-bit binary approximations of these same sound waves. Granted, it is a very detailed approximation, and these approximations are typically made 44,100 times per second, so the real difference in sound quality between the two formats is pretty negligible. I’d bet that many “audiophiles” can’t really tell the difference—it may be simply a matter of principle, and I respect that.

Others, I imagine, simply enjoy the rituals involved with playing an LP: the careful placement of the record on the player, the lining up of the needle to the outermost groove, the warm, fuzzy sound that then proceeds to emerge from the speakers. Furthermore, I find that listening to LPs places more emphasis on the concept of a full album (of course, singles are released as records as well, but let’s push that to the side for now). It’s a bit of a process to skip songs, and there’s certainly no way to listen on shuffle, so it’s easiest just to sit back and let the album play through. And that’s wonderful. While it does seem that people still place value in the album concept, this whole iPod shuffle culture has me a bit worried.

The rising interest in vinyl may be a flash in the pan, a last-ditch effort to reclaim a technology of the past before physical music formats go the way of the dinosaurs. But I want in. I want a record player, and I want to listen to songs such as those below on LP.

The Beatles – When I Saw Her Standing There (YSI) (filesavr)
Elton John – Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters (YSI) (filesavr)
Otis Redding – Wonderful World (YSI) (filesavr)

I'm excited just thinking about it. Enjoy, and feel free to share your own thoughts on vinyl.