It’s not my turntable. I own more than 500 LPs and all of them play without a single skip (many of them without a single pop). I have a relatively low end Sony turntable with a new needle, and I brush and/or liquid clean all records prior to playing them. I store them in plastic sleeves (inner and outer), never leave them out, and baby them to no end. I actually enjoy the meticulous part of the hobby — when it pays off.

I’d say 3-4 out of every 10 records I buy, new or used, skip all over the place despite no apparent damage to the vinyl or stylus. But I can turn around, pull one of my other records off the shelf, and no problem. I’ve had this issue with brand new 180g vinyl, vintage vinyl from the ’60s and ’70s, and the thinner, cheaper, crappier records of the mid to late ’80s when vinyl was dying and labels were cutting corners.

I can find no discernible pattern or signifier. Otherwise this would be easy. I’d just stop buying used records, or stop buying records produced during a certain era or from a certain label. That’s not the case.

On the other end of it, I have records that do, in fact, look like dog Frisbees, but they play perfectly. Again, no connection to label, weight, era, genre, or whatever. Some records just play. Other records just don’t. It makes me crazy and it costs me an unnecessary amount of money. I’m buying a product, not gambling. This is the sort of thing that makes me shy away from spending more than a few bucks on a piece of vinyl, new or used. Why should I risk $50 on a Neil Young record that might skip right out of the wrapper? Why don’t I just chuck it all and go entirely Cloud-based with my own digital collection? If 3-4 out of every 10 records simply won’t play, I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough to keep me for long.

Additionally, there are tons of of great experimental records being released in limited editions, and for me it feels like I’m buying a piece of art. Likely, I would also buy it in digital form for on-the-go enjoyment.

As a recording engineer I’m happy to stay entirely digital, but if I can send a mix down to tape and master to Vinyl I’m generally happier still, provided the mastering engineer is good and doesn’t take on any bold steps to change the audio drastically. I enjoy going to tape because it can be quite a pleasant and subtle unification of the sound. Putting a mix or master through an overall eq is usually required but generally you want to do be as gentle as possible, a db in the wrong direction can sound quite crude at that stage, however that overall process on the mix as a whole rather than the individual elements can gel things together nicely.

If you can avoid the eq but gain the required overall ‘gel’ with a process like tape or vinyl then thats great, its normally more pleasing to my ears as long as the tape machine is set up correctly or (in the case of vinyl) the mastering engineer is GOOD. The medium will dictate the character but vinyl is one that many listeners naturally like, and with a good mastering engineer no useful info will be lost in the process.

Regarding ‘whats the point’ of going vinyl when the recording is digital needs a little extra info. Recordings are generally done at 24 bit, and often with higher sample rates than 44.1k. CD audio is 16 bit, at 44.1k, so the digital audio up until CD stage is normally of a noticeably higher resolution than most consumers ever experience. CD still sounds closer to neutral, perhaps, but a high quality digital mix master is going to loose info whether it goes to CD OR vinyl, its the artists/engineers choice as to what compromises to make in getting the song into a format that can be sold, ie CD, vinyl or both.

Recording music is an imperfect art from the word go, irreconcilable technical problems occur as soon as you multi mic a drum kit, its a series of compromises that are governed by artistic vision from the artist, producer and engineer, and limited by the gear used to capture the audio. The mics used effect the sound captured HUGELY, in comparison the effect of vinyl on the overall product is a small and musical one, and if its a sound the artist and studio personnel like then they will take steps to making sure it reaches the medium at the end of the project.

Again, I’m not arguing for either – I just want to find out whether vinyl’s sound experience is better than digital formats.
To be honest, I would choose a vinyl LP over a CD LP just purely because of the ritual of getting the album art all nice and big on the cover, opening it, placing it on the deck, positioning the needle and hearing it play.

The second issue is simply the equipment itself.. All styli and cartridges (And for that matter turntable themselves) add a signature to the sound in the vinyl. Think of the styli as a microphone listening to the groove. Its often this final stage that is responsible for the warm and less fatiguing experience of vinyl. Compare this to the harsh (every detail counts) philosophy of most CD players. My CD player along with most of the equipment is Linn LK series with a Genki as source for the CD side of things. Its interesting to note one of the reason the Genki sounds rather less fatiguing as a source is it seems to be tuned to make the CD sound vinyl like – However even that (and the latest streaming players) still have a “too much detail” quality that simply becomes fatiguing after an hour or so..

We can argue for ages about how much distortion has to do with the “warmth,” and frankly I don’t care what temperature my music is. The only difference is that when I listen to the very same CDs, through the same receiver and speakers as the vinyls, I don’t feel like the band is right there in front of me, whereas when I listen to the vinyls, the drums, vocals, guitars, pianos, and textures just feel as if they’re being played by people instead of Pro Tools. I wish my band could afford to record live on real tape. It’s a beautiful thing that lots of people get too caught up in technicalities to take the time to understand.

Go into a good mastering studio, pull the analog master tape OR the digital master, it doesn’t matter, and play it. I’m talking about the two track master, the post-mastering master, not the pre-mastering mix master.

Then, in the same room, at the same db level and through the same speakers, directly A/B the original master with a CD played on a high quality CD player and a vinyl record played on a high quality turntable. (Obviously, the CD and the vinyl record must be produded from the same master that you are comparing to).

The CD sounds more like the original master than the vinyl record does. It’s a very noticeable difference.

The vinyl sounds warm and nice, but it is NOT truly representative of the original master the way the artists and engineers crafted it.

The CD doesn’t sound absolutely perfect either, especially when compared to an analog master, but even then it is MUCH closer and truer to the original audio source than vinyl.

So the decision is whether you want to hear it as close as possible to the way the artist created it, or do you want something that may be nice and warm but inaccurate?

I think either choice is valid, after all it’s all about personal taste. Just don’t try to convince everybody else that vinyl is more accurate. It’s not.