Vinyl
All music samples on this site are recorded from the record for sale and always the first track.
Vinyl has always offered a more intimate experience. The large format feels more substantial and turns the design of the cover and the inserts into satisfying artworks in their own right in a way that a CD never could.
Vinyl can be fragile, yes, among other imperfections. But those end up being part of its charm. Older records warp, needles wobble on their surface and skip over scratches. This is also turns records into nostalgia factories.
CD
“As long as you can measure the difference, the CD will be better than the vinyl, absolutely,” says Kees A. Schouhamer Immink, a former Philips engineer in the Netherlands, who was a member of the Sony/Philips task force that created the compact disc standards. “But if you say the whole experience — just like smoking cigars with friends — is better, well, do it. Enjoy smoking cigars with friends, and drink beer and brandy and enjoy listening to an old-fashioned record player. But don’t say the sound is better.”
“You may say it sounds better to you. That’s OK. That’s a subjective matter.”
