alt Hacker NewsVinyls are not necessarily the inferior technology. Given the choice, I'd prefer to play vinyl in some cases. In social settings vinyl's short length and need to be flipped creates a dynamic social environment. Someone has to regularly choose new music to play, acting with intent to do so. Someone has to regularly walk to the machine. These create dynamism and flow. CDs are much longer, and less tactile. There's less of the my turn your turn, who is going to flip the thing.
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.
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For me the fact that vinyl discs wear out is their decisive disadvantage.
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.
Vinyl is for plebs, hiring troubadours for your party is the way.
This is like saying “Candles are superior to lightbulbs because they burn out quicker and thats an advantage in some situations”.
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.