I semi-agree. A phone is better in any practical way.
But there is something magical about interacting with mechanical (and electromechanical) stuff.
Sometimes I really love putting a record on a record table, flipping a switch, and gently lowering the stylus into the groove. There’s no track skip, no fast-forward, you just sit there and listen to an entire album at once. The quality is worse than what I could get from YouTube or something, but it feels so much more engaging.
And it’s not nostalgia either, my childhood music was on cassettes and later CDs, and I feel less attracted to either of those.
I would probably absolutely hate it if it was the only music format available to me. But the contrast with modern digital music blasted from a depression rectangle is what probably makes it so appealing to me.
You can skip tracks on vinyl. Not at the press of a button, but if there’s a track you know you don’t like, and maybe it’s extra long, you can absolutely set the needle down at a different point. It’s literally what old school DJs did and do.
Well, I know, but don’t tell my ADHD brain that! This has forced me to listen to some tracks I wouldn’t have otherwise and made me appreciate the art of album composition. Even if I don’t particularly enjoy one of them, it still still combines with the others to become more than their sum.
Oh, also, there are turntables that allow you to skip tracks at the press of the button. But that ruins half the fun of vinyl for me.
I semi-agree. A phone is better in any practical way.
But there is something magical about interacting with mechanical (and electromechanical) stuff.
Sometimes I really love putting a record on a record table, flipping a switch, and gently lowering the stylus into the groove. There’s no track skip, no fast-forward, you just sit there and listen to an entire album at once. The quality is worse than what I could get from YouTube or something, but it feels so much more engaging.
And it’s not nostalgia either, my childhood music was on cassettes and later CDs, and I feel less attracted to either of those.
I would probably absolutely hate it if it was the only music format available to me. But the contrast with modern digital music blasted from a depression rectangle is what probably makes it so appealing to me.
You can skip tracks on vinyl. Not at the press of a button, but if there’s a track you know you don’t like, and maybe it’s extra long, you can absolutely set the needle down at a different point. It’s literally what old school DJs did and do.
Well, I know, but don’t tell my ADHD brain that! This has forced me to listen to some tracks I wouldn’t have otherwise and made me appreciate the art of album composition. Even if I don’t particularly enjoy one of them, it still still combines with the others to become more than their sum.
Oh, also, there are turntables that allow you to skip tracks at the press of the button. But that ruins half the fun of vinyl for me.