They sound worse, if clarity is your goal. And they are huge and wear out. I agree with you 99%, I just wanted to point out that across some dimensions they are the superior technology.
I’m not sure how, its an aesthetic choice but an inferior technology by every metric that counts.
Candles still have a place, we still buy them, but we can’t reasonably call them superior either- even if, candles actually would have a real advantage of not requiring power. Vinyl doesn’t even have that.
Candles/Vinyl can be superior if you clarify the metric you're optimizing for.
The advantages of vinyl are basically making up for lack of self-discipline in humans. (I much prefer vinyl for that precise reason!)
a) Since putting it on becomes more of a ritual - handling the album carefully, brushing off lint, placing the needle &c - I find I make more of an effort to actually _listen_ to the music I put on. I could listen as intently to Spotify or Tidal, too - but, alas, I most often don't.
b) Seeing as you'll get some 20-odd minutes of music before having to make another choice - be it playing the other side or another album entirely - it enforces having to decide on what you'd like to listen to, rather than just letting your streaming service of choice play things it thinks you may like. (That being said, streaming services are a great way to explore new music!)
c) Given the economics of streaming, buying physical media helps both the record stores - a good one is like an excellent library, in which the librarians give you all sorts of curated recommendations for things you may like, in addition to being great social meeting places with like-minded folk - and performing artists alive; I've no idea how many hours I would have to listen to an artist on Spotify before the payout is equal to their takeout from a single vinyl sale...
d) Besides, it is cosy.
That being said, you could easily DSP CDs or streaming to sound like vinyl if that's your idea of fun - just about any playback format is superior sonically to vinyl. However, to many, it is the whole ritual of putting on a record which basically makes it worth the sonic tradeoffs... (Call me a luddite if you like!)
Rather less-succinctly: I never got into vinyl and have never owned a turntable that wasn't built down to a price. I do still have my shelves of CDs, and it keeps slowly expanding. I usually listen to Spotify because it is convenient and portable and -- these days -- lossless.
But my sister and her old man have put together a quite decent stereo system with a mix of vintage and modern gear in recent years, and also started a a rather serious vinyl collection. While there's certainly no romance there on my end, it's a lovely and deeply-involving experience to hang out with them in their tiny little city-dweller living room and spin records into the wee hours; sometimes for just one track, and sometimes for entire albums.
I definitely prefer the way my own stereo, which I've built over the course of decades, sounds. It's detailed and big and it does all the things; it is by all technical measures very superior. But we have a lot more fun listening to vinyl at their place than we have playing CDs and Spotify at my place. The process -- and indeed, the inconvenience -- of playing vinyl makes it all much more visceral.
Using constrained mediums on purpose is often how the best artistic expression is achieved. For example, if the artist knows their channel is noisy and band-limited they can get a lot more liberal with the kinds of samples they use throughout. CD/SACD is kind of like 4K for television. The medium becomes so transparent that it causes upstream shocks in every other part of the process. You can no longer rely on the camera or audio chain to cover it up (unless you hobble yourself intentionally).
Artistic expression is not technology. Vinyl is strictly inferior as technology. That doesn't imply that it cannot have any advantages at all, but that wasn't the point being made.
In theory. In practice most stuff is distorted and compressed to death and might as well be 12-bit ;)
But, another example: when I was growing up (dating myself here), cassette tapes were superior to CDs in the only way that mattered (to me): they didn't skip in my portable music player (walkman) when I took them running.
I had candles at my dinner table last Thursday, and am likely to do so date night tonight... but the bulbs I turn off to give the candles reign are LED...
RAM prices are such an infinitesimally small component cost of digital audio equipment that I can’t take you seriously here.
well actually...
Many decades ago, those who bought vinyl and desired adequate audio quality never listened to vinyl discs, but they copied them immediately to magnetic tapes and always listened only to the tapes, keeping the vinyl discs only as a master source, to avoid wearing them out.
You can get rid of a surprising amount of surface noise with a static gun and a line contact stylus (where shape is close to that of a cutting head so you get the biggest contact patch).
I think most people only copied to cassette if they want to use a Walkman, play it in the car or give a copy to a friend. It generally wasn’t for sound quality.
