On Wed, 27 Apr 2011, Hein Marais wrote:
> More than a desire for fetish objects is the reason for the return of
> vinyl in the late 1990s ... it's about sound qualities, and the feeling
> that analogue recordings retain texture and warmth that cannot be
> reproduced in digital recording formats.
Well yes. But on those audiofile grounds, records never left. Almost all large company classical and jazz musical releases over the last 30 years have released vinyl as well as CD for the small group willing to pay extra for them.
I find it hard to imagine that teens who are totally happy with their iPods would stress the audiofile aspects. (Audiofiles generally loathe iPods.) I've certainly never heard them do it. But they do go on about how cool records are. (Cool, the one slang word that seems timeless.)
Records certainly sound different than CDs. When I first heard a CD I was blown away. When I first heard a record after 10 years of only hearing CDs, I was blown away again. Both seemed a sonic revelation.
But records are such an inconvenient pain in the tuchus that people who make that their primary source of music I think will always be looked at as at least part ritual fetishists by the rest of us.
Michael