Vinyl Ritual

It's just awesome to be living a life long enough to see the revitalization of the vinyl record as a legit sound source. And, finally, people are finding it not only legit, but superior in quality... which I've always believed to be true.

Man, I really encourage everyone reading this, who truly loves the music they listen to, to dust off the old turntable and get it moving again. The ritual is my favorite part. With digital media, there's no ceremony involved in playing the music - just pressing buttons. With a record, you hold the beautiful sleeve in your hands, carefully remove the disc, place it gingerly on the table, and even more gingerly, place the needle on the bumpy, sensual, tactile bumpy intro groove. Sounds like a letter to Penthouse.

It'll be the death of the CD, and, thank god, bands have embraced it as one of the two main formats of release: the other being a free mp3 download that comes with the album. Smart, eh?

Vinyl vs InterWebCloudHighway

Long have I been an antiquarian, in music-fanboy terms. The best music always came out in the past. Mostly before I was even born. There have been many exceptions for me, but I'll save that for another brain dump.

When you listen to that music on vinyl, something happens. It's almost like a time machine - but it's muscle-memory; it's visceral - the feeling I get is warm and passionate. Vinyl sounds like the womb.

When measured on a graph, you can see the difference in decibels for vinyl vs CD/DVD, and how the human ear hears it. There's an arc, including a higher treble plateau. Also, the dynamic range is wider with vinyl. I really think there's something innate inside of us that is attracted to the analog curve. I think we want a quieter, but more dynamic sound.

I believe the future is headed towards cloud media storage on one hand, and a continually self-sustaining vinyl industry, though comparitively tiny, which will feed another part of our intellect and desire, on the other. CDs will be out eventually. But they couldn't replace my vinyl collection anyway. Not even really a great try, if you ask me.

My buddy Chris tipped me off a few years ago about a boot version of Abbey Road called "The Black Triangle" - it's an incredible mastering of my favorite album of all time, and the history of it is pretty cool too. The audio sounds bloody amazing. Thing is - it's a VINYL mastering! Nuf said.

On a complete tangent, had to post this Split Enz tune. First saw this a little while ago on Merlin Mann's blog, and have since fallen in love. So cool. And kooky.