“Vinyl just sounds better man, like, it’s music in its natural habitat, man.”

That, of course, is one stoner’s opinion and it’s not to be discounted because the dude that attended Woodstock, the bud-smokin’ brother who saw the Grateful Dead thirty-nine times and drove his van to the Us Festival knows a shit-ton about two things: vegan restaurants and music.

So what side should you take in the emerging vinyl vs. digital debate? Well, the smartest combatants will be the ones who play on both sides and build a music collection that is diverse and capable of replicating whatever’s going on in your head (like, dig it, man). But you should always remember that “the music” is about much more than just sound.

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When it comes to the sound – the sound that comes from your turntable or a CD or a download – you have to figure out just how big of a nerd you want to be. For most of us, the answer will be, not very big. The vast majority of people you know are only casual listeners, consuming music while they’re doing something else.

Unless you have a super-expensive music set-up and a super-quite listening environment, detecting sound-quality differences between a vinyl disc and a compact disc and an MP3 will prove elusive. But it might be helpful for you to know the scientific facts.

• Original sound is analog by definition (picture a wave that goes up and down). And vinyl records are analog recordings, that is, they have a groove that captures the complete sound wave.
• Digital recordings like CDs and MP3/ACC downloads capture only parts of the analog wave depending on the sampling rate.
• Because vinyl is an analog recording it has the ability to sound more complete. Conversely, all digital recordings are missing information, they’re not complete.
• The level of missing information is not-so-much on a CD, but on downloaded tunes or the ones you typically hear on Pandora or Spotify, the missing information can be quite a lot (and Millennials don’t give a shit).
• A vinyl record starts with all of this great analog hope, but when it comes to sound quality, that hope is totally dependent on how the music is delivered, and this is where vinyl falls down.
• Scientifically, because of the flaws in the vinyl delivery system and the resultant compromises in physical structure (records get dirty and warp and sometimes the little whole is not perfectly centered, etc.) and dynamic range and surface noise and mechanical noise and speed variation and a bunch of other stuff, CDs (and some higher quality downloads) are superior to vinyl. That’s the oversimplified truth.

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But music doesn’t happen in a science lab, it happens in your soul, man. A piece of vinyl in pristine condition piped into the landscape through multiple speakers can for sure sound pure and complete and dimensional and groovy. Whether it’s technically better than any other form is irrelevant, because if it’s better in your mind, it’s better.

When a vinyl record pops or the needle skips, you consider it personality, you call it richness. And as the music plays and you’re holding the album cover and you go to this artsy place in your mind the music becomes holy and it exactly matches the vision in your mind when you think of the word music. That doesn’t happen with Pandora; it doesn’t happen with a download on your phone. So you should buy vinyl.

But don’t start dumping your CDs, they’re a wonderful music source in almost every way (once you get past the barrier of opening the original packaging). With a CD you can play an entire record, skip songs and go back and forth with the ease of a remote. The value of this playback versatility cannot be underestimated.

CDs are easier to store and catalog than records, though truthfully, the typical plastic CD jewel case is lame and breaks easily. CDs have the same cover and artwork featured on an LP, only it’s miniaturized, it’s pretty sweet. In addition, almost all CDs come with booklets which often include detailed liner notes and facts about the tracks and the band. While 12″ x 12″ albums have long been known for the art they contain, and some do have gatefolds and panels of words and pictures to be discovered, the truth is that many, many records especially ones from the 50s, 60s and 70s contain little-to-no information about the record. I have many albums that don’t even list the musicians.

CDs will essentially last forever and they are great friends that should never be kicked to the curb. Still, they’re endangered. For practical purposes, CDs are only sold today by Amazon, with Best Buy and Target recently announcing that they were quitting the CD business. Laptops and other computers no longer come with a CD drive and most automobiles are heading in the same direction. (CDs don’t belong in cars anyway because changing the radio station is one of the funnest reasons to even have a car.)

The moral of the modern music story is thus:
-Digital streams and downloads make your music portable and their kinda sucky sound quality is perfectly fine for when you’re out and about (you never want to without your music, man).
-CDs are the workhorse of your musical life and should be purchased and saved and appreciated.
-Buy vinyl, play it every chance you get, even when you’re not stoned … use your records as a means to get closer to the music and as a time-transport vehicle for your soul.

Photo credit: Adam Melancon on VisualHunt / CC BY-NC-SA