Opinion: CD vs. Vinyl

The record begins to play. Slowly, surely crackling at first, coming through the Sony floor-standing, 200-watt 8ohm speakers. And then: fruition, that moment. The needle finds that certain groove and away, you're transported into a realm of pure music, rendering ecstatic frequencies in your ears and sonic blushes through your skin. As of this evening, I've begun to listen to an old Miles Davis Album, Seven Steps To Heaven, and I have to say that the mood is nothing less than a haze of confusion, contempt, and loathing.

The swooping, flexed lines of cool-blue trumpet coming through the speakers are muffled by this looming and very near static that has been buzzing in and around my head all day today. Through recent views stressed to me by a co-worker of mine, I've come to find that not all share the opinion that analog music is better than digital: hence, this buzz. The main argument contending, more specifically, that Compact Discs are, and will always be, of better sound quality than that of Vinyl records, or LPs.

So why, oh why indeed, for this shameless and embarrassing, unpleasant turn in a very fundamentally sound argument? It seems like a waste of time to me because Vinyl Records are better (yes, I've said it now) than Compact Discs. Always will be.

A Vinyl record's sound quality is the stuff that any music connoisseur strives for: a stringent example of the warmth and brightness of the turntable itself. CDs miss this mark, and become only "pieces" that can be used to puzzle the sound together. LPs are a map to that sound.

Original sound, the actually noises made by a band or a solo musician, whether live or in a recording studio, is analog by definition. CDs have to convert the origin of the sound into approximated steps, compensating for the analog rate, and measuring it to a certain degree of accuracy (think analog signal flashcards, or photographs, used to figure out the degree by which the sound facilitates).

It then converts the signal to that of analog, and shoots it out through the amplifier of your stereo: the only problem is that in the process of this, information, crucial at worst, can be lost. This form cannot truly capture the complete and original sound wave.

A record's "grooves", the lines that can be seen on both sides of the disc, spanning its entire length, mimic the original sound-wave's form. And while it is true that if dust or dirt get into the grooves, it can cause skipping, excess noise, or scratching, these same grooves allow for a direct connection, with no information hampered or lost, straight to the stereo of your choice. Wave-forms of a vinyl are much more rich, as the output of a record player is analog.

White-hot, grooved and cut and blasted back through the speakers: Bzzzzzzzzz, Pop! That rumble…It's alive, oh ladies and gentleman it's alive (cue evil music and psychotic laughter)! It's genuine, it's important. With the LP, a sense is conveyed in its entirety: while this may only be pop music, or rock 'n roll, or punk or jazz, no matter what anyone says, it has some sort of higher importance, and transcends that ugly, hollowed-out little cubby that has a reserved space for entertainment; it's an intangible quality.

And besides a sweet mist of nostalgia that one may get when putting on a record, or going to the store and browsing the seedy, sooty and incense-smelling rows and racks of these relics, there is an innate quality that comes directly from the apparatus that produces the sound. The aesthetics of LPs are very much a reality. From the album artwork, to actually putting on a record, vinyls seem to exceed and expand on the aesthetic nature of listening to and appreciating music.

Pulling out a full sized, almost poster-like lyrics sheet and inner art sleeve of an album beats the tiny, eye-straining books that come with CDs. And the vested interest and care that comes with actually taking the record out of the sleeve, putting it on, selecting a track, lining up the needle, and finally letting it rip: through these subtle differences, a level of investment can be seen. Not just in the choice for what the night's music will be, but in a commitment to an exemplary form of artistry and level of quality.

The splices throughout are only the precursor to greatness. The pops, skips, booming-violent storms of sonic assault - they transcend time and space and static. Albums do have their points of rebuttal though, even if they are masked by the CD and digital medium lovers' jealous and weird rage: the capacity to store albums, and how easy it is to store CDs compared to albums; the amount of abuse CDs can take over records, or records' susceptibility to dirt and dust particles; cleaning techniques-these facts are and will always be over-shadowed by the fact that through vinyl-analog compression, a level of sound quality and volume can be achieved that has not yet been rivaled by current standards of transmission.

iTunes, iPods, digital medium, CDs… these aren't (entirely) all that bad, but they will never match in comparison or in feeling what that of a true Vinyl can when you throw it on, turn the monster up, lean back and engulf the wave.